Chairman, sheila bair. A bit later, the alliance for Health Reform host a forum on medicare policy in the future of the program. That gets under way at 12 15 eastern. Were live this afternoon at 1 30 this afternoon with a press conference with bipartisan members of the conference congress. As you might expect, given the breadth of products we have, one of the areas we are investing a lot is the multi screen connectivity, because we have already seen humans will pay tasking. You were on your couch watching tv but also texting on your phone are on the internet. How do we link those devices to reach other and link them to the internet . One very good example is the camera. And a camera now built in with 3g and 4g connectivity so you can take photographs were you go and instantly upload of tool website or to social media. Bringing Wireless Connectivity to a camera. Linking products to each other is a big thing for us and we think of value to the consumer. David steel from this years Consumer Electronics show tonight at 8 00 eastern on communicators on cspan 2. Ben cardin spoke with federal workers at the National Institute of health and maryland. He talked about sequestration budget cuts and other issues. Sequestration calls for across theboard cuts, totaling 1. 2 trillion dollars over the next 10 years with 1. 6 trillion coming out of the budget. This is just under an hour. Good morning. That was a nice response. Its wonderful to see you here this morning at the National Institute of health where we have the Great Fortune to have was United States senator ben cardin. Welcome to all of you and those who are watching over the web. I want to say a few words about the senator and he is going to address you and we will have time for questions and answers. And we have ways to receive those for people who are here and over the internet. And we will make sure to respond to all directions from which those questions may come. For those of you with who live in maryland and about three quarters of the people who work at n. I. H. Have that residence, this is your senator. He is become a National Leader on retirement, security, the environment, homeland security, Minority Health and Health Disparities and he is been a consist president supporter of the National Institute of health and our mission and the work we do. He was elected to the senate in 2006 where he currently serves on the finances, Public Relations and business committees. He serves as cochair on the Security Commission in europe. Prior to this he represented mary mayors third Congressional District in the house of representatives. And before that in the maryland house of delegates where he served from 1967 to 1978. He was speaker. He is a champion for medical Research Support for marylands World Class UniversityHopkins University of maryland and several others. And he is a strong supporter of our states biotech industry which is not located here by chance. Hes also been i think a strong supporter throughout all of this as the importance of looking for curious for many diseases and protect our citizens from bioattacks. Hes been here in a town meeting. We arrive here today at a particularly interesting moment given this is the month of february and there is a threat which im sure he will talk about of something called the sequester which might strike us by march 1 if nothing happens. Current estimates being that would reduce the n. I. H. Budget for 2013 by 1. 6 billion, already well into the fiscal year this would be a severely stressful situation. I know all of you here who believe in the mission come this morning hoping to hear words of encouragement about ways in which our enterprise can move forward in this time of uncertainty. I know he is a strong supporter of a good outcome here so were happy to have him come this morning to tell us something about that and to encourage all of you who are working hard as supporters of this enterprise, as Public Servants who believe in what you are doing and to tell that you this morning. So please welcome senator ben cardin. \[applause] thank you very much. Thank you for your extraordinary leadership on behalf of n. I. H. It really is a pleasure to be here. Dr. Collins pointed out that along with senator i have the great honor of representing the state that headquarters n. I. H. And it is a great world class institution, no question about it. We not only have the World Class Research facility at n. I. H. , but we have the World Champion baltimore ravens. \[applause] we collected on the bet yesterday so were in good spirits. I havent finished all the wine that was sent to us from california yet so i might indulge a little bit over the weekend. But we had to endure the california dentist crafts which are not as good as our crafts in mayor. It was a sweet moment and we thank you for that. Its a pleasure to be here. Joan is here representing chris part of our congressional team. We thank chris for everything he does as the leader in the United States house of representatives on budget issues there is no stronger advocate for n. I. H. Than chris. My colleague in the senate, barbara mcculski who is taking on a new responsibility as the chair of the Senate Appropriations committee. I tell you thats going to be good for this country because shes a real champion of responsible budgeting. But its going to be good for maryland to have the chairman of the appropriations committee. I want to acknowledge john walker on behalf of the work force, thank you for being here. My main purpose for being here is to have a town hall meeting to allow you to ask questions. Now i have been here for ribbon cuttings and ground breakings and very happy occasions. They are nice. Today im here as we start february just a few weeks away from march 1, which will bring about sequestration automatic across the board cuts that will effect the work that you do. And i want to be here to answer your questions. We are only a few weeks away from the end of the continuing resolution and its not clear what the end of march will bring for the legal operation for you to be able to spend money. Thats something we need to talk about. So i want to be here to try to answer your questions as your United States senator by first start by thanking you for what have you done and what you continue to do for our country and for our world. What you do here is world class. There is no comparable facility anywhere in the world. What you do is the best in the world. And yes, i can talk about the Economic Impact that you have on our community in Life Sciences there are 6 million jobs, good paying jobs that depend upon the basic research that is generated from what you do here. That is critically important, the number of jobs that we have. The impact you have on maryland and our employment. And i thank you for that. But what i think is critically important is how youve changed the way of life, the quality of life for people around the world. I had a chance to meet one of those individuals just a few minutes ago. The work that dr. Reenhand does on renal cancer. That is just one face of a person who would not bes with us today, who wouldnt have survived but for what was done here at n. I. H. And that story has been told thousands if not millions of times over. When i was a youngster i had a cousin who was diagnosed with a disease and decide shortly after. I later found out it was karen. We didnt talk about that when i was young. Cancer was a death sentence when i was a young person. Have you changed that here at n. I. H. Hereork thats been done has given hope to so many families and have cured so many diseases. I think about the progress weve made in heart disease. When i was young if you had a heart disease, it changed your life forever. You have changed the landscape on understanding our heart and how we can live healthy lives. Youve changed the landscape on hiv aids. It was a death sentence, no longer, thanks to the work thats been done here at n. I. H. Youve helped us understand Mental Illness and changed the landscape on Mental Illness. So many different areas that you have led have changed what we know about diseases and how we can improve the quality of life. So i first come here to say thank you. Thank you for what you have done. I know congress has a strange way of saying thank you. But i am sincere. You are the front lines of service to not only our country but i think to our world and i very much appreciate that. So let us move forward to the problems we are having. We have a budget problem in our country today. We have budget deficits that are not sustainable and how are we going to dale with these budget deficits . Thats the issue before the congress that we are dealing with. We dealt wit this week. We had president obama who visited with the democratic members of the United States senate in annapolis and it was the issue we talked about the most. How are we going to deal with our budget deficit . I could talk about how we got here, the policies that led to these deficits but im not going to harp than because we have to figure out how were going to move forward. I will emphasize one point. This deficit was not caused by our federal work force. You are not responsible for their deficit. \[applause] we could talk about the policies of going to war and how we pay for it, etc. But we have these large deficits and we need to deal wit. Let me bring you up to date because the last time i was here was a little over a year ago and we were talking about the budget control act and how we had to deal with this deficit and how we were going to bring down discretionary domestic spending and how we were going to deal with longer Term Solution that is required to us deal with revenues and mandatory spending and i ask your understanding as we pass the budget control act. And at the we were analyzing a recommendation that came out of a president ial commission known as the Boles Simpson commission. That Commission Said we had to reduce the deficit by 4 trillion or 5 trillion to have Sustainable Growth in our country. Take a minute and look at the progress that weve made since that last visit. Simpson bowles which was generally recognized as a balanced approach, a bipartisan approach to deal with our deficit asked to us reduce the projected deficit by 4 trillion to 5 trillion, we have 60 coming from spending cuts, 40 coming from revenues approximately. Since that time, we passed the budget control act that brought the deficit down by almost 1. 5 trillion over ten years. Almost all of those savings were on the discretionary domestic side. We froze budgets, as you know. You know that firsthand with your pay freezes. We did that and we were able to achieve through these budget caps about 1. 5 trillion of savings. Then on december 31, it may have been january 1, because it may have been after new years. Congress passed the compromise to avoid the fiscal cliff and that contained almost yours truly trillion of deficit cuts and most of that was true additional revenues by establishing the permanent tax rate at 39. 6 of wealthiest people and permanent tax relief for middle class taxpayers. We are up to around 2. 5 trillion of deficit reduction since we last talked. Now we are getting to march 1. And march 1, if we do not act, sequestration will take effect. These are across the board cuts. These were never intended to take effect. They were intended to get congress to act on a longterm budget plan, that was the intent of it. But were at the day of judgment, march 1. And they will take effect to our National Defense budget as well as our domestic budget. The cuts are actually larger on the military side. And if they take effect on march 1, if they take effect, they will cause significant damage to our country, to our National Security redness, to our commitment to provide essential services to the people of this country and to our economy. Let me talk a little bit about the number of jobs. There are different numbers out. There we have that it would effect the cuts here at n. I. H. Alone when you look at the direct jobs and the indirect jobs could cost our economy as much as 100,000 jobs. Weve looked at the impact on our federal work force. Maryland has almost 6 of its total work force are federal employees, well above the National Average of 2. 2 . So it will have a real impact on the state i represent, more so than other states. But then there are federal contractors who will be negatively impacted with layoffs hurting our economy. So weve got to avoid sequestration. Thats another 1. 2 trillion more in cuts. We need to substitute a rational plan for these ir rational cuts. Thats what we need to do. Let me tell you what we are working on and what were going to try to do. Were going to try to substitute for sequestration a plan that gets sequestration off the table not for two months or one year or two years, but for ten years. We shouldnt have these types of cuts in Discretionary Spending. Weve already done. That look at the numbers. Look what i told you originally about the Simpson Bowles framework. Weve hit those numbers on the discretionary side. What we need to do is substitute a budget that makes sense for growth in this country so we can create the jobs, train our people, do the research, protect our people, do what is necessary but allow for Economic Growth and responsible budgeting. So how do you do that . I believe you will see budgets that we will be submitting that president obama will be submitting that will say that we will do three things to continue this deficit reduction. Weve already done over half but we need to do more. We need more revenue. Historically revenue is represented about 19 to 20 of our economy. When bill clinton was president and we balanced the federal budget it was close to 20 . Revenues today are less than 16 of our economy. We need additional revenues. And we have suggested that there are ways of doing this by looking at what we call the tax expenditures. These are provisions in the tax code that give tax breaks to certain groups of taxpayers but not all taxpayers. You might be surprised to learn when you add that up on an annual basis it equals about as much revenue as we bring in from the tax code. That 1. Trillion a year we spend in tax expenditures. Not all of those are necessary. Like not all spending is necessary, not all tax expenditures are necessary. We can certainly save over a tenyear period a couple hundred billion dollars by reducing these tax expenditures. That needs to be part of the equation, revenue. We also need to bring down mandatory spending. It represents we spend much more in mandatory spending than we do in the appropriation process in government. And you know that the anguish we go through every year on appropriations. We need to bring down our mandatory spending. The best way to do that is to bring down the cost of healthcare which would reduce not only medicaid and medicare cost, but also the cost to our economy of healthcare. And working on those proposals. Then we can save money on the military side which we have the overseas Contingency Operations which reflects the military operations in afghanistan which are at a high level. They are going to be reduced, we are going to have our troops out in 2014 plus in todays threat against america which is more of the terrorist type rather than another country trying to abate us we can organize our oversees operations in a more efficient way. We should be able to do enough deficit reduction without the type of cuts for our Discretionary Spending particularly on the domestic side. And we should do it in a way that allows to us continue to invest in what will create the jobs we need for our economy, by educating our work force and doing the basic research we need. What is the prost prognosis of getting that done by march 1 . Not very bright. For the congress, for the house and the senate to reconcile their differences and get a bill to the president for signature taking care of all these issues by march 1 is not likely. Its possible. Were going to work for it, but not likely. So we will look at ways we can provide shortterm relief. But ill support that because i want to avoid sequestration. We need to get working now on the longterm substitute proposal and reconcile the differences between the house and senate and get it done. Predictability is critically important for the work you do here, for researchers who commit their lives to know the funding will be here, not for two months but for a long time. We really need to reconcile our differences and get this done. I wish i could give you clear direction on this. I wish there was a more definitive answer. Gridlock never created a single job in this country. Gridlock is bad for america. Congress needs to act. But i tell you the debates we are having in washington are fundamental to americas future. President obama is right to insist that were not going to solve our problems by asking spending cuts to take the full burden here, we do need revenue. Hes right in his leadership on this issue. And i am hopeful that we will see a resolution of this issue sooner rather than later. I have confidence we are going to get this done. I have confidence in this country. When i come here and see the incredible work that you do, it just energizes me and i know i speak for your federal delegation. We are going to do everything we can to make sure these sequestration orders never take effect and we have a plan that will allow the type of job growth that is important for ameri