were you goofing off before sitting around drinking coffee? occasionally. but the left hate privatization. they don t want to pay for the things the roads, the dams and the rivers. yes, we do. we just want the money spent well. privatize the police department, privatize everything. privatize everything. that is our show tonight. oo now john stossel. privatize erg. may everything. maybe i got carried away. there are some things government. ought to do. most are listed in the year of the constitution. this is the spin. this makes it clear there s not much the government should do. this is mostly about what the federal government should not do. the founders were right. most things work better. most have freedom of choice. that happens with we leave things in their hands. what should be privatized? lynn gilroy studies that. what for example? things like changing the oil in vehicles, many cities are paying public employees lavish salaries and functions that you can compete out to the private sector. why can can t the government employees do it cheaper better? it is a great question. in the public sector you have a monopoly. when you do you don t have competition. you don t have any pressure on prices. when you go to a competitive business system you have a private sector competing to provide services for you what you tend to do is drive down costs and reduce service quality. when you do this process right that s the outcome you are going to get lower costs better quality. you published the privatization report. one of the things in in country don t realize there are 17 states that since prohibition own and operate liquor or wholesale operation. you deliver liquor to stores. after prohibition dangerous drugs and kids get it and there will be drunk driving accidents. what you tend to see today you see the same with marijuana legalization. what is interesting about that you don t have any states clamm clamoring to operate it themselves. washington state had its own state run wholesale and retail monopoly with lick tore. vot liquor. we have been through it a year now and we look at the results. critics say kids will drink we will see more car accidents. that has not panned out. you have fewer dui incidents accidents and arrests. you have under aged drinking that hasn t changed. the sky didn t fall. california hired a company to run public parks. the private sector is charging the same fee the state was charging to let people in and do camping fees and things like that. they are paying the states for the privilege of doing that. the state which was losing money and making money. but this is what people would say this can t be. the company says this is a prophet. you have a company making a profit and they are saving you money statement. that gives you a sense of how inee fish shentd it can be. rahm emanuel lowered recycling costs by causing competition between government workers and private workers. he allowed the public employees and private sector to compete against each other. in chicago mayor emanuel broke up the city into different zones and kept the public sector with some of them and bid out the recycling in other parts. you had a real world competitive test game. what happened is again competition just by bringing in the private sector the public employees realized they were going to have to step up their game because that is encroachment in their turf so to speak. what happened? over six months they saved $2 million after just the first six months. this is reported by the mayor s office and they reduced the overall cost by 35 percent over a six-months period. that prompted the administration to decide to look at other opportunities to apply that managed competition model. this is happening all over space flight they are doing it for much less. paving streets. louisiana and hospitals. they are getting approved patient outcomes. private operators are killing them for neglect. getting better preventative carry duesing waits for prescriptions and appointments and things like that. they have seen a traumatic turn around. what woke me up to the benefits of private companies running by government services was a report i did years ago with the jersey city water department. jersey city new jersey dgot o bad they didn t taste good. they failed the tests. city workers said there wasn t inch they could do they couldn t slow the price increase. they don t have to increase rates they said no. can t be done. answers heard bureaucracies every where. he did something unusual. he put a water contract out forbid. and a for-profit company won. within months a private company fixed the pipes the government couldn t fix. how can you trust the drinking water to some outside company? the water is safer and cleaner than ever before. for the first time in years the city s water met the highest standard for less money. the private companies saved taxpayers more than $100 million. some private companies are bad. you are cherry picking the good examples. maybe i did there. they get fired they go out of business. they get fewer. the government workers never fire themselves. it is new private workers. if they blow it they are going to get the contract to somebody else. these men work for jersey city water when the department said it couldn t be done. they knew it couldn t be done. are you working harder now? on the go. were you goofing off before. not only government workers defend that. you get about 4,000 plus water related contracts up toer rebidding. 93 percent have been renewed by the public sector. the cities and italians in waste water services. now the other side. some on the left. prooifr ties everything you can get their hands on. you have old tee baggers who don t want to pay for the things the roads and the dams and the rivers. yes i do. i just don t want the money wasted. former congressman kucinich says the government workers can do the work just as efficiently? when you talk about privatization you end up paying more taxes and fees go up you heard examples that the taxes were lower because they delivered the water more cheaply. not going to happen. listen. the question is this. if people want control over these public services in time they will own you. what we have in america is assets that be long to people and municipalities across the country now being brought up by foreign investors. we have for example ab dab bee invested in the parking meter privatization in chicago. you have the tollbooths in it illino indiana $3.4 million investment. investors are planning on making $21 million. they didn t give it away they leased it so they will get it right. the parking meter was a bad thing so they canceled it. the private company when it doesn t cowork out they can fir the company. in indiana you have spanish and australian firms invested. they expect to make 21 billion in profits over the term how do they do that because they are more ee pish sufficient. you raise the tolls? if a private company takes over who are you going to call? we elect the public official but the private companies are i will make sure the streets are repaired you have water and sewer service that is second to none. that is parted of what people vote for. you talk about democratic control the people get the vote their representative. you only get to vote every four years and sometimes two years and often you incumbents gain the system unless you get redistracted out. there is knotted really competition. in the private sector where there s competition every minute if you don t serve them well the next guy cleans your clock. that s why things improvement. you look at lal burton you look at black water. war is a bigger one. the nsa. wait a minute, john. not only do i have one, i have the same identical kucinich has the same identical constitution. you are the mayor of cleveland. somebody wanted to proif ties the electric company. you fought that. that was a good thing? because cleaver land then defaulted. our elected company. we saved it as saved taxpayers ten s of millions of dollars if not hundreds of millions of dollars. why did you fault? the bank said unless you sell the city s electric system to a private they had a financial interest they would refuse to reduce the city s loans it was a corrupt thing that had to be turned out. we have to expect there would be certain public services rendered to people. police, fire, yes fire. waste collection, water, sewer. it has to be government run. it should be. if people don t have control over the water rates the rates go up. why should people have to go to companies in france and germany to be able to get permission to turn on their water in the state. we have massive investment being made in america infrastructure. we don t own our own country any more. i have a problem with that. i have a problem with foreign investors investing in infrau structur structure. thank you senator kucinich. we agree to disagree. i would like to keep the conversation going with you. privatize it, let us know what you think. private parks, libraries and even selling human organs. should we really privatize everything? 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[ female announcer ] stay strong, stay active with boost. pop in the drum of any machine. .to wash any size load. it dissolves in any temperature, even cold. tideod pop in. stand out. what is something that clearly should not be privatized? many people would answer the public square like the public park. parks need to be open to everyone. there shouldn t be an admission fee. yellowstone park charges user fees about 20 bucks a camp there, $25 to ride your car in. there s little doubt a park is something that ought to be open to the public and therefore run by a government national or local. ann beater man says it s still that way and he should know because he converts the government park into privately managed ones. how did you come up with this idea? we took over a park, john, when it was a disaster. not far from this studio. very visible to everybody because they come to other cities and visit. 2k3w069ment has government h allowed very dangerous conditions to govern it there was urine and graffiti. there needed to be a plan. we needed to pay market prices for everything. the private sector is used to market prices. as opposed to paying less? government prices the government employees are so expensive one of the reasons in manhattan you don t have litter picked up during the day it s too expensive to do that with government employees. you found government pays above market prices and gets below market service. when you hear government doesn t have a market it is a self compose pose imposed commission. you have a park dangerous dirty not maintained you say businesses wouldn t you like a nicer park give me some money. we started with charitable contributions from it the businesses and rockefellers and came up with a revenue scheme where all of the money going to the budget would come from private business deals. we haven t taken park money from 1997. the tapark is nice. i get a lot of tearful letters haven t been here for 25 years but great bryant park is something we can enjoy. whatever evidence in bryant park the result is a corporate playground. you have these booths, people sell stuff. people advertise stuff. that is not public. that is not a public park. only rarely do we have anything commercial and that is to give us enough money to do all of the things that are enjoyed by the public. the park is completely free all of the hundreds of events we run there are free. they can go to the ice rink which is free. it s a revenue scheme that allows the park to operate free of the ups and downs of government money. we keep the corporate messages toned down. if they aren t being built. google sponsored the wi-fi we gave them 8 and a half by 11 porcelain signs saying you want wi-fi google paid for it. now bryant park even the city is trying to get other people privatize other parks and this is called a fascist corporate takeover. there is a cab soolger tooli cartoonish view. they want to do the right things in washington square. there are surgszs pd colling true labs surgszs where this is a poll la there are large sections where this is popular. we did a park in dal also where i entered my routine about why it should be prooifr tized. we have of already started this you don t have to persuade us. you did pittsburgh? yes. and you planned a park in newark. you are still working in boston. the dallas park goes over what used to be a highway. this is a beauty. it is incredibly popular. as is bryant park. the average income in bryant park about 55,000 a year. this is a playground for executives. what else should be privatized? mass transit first thing. i always laugh. 100 smart people said to me over the past ten years of course mass transit can never break even. it can t break even at under government rules. you are going to pay three times the market price for wages and you are not going to collect from things other than taxes. they pay three times the market price from wages? i heard metro north flight men are 140 range straight salary and the conductors. the public doesn t know this but part of the problem with mass transit not operating at a balance is the wages and benefits are so high when run by the public. they don t know the trains were built by mostly private companies who made a profit first before they took over. privatizing parks or a town s water system or bgarbage collection is one thing, but what about the military and selling human s organs? that s later. next special correspondent kennedy checks out privately run libraries. they offer things like vending machines that dispense fully charged laptops. vo: it s that time of year again. medicare open enrollment. time to compare plans and costs. you don t have to make changes. buit never hurts to see if u can find bettoverage, save money, or both. and check out the preventive benefits you get after the health care la open enrollment ends december 7th. so now s the time. visit medicare.gov or call 1-800-medicare nothing, that s what? that s why i take prilosec otc each morning for my frequent heartburn. cause it gives me a big fat zero heartburn. woo hoo! 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[ male announcer ] prilosec otc. millions have raised their hand for the proven relief of the purple pill. and that relief could be in your hand. for many, nexium helps relieve heartburn symptoms from acid reflux disease. find out how you can save at purplepill.com. there is risk of bone fracture and low magnesium levels. side effects may include headache, abdominal pain, and diarrhea if you have persistent diarrhea, contact your doctor right away. other serious stomach conditions may exi. avoid if you te clopidogrel. for many, relief is at hand. ask your doctor abouxium. i m bethand i m michelle. and we own the paper cottage. it s a stationery and gifts store. anything we purchase for the paper cottage goes on our ink card. so you can manage your business expenses and access them online instantly with the game changing app from ink. we didn t get into business to spend time managing receipts, that s why we have ink. we like being in business because we like being creative, we like interacting with people. so you have time to focus on the things you love. infrom chase. so you can. john: most everyone says most everyone says libraries have to be run by government. it s not a store it s a free government service. but just as with roads and garbage removal what if the government instead of trying to manage the library itself hire add private contractor and said you run it? would service decline? would they cut corners to increase profit? we checked out private libraries in california. can you drink coffee p and walk around a library? you can. this is different than most libraries i visiteded. we have story times every day for kids all different ages. you can check out a computer that comes out of one of the vending machines. where is your lap top? you got it. it is free as long as you return it. when you want to check out books and dvd s a computer handles that. there you go. is that cool or what? when you return a book no librarian has to find out where it goes on the shelf the machine does that automatically. look at that. they have your book. people lover this lilove thi library. you know they are not public workers, they are hired by a private company? i did not know that. did you know this is a private library. private? you see a difference? yeah, definitely. they do a better job running your labibrary than mayor kelly did. he voted against allowing a private company to manage the library. i went down a post. i am okay with that. are they happy? they are thrilled. this library is packed with citizens and families. this is one of the best decisions we have made. would you look at the success of our library system today? some think the government should run libraries. if you contract things out to private company they do just fine. the mayor voted against it but now he says i was wrong. he was against it before he was for it then he sighs what an incredible success story it is. it saves the tax payer money and also keeps them really involved in the library. they use it themselves. the traffic is up 23 percent. circulation up 39 percent. program attendance. volunteers are out that means people are coming to help out and really get involved. volunteer hours sounds like oh you are taking away government jobs volunteers are going to be doing this. but they have more paid libraria librarians. the libraries run so much more efficiently by the private company than when the county ran it the county was only able to offer 14 libraries. this company was able to get enough money together including retirement packages. you mentioned lssi which stands for library system and services. they are the one big privatization of library chains. that s all they do. they don t have to waste time focusing on anything else. this is a privatization success story. the two were open only six days a week now 7 days a week. people hate this term now you talk to the city and they say we object strongly to the term privatization. we have out sourced libraries. i think out sourcing is more offensive. if you hear the word privatization involved in a government service you should breathe a sigh of relief. it means it will be run efficiently. it might not be but the beauty of it if it is not the city can say okay private company you are fired and hire somebody else. government november fires itself. they are not saddled with the long-term pension contracts breaking the bank of many california cities they are doing quite well compared to some of their neighbors. the city saves a million dollars a year that they were spending on their own left good libraries. thank you kennedy. coming up 100,000 americans are on a waiting list hoping someone will donate a kidney. or some other organ that might save their life. our next guest went to a country where you can buy and sell organs lelie. what happens there? 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[ male announcer ] united is rolling out global, satellite-fed wi-fi to connect you even 35,000 feet over the ocean. that s.wifi friendly. of their type 2 diabetes with non-insulin victoza®. for a while, i took a pill to lower my blood sugar, but it didn t get me to my goal. so i asked my doctor about victoza®. he said victoza® is different than pills. victoza® is proven to lower blood sugar and a1c. it s taken once-a-day, any time, and comes in a pen. and the needle is thin. victoza® is not for weight loss, but it may help you lose some weight. victoza® is an injectable prescription medicine that may improve blood sugar in adultth type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. it is not recommended as the first medication to treat diabetes and should not be used in people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. victoza® has not been studied with mealtime insulin. victoza® is not insulin. do not take victoza® if you have a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to victoza® or any of its ingredients. symptoms of a serious allergic reaction may include: swelling of face, lips, tongue, or throat, fainting or dizziness, very rapid heartbeat, problems breathing or swallowing, severe rash or itching. tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. serious side effects may happen in people who take victoza®, including inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis), which may be fatal. stop taking victoza® and call your doctor right away if you have signs of pancreatitis, such as severe pain that will not go away in your abdomen or from your abdomen to your back, with or without vomiting. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you have any medical conditions. taking victoza® with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. the most common side effects are nausea, diarrhea, and headache. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. if your pill isn t giving you the control you need ask your doctor about non-insulin victoza®. it s covered by most health plans. john: this guy accused of buying kidneys and reselling them on the black market. making money off of people s misery. look at this scar from a guy who donated. people are paid 2,000 dollars for a kidney. that clip from mig gwinn kelly a few years back, clearly she is horrified about this black market kidney selling operation. is something wrong with me. poor people were paid 2,000 dollars for a kidney. i say fine. apparently that person wanted $2,000 more than he wanted his kidney. we have two you don t need both. once you are an adult it ought to be your choice how you use your body if you want to sell a body part it is your business. not in america. it is illegal. something must be wrong with me. it s illegal because most people are horrified by the idea of organ selling. i am horrified by the ban on it. 100,000 americans are on a waiting list hoping to get a kidney. in the meantime they suffer painful dialysis, four-hours three times a week. it only partially clean their blood. it is very expensive. thousands die waiting to get a kidney. others risk their lives going to foreign companies or going to sleazy doctors doing transplants illegally. web sites post ads for kidneys. in america kidneys go for 120,000 collars. but because it s a black market you can t be sure the offer is real or if it is if the surgery would be safe. image if you could leave america and go to a truly horribly governed country, iran. they threaten the world persecute women, stone people and break sharia law but they do one good thing. they are the only good thing in the country that legalized organ selling. he went there to check it out and you liked what you saw. they have a waiting list for people to donate as opposed to a waiting list for people to get a kidney. everyone who qualifies can get one. iran of all places. exactly. the only country? they have been doing it for 25 years. you interviewed people there, you said what if they it was illega illegal. nothing wrong with helping yourself while helping others. the sellers thought they were doing a good deed. they didn t think money exchanging hands made it any less valuable as a social act of helping save another person s life. as a matter of fact there are people who said if i had a second kidney i could give i would give it for free because i got so much pleasure out of helping other human being, but r9d oh at least two of us were helped. some people didn t feel good enough about it they didn t donate without money. some people do. in other countries people wait for organs. in this country the donations come from all truistic donors. who can t get paid. who don t get paid. one of the pictures you have a black smith who needed money to start his own shop. he told us later he had done that. he built an addition on his house. had his own shop now. interestingly he gave his kidney to a 15-year-old girl who is going to school and doing well. he checks in regularly with her mother because it gives him such a lift to hear that the girl is doing fine. here are people who received kidneys. one woman looked really old. i am surprised they would choose to give her a kidney. if you qualify medically there is no age limit. in america 100,000 people wait hoping. in iran they get a kidney. here you have donors and recipients together they get to meet. it is almost like open adoption in that way. the parties can decide whether or not they want to get to know each other. about 50 percent of the time they do they have ongoing relationships where the recipients say the donors are like their son they go to dinner at each other s homes and things like that. the donor is on the right the recipient on the left. correct. the rest of the world the people are horrified by this. i am not, you are not. are we just weird? what s your take on this? i can t really understand why that whole argument of explo exploiting the poor is so patronizing. the rich will take organs from the poor. why do you think you lose your ability to reason because money is involved. you don t. it makes a lot of sense to get 50,000 dollars for a kidney and save someone s life rather than working to pay for your child s education. we already sell women sell eggs men sell sperm. blood and bone marrow, yes, we do. people view the surgery differently. i don t know if it s the surgery. i think it s old habits diehard. i don t understand the attitude of news reporters who act like adults who trade one kidney for money are helpless suckers. here s is a sample. young unemployed man who tried to sell one of their kidneys. they have little understanding of the consequences. they understand the consequences. there you go. the guy i told you about was 32 years old. this young guy decided he had been an apprentice long enough. there were people who paid for their children s educations build additions on their house, start businesses, to get married. as many reasons as therer for wanting money like a loan were reasons to sell the kidney. the added benefit is you are saving someone s life while you are doing it. we encourage you to donate, but i wish america would allow is he selling. thank you. she has written is book about what she learned in iran. it will come out early next year. what else can we privatize in inch more. the son of miment ton friedman he is next. next. [ male announcer ] there will be more powerful storms. that s why there s new duracell quantum. only duracell quantum has a hi-density core. and that means more fuel, more power, more performance than the next leading brand. new duracell quantu trusted everywhere. john: i have to a knowledge the show title is we need some government the worst places to live the countries have no rule of law. an african country where you are afraid to build because your neighbor may steal it. nobody builds everybody stays poor. we need government. limited government. the man who taught me that was nobel prize winner milton friedman. what with need a widespread central the government needs to be limited to the basic functions. i assume that means what is in here the constitution. the court the post office provide for the common defense. but it turns out milton friedman s son david an analyst says we ought to go further and gradually david gets ridz of almost all government? all government. i would say of the things government does, some of them are things that should stop doing tomorrow such as arresting people for smoking marijuana and some are things that over time we should be able to find ways of doing privately by voluntary arrangements. will like courts our eeing system? like courts. a lot of the law currently in fact is arbitration the american arbitration association in effect has its own legal rules. your auto insurance company has its own legal rules when you run into somebody they almost never go to court. in the long run law and enforcing law ought to be private activities. before we go into this i should point out your book machinery of freedom goes into details about how a system without government might work. government s laws it protects the poor and the weak. if you didn t have government the rich people would take over. are you disturbed by the fact that majority of all felony trials in the u.s. the defense attorney is working for the government? is that is what comes outer our system where if you say you are poor and charged with a felony you get a lawyer but the lawyer is ap pointed by the prosecutor who is trying to con vvince you. how old it work in a private system? if you look at the president it will do as the best the government pro tuesdays. they produce schools and most of us know what the schools and inner city wiare like. they are mostly places inhabited by poor people. on the whole they do better than worse for people on the market. beyond the court how about law enforcement, government, the police i think of as a government job. if you look as recently as 18th century england they had what they looks on paper is the legal system with no police force. if you were robbed it was up to you or someone you hired to find the person who robbed you and to get the victory of the crime. in england for well over a century that was a successful society. france in the 18th century had a modern system which police and public prosecutors and france went down into the chaos of the french revolution while england fell on into the victorian period. it is one of the ways it can be done we are much too willing to assume the way we do things is the only way it can be done. what about the military? is that was the hardest problem. i was more pessimistic when ie soviet union was a serious threat. it fortunately self destructed and at this point our enemies are much less powerful. they don t have hydrogen bombs and missiles and bombers. it is true much of the military is prooif sized. halliburton provide meals and builds barracks and does the laundry tdefense department say it would cost much more if we did it all of the weapons are prooifr tized. the modern military at least outside of communist states don t build their guns and thanks and things. they buy them from firms. thank you david friedman. up next, my take on privatization. i m beth. and i m michelle. and we own the paper cottage. it s a stationery and gifts store. anything we purchase for the paper cottage goes on our ink card. so you can manage your business expenses and access them online instantly with the game changing app from ink. we didn t get into business to spend time managing receipts, that s why we have ink. we like being in business because we like being creative, we like interacting with people. so you have time to focus on the things you love. infrom chase. so you can. how do you react when you first see this? it looks kind of like a dancer? reality check: some 4g lte coverage maps don t really look like maps. seems like maybe. a bunch of berries. this one feels more empty. what do you see here? clearly a picture of thunited states. check the map. verizon s superfast 4g lte is the most relile, and in more places than any other 4g network. i should switch to verizon immediately. that s powerful. verizon. the lg g2: featuring an intuitive rear-key design and 13-megapixel camera. 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[ female announcer ] today, cisco is connecting the internet of everything. so everyone goes home happy. john: privatisation jus privatization sounds bad to people. not you but you are not normal. you are economically educated you watch this show. regular people believe if it is privately run it favors rich people and excludes the poor and the weak? it has to cost more because they take a profit. and their profit must be our loss. if government runs it we are in this together sharing the good stuff. that makes sense to man he into people. it is wrong. let s look at one town that proo privatized most of the services. these workers picking up streets and picking up trash. aren t they working fast? they work for a private company and they get more work done in less time. we have fewer employees than the city to the north of us and we have exactly the same population. the mayor it is a coincidence she looks like margaret thatcher was delighted they do better job for less money. of course they want profit. what difference does it make if the company is making a profit but you are getting a service that cost you less? the town saved tax money and private companies offered a better idea. traffic lights are sin synchronized so there aren t traffic jams. city workers might have eventually figured out a way to synchronize the lights. they didn t. it s not that they are bad people it is just government workers have fewer incentives to rock the boat by trying something new. if they don t innovate don t do it better they may lose the contract. if they do it better other cities might hire them and they might get rich. the businessman who ran for president understood that. instead of the government budget what should we cut. we should ask the opposite question what should we keech? if only you weren t so wouldn t you might educate people about the privatization. nearly half of the people government pays to work wildfires work for private companies. the president says we need money to put outhouse fires. if your house catches fire it is a private company that will help put it out. private firefighters cost less. even police working be privatized. today there are more private security people in america than police working directly for govern thement. oakland california was run to the ground and when the city ran out of money cut out the police force. plan then rose. they they hired private security it was better. the presence of patrol seems to reduce crimes in an area by 70 percent. in the two years prior to the patrols going live we had about 30 burglaries. in the four and a half months since we have had one burglary and one attempted. crime is down and residents are happier. government offers guarantees on paper and promises and speeches but government rarely delivers. market competition does. they aren t perfect but they allow for a world where prudence is rewarded and sloth punished a world in which people are more likely to take risks and innovate. that s a world where more people prosper. that is our show. see you next week. huckabee in two seconds, have a great night. tonight on huckabee. i am sorry that they are finding themselves in the situation based on assurances they got from me. with his credibility on the line the president apologizes after lying about the health care. you will be able to keep your plan, period. was the damage done? he would tell anyone who cared to listen, he would be a navy seal. betrayed and demanding answers from the white house. our president has gloried in their excesses and exposing them they have put a target on their back. partners of aaron vaughn
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(male announcer) live from the bay area here is your kron 4 news mine during the late is out of bags and city, black smoke has come from the sistine chapel chimney as a were to elect a new boat resumes this morning at the vatican. we re following a developing story out of marin county where police are on the scene of a fatal car accident. warm weather as we be are the bay area, temperatures expected to hit 80 degrees and some parts of the bay. just like yesterday. once we get that fog to pull back a little bit we will see some nice temperatures and wind, and near the 80 degree mark. not so warm white now, it is 42 degrees. it does feel a little warmer than that just because there s not a whole lot of wind right now. you could see some of the trees over there, how still they are right now. the good the is there s no wind factor but it is expected to warm up and get into the 80s. pick a possibly be one of the hottest days of the year. you should prepare to wear jackets and now because it is 43 degrees but it is expected to warm up. we have some areas of luckily did fall right now. later on this afternoon could definitely be the warmest day of 2013 thus far. here s a quick look year after an highs, looks of a piece of lint, 77 fairfield concord, sunnyvale 66, livermore 78. more details on those afternoon highs coming up in just a few minutes. we have a hot spot in the north bay highway 1 01. you ll see at least one lane, off at the marin county line. fifth off this is northbound 01 at the county line, very close the san antonio exit. a pickup truck went off the road, the accident resulted in a fatality. traffic is getting by without a major delay but we will definitely keep an eye on it. we re dealing with reduced visibility especially on the bridges. i love the bridge checkable trevor report coming up in just a bit. black smoke is billowing from the chimney of the sistine chapel, meeting roman catholic card also not elected a pulp and there is a record third round of balloting. cargoes loaded twice today and michelangelo s famously frescoed sistine chapel after a first vote tuesday at the conclave to elect a successor benedictus 60. if it will take a two-thirds majority of the 115 card of, 77 boats must be electevotes toe next pope. we did see another boat or wrong and today. vote around noon today flu leaders from the christian preschool of ouand church held apparently meeting and pleasanton last night. parents and administrators at said appoint preschool are in shock following allegations that of former teacher take up a child for refusing to take a nap. angelo calcano resigned from her job as a teacher at the preschool in january. this pictur after polie said the mother of the zero growth wouldn t disclose that she saw a picture of her daughter to again by calcano after she allegedly tied the tied their up with masking tape for refusing to take a nap. it s their turn year-old boy is recovering this morning after being shot in oakland. as many as it morning around 730 in the 13th at 0 hundred block of 66 ave. police received a call from the hospital after the boy had been dropped off. the details are available but the shooting at anyone effort with information about this is after all oakland police department. a man who claims he was running what ought oakland most wanted list is now suing the city s police department. 37 year old och au van was placed on the city s most wanted list for six months and 2012 in connection with a gang shooting. claims that when he went to the police to clear up the confusion, he was placed under arrest. however a lawyer for the band says his client a law-abiding citizen with no history of violence. on top of clearing his name, a band s lawsuit seeks financial compensation for loss of employment wages and emotional trauma. the case is scheduled for a status hearing on june 7th. some a little video shows a missing woman last thursday morning. at 31 year-old eric out maska- leris was walking along 34 then telegraph in oakland. she has not been missing for seven days. her brother jobs last uncovers this may have. i told her what to pack. we love you erica. there is only people here who love you and are looking for you. we are going to find you. a $1,000 reward is not being offered in this case. benicia police are asking for public help in finding this man. 53 year old arcelio cruz also known asr c. he was last seen as the knees on monday just before midnight. he has milked medical problems and is considered at risk. cruz was last seen wearing a black but it s wet shirt, jeans, and brown boots. an underground gas lie near berkeley home was punctured by a worker causing a fire. this is video for helicopter parts to but abc seven is. at first, the fire was reported as a car fire but a contractor hired by the homeowner apparently had a gas line with a big. the home itself was not damaged. from beautyrest40% and posturepedic.ets save hundreds on floor samples and closeout inventory. but hurry, the beautyrest and posturepedic closeout sale ends soon at sleep train. your ticket to a better night s sleep backflipfls and cartwheels.mile? love, wa, rmth. here, retry this. mmmm, ok! ching!g! i likeli the fact that there s lotslo of different tastes going on. mmmm!! breakfaskft i m vem ry impressed. this is ia great cereal! honey buy nches of oats. i hei ar you crunching. wher welcome back to the dow heads into wednesday trading on a streak of eight straight increases. yesterday gained almost 3 points to close at 14,450. that is long as winning streak for the dow in two years and the dow s sixth straight day closing at all- time record high. the broader indexes were both down tuesday with s&p 500 slipping four points to 1552 and the nasdaq listing 10 and 1/2 points to close at 3242. the dow was up 10.3% so far this year. boeing stock out in pre-market after the faa approved a battery redesign plan for the 787. taking center stage wednesday, the latest reading on february retail sales due to be released before the opening bell. sales are expected to resume 0.5%. more and more young people are using a smart bombs as their primary injured at portal. about half of teenagers was smart phones say is their primary internet device. in comparison, just 15 percent of adults said that they will access the internet mostly by cellphone. tax experts say these young mobil servers will continue to influence the way corporations do business and marketers advertise will only continue to evolves, as the wwill the way mobilizes are monitored. you will pay nearly $50 million in bonuses to for the internet search company s top executives for their performances last year. documents filed tuesday disclose executive chairman eric schmidt will get the biggest award at $6 million. most of its wealth is tied up in google stock. those of the bank of $3.3 million bonus to a top lawyer. the chief financial officer and the company s t business office are each getting bonuses of $2.8 million. it looks like twinkies and returned to stores shows their own. houses has announced that to a buyout firms have agreed to buy the brand. the deal includes the loans. the proposed transaction includes the brands by bakeries and equipment. a bankruptcy court still has to approve equipment. a bankruptcy court still has to approve so she sees her allergist who has a receptionist susan, who sees that she s due for a mammogram. mary has one that day. that s when she finds out she has a tumor. she has a successful surgery and because her health provider has an amazing connected system, she has her life. i don t know what you have but i have kaiser permanente. kaiser permanente. thrive. i m just red carpets, big spectacles and the a-list. that s only the beginning. i have more than one red carpet. i like all sorts of spectacles. from the grandiose, to the impromptu. to the completely unexpected. and you ll only have to think about a list. when you cross this, off your own. los angeles. endlessly entertaining. plan your getaway at discoverlosangeles.com los angeles. endlessly entertaining. good morning, out banks for waking up the best is 6158 m. yesterday was anyone around the bay area. we saw some mid-70s for concord and livermore, up 71 was the high at the oakland airport. visibility is the big store eight again as 40. eyeholstory the fog starting in from the coast line through the golden gate is affecting oakland berkeley and emeryville. the good news is the fog will burn off for most of us into the afternoon. temperatures are not too bad. we had quite a drop in the upper 30 s for and about all but set out oakland waking up to 50 degrees. 48 in hayward, 46 and pleasanton. future cast four, tracking the temperatures for you, by lunchtime you ll see 60s writer on the heart of the bay. it looks like we will warm up already, mid-70s for our inland spots. by 2:00 p.m. the yellow really damaged the screen. we will stay in the upper 60s along the coastline, ladies in the south bay. today could certainly be the warmest day was 2013. i don t think we will see any records broken but still lives in warm around the bay area. at 8:00 p.m. tonight we look like down to the 60s, upper 50s for samper s goal and the coastline. happened highs fremont 75, 81 campbell, a new ballet, 80 and every, 81 danville, 73 san leandro, downtown san francisco upper 60s, low 70 s in berkeley. we will see a lot of fog cleon s a coastline into the afternoon hours. daly city high as 64. 7 day around the bay forecast shows a gradual cool down, lies whether and to a mergers above average. it will feel like springtime and into the weekend, we have changes to talk about. perhaps as sour as we head into tuesday evening. 6:17 a.m. and here is robin. hotspot on highway 10 what is the tied to the scene that has the ability of since the 2:00 hour. this is northbound 1 01 at the marin county line. a fatal accident past the right lane where a pickup truck went off the road. crews shut down the right lane for the investigation very day we opened the right leg about 10 minutes ago. all lanes are open on the northbound 1 01 at the county line. in the opposite direction, southbound the new direction is starting to back up now. the stopping of xvi and getting through the accident scene. there is some labor activity on the shoulder but they are out of the right lane. this all is live in the morning is the commute on 205 and 580 headed out tracy did all my and to livermore. the drive time is up to 40 minutes, it is a stop and go right. no accidents or stalls in your way. when dealing with fog and, it is affecting the visibility of the bay area bridges. if there is a special fund advisory for the san mateo, bay and golden gate bridge. the lights are on, you are already back to the 880 over grozny. once you get on the bridge, you have to deal with the fog. drive time 40 minutes out of oakland downtown san francisco. this is a live look at this and the sale bridge, highway 92. this does not affect your drive times, you are looking at 12 and from hayward to foster city. the saying goes to the right across the golden gate. use extra caution as you were killed and about into downtown sao francisco. lawmakers and colorado have passed a bill legalizing still unions for same-sex couples. it follows several years of strong debate on the issue. the state house passed a bill yesterday that are declared the state senate. the governor is elected to sign the bill next week. that it would go into effect may 1st. 19 other states, all of washington d.c., already recognizably unions and same-sex marriages domestic or domestic partnerships. the house is expected to vote today on a bill that will block deal bomb administration from waiving any work requirements in the 1996 welfare reform law. house republicans say the president obama is trying to get rid of the work requirement. it is traces says state officials have the desire of the welfare laws work requirement create an erratic bureaucratic haricots the blazing welfare recipients in jobs. we want as the obama is addressing the owners and democratic activists were raising money for a group formed out of his reelection campaign. the president is heading into way meeting of organizing for accident, a nonprofit group created by former obama campaign aides and white house advisers this year. the group is raising millions of dollars from donors to rally support for issues like gun control, and immigration reform and climate change. the roman catholic archdiocese of los angeles will pay nearly 10 million to settle for clergy sex abuse cases. adjourns attorney confirmed that the ninth when i leave a settlement which alleged abuse by a former priest michael baker. two cases where to go to trial sent a judge and attorneys for the alleged victim s that also receive punitive damages. baker met with cardinal roger mahony in 1986 and invest less in two brothers for nearly seven years. hoodies that baker for a psychological treatment but easily but back in a ministry where he molest again. baker was to make them less in what was it 2007. the alleged point of are the batboys brothers. the ones that america is considering a change of policy against allowing openly gay members. not sent out a questionnaire that goes beyond assembly answered all his subjects. among the nine questions, is an acceptable for a discount and a straight out of sheer talent on an overnight camping trip? the survey, centiliters of harrods, and goes by multiple toy s answers written from a totally sensible to totally unacceptable. the boards as the decisions openly gay members will be made at the group s annual meeting in may. defense secretary john hagel has decided to review the criteria of a recently created medals honor achievements in from warfare. the metal is so new it hasn t actually been awarded anyone yet. the outraged and horrified at what out right those medals given the bats in face enemy fire and the risk of death. the distant as warfare metal was created by former defense secretary leon panetta of is that it was high time to honor soldiers fighting on a new kind of battle vote front. the faa has approved a boeing plans to redesign the batteries for a 787 dream liner is. boeing says it will redesign the battery to minimize the chances of a sort circuit. they are talking about better insulation and inventing system. the 787 fleet is the provinces january after a battery fire on one plane and a smoking battery on another. and the bill in sacramento would require the state s public colleges and universities to give credit for online courses taken my students unable to register for classes on campus. in the past as a will be the first time as the legislators that destroyed the public universities to grant credit for courses that were not their own, including those of my private vendor. the bar because of budget cuts, hundreds of thousands of students in california s three public higher education systems are shut out of courses they must pass to fulfil their general education requirements or proceed with their major. many are forced to spend extra semesters or years to get their degrees. mom, i invited justin over for lunch. good. no, not good. he s a vegetarian and he s going to be here in 20 minutes! [ mom ] don t stress. we can figure this out. [ male announcer ] get the speed to make a great first impression. call today to get u-verse high speed internet for as little as $14.95 a month for 12 months with a one-year price guarantee. this is delicious. [ male announcer ] save the day in an instant. at&t. time tmeo jump in to soo mething new the t best part of wakin is ifolgers in your cup and palo alto teen is a tough place winner and the intel science talent search in washington d.c.. 16 year old sahana vasudevan receive a $20,000 reward in math research. five bay area high school students were among 40 finalists vying for the $1,000 top prize in the contest. organizers say the talent search say all the projects they receive stem from a simple curiosity. $100,000 top prize organizers say some of the project that have come into the talent search feature project that have come into the talent search feature ideas for solving problems that s my late night munchie meal. comes with one of four awesome new entrées. i got an exploding cheesy chicken sandwich! i got a stacked grilled cheese burger! i got two tacos, halfsies, and a drink! they all come with those. mine came with a remote! mine came with a picture of your family.and your electric bill! you can keep that. welcome back silver spring s network just went public and this is their ipo. they first file for ibm back in 2011 in july and is going for $17 a share. dow futures are flat they aren partit is sitting in recorh territory at 14,450. we are also watching the war weather, hoping to feel it today. temperatures could be around 80 degrees in some parts of the bay. jackie sissel is up an oakland hills right now it follows looks like you walk across the fog over stanford s is go at this point. that s out to get is very as you look back at san francisco is hard to make out. i am lower in the oakland hills. it is absolutely perfect up here, i could see stars over head and not the hands of breeze. it feels like mid-50s over hilere. it will be a beautiful day. plenty of 70s, perhaps some eighties later on today. we of areas of locally-it s called. wider than yesterday, pushing car east toward concord. pleasanton and is loaded with the 80 degree mark. sunnyvale region after an high as 76 81 campbell. war or whether in store for this afternoon. it could be the warmest day of 2013 thus far. more details on nafta highs coming up and a few minutes. we re still seeing slow traffic in the north bay on highway 1 01 where we have a hot spot. the accident occurred on the northbound side of 1 01 near the county line. a pickup truck ran off the road around the 2:00 hour this morning. the right eye was blocked off for the investigation and debris opened it at 6:00. in the opposite direction, you have a lot of doctorqwackelookiy loo board on traffic is defined as fine. at the golden gate bridge, continuing into san francisco a fog advisory is still in place. from about into downtown severance as coach traffic is nice and light, 21 minutes. this morning after three unsuccessful vote 6 elected a new po. have played suits throughout the day to there is still no decision. black smoke after the voting and they have not reached a two- thirds of voting. the gunboats and more times before the end of the day. they may close the deal today, they could get our that magical threshold of 77 votes. rainy weather is not stopping crowds from keeping vigil in st. peter s square. is an exciting syrians and a part of history. to say that i was here for the new election of a new pope is amazing. they re hoping the conclave will secure a strong feature for the church. the above is the leader of our church. we really need someone who is strong and who can lead us. they need someone in the sand on the stage and all this excitement about the church. until the cardinals decide who that person is, the world will wait keeping and not watch what i on that jimmy atop the sistine chapel. a 2005 the conclave that elected been a big 16 was over in four ballots. this time around, there does not seem to be a clear front runner. there are and fall of highly popular candidates. threatening graffiti is out of pleasanton hills high school. mike pelton is live outside the school this morning. they found a graffiti threat inside the girls a bathroom inside the gir. and pas i hate everyone at the school, watch me shoot everyone on march 14th. that is tomorrow. school officials issued a campus safety alert and alerted parents. they assured them that they re taking steps including increasing police presence on campus. we ll get more reaction aha from school officials later on. the big one has any idea who is as oslo for the threat, contact police. the kids at school today correct? car rags, they will start at the next several hours. presumably they will start showing up shortly. police are searching for a man robbed the pleasanton bag. they release the surveillance of the suspect. it happened at wells fargo bank on how yard road. the man and a lot of teller a note demanding cash and then ran off. no weapons were seen and all was hurt. it is not clear how much money he made off with. the suspect is described as a black male between 30 and 40 years old blues bands roughly 6 ft. tall and weighs about 160 lbs.. san francisco police are releasing a total of one of the state kicked a toddler at golden gate park monday. the suspect is 24 year-old sabrinyna bell. she is accused of kicking a little girl in the chest. the child had some scrapes after falling but is otherwise ok. investigators say there is no apparent reason the suspect it the child and is a she also threaten other children. the fight fire at berkeley s boehme s chez panisse restaurant has done a lot of damage. top rated dining spot remains close. even see the front porch suffered a lot of damage, is boarded up and officials say it is on say. it is believed the fire was started by an electrical box a caught fire and the restaurant sports. this and says chez panisse is canceling reservations three weeks out. today marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark u.s. supreme court decision that led to the use of the miranda warning. it is used when please tell a suspect you have the right to remain silent. ernesto miranda was aggressive back in 1963 and convicted of kidnapping and raping an 18 year-old woman in phoenix. the supreme court said his rights against self-incrimination were not protected and he should not he should have had an attorney with them should not he should have had an [ female announcer ] the one for all. mcdonald s dollar menu, home of the meaty, melty mcdouble you love. .and other amazing tastes, for just a dollar each. like the bold hot n spicy mcchicken, and the new grilled onion cheddar burger topped with caramelized onions and melted white cheddar. everyday, as always, there s a lot to love for a little on mcdonald s dollar menu. eat tomato sauce on my spaghetti. the acidic levels in some foods can cause acid erosion. the enamel starts to wear down. and you can t grow your enamel back. i was quite surprised, as only few as four exposures a day what that can do to you. it s quite a lesson learned. my dentist recommended that i use pronamel. because it helps to strengthen the enamel. he recommended that i use it every time i brush. you feel like there is something that you re doing to help safeguard against the acid erosion. and i believe it s doing a good job. to help safeguard against the acid erosion. ==dj been waiting for the price then hurry, sleep train s beautyrest and posturepedic closeout sale is ending soon. save up to 40% on closeout sets from beautyrest and posturepedic. save hundreds on floor samples and closeout inventory. these prices are falling fast, but these deals won t last. sleep train s beautyrest and posturepedic closeout sale ends soon. superior service, best selection, lowest price, guaranteed. sleep train your ticket to a better night s sleep welcome back, 641 a m. a colorado mother says she has run out of options in trying to curb her children s bad behavior at school. she wants is to announce a school wearing shirts that say bully and seas of the school said know. the mother says her son is a bully so she made him an a. i am i believe t-shirts to wear to school. are 8 year-old stepdaughter was stealing from her purse, the local wal-mart and neighbors. she made a little girl wear a shirt saying that she steals. the school is not ok with these t-shirts, saying it demeans the kids. school districts and birds and says he was an anomaly was cool out of it. we share the story of facebook page and here s what some of your say about this. daria as as i am curious to find out how it even got to this point where both of her children are misbehaving. perhaps our parenting has been lacking for a while? christopher says the choice is apparent exit as the planet childs should not be carried into the school grounds. however wearing a t-shirt is not going to hurt anyone long term. the purpose is to discourage further at appropriate behavior. the generous as i d really appreciate this mother is desperately trying to be proactive. sightseer a school representative asking to be left out was also their job to educate. this should be a part of their education. tell us what you think about it on our facebook page at facebook .com/kron4. a long island firefighter ended up battling a blaze that is own house last night. a driver- truck into the. all the house and the truck caught fire. the drug also had a natural gas line leading into the house, causing an explosion. the homeowner, a volunteer firefighter responded on the scene. i want to give were inside a house of the time but got out safely and were not hurt. the driver of the big was charged with driving while impaired by drugs as well as second degree reckless endangerment. we will take a break, 6:44 a.m. is the time. rob black will be joining us with is from wall street. a live look from the mall tam cam, a lot of fog out there. we will be right back. welcome back, the dow was down 30 right now. we have seen that in the past a good day is what we have been closing up. the think a rally could finally be ending today? if the rally continues to day will be nine straight days. the last time i went nine straight days was 1996. the dog that song was that year? my ideas? the macarena e talk about consumers and that they are still spending despite the fact that we have 2% less and our paychecks of because of the tax break that expired. the numbers were great for people buying cars. we have an older fleet in the united states. i m intrigued by ford bonds as well as stock. gasoline prices are higher and that helps retail sales. these are great numbers. i ll use the word cautious optimism. americans in need as ben, i like what i m seeing. we continue to be the leader in the world economy. we need the pope, get that done. italy needs to get a pope and get their economy back on track. costco good, target good, wal-mart good, j.c. penney, not so good. the important is if we do not send money the economy falters. i feel like at mcmahon, you are correct sir. we do pay attention to that. do we have and it s all coming out tomorrow? the most lanes/mob ever in the york for people. samsung employees. they re coming out of the phone tomorrow and it has samsung aquiver in. it is one-fifth of th10 years ago they we need t new products. the intent was sounds of all is the son was steeper than the five phones do you think that will help apple out if they have in the less-expensive iphone? yes i do. we go is a good success partner. sam s and has a good partner. did i were to marry samsung or apple i would do well. as long as i don t marry nokia. they aren t bad, motorola is dead. samsung and apple are the two players. it is not a pie they make, and is not a pie they get. i is good. they are the two best pipe makers if you get what i am saying. i do with the season at delays and high of apple or samsung or go with what s next. we need be innovation. thank you drive. hopefully today we will get a boat at 1230. if we didn t come up high. i.we do get it, i. pie. that is our roof cam overlooking downtown since francisco. we get into some areas of dense fog, it could linger along the coastline, even well into the afternoon. have low betas of the dow will not see too whatsoever. tanagers are offset war is started, the oakland, 48 concord, 46 of the san francisco. visibility, the fog is not nearly as dense and eat north bay as it was yesterday. concord, three tenths of a while there. a 10th of a mile in oakland. a lot of fog from the coast is going through the golden gate and into berkeley. tack on a couple minutes to your drive time but the fog will burn off into the afternoon. by 2:00, 60s and 70s are ready for the inland spots. the yellow really dominates the screen. we have the potential to see some eighties indicated by the horns and the south bay. my 8:00 p.m. tonight, mild conditions 50s coast side and low 60s everywhere else. afternoon highs, mid-70s fremont, mountain view s 78, 81 campbell. 81-unveiled, upper seventies fair fell concord, of walnut creek and 78. we could see some upper assemblies for napa up, mid- 70s petaluma, down some severance cisco 68 and 72 oakland. 7 day around the bay forecast shows a nice stable weather for the foreseeable future. the next opportunity for rain is tuesday night into wednesday. if you and up to tahoe, snowbound .com. and ours are a base of 38 to 88 in.. squaw valley a base of 25 to 107 and is very 653 a m in the kron4 morning is will be right back. well, well, well. growing up, we didn t have u-verse. we couldn t record four shows at the same time. in my day, you were lucky if you could record two shows. and if mom was recording her dumb show and dad was recording his dumb show then, by george, that s all we watched. and we liked it! today s kids got it so good. [ male announcer ] call to get u-verse tv starting at $19 a month for 2 years with qualifying bundles. rethink possible. and her son is dead as first lady, michelle obama will appear on the cover of vogue magazine again. the fashion magazine once again run its shape issues cover that has been in a provision for the last 10 years. previous april covers featured brooke shields, scouted johansson and giselle bundchen. mrs. obama last appeared on those
we are the world s policeman. the other so-called world powers are either too cheap, morally indifferent, or happy to sponge off of us as they have neglected their duty to keep some semblance of order. we are unwilling to let crazy people romp through our neighborhoods. but we are not is the world social worker. to the extent we take it upon ourselves, the goal or the obligation to bring universal selfridge, make sure people can listen to madonna, bring about democratic elections. that is not our job. we are not good at doing it. we are good at building roads, crushing opposing armies. no government is good at the work of nationbuilding. [bell] we will alternate. tucker, you will go first. federal debt does it matter? we can simulate our way to prosperity. you are insane for suggesting it. it matters because i believe in math. here is what i know, which is saying i believe in science. you often hear we are for science. we do not believe in evolution. we are on the side of science. anybody who ignores the obvious point that if you expend more energy than you bring in, you die, whether you are a business, person, or country. the person who ignores that is against science. in the long run, a country that spends more than it raises cannot continue. it is a threat to this country. it is a threat to our economy. common sense confirms it. any belief in science tells me to believe that there is no bigger problem. [bell] let me quote the cheney who said ronald reagan taught us deficits do not matter. dick cheney was wrong. he is wrong then and he is wrong now. deficits matter. anyone who supported the bush has no business talking about debt. [booing] i helped bill clinton balanced the budget and built a surplus because we had good economic times. good economic times should pay down the deficit as clinton did but to reagan and bush did not. in bad times you have to stimulate and the airtime as president obama is doing. it is like listening to lectures on hygiene from type 40 typhoid mary. is more important to america s pursuit of happiness? which is more dangerous to america s pursuit of happiness? eight 350 format before a 44 ounce big gulf. if you come to my house, you would find guns but no cans of soda. i have the right wing position on the giant drink soda thing. i do not like the idea. idea of thee the government telling me what size soda i can drink. i am with tucker and probably most of you. i have the right wing position on gun safety. i have the same as ronald reagan who was for a waiting time before you buy a gun. the same as george w. bush he was for a ban on assault weapons. the same as when lapierre who was for a universal background check before he flip-flopped. i have the right wing position big drs if you give a pepper to a bad guy, he will get fat. but if you allow that bad guy, bad things happen. as someone who is neither a criminal or insane, i disagree. arearms and big gulfps integral to american happiness. thee is no higher right in right to protect yourself and your family. without firearms, you are incapable of doing that. is that simple. i do not think i should have to get the government s permission before i buy or sell a firearm. i do not want to ask mom s permission. moms russia this is a battle in the class war. ulps.ban big glup his is a class-based attack on your simple pleasures. the right to smoke, tan, had a shower head. stand up against those attacks on your right to please yourself. [laughter] shouldican seniors they be more afraid of private social security accounts or obamacare? should not seniors be as afraid as they are. both parties get a lot especially the credit parties both parties get a lot. it is caring people. this is the safest country in the world. it is financed. every person will die. the faster we accept it, the happier we will be. you ought to be concerned when the government decides it has the power to determine basic choices about your healthcare. not let them take away your drink. people my age should be concerned about this attempt to organize us into war efficient units. there is not one person smart enough to organize millions of americans into more efficient units. we should be afraid of that. [bell] whohank god for harry reid stopped bush s plan to privatize social security. you want it to turn your grandmothers retirement to lehman brothers, bear stearns? aroundsecurity has been 75 years, run by the government 75 years and has never missed a check. thank god for social security. the medicareare, program, call your mother. call your father. ask them if they love being on medicare. they left it. only 5000are has employees. private insurance has hundreds of thousands. government is more efficient and health insurance. lower overhead, better outcome, lower prices. the only change i want to make is to change the eligibility of medicare into birth. us all get on it and we will have a real system. i will not answer that. have you been to the dmv lately? when secretary of state hillary clinton appeared before the senate hearing on benghazi, here s what she said dead americans. is it because of a protest or because guys would kill some americans? what difference does it make? is herlast question question what difference does it make? we know americans were killed and their deaths must be avenged. when our embassies and consulates and 11 places were attacked by terrorists in the list administration, none of you said boo. and yemen, all around the world. republicans voted against spending the money to harden those authorities and make them safe. if you are upset about what happened in benghazi, i suggest republicans look in the mirror. it is bush s fault. we have not a single perpetrator in custody despite the fact there were security cameras. why is that? it is hard to bring them to justice if you do not bother to find out who they were or why they did it? hillary would not be an effective police officer. it matters because details matter and justice matters and the truth matters. it is worth taking the time to find out what happened. let s prevent it from happening again. that is the end around one. d- that is the end of roun one. thehe second round, fighters are allowed to ask each other questions. try to ask the questions that the mainstream media is too afraid to ask. it is open field. your choice. we will begin with tucker. two questions, two minutes each. you are close to the former vice president al gore. his concern in life is saving the earth from an environmental holocaust. given that goal, were you surprised to discover he took a $100 million from the oil rich family that runs qatar and the next time you see him will you ask them to give that money to an environmental charity? when our grandchildren inherit a planet that is still alive, they will think al gore. [laughter] climate orbelieve in gravity or any of that. it is real. this is ingenious. he is bleeding the funds from the enemy and using it for good. god bless al gore. it is ingenious. that was valiant. mr. carlson, mitt romney could live anywhere he wants except the white house. inchose to sell his mansion conservative utah and buy a mansion in liberal la jolla, california. why did he sell? mitt romney. the name rings a bell. vallejo,e who is from california, la jolla , it is despicable. i would have been happier had he moved to highland park, texas, for example. if you are interested in drinking cop located coffee and going surface, go ahead. i do not judge other peoples recreational choices. ver each other] i asked you this question last year. i did not get a satisfactory question. you know more about this than anyone. you are close to the clintons. you know secretary clinton well. she believes she will run for president in the next cycle? do you think she should? aslex absolutely. absolutely. she will be a great president. you agree. now that we have moved towards hypotheticall hillary candidacy, all of the right-wingers are saying she is evil. that is a sign you are afraid. i have no idea if she will. i think she will live a life, write a book, reacquaint herself with the real world. she is a real woman. she is not a republican society lady. what she will do is go around trying to empower women because where women are empowered, the whole society does better. is a global force for good. i hope and pray she wants for president. i hope and pray she wants for president. professional bush basher. his plan for relief was wonderful. it was outstanding. it was america at best. it saved more lives than anything any democratic president did in africa. what has barack obama done that artisan right-winger question it would have been honorable it would have been honorable had he raise the money himself. what is the one thing that obama has done that i applaud? , thes second inaugural president to walk down the length of avenue chewing nicorette i respect that. living in a world where all of your buddies are telling you the most simple thing you can do is use tobacco products. this guy to flaunt his nicotine addiction and public was courageous, compelling, and inspirational. go, barack obama. [bell] nra. it does not represent most gun ownerers. you have to deal with reality. the nra is the only organization working to protect the constitutional right that new york times hates. sequester. the y2k of politics. it came, went, and no one noticed. it has not gone. it is incredibly dumb. it will hurt this country. a self-inflicted wound. rich people. writer is my favorite rich person. i cannot hate all rich people. i hope to join their ranks. poor peropople. a group that i have great sympathy for and deserve a shot. there is a myth that conservatives hate the poor. they love them because they have created so many of them. i will give you credit for that. ashley judd. why does every right-wing guy i know think it is horrible that she is posing naked in movies but think it is fine that scott brown dated. i have a different taste and nudity. against scott brown s nudity. ashley judd is crazy but is the gift that keeps on giving. clint eastwood. oscar for the best political convention. i will not attack a legend. the guy has done great film. i honor that. [applause] the tea party. harry reid s best friend. take you for saving the senate majority. president ronald reagan. principles. liberal. a sign of tax increase and pro- abortion law in california. ahead of his time. reagan was a liberal. president barack obama. clark s greatest president of the 21st century. a cold, remote, and deeply cynical. god. god is love. [applause] satan. satan is hate. the dark lord of good inte ntions. hugo chavez. e now.qaan s roommat [laughter] [indiscernible] [bell] that is the end. who is the winner? is it paul? son?t tucker carlon go back and read the papers. we want to thank each of these. i want to thank paul because it is a little more of an uphill climb. we are delighted to have you. thank you so much. i appreciate it. continuous coverage. rick perry.or mitt romney will a trust mitt romney will address the conference of this afternoon. god bless texas. god bless texas. thank you. they said you have to turn to the left. i said i do not go left well at all. it is a big honor to be asked to speak. i want to say thank you to those of you who have allowed me to come. for all of the bad things that i say about washington, i never mind coming here. this is a fabulous place. i wase got here, surprised to step off of our united flight and see that everyone was still here. from what i have been reading about the sequestration, i figured president obama had shut the place down and send everybody home. that would probably be the first that idea he has had when you think about it. just kidding. well, mostly. i come from what a lot of people might seem to think is a foreign country. we have a balanced budget. we have a surplus. thane creating more jobs the other states in the union. we are doing this with a part- time legislature that meets for 140 days every other year. our legislatures come in and pass laws and then they go home and live under the laws they just passed. if we had ak part-time congress in washington, with a kit less what they really get less done? what we are getting is a lot of hysteria. from a president more concerned about the next election and saving programs for the next generation. president obama is campaigning full-time against the sequester that he created. he has used schoolteachers and border patrol agents and airport security and janitors as part of his portrait of pain. now he has decided to shut down white house towards. now, the only people who can tour the white house are those who contribute half $1 million or more. would beident posture laughable if he had not taken it one step too far. onto our criminals streets to make a political point. when you have a federally sponsored jailbreak. , at is what this is federally sponsored jailbreak. you cross the line from politics asspend as aform of senescence as form of cynicism where everything goes in order to win the next election. if the president cannot handle $85 billion in cuts that he suggested, how can we ever believe that he will tackle trillion dollar deficits, unfunded entitlement obligations that amount to trillions of dollars more? our deficit is approximately equal to our gdp. $0.40dollar we spend is barred from some bank in a place like china. the resolution to this debt ceiling debacle led to the first downgrading of american credit in the history of this country. we have a president who refuses to put a single plan on paper that addresses the deficit spending, entitlement reform, those are inexplicable. he is willing to do a photo op with he s more than willing to do a theo op to talk about 1% of total annual budget. if the president is word about overtime pay for capital janitors, i say what about the stagnant wages of millions of american workers? what? americans resigned to food stamps? what about small businesses and homeowners that cannot get loans because of dodd-frank? what about more than 20 million americans who cannot get full- time work due to the most anemic recovery since the great depression? mr. president, your plan to tax and spend our nation to l asperity will fai spectacularly as the economics you have borrowed from john maynard keynes. thes be clear about what is crux of the debate in washington. americans will surrender to the creation of a massive welfare states in the image of western europe. thequarrel is not with legitimate role of government but the unlimited role of government. [[cheers and applause] in research and defense capabilities and infrastructure and border security are vital american issues and issues that washington needs to address. turned the constitution on its head and the federal government has inserted itself into every aspect of american society. to ead of allowing states become laboratories of reform, washington s central planners are coopting other responsibilities reserved to the states and individuals under the 10th amendment to the u.s. constitution. of fiscallicy coercion is now at the heart of the debates of medicaid expansion proposed under obamacare. unfortunately, some of our friends and allies in the conservative movement have folded in the face of federal bribery and mounting pressure from special interest groups. .hey tell us to take the money in the case of texas, four billion dollars. that s because it is free. thathere s nothing free comes from washington, because for starters, it is our money. this is our money. to money we have tacked on the national debt either by borrowing from china or pulling it off the printing press. secondly, nothing stops washington from changing their rules down the road and the increasing the states share, which in the case of texas will be up to more than $18 billion over 10 years. that is a lot of money. that is a lot of money for the 14th largest economy in the world. all we have is a promise to. il we have is a promise, and got a promise from the federal government that apparently it afford to keep dangerous criminals behind bars. cannot afford. it is as if the merits of the expenditure do not matter any more. but i say they do. i say medicaid does not need to be expanded. it needs to be saved and reformed. we care about our poorest texans. we want them to have the best care possible, and that cannot happen with a program that is on its way to bankruptcy. if you do not believe me that medicaid is broken, just ask our president. four years ago, he said, we cannot simply put more people into a broken system that does not work. he yet that is exactly what is doing or has tried to do in the case of texas. no program has grown more rapidly in the last 15 years at the state level of than medicaid. washington s solution is to grow it faster, regardless of the fact the medicaid program is unsustainable. here is what we need. instead of this one-size-fits- all medicaid expansion under obamacare, flexibility to innovate, to enact patient- centered market-driven reforms, state accountability requirements, combined with limits on federal overage we reach.eral over we need a medicaid program that emphasizes personal responsibility with copays on a sliding scale, deductibles and premium payments for emergency room care, small contributions so patients take ownership over their utilization of care. we need to make an asset test to make sure that care is there for those who need it most. we need the ability to offer medicaid clients health savings accounts, getting patients more control over their health care spending. [applause] nothing about the medicaid expansion should move citizens from existing private coverage and employer-sponsored coverage to the public rolls. nothing should do that. medicaid dollar should be used to keep people on private insurance, and the best way to help states provide health care is to allow states to design better, more efficient, more effective care using medicaid dollars. this will allow each state tailor the programs, specifically serving the needs of those unique challenge the state s have. we know more about and care more about the physical and economic health of our citizens than the federal government does. the states like texas flexibility to actually fix medicaid and to create more cost-inefficient health care for our families, our neighbors, and for our health care providers. absent those changes and needed flexibilities, the medicaid expansion amounts to one large incremental step towards a single-payer socialized medicine. that is where we are headed. i for one will not accept that as long as i am the governor of the state of texas. [cheers and applause] myre are some who say position is ideological, but that is only true to the extent that being able to pay one s bills in the years ahead is ideological. washington does not worry about how to pay bills. they just charge it to our grandchildren s account. but in texas, our constitution requires a balanced budget. it s so happens that a balanced budget in one of the lowest tax and spending burdens in the nation funds our number-one ranking when it comes to job creation. we are leading the way in job creation in all categories, on all salary levels, from entry- level to the executive suite. ofas comes back to the crux the issue. i mentioned earlier, i said we do not believe in growing government to grow the economy. we did not believe in a massive expansion of government as a source of economic stimulation. we believe in putting more money in the hands of entrepreneurs and family. we believe low-wage jobs should not be looked upon as they are a stepping stone to a higher- wage job. we believe the best source of revenue for public priority is job creation, not higher taxation. [cheers and applause] if washington were serious about job creation, it would not pour hundreds of billions of dollars into so-called stimulus. it would reduce the red tape on energy exploration on federal lands and waters. the single fastest whey to boost our economy and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars is to unleash the energy exploration across america. shale formations of america the cheapest natural gas in the world, and natural gas is clean. why would this administration limit energy solutions on this continent only to make us more reliant on energy produced in foreign lands? the administration s policy of benign foot dragging on keystone, its blocking of coastal exploration, its regulations imposed by the epa and other agents is what that means is america is at the mercy of middle east mullahs and south american dictators. common sense tells us it is time to drill for american energy to create american jobs and american prosperity. it is time for us to have a western hemispheric energy strategy. my approach is pretty simple. make what americans buy, buy what americans make, and sell it to the world. [cheers and applause] that is what we need to be doing in this country. let me close by just sharing with you my take on conservatism in america. now, the popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away from conservative ideals, as evidenced by the last two presidential elections. that is what they say. that might be true if republicans had nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012. that might be true. but now we are told our party must shift and appeal to the growing hispanic demographic. let me say something about what appeals to hispanics in states like texas. it is the free enterprise agenda that allows small businesses to prosper, free of government interference. it is the policies that value the family unit as the best and closest form of government. it is the belief in life. and faith in god. no one who risks life and limb to reach our shores comes hoping for a government handout. they want opportunity, freedom, and they want and other way to provide for their families, and that is true whether they are first-generation americans or like hispanics in texas, families living here a long time before davey crockett and james bowie and sam houston made their way south. [cheers and applause] my friends, this is what we as conservatives stand for. we are not the people of equal outcomes, of quotas, of race- based appeals or a nanny state. we re the people who say everyone deserves a shot, but success is only the product of hard work and innovation, where the ideology is blind of color and solely grounded in a merit system. we are compassionate without being cynical. government can be a tool to self-improvement, and self- empowerment. not self-entrapment. these ideals are as old as america, and they will live on as the prevailing sentiment long after we are gone, because they are what make america unique. we will never bend to the social and economic agenda of western europe. yet it is an interesting place example of government. we will continue to pursue a uniquely american vision seated in liberty, personal responsibility, and individuality. god bless you, and may god continue to bless this country. thank you. more from cpac now. next, newly appointed south carolina senator tim scott addresses the political active conference. a reminder, washington journal starts at the top of the hour. good afternoon. thank you. that was good to hear, governor. when you are old and trying to be beautiful, you have to talk about somebody else s hair. thank you all for being here. how many red blooded conservatives are in the room? [cheers and applause] i cannot hear you over here? [cheers and applause] . we will continue to expand the opportunities of conservatism and i will tell you how and why. a quick story. anybody willing to listen to a quick sry? good. one of the mostin m life happenf 1982. i was a 16-year-old rising senior and a football star in my own mind. [laughter] were po not poor. i used to drive her to work 45 minutes and then 45 minutes back. one friday afternoon i drive her to work, actually it was friday morning and i got sleepy. anybody gets sleepy while driving? so i started rolling the windows down. i did not say pushed the button. i had to roll down the windows. windows back up and then i turned the heater on a and then turned it off. i turned on the air conditioner and then turned it off. i turned the radio on and then turned the radio off. the next thing i knew i woke up driving down the road at 70 miles an hour. i did what any 16 year-old would do. i panicked, so i slammed on the and jumped on the steering wheel at the same time jerked the steering wheel. my car started to roll back into traffic. i remember going back in traffic and hitting carpet. car. my body started towards the windshield, so i grabbed the steering wheel and i yelled jesus! glass went everywhere. we stumbled back and i was direction and i came back and in that direction and my car landed in a ditch headed the other direction. glass was everywhere. i was laying on the side of the car. i could hear people yelling and running towards me. i heard one lady very specifically. i think he s dead! i yelled back, i m dead! the highway patrolman came and ems showed up. the highway patrolman meltdown and said, son, your mom will be happy you are alive. i was lying there with glass in my back and i looked up at him and said, sir, you don t know my momma, she s going to kill me, because this is her first car, a 1982 toyota corolla. an ugly brown car. what i learned from that was i andso fixated on the car what the officer was trying to was about why myeth mother would be concerned about me. as we helped to connect the american people with why to our whats to policies that we stand for, that we will win people. when we win people, we will win elections. it was said that when you find your why you find your way. . that is exactly what we are going to do. when we talk about things like obamacare, this is a what. it is an atrocity. $800 billion of new taxes, new revenues coming to the government from obamacare. 3.8% excisethe the tax in obamacare, creating $123 billion. this comes out of the same pocket where we just took the capital gains rate from 13% to 20%. now when you add this on top, we are talking about a 25% tax. we are headed in the wrong direction. when we think about the other taxes and revenues that come out of obamacare, we only can think about awful legislating. i think about how i talk about obamacare in addition to the taxes, and i think about my granddad. my grandfather was 93 years old and incredibly healthy. still drives his ford f-150. abouttiful car i think obamacare, the independent payment advisory board bad breaks the link between a patient and doctor. i want my family making the decision for my grandfather. i don t want 15 unelected bureaucrats making the decision for my grandfather s future. i want that to be a family decision. [applause] i know we are going to do it right. and communicate the impact of obamacare, we talk about that, we find ourselves having a conversation with the american people that they truly do not like obamacare prevent why they re on our side, because we in america are conservatives, without any question. we are conservative nation going in the right direction. i think about taxes. how many feel we are taxed too little in the federal government? spend it took we much in the federal government? [applause] i remember when i first started running for congress a couple years ago. i started talking about taxes and revenue streams and the budget. i started talking about the fact that we were spending $3.40 trillion. what i would say to get people to take a nap in the middle of a speech was not necessarily a good thing, by the way. we want you to stay away. i would go through all the numbers in about 20 seconds. we spend about $700 billion on social security. $692 billion on defense. billions on non-defense discretionary spending. $519 billion coming out of medicare. $400 billion in mandatory spending. $300 billion just to service the debt. the 25 yearack to historical average, we find ourselves paying over $800 billion just to service our debt. $273i would close with billion sent to medicaid. whoh.ody would say, the federal government has a $22,000 income. we set a budget at $34,000. where does that make sense? nowhere in america would anybody across the kitchen table is understands their income $22,000 decide to spend $34,000. only in the federal government can that happen. that s why i ve understand that we have to control our spending. with a $16 trillion debt and an annual deficit of one trillion, we have to bring fiscal sanity back to washington. when your on the campaign trail, we have to talk about the necessity of bringing in our spending, restraining it. i have to make it digestible for guys like me that about a trillion dollars and i say that in my audience and people understand we are spending so much money that we have to borrow 43 cents on the dollar. what does that mean? i talk about my grandfather s f- 150. when i ask people what does $1 trillion look like. they say i don t really know. ,o i tell them that $1 trillion 33,333,000 ford f- 150 s. that s a lot of money. then i talk about the necessity of performing our tax code. anybody believes our taxes are still too high? [applause] absolutely. we have the world s highest corporate tax rate at 35%. 70%need to bring it down to or as far as we possibly can. then we have to quit double taxing our profits we make in other countries. we re talking about repatriation. we have to allow for our money to come home to our nation without double taxation. when that happens we will grow our economy, because we need to grow our economy and not our government. that is the key. we have to grow our economy and not our government. when we do that, i think we will unleash opportunities in this country. another issue i find incredibly important is the issue of school choice. i m a big believer in school choice. it s a part of the opportunities of our future. if we remember that every parent deserves a choice. and every child deserves a chance. i think back to my young days growing up in a single-parent household. i think about the tough times that my mother who worked 16 hours a day, she went to work every day all day long, came home. when my grades were bad, she would pull out is which. switch. as a freshman in high school, i did not do very well. , was failing world geography civics, spanish, and english. when you fail spanish and english, they don t call you bilingual. they call you ignorant because you cannot speak any language. that s where i was. i had the blessing of meeting a conservative republican who became my mentor, a man named john, a chick-fil-a operator. he started teaching me some of the most valuable lessons i have ever learned. he taught me that having a job is a good thing but creating jobs is a far better thing. he said if you have an income, that s a good thing. profit, youreate a can do the most amazing things. he started to change my life. mentor, i john, my was becoming a red blooded conservative, because he taught me how to think my way out of poverty. my mother taught me discipline. that combination made such a huge impact on where i am today. i think about why it all solidified. i think back to 1986 when john was 38 years old, very successful business owner, chick-fil-a. he died. , a blood clot stop his life. that was the time when all of these lessons came together. i realized very quickly that i needed to honor johns memory by the way i live my life. so i set my mission statement to positively impact the lives of a billion people with a message of hope, which has a lot to do with my face, and opportunity, that has to do with the johns message of being. financially being after 13 years as a member of the county council and on the local level and then going to the state house and then getting elected to congress and now appointed to the senate i will say that john s dream still lives. i believe that america s finest hour is still ahead of us, that our greatest stand is not yet happened, because we are an opportunity society. we are not a society that believes in redistribution. [applause] we are an opportunity society. if we do what it is that we need to do, all of america will stand up and join the conservative movement and tell us not only win elections but win the hearts of people. thebless you and god bless most amazing country, america. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] more from conservative political action conference today. four more republican presidential former republican presidential candidate mitt romney at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. tonight, former florida governor jeb bush mentioned as a possible presidential candidates, we will have live coverage of his remarks at 8:45 eastern on c- span. are is some of what we covering this morning. the house is expected to finish work on the job training measure today. the house is in at 9:00 eastern. on c-span2, ahead of the medicare payment advisory committee will give recommendations to a house subcommittee on health. that starts a 9:30. on c-span3, a senate panel will investigate trading losses at jpmorgan chase, including a $6.2 billion loss on credit derivatives last year. you can see live coverage of that at 9:30. minutes, wall0 street journal reporter damian paletta will compare the differences in the house and senate budget plans for 2014. later, a discussion on drug abuse and mental health. we will talk with peter delaney
been waiting for the price of mattresses to fall? then hurry, sleep train s beautyrest and posturepedic closeout sale is ending soon. save up to 40% on closeout sets from beautyrest and posturepedic. save hundreds on floor samples and closeout inventory. these prices are falling fast, but these deals won t last. sleep train s beautyrest and posturepedic closeout sale ends soon. superior service, best selection, lowest price, guaranteed. sleep train your ticket to a better night s sleep this is the bay area news station, kron 4 news starts now. catherine: breaking news tonight in richmond. a man is dead after a shooting at the bart station it happened just before six- helicopter partnership withkron4 s philippe djegal is live at the scene with what we re learning. reporter: kathryn we are on the corner, of 16th his been a very active seeing. the police department is the lead investment department in this they say that he was shot at 19/mcdonald s. near the bart station. they responded the man was pronounced dead on the scene of the nature is still on clear. it happened just before 6:00 p.m. we do not know if he was on foot or if this was a drive-by or if he was targeted. whorf, if he was an innocent bystander. waror if he was the innocent bystander but they are talking to a with this canal. as soon as we learn more information we will bring more. reporting live, phillipe djegal, kron 4 newscrime without punishment: percent increase in strong-next at 8. also, this former substitute teacher was are rested on a charge of pornography possession and distribution. he was arrested that he was sharing child pornography on-line. that some of this pornography was sharing it involving that was pre- pubescent. the august was around for years old-90 years old the youngest was a run for years old-9 years old and around 4 years old. this is incredibly damaging and he was sharing misinformation on line. they have no information or believe that he took video of his former students. they are working to identify the children in these images. also, this sex offender is going be. its new home. going to be calling the plight its new home. and neighbors are still on the defensive at baypint. i showed this to my child. and she understood and now i am in trouble with my wife. i have been around not cases all my life. he is deemed a sexually violent predator. to take residents on this property. like last time they fear that there will be retaliation that want him out. either way they believe that the children s safety is in jeopardy. this is the second time that it has happened and i do not know if this is any thing that we can do. reporter: there is a protest plans for tomorrow. and attendance is way down at foothill high school in pleasanton. the problem this threat found spray-painted on the wall of a school bathroom. it says watch me shoot everyone on march 14th - which is today. we re just getting the final numbers on how many students stayed home the school district says 675 of them didn t show up today. 509 left school early. and that s out of a total of 22-hundred enrolled. kron 4 s maureen kelly shows us what it was like for students who came to school despite the ominous warning. it was weird because no one was there here s a photo that shows empty seats inside one classroomseveral students told me that in some of their classes. more than half of the usual number of students didn t show up were more than half empty.one kid says he only showed up to school because of a chemistry testand it turned out he could have just stayed home too his mom ended up taking him home early the distict says about 80 kids were out because they are involved in sports teams that are away in compeition. but they do acknowledges that some parents told them they were keeping their kids home because of the threat. bite several kids said there were reassured by the increase in security.including the heavy police presence that could be seen all day around campus.but some were still a little jittery. others say today was just a mellower day than normalbecause there were fewer people there saying they didn t take the threat serisouly in the first place. maureen kelly kron4 news. new tonight.a 14-year-old boy has been arrested in connection to two bomb threats at fremont s thornton junior high school. police say the student was arrested on campus today for bomb threats made at the school yesterday and today administrators in san jose s east side union high school district are trying to next at 8. we re following breaking news. police are on the scene of a deadly shooting at the richmond bart station. we ll have new information coming up in a live report. jacqueline: we are going to see some cooler temperatures. and big changes half far the state supreme court has cleared a walmart plan to create a super-center in antioch. where the retailer has been trying for a decade to expand its existing store. kron 4 s charles clifford shows us what will happen next. this is a google earth view of the existing walmart in antioch. it s near the intersection of lone tree way and hillcrest avenue. currently, the store has about 141 thousand square feet of retail space. under the newly approved plan to expand the store into a supercenter, the retailer will add more than 33 thousand square feet of space on the store s western side.here. the expanded area will include a grocery store, a garden center, a tire and lube express and additional merchandise space. walmart also plans to add 176 additional parking spaces in this empty lot to the west of the store. there reconfigurations to the existing parking lot, bringing the total number of parking spots to 918. walmart will also be making major changes to the exterior façade of the store, including adding a 10 foot tall brick wall and additional landscaping. in the newsroom, charles clifford kron 4 news. mom, i invited justin over for lunch. good. no, not good. he s a vegetarian and he s going to be here in 20 minutes! [ mom ] don t stress. we can figure this out. [ male announcer ] get the speed to make a great first impression. call today to get u-verse high speed internet for as little as $14.95 a month for 12 months with a one-year price guarantee. this is delicious. [ male announcer ] save the day in an instant. at&t. new at 8 tonight. bay area home prices.through the roof compared to this time last year. new housing humbers just came out.and the average home price last month in the bay aera is up nearly 25 percent from febuary of 20- 12. the biggeest jump is in contra costa country.where average home prices are now 311 thousand.a 32 percent increase compared to this time last year when they were just 235 thosuand. san mateo county homes.now averaging 635-thousand. 29 percent higher than last february when they were less than 500 grand. in santa clara county.you ll now pay an average of 554 - thousand.28 percent higher than last year. alameda homes now average 372 thousand.up 26 percent. you get the idea. the most expensive county.san francisco.where properties are just over 700-thousand dollars. and while home prices are soaring.home sales actually dropped from year to year in february. experts say what we re seeing is a housing market that s now re-balancing itself after the recession. ahead at eight. today marks three months since the sandy hook school massacre. why some of the victims families were here in the bay area. also - the c-h-p is cracking down on drivers trying to cheat the bay bridge toll system. how they re stalling for time - to save a little money. and: samsung unveils its brand new phone. a first look. next. she s known as di=fi, but california s senior senator was more like di=feisty today. dianne feinstein tearing into texas senator ted cruz, a tea party republican. the exchange came as a senate committee approved her proposed ban on assault weapons. and senator cruz tried to deliver what she called a lecture about the constitution. one, i m not a sixth grader. senator, i ve been on this committee for twenty years. i was a mayor for nine years, i walked in, i saw people shot. i ve looked at bodies that have been shot by these weapons. nearly 25 years ago, when feinstein was a san francisco supervisor, she was witness to a double murder just a few steps from her office at city hall. both mayor moscone and supervisor harvey milk have been shot and killed. she says the horror of that day has never left her. i can not get out of my mind trying to find a pulse in someone and putting fingers in a bullet hole. i can not get out of my mind walking into a crime and seeing the brain matter all over the carnage. in 1994, she sponsored a federal ban on assault weapons, which expired ten years later. after the newtown school massacre, she re=introduced the ban.when the texas senator accused her of seeking to subvert the bill of rights, she let him have it, with both barrels. you know, it s fine you want to lecture me on the constitution. i appreciate it. just know i ve been here a long time, i ve passed on a number of bills. i ve studied the constitution myself, i m reasonably well educated and incidentally, this does not prohibit. you used the word prohibit. it exempts 2,271 weapons. isn t that enough for the people of the united states? do they need a bazooka? feinstein s bill would bar the sale or manufacture of military-style assault weapons like the ar=15, used by the killers last year in aurora colorado and newtown connecticut. it would also ban high=capacity magazines, used in the shooting that wounded congresswoman gabby giffords. according to one report, assault weapons have been used in 20 mass murders in the past 30 years. high capacity magazines in 42. but for gun control advocates, the important number is 60. that s how many votes they need to break an expected gop filibuster. it s pretty clear that the assault weapons ban has become the other party s been locked in against that. so i don t see us getting 60 votes. feinstein admits her biill faces an up=hill battle in congress, but she has a plan b. she will drop the assault weapons ban and concentrate on outlawing the high=capacity magazines. the families of some of the children killed in the sandy hook school shooting were in san francisco today. they joined bay area leaders to mark the three-month anniversary of the massacre. and announce an initiative to try to prevent future gun violence. we re moved that this tragedy has affected and mobilized the nation. we can feel the thirst for change/ though there have been many senseless losses before and since sandy hook, we re determined to make this a turning point for our country. december 14-th. 20 students and six adults were killed in the shooting in newtown, connecticut. now - a new initiative - will use money from venture capitalists. to invest in new innovations in gun safety. mental health research. and school safety. the tech community is also jacqueline: the south bay, 70 s through san jose. guion cooler along the coast. where it has kept it has kept the temperatures cooler with the clouds. and the sea breezes. it is staying rather mild. 60s and 70s. let us take a look of the satellite and radar. we are getting some of that cloud coverage moving over the bay. of. and mostly clear conditions that will keep all our temperatures in the afternoon. in regards to that fog? not much to near the coast. however, the sea breezes will be in tact. picking up for tomorrow. more coverage near the coast. for the 8:00 hour we are seeing patches of fog near the south bay. not that extensive. coverage could be a bit more. and tomorrow, the temperatures in the 60s in the south bay. mild. 69 degrees and palo alto. for the inland valleys, also as we look for the east bayshore. a lot cooler because of the marine influenced. temperatures are going to keep it cool and san francisco, berkeley powerhouse the mixture of 60s and 70s for the north bay. slightly cooler for the next couple of days. more dramatic cooling on wednesday with the storm returning. i think there rain could start early wednesday morning. we are following a breaking news out of richmond were there has been a man shot and killed a up to the bart station. phillipe djegal has the latest. reporter: kathr catherine. this is where the park police officers have been located. there is still a fluid situation. we do know that they are speaking with one witness. we do not know if this was a drive-by shooting. or if somebody was on foot who shot this person. however, the bart agents heard the shots fired. we are still working to gather information and the lieutenant is making his way to the situation. reporting live, phillipe djegal, kron 4 news. reporter: samsung has of the press release/entertainment release of its samsung galaxy 4. rele[ teen ] times are good, aren t they, kids? it s nice having u-verse, isn t it? see back in my day, we didn t have these newfangled wireless receivers. fangled? no, we watched march madness in the living room. that s where the tv outlet was. what is he talking about? and if mom was hosting her book club that day, guess what.you missed it! we couldn t just move the tv all willy-nilly all over the house. ohh! ohh! kids today have it so good. ok. [ male announcer ] call to get u-verse tv starting at $19 a month for 2 years with qualifying bundles. rethink possible. ladies and gentleman, the samsung galaxy ! reporter: this was paid large production. this is the most popular phone. if the most popular. and this samsung galaxy is the main competitor to the iphone. that is why it is such a big deal. here is what we know. it is slim, light than the previous model. the s four is a 5 in. screen. and by comparison with the iphone 5 is only a 4 in. screen. that will be a high definition amoled touchscreen. this new interface will be cleaner, faster and easier to use and even and i scrolled video if you look away. this will be featuring feet up cameras. the front side camera is a to mega pixel. and even the language translator. this is a powerful application that understands and dialects. with english even with a british accent. and the galaxy will support text to speech and speech to text. this will be available in black and white. if those will be as popular as the s 3 and continue to impact the hold of the iphone of its market share of smart phones. cellphone puffs up in the prop and a tenth straight day of gains for the dow. a look at the closing numbers. coming up. [ male announcer ] fact: the 100% electric nissan leaf. is more fun than ever. sees better than ever. charges faster. and will charge. cool. and heat. from your phone. fact: leaf never needs gas. ever. good for the world. built in america. now, leaf s an easier choice than ever. shop at choosenissan.com. catherine: now for a look at our top stories at eight- 30 a man is dead after a shooting at a richmond bart station. it happened just after six this evening. a motive for the shooting is not known. and no suspects have been identified. san jose police have arrested a school teacher accused of possessing child pornography. police say they ve found about one-thousand images of children on nathan forsteel s home computer. tonight, san jose police tell kron 4 forsteel tried to commit suicide in his home this afternoon. and was taken to a hospital. forsteel was arrested wednesday at martin luther king elementary in seaside. where he works as a physical education teacher. crime without punishment: caught on video. more and more bay area smartphone owners losing their expensive devices to strongarm robbers. crooks look for an easy target tonight. what you can do to protect yourself. and what police are doing to keep you from being a target san francisco police released a video tonight to kron four news to show you how an innocent victim was the target of such a cell phone crime. police have asked us to blur out the victims face as well as witnesses to protect them from posssible retailiation. the suspects are still on the loose. as kron four s terisa estacio reports, police say with more and more thefts occuring people need to be smarter about their smart phones. reporter: watch and listen how police explain how an three suspects go after a victim on this muni bus. on this bus there are three suspects. this was a three man operation the first suspect is standing right next to the victim. the second is right next to the near of the door. but second a suspect is out of the frame and the object is that the person in the light shirt is going to take the smart phone from the victim. the second suspect is going to hold the door open to make sure that the suspect has plenty of time to run out the door. the third suspect that you do not see will watch the front of a boss to make sure that there are not any good samaritans that will help in any way. again, the b surf the bus . is in route and as it stops it is a perfect opportunity for them to take a smart phone. you can see the suspect take the phone. the victim immediately follows out and she actually recovers her own a smart phone and was able to come back on the bus.. reporter: on the rise, here is what they are strongly advising residents and tourists to do to protect themselves. your phone has a pass code protection. i highly advised that you put a pass code protection. in an attempt to use the pass code to more than 10 times it will clear everything out of the phone. reporter: terisa estacio, kron 4 news. catherine: strong-armed robberies are a serious and growing problem across san francisco. since the beginning of the year.past couple months.police have seen a 25 percent increase in strong-armed robberies city- wide. and when you focus on the norther polcie district.strong armed robberies are up 11 percent. this woman has no idea that i am watching her. and closer, no reaction. his it to look get the reflection, you can see what has her undivided attention it is her smart phone. and just recently something known as a strong armed robbery. the northern district area like hayes valley, polk rise in the bay area. we have tips on protecting yourself. and your property. not known. and no suspects smartphone im am on chestnut street in san francisco were just recently something known as a strong arm robbery occurred what is a strong arm robbery? it s when anyone takes your personal belonging by force like a smart phone , mp3 player or even you re purse it so easy for thieves, it s not even funny, in the northen district where i am right now robbries are up 11 percent since january if you know this then you that these numbers could go down if we don t make ourselves a victim by doing something as simple as being aware of you surrondings these men are sitting out having lunch with them one tablet and two smartphones in one brief second they could be gone i am hearing that drug dealers are now switching from selling drugs to selling stolen electronics. simply because there is a huge market for i phones and android devices and if they get caught with a bunch a phones the police have to prove the phones are stolen, but not with drugs look .i m not blaiming the victim for getting robbed, but crooks look for an easy target and if you give them a chance they will take it .even on chestnut street in san francisco s marina district, stanley roberts- kron 4 news halflookout mobile security. you can even pinpointed this ahead with the loud scream. if you have a pass code is entered incorrectly free time in front facing a camera will snap a picture. this is also another website that is dedicated for scellphone a security. one of the most recent articles her own bad experience they held out a knife and they said give me your phone. she did some research a lot of times they will target and lookout will send you a e-mail with a possible location. if it is reported stolen it will be rendered useless these have to steal a certain number of phones that they cannot resell that is a free application you can get it on the android or go to the alps to felt apple store after store. or androidtoll plaza tickets. the highway patrol.cracking down on commuters. now at five. a crackdown on commuters trying to cheat the toll system on the bay bridge. cars and trucks, pulling over to the side of the clock ticks up, and the toll price goes down. now, the highway patrol is sure you can save 2-dollars by waiting it out. the chp is agressivly evaders. camera this morning. the shoulder. some in the median. slow! the chp was there thisat 10am the toll price drops from 6 to 4 dollars. so the drivers.as you see. just right. chp told me this creates a for one it is a huge traffic distraction. no reason so it is a waste when the driver pulls back congested area. if you get caught the ticket is for a non- emergency stop. of the existing walmart in this was the first full day on the job for pope francis. and as the church prepares for its next chapter catholics here in the u-s face some major challenges. and it s up to the next generation to find answers. tory dunnan has the story. are you guys on facebook and twitter? we are. yes. reporter: shots of them eating, walking with backpack on at 22 and 26 years old, louis masi and dustin dought are like most students. but instead of pursuing a career in law or medicine they re both on their way to priesthood. seminarians at catholic university -looking ahead. we re very enthusiastic about what s about to happen reporter: these two are part of the will try to influence the lives of american catholics at a critical time a struggle between tradition and modernity. we have to give attention to and to listen very carefully to those and say ok well what is it about the traditions that you feel are archaic? reporter: as one generation of catholic priests prepares the next for leadership, new could shape the future of the church. the culture of today is very different than it was 500 years ago, but in many senses, the culture is not at the time of jesus reporter: catholic membership is on the decline in the u-s. a pew research study shows almost one-third of americans who were raised catholic no longer describe themselves as such. think some of the challenges are definitely being able to approach the modern church while still keeping our traditional roots. i think it s more of marriage and pro life. reporter: the leaders of the next generation say, they re ready. we can t use the same old ways we ve been using these last 50, 100, 500 years. with new zeal, we not only need to do it differently, but we need to reporter: i m tory dunnan kron4 news. catherine: another cruise ship is having serious problems at sea. carnival is scrambling to charter flights for thousands of passengers after their ship became inoperable at a caribbean port. an emergency generator - which powers ship propulsion failed. about 36-hundred passengers were on board. some of them saw what happened on the carnival triumph last month, and didn t think it could happen again. well, i think we kind of figured this ship s newer, they re going to be more cautious, and um, that you know, things happen, but something like this should not be a recurring issue. and we actually had scheduled it prior to that event happening. catherine: passengers are reporting power outages and overflowing toilets. carnival says there were periodic interruptions power. jacqueline: we are certainly seeing some mild conditions along the coast. and for the south bay as we take a look outside at the golden gate bridge. the visibility not that bad and even along the coast it has improved to dramatically. from 8 mi. visibility which is still pretty good i still think that we are going to see fog for tomorrow. the cloud coverage moving over the bay area. much cooler temperatures for the bay area tonight. we will see areas of fog tonight. away from the coast that cooling trend will continue for tomorrow. and as we go for the extended forecast we will see cooler conditions and rainfall. details, coming up. if you did not file your 2009 returns ? you been waiting for the price of mattresses to fall? then hurry, sleep train s beautyrest and posturepedic closeout sale is ending soon. save up to 40% on closeout sets from beautyrest and posturepedic. save hundreds on floor samples and closeout inventory. these prices are falling fast, but these deals won t last. sleep train s beautyrest and posturepedic closeout sale ends soon. superior service, best selection, lowest price, guaranteed. sleep train your ticket to a better night s sleep federal tax return for 2009, you could be missing out on a refund. how many millions the i-r-s says is still unclaimed. now for today s market update. the dow extended its winning streak for the 10th straight day. it s the longest winning streak since 1996. here are the closing numbers. the dow rose 83 points to close at 14-thousand-539. the nasdaq rose 13 points. and the s-and-p came within two points of its all-time high.after gaining 8 points. catherine: if you didn t file your federal tax return for 2009, you could be missing out on a refund. the i-r-s says it has 917- million dollars in unclaimed tax refunds from that year. and says that 984-thousand people haven t submitted returns. a lot of the money works out to be more than 500- dollar per person. time is running out to claim the cash. 2009 tax returns must be submitted by april 15th. if you miss that deadline, your money will be handed over to the u-s treasury. catherine: honda is recalling 180,000 vehicles in the u-s and nearly 250,000 worldwide. a brake problem is to blame. it could cause cars to brake randomly when driver isn t pressing the brake pedal. the u-s recall involves the following models: 2005 honda pilot suv 2005 acura r-l sedan 2006 acura mdx suv honda dealers will install a new electrical part at no charge and will notify vehicle owners by mail in mid-april. no accidents or injuries have been reported. wildlife experts spend days trying to free a whale tangled in fishing line. a humpback whale spends days tangled in fishing gear off the coast of hawaii. wildlife experts stepped in to help. but as kristine uyeno reports, it was tough to the get the whale the help h last friday morning, the boat operators spotted this, in waters off lahaina. an adult whale, just under 40 feet long, tangled in and as you re probably aware they are typically mobile. they re able to dragthe national oceanic and atmospheric administration keep him close to the surface so they could cut him loose. so, they do, what s known as kegging. and kegging is an old whaling technique. we re going back to moby dick era to throw harpoons at the whales, not to kill them but to attach to them. to attach to them. well, well, well. growing up, we didn t have u-verse. we couldn t record four shows at the same time. in my day, you were lucky if you could record two shows. and if mom was recording her dumb show and dad was recording his dumb show then, by george, that s all we watched. and we liked it! today s kids got it so good. [ male announcer ] call to get u-verse tv starting at $19 a month for 2 years with qualifying bundles. rethink possible. jacqueline: temperatures for down a few degrees. it will be more subtle as we go towards the weekend toward we will wake up to some areas of fog otherwise mostly sunny skies for the afternoon if you re temperatures are going to be cooler. still on the mild side. the satellite and radar showing the cloud coverage and is almost through of the bay area with clearer skies. temperatures will be cooler out the door tomorrow for the in the valleys. things will be clear for the north fe. and the fog tracker is a bit conservative for the coverage. we will see more fog near san francisco and the bayshore. pressing back along the coast by 11. temperatures? slightly warmer. 69 in palo alto. 70s in san jose and for the in the valleys. low 70 s for the east bayshore mid-60s. we will see that marine influence the same for the coast. temperatures will be in the 50s only 60s in san francisco. a mixture of 50s and 60s for the north bay. as for the sierras it will stay miles for things will cool down slightly. as we take a look at the seven day forecast slightly cooler next week dramatic cooling with the storms returning late tuesday and wednesday with the lingering showers you re now, let us check www.snowbomb.com your current conditions if you would like more information to? gary: take a lookbottom 1st/ bases loaded the bears led utah. remember, they came and second they are the second seed and somehow, someway utah sent the game to overtime. utah beat mike montgomery. 79-69. a very close game but again you figure the the pac-10 will get five teams in the n.c.a.a. tournament. cal will have a lot worse as they are eliminated. people who follow sports and basketball in particular some wanted to play all of these kids to have a tournament at the end that is a good question if they can have money at the conference to have this extra but callous dumped. the dominican republic. knocked off joe tory 34,000 in miami this is where the international competition is really on fire cuba and all of those few with a live in that area giraffe fife fit is a big deal if you beat the united states. the united states must have a victory tomorrow against pr to advance. that is ironic verse is pr. the games are sunday, monday and tuesday and a half the u.s. is not an error most people will not go. you are going to be playing with your children. gary: i received a nice e-mail that the love of sports and you are going to lose it all one a day. and if i came on perhaps that night and was speaking realistically. and he said what would your father say. the with the you are running down of the poor kron kids. you are on television you have a choice to have a little bit of fun or just say to what if you re if so just five keeping things light. but think you for that gentleman in danville your health care how frustrated oarfis 1/5eric homser draws the walk brandon phillips scores 1-0 r.a. dickey gives up a 450- 6,434 in phoenix to watchtop 1st adrian beltre a deep shot - but watch great running catch in the outfield by the one - sends this randy wells pitch deep over the wall in right reddick s 2nd home run of the spring rangers beat a s 6-2 a s drop to 8-9 this spring the 49ers lost their 4th free agent, and third on defense when the colts inked defensive lineman ricky jean francois to a 4-year, $22 million deal francois joins isaac sopoaga defense, as well as tight to leave via free agency francois may best be known for what he calls his penut butter jelly dance: pbj dance i must death of my shoulder and left kind of get a kick on the aft and 5 with a performer they go to bed, they like to the left. that is one things. we will come back for finance speak to catherine the south wall and back for finance speak to catherine the south wall and in [ lorelonzo ] o i m lorenzo. i woi rk for 47 differffent companies. well, te, chnically i workwo for one. that com cpany, the united stas postal service® works fos r thousands of home businesses. becauscae at uatsps.com® you can capay, print and had ve you yr packages pickp for frr ee. i can caeven denrop off free b. i wei ar a lot of hats. well, te, chnically i wear on. the u.s.u. postal service®, no bus biness too small.l. there is a special common. gary, when i was at high school i watched your off the court i schedulei scored all the time! 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leaders for morning hour ebate. the chair will alternate recognition between the parties with each party limited to one hour and each member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip limited to five minutes each, event shall debate continue beyond 11:50 a.m. the chair now recognizes the gentlelady from california, mrs. capps, for five minutes. mr. speaker, i rise today to call attention to the lombing crisis of climate change looming crisis of climate change. the effects are diverse but they all impact american lives and livelihoods and we are realizing and witnessing these occurrences in real time. extreme weather events like hurricane sandy, severe drought and major flodding are becoming more frequent flooding are becoming more frequent and growing more intense. sandy alone caused at least $50 billion in damages, killed dozens of americans and up ended the lives of millions more. but sandy was only one of 11 separate billion-dollar extreme weather events last year. and not only are things getting worse each time, but with these vents they re occurring more frequent now than even a decade ago. and the costs of all these can stast row fees, which are borne by the taxpayers, are escalating. we enacted over $60 billion in emergency aid for all those impacted by sandy. who knows how much the next catastrophe will cost. mr. speaker, we cannot sit back and wait for the next hurricane sandy to devastating american lives and property, especially in these tight america times. i think we can all agree that reducing the costs of extreme weather events is a good idea. and one of the most effective ways to reduce these costs is to plan ahead. regardless of what you think about its causes, extreme weather is happening, and because we cannot guarantee these events will not happen in the future, we can and we must do more to prepare. imagine the lives, infrastructure, homes and businesses that could have been saved if we better anticipated and prepared for the impacts of these events before they occurred. by smarter planning and building more resilient infrastructure, we can reduce storm damages. we can lessen economic impacts and we can save lives. the adaptation measures also create good quality american jobs that can help grow our economy for the future. it s a win-win that we should all support. that s why last month i reintroduced two bills that would help our local communities implement these cost saving measures. one is the coastal state climate change planning act which would provide for coastal states who wish to carry out adaptation projects in order to prepare for the impacts of climate change. and another bill is the water infrastructure resiliencey and sustainability act, supporting states wishing to update their aging storm, waste and drinking water systems in order to adapt for climate change. these bills would help our local communities to plan and prepare for the impacts of climate change and increased extreme weather. our communities deserve protections from these potentially devastating events, and we have a responsibility to help. mr. speaker, we have a choice. we can continue to spend tens of billions of dollars annually on emergency aid packages that will only grow in size and quantity or we can spend a fraction of that on planning smarter and building more resilient infrastructure that creates jobs and strengthens our economy for years to come. i think the choice is clear. let s choose to protect our coastlines and to for theify our infrastructure. let s choose and to fortify our infrastructure. let s choose to plan ahead to protect lives, to protect property and the federal government itself from the impacts of extreme weather. i urge my colleagues to join me in taking action on this critical issue and to help our communities to prepare for the impacts of climate change. and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady yields back. the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. poe, for five minutes. mr. poe: mr. speaker, saturday was a day that lameer middle school students from houston, texas, had been looking forward to for a long time. they were going to get to see where the president of the united states lives. this was even more exciting because it was the first time in five years that they had been successful in scheduling a tour of the white house. then last week, two days before they were set to go on their tour, they got the bad news. they were no longer welcome in the people s house. mr. speaker, i know one of the parents of the kids at laneer middle school. here s what she said. it s disappointing because it s particularly disappointing to me because i think it teaches the kids a bad lesson of not keeping your word. that s bad for our kids. harvin moore, a trustee from the houston independent school district, wrote the white house when he got the bad news and here s what he said. next week 80 students from laneer middle school in texas will be spending spring break touring the nation s capitol. they have been planning the trip for over a year. they have completed the background checks, received confirmation that they would be welcomed at the white house. and as you can imagine they are very excited about that. now we find ourselves in a situation and position of having to explain to the students that their plans have been abruptly canceled and that they will not be welcomed at the white house after all. frankly, that s a hard thing to do as we don t understand the reasons ourselves. we don t understand why, out of a budget of $1.6 billion, the secret service s budget, the administration believes that 1/20 of 1% that s required to fund the white house tours is the first thing to be canceled. we don t understand why the administration would choose to cancel the program that touches the public the most and return from truly a minuscule budget savings. we don t understand, mr. president, why you have chosen to disinvite schoolchildren from their white house. the first lady has referred to the white house as the people s house. i agree with her. it is the people s house. it is our house. mr. moore continued in his letter, one parent described having to tell her son that he was no longer welcome at the white house. the word sequester doesn t mean anything to this student. first lady michelle obama said that the white house is our house. well, it doesn t feel like it any more. mr. speaker, laneer students from texas are not alone. thousands of students nationwide are gearing up for spring break, the cherry blossom festival are a few weeks away. these trips require planning, time and, yes, even money. bake sales, car washes, parents work were off of all involved so kids could come to washington to tour the white house, but the president unfortunately has punished the people for the sake of a few nickels. perhaps the white house forgot what the first lady has said which is posted on the homepage of whitehouse.gov, quote, this is really what the white house is all about. it s the people s house. well, mr. speaker, if this is true, the president should take the padlocks off the white house doors, put the welcome mat back on the front porch because america s kids should not be evicted from their white house. mr. speaker, the open door philosophy of the white house is a uniquely american idea, where the people of the country can come see where the president of the united states, the most powerful person in the world, actually lives. this is uniquely american. you go to other countries, whether they re democracies or not, they don t let you near the home of where the head leader lives, but only in america have we done this. so, mr. speaker, i would encourage the president to keep his word, let the people back in, and if students come to washington, d.c., they should know that the u.s. capitol is open for business, that members of congress, their staff, the tour guides at the capitol visitor center will be glad to take them through the capitol. in fact, earlier this morning there were about 70 kids from westchester, new york, seated here, getting a history lesson from one of our parliamentarian. mr. speaker, the capitol is open but neither the white house nor the u.s. capitol should ever close its doors and ban the people from the people s houses. and that s just the way it is. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman s time has expired. the chair recognizes the gentleman from pennsylvania, mr. barletta, for five minutes. mr. rletta: thank you, speaker. mr. speaker, i rise to talk about the important compelling issue of illegal immigration. we have heard from the gang of eight in the senate and now the gang of eight in the house. when we talk about legal immigration as a mayor, i know what it did to my city. aside from the crime and violence, it took a great toll on the economic vitality of the population. our population grew by 50%, but our tax base stayed the same. people who are here legally, especially the new american citizens, are looking for jobs and they are scarce. 22 million americans are out of work, and now the proposal is to waive the carrot of citizenship to millions more. and when we were talking about giving amnesty to millions, maybe 20 million illegal aliens, how much more scarce will those jobs become? mr. speaker, we have heard these proposals before. in 1986 we said that if we granted amnesty there would only be about 1.5 million people who would be included. in truth it turned out to be twice that amount. we were also told that it would never happen again. our borders would be secure and this problem would never occur again. in truth that was not true. so now 27 years later our borders still aren t secure and here we are doing this all over again. well, we got fooled once. by news reports we were told there were 11 million illegal aliens in this nation right now. by using 1986 as a yardstick we can guess by offering amnesty there might be twice that many. mr. speaker, we were told in 1986 that none of this would happen but it did. now we re talking about brand new expenses at a time when we really have no money to spare. this means social security, medicare, unemployment compensation, obamacare, welfare, food stamps, you name it. the heritage foundation projects that currently illegal immigration today costs us $55 billion a year or $550 billion over 10 years. illegal immigrants today receive $55 billion more in government benefits than they pay in taxes based on the 2010 census. worse, after so-called amnesty, the net deficit resulting from illegal immigrants will be $75 billion a year or 3/4 of $1 trillion over 10. now, we have no guarantee that these millions of new legalized aliens will not be on the public social programs. nothing in any of these proposals from these gangs or the white house can convince me otherwise. all told, the heritage foundation projects that if that s true it will mean $2.5 trillion in new costs to the taxpayers over the next 20 years. now, mr. speaker, i submit that in this time when we are looking for every dollar to save, we should not be giving away the bank at the same time that our borders are not secure and 22 million americans are out of work. we should be talking about border security first. there should not and cannot be a discussion of amnesty until we secure our borders first. thank you for your time. . the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yield back. if no other members seek recognition. pursuant to clause 12-a of rule 1, the chair declares the house so i urge a no vote. if i may respond briefly. as i said i respect the distinguished senator from california, but i would refer her again to the testimony of gale trotter, who testified before the committee that these guns are a great equalizer, including the use of an ar-15, which would be prohibited by this act. that should be before the committee. i note that the vice president has also apparently believes that a handgun is insufficient for self-defense because he s advocated use of a shotgun on at least one other occasion. i also ask mr. chairman to make part of the record a listing of nine separate incidents of people defending themselves with assault weapons that would be prohibited by this legislation. no further discussion, the senator from illinois. just very quickly, i would also like to include in the record this morning s chicago tribune story where the police officers in the city of chicago in east garfield park shot to death a 58-year-old man who refused to drop an automatic assault weapon which he pulled on the policeman, certainly not a weapon which police often carry but now face from criminals on the street with regularity. mr. chairman, just concluding, i would say that the underlying bill exempts retired police officers, and the rationale for that, which i support, is they can use their weapons. they are trained in these weapons. they can use them for self-defense. why we would deny other american citizens the right to legitimately use these weapons for self-defense is escapes me. i think there s a larger issue here that we ought to think about, and what senator cornyn is trying to do is protect constitutional rights, and i think everybody s trying to put the burden on senator cornyn to do that. the burden ought to be on those people that are trying to limit constitutional rights. the clerk, call the roll. ms. feinstein? no. mr. shumer. no by proxy. mr. whitehouse. no by proxy. ms. klobuchar. no. mr. coons. no by proxy. mr. blumenthal. no. ms. hiono. no. mr. hatch. aye by proxy. mr. graham. aye by proxy. mr. lee. aye by proxy. mr. cruz. aye. mr. flake. aye by proxy. mr. chairman. no. mr. chairman. it is eight yeas, 10 nays. senator schumer. senator schumer will be recorded no in person. senator cornyn, you have the floor. i call up amendment 13116 and ask for its consideration. no objection. it s before the committee. this amendment would allow persons who have obtained a protection order, which is actually a broader definition than just merely a protective order as ordinarily ordinarily thought of. this would allow people who ve obtained a protection order as defined by the violence against women act to obtain and possess the personal self-defense weapons prohibited by this legislation. the national coalition against domestic violence estimates that 1.3 million a year women are traumatized by domestic violence, and that one in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. when a sexual assault statistics are added to this estimate, the numbers are staggering. the most vulnerable of these women, the protection order is a living symbol of their struggle and a certification of the real threat of danger they and their families must live with every day. and we should ensure that at the very least these law-abiding americans are able to own and possess the very tools necessary to protect themselves from becoming a tragic statistic. so i d ask my colleagues to support this amendment which would allow individuals who ve obtained a protection order as defined by the violence against women act to obtain and possess these self-defense weapons. i would urge a no vote. again, in my view, there s no strong evidence that these weapons are used for self-defense, nor do i believe you need clips, drums or ammunition feeding devices of more than 10 bullets for self-defense. what senator biden said is if you really want a weapon use a .12 gauge shotgun. a shotgun is mott an assault weapon. we ve demonstrated where these assault weapons can have different slides put in there which essentially make them act like fully automatic weapons. these weapons are generally able to be sprayed fire. i think we ll see more of these amendments. is an effort to nip it and tuck it and create exception after exception. i really resist this effort. i urge a no vote. clerk will call the roll. mrs. feinstein. no. mr. schumer. no. mr. whitehouse. no by proxy. ms. klobuchar. no by proxy. mr. franken. no. mr. coons. no by proxy. mr. blumenthal. no. ms. hirono. no. mr. hatch. no. mr. sessions. aye by proxy. mr. cornyn. aye by proxy. mr. lee. aye by proxy. mr. cruz. aye. mr. chairman. no. mr. chairman, the votes are eight yeas and 10 nays. the amendment fails. not necessarily because of this last amendment. i was thinking of some of the discussions of what kind of firepower people need in their homes. one of the discussions sounded almost like somebody had been one to these movies, the zombie takeovers. i ve always been perfectly satisfied in my .45 i have at home. others too. even we have people escaping from prison announcing they were going to kill me, i felt pretty comfortable with that. i didn t feel necessary to shoot up my neighborhood with a semiautomatic assault weapon. i guess depends on how good a shot they are. senator cornyn. mr. chairman, we certainly won t ask you to inventory your arsenal that you maintain at your home in vermont. we will lose a quorum. before senator cornyn speaks, in response to what you said, it seems to me you re raising the question about the firepower that a person ought to have, maybe to protect their home, isn t the rule ought to be that you would have the firepower commensurate with possible aagreesors, what they might have? zombie assault is a different thing. go ahead, senator cornyn. if i may ask before going to my next amendment just ask the senator from california, what s the purpose of the exception of retired police officers in the bill? well, the reason for retired police officers is that generally they do maintain their weapon. they do keep their weapon. the retired police felt strongly and this is a problem for them if they re going to re you re going to remove weapons for them. in the crafting of the bill, we obviously made certain compromises and made certain changes and that was one that we made. mr. chairman, i d call up my amendment 13118. without objection, that s before the committee. senator cornyn has the floor. mr. chairman, this amendment would allow residents of counties that are on the southwestern border to have self-defense weapons as prohibited by this legislation. as we know across our border to the south transnational criminal organizations are equipped with fully automatic military-style weapons and trained in military tactics and they re committing hundreds of thousands of acts of violence every year. these organizations have also expanded their footprint to the united states through drug trafficking and human trafficking. these cartels are dangerous as are the gangs that support their operations. and we know that they are operating along the southwestern border. i cannot in good conscience tell my constituents that the federal government is going to deny them the freedom to defend their families from these transnational criminal organizations, and i d ask my colleagues to support the amendment. if i may respond. senator feinstein. thank you, again. this is another way to create a nip and a tuck. i would like to point out to the body that the bill contains nearly 100 pages of weapons by make and model that are exempted. there are plenty of weapons out there. the whole point of this bill is to reduce over time the supply, the possession, the transfer and the sale of military-style weapons. and anyone that has a concern that their weapon is affected need only look at the bill and you ll see most likely your weapon is exempted by name, make and model. and that is from everything from handguns to center filed rifles and on and on. so i d like to make that point. i d urge a no vote. could i speak, please? certainly. i think this brings up a bigger issue. i support the amendment. but i think we ought to remind everybody that when it comes to the citizens of anyplace in the united states, either local government is going to support them or protect them or the federal government. in the case of immigration, it s quite clear that that s a responsibility of the federal government to protect our borders, secure our borders and protect our sovereignty. now, in the southwest of the united states we have people being murdered by the very example or the reason for his amendment. the federal government s not doing their jobs or these folks wouldn t be getting across the border. so arizona steps in, some legislation, saying, well, the federal government s not protecting our people under the 10th amendment, state responsibility of protecting the safety and welfare of their citizens step in to do it. you know what, the federal government starts suing the state of arizona. if the state if the federal government was doing its job, arizona wouldn t have to step in, wouldn t have to spend all this money. so senator cornyn comes up with his amendment. if the federal government isn t going to do it, are we going to allow the individual citizens to do it? if the governments don t it, the second amendment is the right of self-protection. we ought to respect that right. we ought to give the people the power to do it if they want to protect themselves if the state government isn t doing it and the state government wouldn t have to do it if the federal government was doing its job. and then instead of suing the state of arizona, the president of the united states ought to be stepping in there and say we will work with you to protect your citizens. mr. chairman. if i may respond not so much to that point but to the general line of argument that i think is raised by these amendments which is a self-defense amendment, and i respect senator cornyn s desire to provide defense or the means for self-defense to victims of domestic violence and to victims of assault. and i think we all do. the question is what kind of weapons are necessary or best suited for that defense. and obviously the second amendment guarantees every individual, regardless of whether he or she is a victim of any crime, sexual assault or otherwise, to self-defense. the heller decision makes that point clear. i think the point is what kind of weapon provides the best or safest means. the use of these weapons were primarily for criminal purposes. it s an offensive weapon. it s a military-style weapon that was designed and made for our military to kill people and it may be used to kill people for self-defense. but the experience is that self-defense is best done by other kinds of weapons which are commonly used at first range. u.s. attorney john walsh said that shootings for self-defense occurs at close range. a 10-round gun would help. and a chief said the same thing, that these assault weapons are commonly used by criminals often against police, not by people in self-defense. so i think the nature of the weapon is at issue here and assault weapons, because they are so extraordinarily damaging, they cause multiple wounds, more serious wounds, often with police officers as their victim, are simply appropriate to be back banned with the very well-defined and explicit approach that this proposal takes and so i think these amendments, while they may be well-intentioned and i agree their purpose in providing a means of self-defense to victims of these horrendous crimes, can be done better by other types of weapon. i would respond to my friend and say, why would we want to make an otherwise law-abiding citizen into a criminal if they want to use these weapons to defend themselves and their families? i see that as the effect of this legislation. i also believe that if the criminals that you allude to, and as a former attorney general, you know this area as well as anybody, if the criminal element is going to be using weapons like this, why would you deny for defensive purposes otherwise law-abiding citizens to be able to use an equivalent firepower to defend themselves? it s not much satisfaction to say that criminals are going to have access to the whole range of weapons that they will have access to because they don t care about the laws that are passed. and we re going to give the american citizen a pea shooter to defend themselves with. i think it s inadequate. you are criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens inappropriately, in my view. mr. chairman. senator cruz. if i might pose a question to the senior senator from california. in your response to senator cornyn, you mentioned that there are some 100 pages of the bill that specify particular firearms if this bill were passed congress would have deemed prohibited. it seems to me that all of us should begin as our foundational document with the constitution. and the second amendment in the bill of rights provides the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. the term the right of the people. it s found in the first amendment. the right of the people to peaceably assemble and to petition their government for grievances, it s found in the fourth amendment, the right of the people to be found unreasonable from searches and seizures. and the question i pose to the senator from california, would she deem it consistent with the bill of rights for congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the second amendment in the context of the first or fourth amendment, namely, would she consider it constitutional for congress to specify that the first amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that congress has deemed outside the protection of the bill of rights? likewise, would she think that the fourth amendment s protection against searches and seizures could properly apply only to the following specified individuals and not to the individuals that congress has deemed outside the protection of the bill of rights? would the senator yield for a question? let me just make a couple of points in response. one, i m not a sixth grader. senator, i ve been on this committee for 20 years. i was a mayor for nine years. i walked in, i saw people shot. i ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. i ve seen the bullets that implode. in sandy hook, youngsters were dismembered. look, there are other weapons. i ve been up i m not a lawyer, but after 20 years i ve been up close and personal to the constitution. i have great respect for it. this doesn t mean that weapons of war and the heller decision clearly points out three exceptions, two of which are pertinent here. and so i you know, it s fine you want to lecture me on the constitution. i appreciate it. just know i ve been here for a long time. i ve passed on a number of bills. i ve studied the constitution myself. i am reasonably well educated, and i thank you for the lecture. incidentally, this does not prohibit you use the word prohibit. it exempts 2,271 weapons. isn t that enough for the people in the united states? do they need a about a bazooka? do they need military weapons to kill people in close contact? i don t think so. i come from a different place than you do. i respect your views. i ask you to respect my views. mr. chairman senator is out of time. mr. chairman, i can t add anything to that. senator cruz. mr. chairman, i would ask yet another question of the senior senator from california. i think nobody doubts her sincerity or her passion and yet at the same time i would note that she chose not to answer the question that i asked. which is, in her judgment, would it be consistent with the constitution for congress to specify which books are permitted and which books are not and to use the the answer is obvious no. and if i may ask could we keep on the i appreciate we have a discussion on books. i know that they have that in your state of texas where educational board tells people what books they should or should not read in their schools. something we would not do in vermont. we are not going to talk about your right. let s stick to guns. let me just mr. chairman, i appreciate your acknowledging that the state of tk allows books. i would specify a little more broadly. pornography books. protected by the first amendment. it s obviously there are different tests on different amendments. and i think what the senator is going to point out was something that didn t occur to me at the moment. there are certain kinds of pornographic materials that would not be covered by the first amendment. and is it the view of the senior senator from california that congress should be in the business of specifying particular books or for that matter with respect to the fourth amendment particular individuals who are not covered by the bill of rights? sir, congress is in the business of making law. the supreme court interprets the law. they strike down the law, they strike down the law. the tests in heller with respect to unusual weapons, two other things i think do not cover in other words, they cover an exemption for assault weapons. if this is brought up before the court if it should pass, i m sure that argument will be made. the senator from illinois wish that s exactly the point. the senator knows having attended law school and professes to have some experience in the constitution, none of these rights are absolute. none of them. and the heller decision goes specifically to the question of this amendment and tells us when they were asked in the heller decision, a panel heller 2, a panel of republican appointed judges rejected a second amendment challenge to d.c. s assault weapon ban and magazine limits, the second amendment challenge. the d.c. circuit court held that such laws, quote, do not disarm individuals or substantially defend their ability to defend themselves. i could go on but i think the senator from california made the case. mrs. feinstein. no. mr. schumer. no. mr. durbin. no. mr. whitehouse. no by proxy. ms. klobuchar. no. mr. coons. no by proxy. mr. blumenthal. no. ms. hirono. no. mr. hatch. aye by proxy. mr. sessions. aye by proxy. mr. graham. aye by proxy. mr. cornyn. aye. mr. lee. aye by proxy. mr. cruz. aye. mr. flake. aye by proxy. mr. chairman. no. i note for the record that senator graham is here. great yeas as much as i m over here i m here. oh, ok. the amendment fails. is there another amendment? i have one amendment. incidentally, i appreciate and i mean it sincerely, i appreciate the courtesy of the senior senator from texas who is told us well in advance which amendments he s going to have and he s not taken an undue amount of time. that means a lot to me. so please go ahead. again, the fundamental flaw i think in the legislation is assuming that certain types of weapons will be used only for offensive purposes. that s wrong. if it were true, the bill itself would not exempt retired law enforcement officers from the criminalization of the possession of these weapons. and so to further point out that fundamental flaw in the legislation, i would call up my amendment 13181. this is 131 and ask for its immediate consideration. mr. chairman, this amendment the senator has the right and the amendment is before the committee. mr. chairman, as the distinguished ranking member pointed out, not all of america is urban. there are large sections of urban excuse me rural america where government, including law enforcement officers, are not omni present. this amendment would prevent the bill from threatening law-abiding citizens living in rural areas, in rural communities of our country by exempting them from possession of these self-defense weapons. the violence against women act itself recognizes that citizens in rural areas and communities deserve special protection under our laws. in my home state of texas and around the nation, rural americans often live far away from the protection of law enforcement officials. and this committee should recognize the vast differences between different regions of our country before enacting blanket bans on personal self-defense weapons from washington, d.c. we must ensure that rural americans are able to fully protect their families before the police arrive too late at the scene of a violent crime, and my amendment exempting otherwise law-abiding citizens living in rural areas from the criminalization attempted by this legislation by exempting them from prohibitions on the possession of these weapons for self-defense purposes. and i ask my colleagues to support it. i thank the distinguished senator. is there any comments? urge a no vote, mr. chairman. senator feinstein has urged a no vote. i pay particular attention living on a dirt road in a town that has no police force mr. chairman, with the guns you have, they don t need a police force. i feel adequately protected. the clerk call the roll. ms. feinstein. no. mr. schumer. no. mr. durbin. no. mr. whitehouse. no by proxy. ms. klobuchar. no. mr. franken. no. mr. koonce. no by mr. coons. no by proxy. ms. hirono. no. mr. sessions. aye by proxy. mr. graham. aye. mr. cornyn. aye by proxy. mr. lee. aye by proxy. mr. cruz. aye. mr. chairman. no. mr. chairman, eight yeas, 10 nays. i would note that i do have other amendments, but in order to maintain the pleasant and disposition of the chairman and not to burn any bridges unnecessarily [laughter] and this close to st. patrick s day at least not right now, i withhold further amendments for the floor. thank you. i appreciate that. the senator from texas knows my disappointed not being elected pope so that i appreciate his courtesy there. i know i m going to pay for that smart alic remark. i appreciate the courtesy of all the senators. we had four cardinals. i guess we re still considered cardinals. but the i appreciate the courtesy of all the senators of both parties in moving through four major pieces of legislation. i want to call the roll on senator feinstein i told her i have some concerns about some aspects of it, but i feel this is a matter of such importance. it should be voted on by the whole senate, not just by this committee, and so i will vote to support her bill as i will vote to support her bill as it is before us and the clerk will call the roll. aye. mr. schumer. aye. mr. durbin. aye. mr. whitehouse. aye by proxy. ms. klobuchar. aye. mr. franken. aye. mr. coons. aye by proxy. mr. blumenthal. aye. mr. grassley. no. mr. hatch. no by proxy. mr. sessions. no by proxy. mr. graham. no by proxy. mr. cornyn. no. mr. lee. no by proxy. mr. cruz. no. mr. flake. no. mr. chairman. aye. mr. chairman votes aye. 10 yeas, eight nays. the bill will be reported to the floor. i know several senators have asked for time to speak. and senator feinstein, i note we ve completed the work on the agenda, but several senators have asked to speak and i will stay here and give everybody a chance. mr. chairman. the senator from senior senator from california. i know other members wanted to speak on this. i just want a very to make a very few comment. i think every member of this committee needs to ask themselves a few questions. first, i want to thank the members that have stood with me. it is very much appreciated. as i ve said before, the road is uphill. i fully understand it. i think a lot of my passion comes from just what i ve seen on the streets of cities in this country, but i really think that every member of this committee needs to ask themselves a few following questions are we going to stand with the thousands of police chiefs and law enforcement officers who do support this bill? are we going to stand with the victims of gun violence? are we going to stand with the overwhelming number of people? there has not been one poll done that doesn t show that a majority of americans want this bill passed. how is this country going to be a weaker country because we don t produce millions of assault weapons to end up in the hands of gangs, to go for grievance killers? you know, let me say something about the young man at sandy hook, because in a sense it s typical. this is a young man who was disturbed. he was maladjusted. his mother, a gun collector, gave him this weapon, took him to the range, taught him how to fire the weapon. the first person he killed was his mother, and then he went to sandy hook and killed brave adults and those children. and you know, when we hear the testimony from the emergency physician about what those bullets did inside the body of those children, it is a very sobering picture. i mean, i cannot get out of my mind trying to find a pulse in someone and putting fingers in a bullet hole. i cannot get out of my mind walking into a crime and seeing the brain matter all over, the carnage. and seeing these mass attacks continue to happen. i mean, i thought it would end with the texas bell tower, but it hasn t. universities, schools, movie theaters, law offices, places of employment. and these weapons become the weapon of choice. why allow them to continue? this bill doesn t take a weapon from anybody. it simply talks about the future. it simply says if you possess one you have to keep it safely. a trigger lock. that if you sell it to anyone but a family member, they have to have a background check. it affects clips and ammunition feeding devices so people that want to go into a theater and kill 100 people can t do it with 100-round magazine. i don t see that as being bad. i don t see that as harming america because we have so many guns. no nation has more guns in theirian society than we do. you can compare in their civilian society than we do. you can compare it with the u.k. you can compare it with australia, and you will see a few double digits and then you will see thousands in america. so how is this a bad thing to do? you know, i ve been in this political career, true, in a city, a tumultuous city, a diverse city. i ve seen bright young police officer, young latino officer that everyone thought had a brilliant future in the san francisco police department walking down third street when a gang member walked the other way with an ak-47, opened his coat and shot him dead. how many times does this have to happen? and it happens all over. that s why the police are for this. you know, you can exempt retired police. they have been trained. they know how to use these. very different from a grievance killer. very different from jonesboro or columbine or virginia tech. very different. and the clips, the size of the clips, who needs it? i mean, would anyone respect someone with a 30-round clip going out shooting deer? i don t think so. so the problem is, you know, i understand the right of people to want to collect these and nothing takes any weapon away from anybody. and to prove it we exempt so many weapons. so i have a hard time understanding why our country isn t better off. with respect to case i know others will argue this but no assault weapons legislation has been struck down. my last bill went through the fourth, the sixth, the ninth and the d.c. circuit. this bill is patterned after that and it wasn t struck down. none have been thus far. no state bill and the last federal bill. so i just wanted to say that. i want to thank everybody. senator, i want to apologize to you. you sort of got my dander up, and that happens on occasion. first time ever. mr. chairman. thank you. mr. chairman, may i ask unanimous consent certainly. that my vote be recorded as present and not by proxy. i was going to suggest that and we re glad i know you ve been going through a rough time with your back. we re glad to have you back and your votes will be recorded as in person. he was medevaced. senator schumer, and before we leave i will have a statement too. i ll yield to everybody first. senator graham. thank you, mr. chairman. i d like to make the same request of senator whitehouse. i think i missed a vote. to senator feinstein, you have been consistent. you re sincere as the day is long. i completely understand your point of view. and i ll vote no because for a couple reasons. number one, about the capacity of the clip. one bullet in the hands of a mental he disturbed person or felon, a gang member is one too many. there are thousands of these high-capacity clips in circulation today. but i could see a situation where an individual citizen would need more than six bullets or 10. most assaults, not most, a third of the assaults that occur are by more than one perpetrator. i go back to the situation of the lady in atlanta a couple months ago. a man broke in her home. she was at home with her twin daughters. he had just gotten out of jail with a crowbar. she went to the second floor of the house and hid in a closet. on the phone with her husband. she had a .38 reinvolver she hit him five or six times. he got up and drove away. thank god there weren t two. in that situation, it wouldn t bother me at all, senator feinstein, if she had 30 or 100 bullets. it disturbs me what happened in connecticut with any kind of weapon or magazine. how do you interrupt the shooter? the theory if you limit the size or the compacity when you have one of these capacity when you have one of these mass shootings it will have a break in the shooting. it really is a false sense of interrupting the shooter. it has a certain logic to it. but i think we can have a better system. if you had there are $300 million spent on securing this capitol. you can t walk anywhere in here without some armed guard. why? because this is a magnet this is the center of democracy. a lot of people would like to do harm to the building, what it stands for and the people inside. i believe the best way to interrupt the shooter is to have a mental health system that actually records and enters into the database people who should not be able to buy a gun. in south carolina a lady was able to purchase a gun lawfully who had been plead not guilty by reason of insanity for trying to kill the president of the united states. the system did not capture her. there are better ways to deal with this. the assault ban. 2.4% of the murders last year, the caused, the instrument was a rifle, not an ar-15 but a rifle. so we re really focusing on what i think is an emotional part of the problem but will create a false sense of safety. i ve said this probably more than i should. i own an ar-15, not out of animosity or paranoia that life is going to disintegrate in my community. i would need it. but there are circumstances where if you did have a situation where lawlessness took over from a national disaster that self-defense component of an ar-15 is to me far greater than a double-barrel shotgun. but you don t have to agree with me. the reason i bought the ar-15, i served in afghanistan as a reservist and people in my unit were buying ar-15 s with a logo of my unit. i haven t shot it yet. i need to go and shoot it. that s why i bought it. that s why the people in the unit bought it. i would just suggest that this legislation has been tried before. it really didn t change things. and after the heller case, i really do believe that there s a very good argument, traditional lawful purposes such as self-defense, i can make a logical defense that an ar-15 is better in certain circumstances than other weapons than one may want to buy. common use at the time, there are over four million of these guns. it s not like i m the only one in america with this. there are four million, it s the number one selling rifle i think last year. not dangerous. of course it is. and unusual is the second, is the third test. can t be unusual in the circumstances of what s going on in america in terms of people purchasing the rifle. and having said that, i will vote no. it is not about questioning senator feinstein s motives. we just see things differently. she has been doing this for a very long time. because she believes it will help. and i believe it is will not appreciateably change things and it is giving a false sense of safety and there are better things we can do in a bipartisan way to address gun violence. the crooks are going to get the guns. if you ever find yourself having to meet one of these crooks, i want to make sure you can defend yourself. thank you. mr. chairman. i would note for everybody i said i ll stay here as long as anybody wishes to speak. i just note out of consideration for everybody there is going to be a vote in a few minutes at which point we will have to recess and come back. senator schumer, you have been patiently waiting. i wasn t going to speak but i do want to make a point. it s in reference to the vy log between the senator from texas dialogue between the senator from texas and the senator from california. you know, even before heller, i go to upstate new york to gun clubs and people would say to me, why is it that people down in new york city want to interpret the first or the fourth amendment broadly and expansively and see the second amendment through the pen hole of militias and only if you are a member of the reserves or national guard that you would have the right to bear arms? and as i thought about it they had a point. heller made that point in a constitutional sense. it said that there is a right to bear arms and a nonmilitia member, a nonreservist in washington, d.c., had that right. and i think that s a good thing that they said that. and i ve made speeches and arguments that those of us on the more progressive side should accept that argument. but heller made a second point and that is that there are limits on the second amendment the way there are limits on every other amendment. and in fact, specifically in regard to my good friend from south carolina, under heller the d.c. circuit explicitly upheld the d.c. assault weapons ban as a reasonable limitation. but my point goes more large than that. we now have the inverse situation. our folks some folks defend the second amendment to all limits. there are no reasonable limitations on the second amendment and many of those very same people would much more narrowly interpret the first amendment or the fourth amendment or some of the others. so in reference to the colleague, the question my colleague from texas asked, would you limit books, would you name specific books? yeah. it s constitutional within the first amendment to eliminate child pornography. . they are constitutional and been upheld as constitutional. similarly you can t falsely scream fire in a crowded theater. similarly we have libel laws. every one of these is an impingement on the sacred first amendment. upheld as constitutional. there are reasonable limits on each amendment, and i think it is anomalous to put it kindly for either side to say to interpret one amendment so expansively and another amendment so narrowly that it just doesn t add up because your interpretation of the constitution should be consistent. this is particularly true now i would say to my friends who defend the second amendment. to too many people there are no limits. none. no objectionable limits. and it makes no sense. you can still believe in the right to bear arms, which i believe in, and say, for instance, that there are certain arms that may not fall in that am bit, certainly in certain instances. ambit, certainly in certain instances. certainly it would seem to me that making sure there is a background check under the brady law, making it more making the background check more effective, is constitutional. although some on the other side have said it s not. i wish we could all come a little bit more to the middle on this issue. i wish that those of us on this side of the table, and i think we do, and certainly heller did, believe in there s a right to bear arms and it is no less a part of the constitution than other parts of the constitution. but i would hope that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would realize and recognize is a better word that there are reasonable limits on the second amendment just as there are reasonable limits on all of the other amendments. mr. chairman, thank you. mr. durbin. i want to thank my colleagues from california, new york, for their statements and just add that there are a couple things i would like to note. today is march 14. it is three months since newtown, connecticut, on december 14. what happened in that classroom and the classrooms of that school at sandy hook was a national tragedy. senator feinstein, thank you for bringing this back for our consideration. the ar-15 used that day to kill the innocent children and six administrators and teachers, is a weapon that really should be restricted in this contry, not to those currently on them. future sales, that s what you address. i think it has been held up before and again in the courts that these assault weapon bans are constitutional. we held an express hearing on this which you attended and dr. lawrence tribe from harvard testified and said that the argument that this legislation is unconstitutional is decidedly a losing argument. justice scalia, no liberal, made crystal clear in the heller decision there is, quote, historical tradition in our country of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. assault weapons, end of quote, assault weapons are disproportionately dangerous when used in assault and they represent a small fraction of the guns in circulation. there is no doubt in my mind that your law as has been held by previous courts is constitutional. and there is sound standing for it to be considered. and this notion that, it s such a small percentage, it may be a small percentage. but the tragedy that we have witnessed, tragedies we have witnessed in the use of these assault weapons are reminders that we cannot stand idly by and as the senator from new york suggested argue some absolute position that will not allow us to make schools and neighborhoods and homes safer in america. thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. chairman. i think all of us understand the passions that this topic ill list its, but in my view decisions in this body on everything, especially this topic, should be driven by facts and the data and by the constitution not by passion. so i d like to make four points briefly. number one, machine guns are already functionally illegal. when this topic is discussed in the public forum, a great many people when they hear the phrase assault weapon, believe that what is being discussed is fully automatic machine guns. senior senator from california made reference to an ak-47, i believe wielded by a gang member. an ak-47 is a fully automatic machine gun that is functionally illegal today. tragically gang members don t tend to follow gun laws. number two, this bill, the data demonstrate, would be singularly ineffective in preventing violent crime. that i think is not surprising because as the hearings on this bill demonstrated, the weapons that would be prohibited by this bill are functionally identicalle to semiautomatic deer rifles, millions of which are in circulation, and this bill targets cosmetic features on guns, cosmetic features that at the end of the day make the guns appear scary but does not alter the basic mechanism. and i would note that we don t have to hypothesize about the effectiveness because we in fact have seen what happens when a very, very similar bill is in effect. the prior assault weapons ban was in effect for a decade. three times the department of justice funded studies on that assault weapons bill and three times the studies were not able to find any statistically significant impact on violent crime. as a result of the assault weapons ban. that s three studies in a row which is very difficult to get away from, and indeed since the assault weapons ban expired, we now see murders by rifles are roughly half today what they were when the assault weapons ban is in effect. so this is not a law that i think has any reasonable prospect of reducing violent crimes. something i know everyone in this committee would like to see violent crime reduced. indeed, i would suggest as my third point, that if the real objective is reducing violent crime, we should be devoting our time to far more effective steps. we should be devoting our time to laws that target violent criminals. we should be devoting our time to laws that improve the nics background check. we heard testimony that 18 states right now have submitted 100 or fewer mental health records to the background check program. that s a serious problem. i would note my home state of texas has submitted over 200,000 mental health records to that background system. and i fully expect to support on the floor legislation that is targeted at violent criminals and not sat law-abiding citizens. indeed, if we wanted to go further and really consider significant steps to stop violent crime, i would suggest we could consider legislation or a constitutional amendment to alter or repeal the exclusionary rule in criminal proceedings. now, there is a rule that consistently excludes evidence of guilt from violent criminals and has resulted in violent criminals being freed over an over and over again. if the passion that is focused on this issue right now were targeted at preventing violent crime, i would suggest considering the impact of the exclusionary rule would be a far more fruitful area for actually stopping violent crime because i, too, as many of the members of this committee have worked in law enforcement for many, many years, have dealt with victims of crime, and think we need to be serious about protecting americans from violent crime with every tool at our disposal. my fourth and final point is that the constitution in my opinion should be the touch stone of everything we do. some have suggested in this hearing that the role of congress is to pass laws and it s up to the court to consider constitutionality. i would point out that every one of us takes an oath to defend the constitution. and that is a fundamental obligation of every member of this body. there has been some suggestion that heller would allow this regulation. i would point out that i am not unfamiliar with the heller case. indeed i represented 31 states before the u.s. supreme court in the heller case. so i have an intimate familiarity with that case having been an active part of litigating it and winning 5-4 before the supreme court, and what the supreme court said in heller, it did say there are some restrictions on the second amendment that are permissible. for example, it specifically identified the current prohibition on fully automatic machine guns. but it also said that weapons that are in common use such as, in that case, handguns were the principle issue principal issue being discussed, and the same arguments that are suggested here about why so-called assault weapons were made by the district of columbia for why handguns would be banned. the supreme court said if they are in common use for self-defense they cannot be banned consistent with the second amendment. we have heard testimony that there are some four million weapons that would be covered by this bill. i would suggest on any measure four million weapons qualify as common use and under the terms of heller they cannot actually be prohibited. the final point i would make on the constitution is some have pointed to public opinion polls. in my view the constitution is particularly important. when the bill of rights is unpopular. that was the entire purpose of the bill of rights. when our rights are popular, we don t need the constitution. the purpose of it is to stab for stand for the rights of the minority when the majority is acting to strip their rights, and i would note the senior senator from new york asked about other rights. i think we should be vigorous in protecting every right in the constitution. just last week a number of us spent some 13 hours on the floor of the senate defending the fifth amendment and in particular the right of americans not to be denied their life without due process of law. and indeed senator rand paul and i have introduced legislation to make clear that the united states government cannot use a drone to kill a u.s. citizen on u.s. soil if that individual does not pose an imminent threat, and i would certainly welcome support from any of my thretion on the other side of the aisle on that from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle on that identify don t want to cut the senator off. he s made his five of his four points. but we do we are going to have a vote in a few minutes and i would ask him to i ll say if he wants to make it longer, appreciate the lecture of what we are supposed to do as senators and the constitution. i have been doing it for 38 years but i m always happy to have the reminder from somebody who has been here for probably not quite as long. i would like to let some of the others mr. chairman, if i could have 60 more seconds to conclude. go ahead. likewise earlier this week this committee voted to fund a study of the impact of films and video games on violent crimes. i would note that i voted know against that as well. i believe in the first amendment, i believe in the second amendment, i believe in the fifth amendment. i would suggest that every one of us has an obligation to the constitution. will i happily welcome support from i will happily welcome support from anyone who wants to stand and fight for the constitution because in my view that should be our principal responsibility and obligation. thank you. i thank the senator. senator whitehouse. speak briefly. it s pretty clear where i think it s pretty clear where this is going and where the political forces have arrayed themselves. and i would hope that as we go to the floor i can work with senator feinstein and others to make sure that we get a separate vote on the high capacity magazines question. it s pretty clear that the assault weapons ban has become other party has become locked in against that. i don t see us getting 60 votes. i do think it s possible to get 60 votes on the high capacity weapons ban. it is hard to imagine that it can be a violation of the first amendment for somebody to yell fire in a crowded theater, but it s not a violation of the second amendment to prevent somebody from bringing a 100-round magazine into a crowded theater in aurora, colorado. we have heard testimony in this committee very specific testimony about lives that would have been saved if there had not been those high capacity magazines. we heard from representative giffords husband about the shooting in which he mentioned the child who was the 13th shot victim would not have happened if he had to reload sooner. we heard from the u.s. attorney prosecuting the aurora case about the harm that was direct consequence of having the capacity of magazine that that individual had before the weapon jammed. we heard from the police chief there has been no testimony to the contrary, indeed the republican witnesses have specifically said that these high capacity magazines, at least at some level, are outside of the heller decision. that was an admission by one of the pro-gun republican witnesses. i think there is room to maneuver there. there is logic behind it. there is unrebutted testimony behind it. it does not interfere with the prescriptions of heller. and i hope that we can at least agree to get that passed. we can t unless we get a vote on it. i hope we can work together to make sure we get in addition to a vote on the assault weapons on the floor, a vote on the high capacity magazines restriction. i appreciate that. talk about what congress can do. so far this is the only committee that s held hearings on gun violence. in neither body. and the only one that has actually taken up and passed out legislation. we have done it in two months time. senator franken. thank you, mr. chairman. i d like to congratulate senator feinstein on today s vote. it s an important step. i know that she worked tirelessly on this legislation. we have been debating this legislation for about three months. there are strongly held views on both sides. that s not just ok, it s good. obviously. i respect the perspectives and opinions, opinions of every member. minnesota has rural areas. the minnesotans feel different ways about this. but as the bill now moves to the full senate, some of the bill s co-sponsors, i guess it s me and dick, remaining, dick durbin talked about constitutionality. we d like to talk to some of the arguments that have been made against the bill. one of the arguments that we have heard repeatedly is that independent justice department studies proved that the last assault weapons ban was ineffective. and i kind of wish that the junior senator from texas was still here. during our first hearing one witness stated, quote, independent studies including a study from the clinton justice department proved that the assault weapons ban had no impact on lowering crime, unquote. during our last committee hearing it was the junior senator who said, talking about that study, that was the janet reno department of justice under president clinton that said, the assault weapons ban was singularly ineffective. during last week s executive meeting, one of my colleagues said, quote, according to the department of justice s own study, the ban was completely inineffectual in reducing murder or ineffectual in reducing murder or crime rates, end quote. these are simply not accurate portrayals of the studies. at the very least the studies were inconclusive. here s what they actually say. as long as we have the staff here i d like you to hear that. for your bosses. pages 6 and 7 of the 1997 study, we recommend further study of the impact measures examined in this investigation. the ban effects on the gun market are still unfolding. page 2th 2004 study. page 2 of the 2004 study. it is premature to make definitive assessments of the ban s impact on gun crime. page 80 of the 2004 study. it is premature to make defenive assessments of the ban definitive assessments on the ban of gun violence. the laws effects are still unfolding. it may not be felt fully felt for several years into the future. page 98 of the 2004 report, the effects of the assault weapon ban and large capacity magazine ban have yet to be fully realized. therefore we recommend continued study of trends and availibility in criminal use of assault weapons and large capacity magazines. i could go on. but the bottom line is that i don t see how anyone could read the d.o.j. studies and say that they proved that the last ban was ineffective. and yet that is what two members have asserted, have stated. i respect their opinions. they have a right to their opinions as pat moynihan says, they don t have a right to their facts. if anything, the report suggests an assault weapons ban would be effective over time. the 1997 study said that the author s best estimate was that the ban contributed to a 6.7% decrease in total gun murders. though the authors noted that the data were insufficient for them to make a scientific conclusion. the 2004 study included an analysis of a.t.f. gun tracing data which suggested the use of assault weapons in crimes fell by more than 2/3 after the last ban went into effect. courtesy to my colleague from connecticut, i d like to ask him to speak to a couple of other arguments that have been made that i think bear some rebuttal. senator blumenthal, you have been recognized by chairman franken. please go ahead. thank you. i apologize. no apology needed. i sensed sarcasm, sir. go ahead. understatement can be sarcasm. we ll talk about this later. i am very hesitant to follow that exchange. thank you, chairman leahy, and i want to thank my colleague i also want in all seriousness i want to thank senator fraken for what he brought up. it was a point that should be emphasized over and over again. we all have opinions. we have to deal with facts. and senator franken was dealing with facts. i appreciate that. senator blumenthal. thank you, chairman leahy. i want to thank senator franken for his very thoughtful and well informed factual rebuttal some of the points that have been raised here. and also to senator feinstein for her unremitting and relentless pursuit of this measure which consists of both a ban on assault weapons, which were defined very explicitly and carefully in this bill, and high capacity magazines. both were integral to the massacre that occurred just three months ago in newtown, connecticut. for me as for her, this issue is very personal. i was there within hours of the mass killing, and i saw the grief and pain that resulted from a murder on a scale that could not have occurred without assault weapons and high capacity magazines. lives were saved. because the shooter had to change magazines. children escaped because he could not shoot more than the 30 rounds in the clip that he began with. but he did change clips, and he continued shooting with a weapon that was designed to be among the most lethal in the arsenal that military men and women carry with them in combat. it was a weapon designed for combat. to be as lethal as possible. and that s essentially what defines the assault weapon that is banned in this legislation. it has a definition of characteristics such as a pistol group, pistol grip, barrel shroud, forward grip, threaded barrel, detachable magazine outside of the pistol grip. these characteristics that are in the legislation are not there by accident. they are there because they make this weapon more lethal. and more dangerous. the argument for self-defense in the constitution is has been proved by heller. we can t deny it. but actually that does not mean that machine guns are actually protected or bazookas or any of the other kinds of weapons that the military carries to kill enemy combatants. and we have had a lot of testimony about these military characteristics from law enforcement, chief flynn, for example, who described the specific characteristics that make these weapons more lethal from john walsh, the u.s. attorney, who testified before our committee, and from mayor nutter who said about them, they are offensive weapons. that s what you use them for. because you are on offense. there are specific definitions in the bill that i think comprort with the due process clause as to the specificity of definition. i have defended the connecticut assault weapon ban in our state courts, and it was upheld against all of these challenges. and i would just point out that the exemption for retired police officers based not only on their training, but also on the role that they can play in continued law enforcement. just as off-duty police officers do, retired police can often play a role in deterring or pursuing criminals. but the basic point here is that children and educators would be alive today but for those the assault weapon and the high capacity magazine that was used in that horrific criminal act of three months ago. our law enforcement officers would not be outgunned if this ban were in effect. this is a law enforcement tool. it is supported by law enforcement officers and professionals. the other measures that have been suggested here, mental health, for example, has a role to play. and so do some of the other initiatives that we sponsored and supported and passed from this committee. there is no single solution, no single state can do it alone. we need this protection. and i am appreciative that our chairman has permitted it to did to the go to the floor where i believe there may well be an effort to divide the assault weapon ban from the high capacity magazine ban. i welcome that kind of split, but not because i want to vote for one or the other. i will vote for both because i think both help us prevent newtown, which was a call to action, and we are heeding it today. thank you, mr. chairman. thank you. i thank the senator from connecticut. of course he and i have known each other for years both in his capacity as attorney general and more recently as a member of the senate. i appreciate what all of you brought to it. it s been a serious subject. i appreciate i said senator franken said about the facts. he s right. it s something that should be driven home over and over again. senator feinstein, who has devoted time on this from i think from the first time we met . and i appreciate her devotion to it. it is not a abstract pie in the sky. i think anybody who reads the history of what she pays and how she became mayor of san francisco would understand p senator blumenthal i remember the emotion in your voice when i talked to you. you were about to go to meet the families of the victims and i called you and the conversation we had. i said we would do what we could about gun violence and we devoted our first hearing in this congress back in january. what to do about gun violence. the first hearing of either body for years. i have asked this committee, i have asked all senators, republicans, democrats to come together as americans, not as partisans, as part of a collective effort to find solutions, to help ensure no families, no community be made to endure the tragedies of the past few years. whether in an elementary school in connecticut, movie theater in colorado, a sacred place of worship in wisconsin. a shopping mall in arizona. americans are looking to us for solutions and for action. after three hearings, four markup sessions we have essentially completed our work. we have sent it on to the senate for consideration. now work with the majority leader see how he intends to proceed. we have worked to try to provide law enforcement with stronger tools against illegal gun trafficking. and to close that loophole. we have proposed enhancements to school security. we have proposed closing loopholes in our background check system from firearm purchases. others have proposed restrictions on military-style weapons. and the size of ammunition clips. i know gun store owners in vermont, they follow the law. they conduct background checks to keep guns out of the hands of those who should not have them. they wonder how others who sell guns do not have to follow these same rules. i agree with these responsible business owners. if we can all agree that criminals, those adjudicated mentally ill, should not be buying firearms, why shouldn t we plug the loopholes in the law to allow them to buy guns without any background checks? why shouldn t they all be subjected to the same checked item when i buy a firearm or anybody else in this room? why shouldn t the law apply to everybody the same? it s common sense. previous measures to close the gun show loophole or improve the background check system have been bipartisan. i hope we can make further improvements in a bipartisan way . i he noted at the outset the second amount is secure and will remain secure and protected. i yield to no member on this committee by devotion to protecting our constitution, every part of our constitution. in two recent cases the supreme court has confirmed that the second amendment like other aspects of our billing of rights, protects a fundamental individual right. americans have the right to self-defense and have guns in their homes to protect their families. nobody is going to take those rights away or guns away. second amendment rights are the foundation which our discussion rests. they are not at risk. that s not let s not put an issue out here that is not out here. but lives are at risk when responsible people fail to stand up for laws that will keep guns out of the hands of those who would commit mass murder. ours is a free society. it s an open society. let s come together to become a safer and more secure society. we need consensus around commonsense solutions. when we what we do not need are false charges about gun registries and gun confiscation to scare people when no such thing is being proposed or will be proposed. these matters are too serious for that. as we began our efforts i challenge other senators to come forward to work together to indicate what issue they would support. i thank the ranking member for making that effort. i ll continue to work with him and others to see if we cannot find more things in which we can agree, and more solutions which we can move forward together to make americans safer. on a personal note, i appreciate so much the honor of being chair of this committee. that is a committee i wanted to be on from the day i came to the united states senate. i have had the privilege to become the longest serving member of this body. i have seen times when republicans and democrats come together on very serious issues. for the sake of our country, of our children, of our grandchildren let us come together, find some sensible, sensible steps that can make us safer as a nation. we are too great, too wonderful a country to do otherwise. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] chairman leahy exists the room after the senate judiciary committee passes this morning on a party-line vote of 10-8. senator dianne feinstein s proposed legislation which would ban the sale and transfer importation and manufacture of 157 specifically named guns, as well as large capacity ammunition magazines. it goes on to the full senate. in the full senate today members are working on amendments to the continuing resolution with government funding ending on march 27. the c.r. which passed the house last week would continue government funding through the end of the current fiscal year. debate an amendment vote is under way in the senate now. that s on c-span2. the house is back in here at noon eastern. and back to legislative work later this afternoon at about 3:45 eastern, we think, after the president finishes up his visits to capitol hill. the house today will be working on a bill that deals with federal work training programs. we ll have live coverage here on c-span of course when they gavel in. just a short while ago democratic leader nancy pelosi wrapped up her briefing with reporters. she spoke about the proposed house budget and the deliberations over the 2014 budget. good morning, everyone. very exciting that that we have a pope. as a san francisco can i m particularly happy of the name that the pope has chosen, francis. yesterday i wasn t sure whether the name was for st. francis of assisi or who is the fray ton saint of san francisco, or for saint francis xavier. saint francis of assisi cared for all god s creation. st. francis xavier did, too, he promulgated the faith in asia, a jesuit priest. it appears that saint francis of assisi is the namesake of our new pope. pretty exciting. as one who has the in our city the song of saint francis is our anthem with the instruments of god s peace where there is darkness, let me bring light, hatred may we bring love, to forgive so that we can be forgiven. it s pretty exciting, pretty thrilling to have francis, i guess they don t say the first. not until they have a second one of these days. it s very exciting. i m just so thrilled. you are always looking for signs, but when the bird was on the did you see this? there was a bird, a sea gull on the chimney for like 40 minutes before the white smoke came. he flew the bird flew away then later the white smoke came, but since saint francis has always been found by birds, we are reading a great deal into the symbolism of that. all that joyous activity is happening in rome and celebrated throughout the world, last night here in washington the republicans passed a budget along party lines that is nothing more than the romney-ryan policies rejected by the american people in the last election. the republicans say this is their path to prosperity. i would say prosperity for whom? by and large it is a path to pain. pain for the middle class. pain for working families and children. pain for america s seniors. republican ryan proposal will lose two million jobs next year alone. stall our nation s recovery by decreasing economic growth by 18.7%. likely cost the if indeed they do balance in 10 years, which is very hard to do without the middle class pitching in at least 2000 jobs $2,000 by some estimates, it s a study it s a hoax. this is removed into the category of hoax and exercise in contradictions. repealing the affordable care act while using the lost savings in revenues to balance their budget. claiming to protect medicare while ending the medicare guarantee in 10 years for future seniors. pretending to balance books without a balanced plan for deficit reduction. as we all say budgets are a statement of our values. a federal budget should be a statement of our national values. what is important to us as a country. the characteristic ter of our country. character of our country. it calls for us to make decisions in a budget that strengthens that character and our country. our democratic budget that mr. chris van hollen is taking a lead on, our ranking member from maryland, will make a clear distinction vis-a-vis what is proposed by our republican colleagues. one of the words that could describe one of the big differences between the two budgets is economic growth. it s jobs. if you want to know about values and our different view of our national values, that s for sure, it s about figures and how they add up. but again the values and what reaches the american people, that s what is important. one of these bills creates jobs. the other loses jobs. tomorrow again chris will present a budget that cuts spending responsibly, increases revenue fairly, strengthens the middle class and creates growth with jobs. infrastructure funding, innovation, energy, and manufacturing initiatives. today as you know we ll meet with president obama. we look forward to that meeting to lay out our shared vision of economic growth in a balanced approach to deficit reduction. we need to reduce the deficit. we all agree on that. democrats for decades have been saying pay as you go. republicans repealed that aspect because they didn t want to pay for their tax expenditures which are as much in spending as any other spending in the budget. again recognizing the budgets are not just about numbers, and their numbers don t really add up in a good way for america s great middle class, their budgets are about the impacts that they have on the american people. we look forward to continuing that debate. i m very proud of our members. they understand the knowledge of the budget and what it contains are really the fundamentals of what we come here to debate. and this isn t just about what we pass one day or another. the decisions made in these budgets and what that means in the legislative process, appropriation, ways and means, etc., the impact of these budget decisions today will be felt for decades. maybe a generation of impacts. so it s really important debate we are going to make it clear a clear distinction. there is so much to talk about. we ll have to prioritize the worst among many, many very bad provisions of the ryan budget. with that i would be pleased to take any questions you may have. yesterday the president told republicans he s prepared to take some heat within his own party negotiating changes to entitlements. are you concerned about what he s contemplating and how much heat are you prepared to give him? i think i don t know how much heat the president i just don t know what he said. i wasn t in the room. but let us just say that our debate about the budget is to put initiatives on the table and see how they work for the american people. do they live up to the promise that the initiative makes to the american people? are they the best and most fiscally sound way to get that done? is what you re talking about is mandatory spending that would be in a bill? as i said if the goal is to strengthen social security, if a goal is to strengthen medicare, if the goal is to recognize the importance of medicaid and how we make all of these initiatives fiscally sound while honoring our promises to america s seniors and the american people, then we are ready to have that debate, and i m sure that we are on the same page with the president in that regard. there is some nervousness from democrats that the president already has gone too far and what he s willing to do on entitlements like change c.p.i. at one point. raising the medicare eligibility age. is there something you think he can say to those members in the meeting today that would make members more comfortable? we ll hear what the president has to say and how he prioritizes the issues he wants to discuss. raising the age is just, as i said before, trophy take. we heard testimony from the keyser family foundation that said it costs money to raise the age. what do these initiatives accomplish except a slap in the face to somebody to say you shouldn t be getting this entitlement? the fact is, the fact is these people are not going to be holding their breath between 65 and 67. their health needs will not go away. their opportunity for prevention and wellness that are contained in the affordable care act, which are already benefits that seniors are enjoying, would go away. so what is the point? is the point to take a trophy? is the point to make seniors less healthy? it doesn t save money. in terms of c.p.i., i have said let s take a look at that. what is it there are elements in our party, who have said that we can do this without hurting the poor and the very elderly. so let s see what that is. there are others who are objecting to it plain and simple. i have to say if we can demonstrate that it doesn t hurt the poor and the very elderly, then let s take a look at it because compared to what? compared to what? compared to republicans saying medicare should wither on the vine? social security has no place in a free society? these are their words. these are their words. how we can go forward without hurting beneficiaries let me just take this to a different place. we have already addressed the issue of medicare. in the affordable care act by the projection that is are out there, we already have a savings of $1 trillion because of decisions that were made in the affordable care act. we took $700 billion as you well know. the republicans misrepresented in the campaign, but what that was was to reduce the rate of increase in our reimbursements to providers and to use that money to increase benefits for seniors, close the doughnut hole, have these wellness checkups without free of charge, encourage seniors to come in and get that done. what the republicans did, they said, oh, terrible. they are cutting medicare. no. reduce the cost of medicare but pour the savings back into medicare for beneficiaries. republicans took that same money to give tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the country. they campaigned against the savings and then used that money to give tax cuts to the wealthiest in one of their other manifestations of their budget. we have already gone down that path. as you see because largely because of the affordable care act, the projections for the increased cost in medicare now .4%. which is lowering the rate of increase for medicare, zero increase for medicaid. zero increase. so quite frankly any congressman ryan has about reducing balancing his budget which i think is a cruel and brutal budget, some of the ways he gets to balance are to be using a baseline that recognizes that the affordable care act reduced the cost of medicare increases. we understand, we care about medicare. we created it. we are there to protect it for our seniors. it is a pillar of health security for america s families, for our seniors in particular, but for others, people with disabilities who depend on medicare and medicaid, and same thing with social security. again what s your point? to those who would say we should raise the age, we should do this or that. what s your point? does it accomplish its goal? and at what cost in terms of the health of the good health of america? yes, sir. what would be the shame of raising the medicare eligibility age and strengthening the exchanges for the 65 to 67-year-olds? they still would have access to subsidized insurance? that s the whole point. there are no savings. so again we are talking about people want to raise the age and abolish the affordable care act. let s understand where our value system is here in terms of the good health of america. not just the good health care but the good health of america. yesterday speaker boehner said after the meeting with the president and thanked him for coming but then he went through a long list of items that they still have wide disagreements on. that was the sentiment from most house republicans who are leading. do you think this so-called charm offensive is really going to have any impact on the relationship between obama and house republicans? you really have to ask them. i don t think there is anything wrong with having disagreements. we have we come from two different approaches for example, the role of government. we don t want any more government than we need, but we respect the public role, public-private partnerships and putting a referee on the field, a cop on a referee for whether it s to monitor clean air, clean water, food safety, a cop on the beat, for the protection of our neighborhood. and by and large the approach the republicans take is that they are there to shrink the role of government to a point where really it calls to mind the statement of the president in washington who cautioned against a party, political party at war with its own government. so if you don t believe in government, then bless their hearts, they have act upon their beliefs. so all the legislation that we have, including the skills acts coming up, clean ericks clean water, food safety, fairness in terms of the workplace and the rights of working families should be heard. and the list goes on and on. clean ericks clean water, food safety, public safety, public education. they want to abolish the department of education. public transportation. public housing. public health. medicare. medicaid. social security. there is a fundamental difference as to the public role . again it shouldn t be any bigger than it needs to be. but the public role, why should you even pay taxes because we want to diminish government? this is a bigger difference than i have seen in a long i have never seen anything quite like it. i don t think anybody has seen it quite like it. that s why they say we ll have a sequester and the republicans say home run. shut down government. make my day. because they don t believe in the public role. and we believe that from the founding of our country, public-private partnerships and the entrepreneurial spirit that relationship engenders is a very important part of the success of our country. they say there are disagreements, yeah. there are. many republicans left that meeting yesterday with president obama, take away that president obama said it was a matter of time before they approved the keystone pipeline. would you disagree with the decision to approving the keystone pipeline if they ended up doing that? i wouldn t say it s a matter of time. did he announce his decision yesterday? a decision. would you disagree with the decision to approve it? i awakened this morning to an interview by somebody didn t awaken to it but it was on this morning on a station, i don t know how it got on to my radio, nonetheless, but must have been in the middle of the night i did something with the dial. they were interviewing somebody from the american petroleum institute. and he said, oh, this is going to be great. tens of thousands of jobs. that s not true. energy in our country, you know this is all for export. so whatever you think about it, i know i want to see what the report is from the state department on it and see what people are saying about it, but the oil is for export. there aren t that many jobs connected with it. but people believe that there are, let s just see what the report is. and that s what i have said. i want to see the report. what i heard on the radio this morning was, was so distorted in terms of what it was, i said why can t we just have a discussion on the facts? on the facts. tens of thousands of jobs. simply not true. we ll have to study it. the environmental impact would be almost negligible, considering that report s already out, would you disagree with the idea of approving the pipeline? i met with some legislators from canada the other day, and i said, you have two coasts, actually three. why aren t you taking this oil out through your own country? well, because the canadians don t want the pipeline in their own country. they want their own oil to be reaching export markets. so i think this is i haven t spent a lot of time on this issue because people in our caucus on different sides of it. and i don t intend to make a pronouncement about it today because i just haven t studied the thing. but since the president has said that a decision is imminent, i ll see what that is. but i just it just is amazing to me that they can say tens of thousands of jobs, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. the oil is for export and the jobs are nowhere near that. would that it were. did the report say tens of thousands of jobs and reguse our dependence on foreign oil? probably didn t. did not. i thought not. anyway sustainable place in the next 10 years. do you agree with the statement? i believe we are on the path to reduce this as a deficit. and i would say that i would count me as one who would say i want us to be on a path to balance the budget in a number of decades. you can t do it in one decade. not after what we have been through. president clinton coming out of his administration we were on a path to serious deficit and debt reduction. after the explosion of the debt and in the bush years and the downturn in our economy and the meltdown of our financial institutions and the loss of revenue that that engendered, we are in place where the deficit is much bigger and 10 years you can t do it without hurting the middle class. but in terms of a path to balance hopefully the surplus, that s what i would like to see. i really don t like to comment on things that i m hearing in isolation. i don t know how the president said that or in what context. but i do think that it might interest you to know, some of you have heard me say this, forgive me, but again you hear things so much, more than one time. in 1982 we had a midterm convention in philadelphia. the democrats had a midterm convention in philadelphia. congressman george miller of california, as you know, he had a resolution before the convention to have pay-as-you-go , the law of the land. pay as you go. it won in the convention. you can see this later in our program schedule. it s also in our video library at c-span.org. of the u.s. house is gaveling in momentarily for short speeches and later this afternoon they will move to a bill that consolidates job training programs and requires the federal government to reduce associated administrative jobs. we expect them to get into legislative work later this afternoon, about 3:45, after a visit from president obama. he s meeting with house democrats this afternoon at 2:15. and senate republicans at about 12:30, half an hour or sow. we ll take you live to the house floor here on c-span. the speaker: the house will be in order. the prayer will be offered today by our guest chaplain, reverend ezekiel piper of hartland evangelical church, entral city, nebraska. the chaplain: our father in heaven, by your sovereign hand you make all nations, kingdoms and empires. you raise up their leaders and ordain the rules by which they govern. you alone are righteous in all your judgments, so it is you that we trust and desire to imitate. lord, help the honorable men and women of the house of representatives lead by persuasion, kindness and reason according to your scriptures. equip and guide them to craft laws, resolutions and amendments that will accomplish your will for our nation. by your spirit, help them carry out these noble responsibilities with wisdom and integrity. i also ask that you encourage their families this day. our savior, we eagerly await your return and your perfect justice and mercy. until that moment, grant us patience and help us be a good be of good courage and strong heart. e pray in jesus name, amen. the speaker: the chair has examined the journal of the last day s proceedings and announces to the house his approval thereof. the journal stands approved. for what purpose does the gentleman from minnesota rise? mr. ellison: mr. speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule 1, i demand a vote on the speaker s approval of the journal. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on agreing to the speaker s approval of the journal agreeing to the speaker s approval of the journal. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it. the journal stands approved. the gentleman from minnesota. mr. ellison: i i object to the vote on the grounds that a quorum is not present and i make a point of order that a quorum is not present. the speaker: pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20, further proceedings on this question are postponed. the pledge of allegiance will be led by the gentleman from minnesota, mr. ellison. mr. ellison: i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the speaker: without objection, the gentleman from nebraska, mr. smith, is recognized for one minute. mr. smith: mr. speaker, i rise today to introduce dr. zeek pipe who are will serve as our guest chaplain today. zeke earned his master of divinity and his doctorate of ministry from gordon theological seminary. in addition to his work in the ministry, he is an avid out doorsman and author. his first book, man on the run was released last year and he is a regular contributer to several national outdoor magazines. he and his wife, jamie, have three children and live in central nebraska. and importantly, his favorite football team is the nebraska cornhuskers. it is my honor to welcome dr. piper. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the chair will entertain 15 further requests for one-minute speeches on each side of the aisle. for what purpose does the gentleman from arkansas rise? without objection, so ordered. thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today to bring attention to the e.p.a. s recent disregard for our nation s food safety. two weeks ago i learned the e.p.a. released phone numbers, addresses and even geographic coordinates that were collected from livestock producers. this information was requested by extremist groups including earth justice and the natural resources defense council through a freedom of information act request. the e.p.a. handed over the very personal information. i have serious concerns about the potential threat these actions pose to the privacy of american farm families as well as the safety and security of our nation s food supply. mr. crawford: this is yet another example of the e.p.a. s overreach into the lives of hardworking individuals in rural america. as chairman of the agriculture subcommittee on livestock, rural development and credit, i m leading a group of 40 house members and writing a letter to the acting director of the peacekeep expressing our concern and asking the acting director to make sure the released information is not improperly used. mr. speaker, it s unacceptable for the e.p.a. to do anything that could jeopardize our nation s food security or threaten american farm operations. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. for what purpose does the gentleman from tennessee rise? without objection, so ordered. mr. cohen: thank you, mr. speaker. the other day it became public that valerie harper, the star of rotas warks diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. and she publicly went forward with that and it was very touching. i saw her on the morning news and she talked about it and she said that she s doing chemotherapy. she has maybe three months, she doesn t know how much, to live, and she says if her husband says if they can slow this thing down, more stuff may come up. they re working fast and furiously for all of us. they re not working for valerie harper because she played rhoda but they re doing this for all cancer patients and the people that are doing this for all cancer patients are the doctors and the universities and the scientists that are funded by the national institute of health. all of which will get a 5.5% cut in their budget because of the squeft ration. this is another example of why it was wrong for us to let the squeft ration go into effect and why it s wrong for us not to make cuts that make sense. we need to put more and more dollars for cancer patients, for people with diabetes, people with alzheimer ses, people with aids, people with illnesses that can and will be cured and that they can stay around for a little longer, they can come up with a cure and save people s lives. we don t need to defund or reduce the funding from the national institutes of health. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. without objection, so ordered. north carolina, ninth district is blessed with many wonderful, hardworking educators. today like like to introduce you to one of them. dr. mark edwards who was named national superintendent of the year. since becoming superintendent in 2007, end of grade test scores have tests have soared. the graduation rate is now third highest in the state and morrisville has become a nationally recognized model for integrating technology into the classroom. these achievements are even more impressive when you consider that morrisville has one of the smallest budgets out of 115 school districts at north carolina. dr. edwards work should be a remind that are strong leadership, dedicated teachers and proactive community involvement are the most important factors in the success of our students. not washington bureaucrats or programs. dr. edwards, on behalf of the people of north carolina s ninth district, great lakeses on your national award congratulations on your national award. may god continue to bless you and your work in morrisville. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the gentleman from california rise? mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent to address the house, revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. thank you, mr. speaker. congressman ryan s current budget proposal is a harsh austerity program that seeks to reduce the deficit on the backs of our nation s most vulnerable while only benefiting the special interests and the nation s ultrawealthy. under this plan, more than 30 million americans now covered by the affordable care act, including more than 70,000 residents of my district, would be at risk of losing their coverage. medicare as we know would cease to exist for more than five million future seniors and over 3 1/2 million seniors today would lose some of medicare s preventive courage. this plan also jeopardizes our nation s economic recovery. loan loan the economic policy stoo lone lone the economic policy mr. loan that will: this will reduce the g.d.p. by 1.7% and literally stal the economy through 2017. this isneath ar balance nor a rational approach that we need. i want to work with my colleagues here in the congress to pass a budget that creates jobs, grows the economy, strengthens the middle class and responsibly reduces the deficit. adly, this is not that plan. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the gentleman from alabama rise? without objection, so ordered. thank you, mr. speaker. we recently learned that immigration and customs enforcement, also known as i.c.e., released thousands of illegal immigrants out of our detention if a similarities across the country in anticipation of the sequester cuts. not after the sequester became law or the cuts became reality. in anticipation. this is the latest in a string of lapses in judgment by i.c.e. director john morton. because it of his repeated questionable actions, i have called on mr. morton to resign. rather than making commonsense cuts like reducing administrative staffing, cutting overhead or taking other action, i.c.e. chose to release thousands of known criminals directly onto our streets and into our communities. i.c.e. s justification for this plan is that those individuals will remain in a monitoring program while deportation proceedings are ongoing. really? it baffles me that i.c.e. officials continue to insist that someone who has already committed a crime by entering this country illegally would willingly participate in a monitored self-deportation program. the sequester has started an across the and across-the-board cuts will affect us all but we cannot stand by while i.c.e. makes irresponsible decisions. i call on john mortgagen to resign and make a full accounting of his debacle to the american people. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the gentleman from massachusetts ise? without objection, so ordered. mr. kennedy: thank you. good afternoon, mr. speaker. i rise on behalf of a special guest today. emmanuel. just 10 years old, emmanuel was selected as the grand prize winner in sco lass ticks national picture president art contest. his charcoal sketch of abraham lincoln earned him that distinguished honor as well as a 50-book library for his classroom at parker middle school and a trip to washington, d.c. emmanuel s teacher back home called him, quote, a great role model who, quote, is eager to learn and help other kids. he practices art drawing every day and hopes to someday pursue a career in art. today emmanuel is joined in the capitol by his father, eman well sr., his mother, karen, and his brother, diego. i would like to welcome him to washington and to congratulate emmanuel on making his school, his city and his state incredibly proud. congratulations, emmanuel. with that, mr. speaker, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the entleman from ohio rise? mr. johnson: request unanimous consent to address the house for one minute, revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. johnson: mr. speaker, it was just over a week ago that we learned that the white house is being closed to public tours. now, the president attempts to justify this decision saying it s a secret service decision. i find this disturbingly ironic coming there a president whose own website says it is his mission to, quote, open up the house to as many people as possible. unquote. that he is accepting without objection the decision to prevent the american people from accessing the house, the white house, their house, the people s house, even during some of the darkest days of america s history, our 16th president, abraham lincoln, championed a policy of true open doors to the white house and governmental transparency. contrast that with president obama who is acquiescing to the exact opposite, closing the white house doors to the public. if the president is unable to help the secret service manage an 8.2% budget cut and still keep the people s house open, then the american people are entitled to some answers from their chief executive. and with that i d yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the entleman from new york rise? without objection, so ordered. mr. higgins: mr. speaker, the republican budget released earlier this week will move us in the wrong direction. it promises us growth through austerity, cutting $943 billion in discretionary spending. but history has proven that it just won t work. . we see when an economy is recovering from an reese significance, and embraces as you tirt, the economy crumbles. that s what happened in japan in the 1990 s. that s what happened in this country in 1937. we must learn from this lesson. in fact, experts say that the republican budget will result in two million fewer american jobs and will decrease the economic growth by 1.7%. mr. speaker, what we have to do is invest in our economy, nation build here at home, in america, and this is a vehicle for growth. we should not be cutting those kinds of investments. austerity is short sight the and we should reject it. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the gentleman from montana rise? mr. danes: to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. danes: . mr. daines: mr. speaker, one of the best parts of my job is hearing from the people i serve in the great state of montana. and while one million montanans offer a lot of different ideas and a lot of different perspectives, there is one concern i hear about every day. thousands of montanans are reached out to my office because they are concerned about recent threats to their second amendment rights. let me be clear, i do not support any efforts that infringe upon montanans right to keep and bear arms. i will continue to stand firm against any proposals that would threaten those rights. that s why i m joining congressman steve stockman and many of my other colleagues in the house in signing a letter to speaker bane they re makes it clear that we and the people we represent are strongly opposed to any efforts that would violate the rights protected by the second amendment. we ll reflect that commitment in any vote on legislation that comes before us. whether it s the so-called universal background checks or sweeping bans of phi arms owned by thousands of law-abiding montanans, i will stand firm against any proposal that would threaten montana s right to keep and bear arms. i yield my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the entleman from delaware rise? without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today to remember judge williams who died recently at age 78. mr. carney: he was one of delaware s most prominent civil rights leaders and successful lawyer and judge in wilmington. he spent his life breaking barriers and paving the way for others. judge williams was one of the first african-american students to integrate the university of delaware. and the first african-american on its football team. judge williams was the long time law partner of louis reading, the wilmington lawyer who argued delaware brown vs. board of education case before the supreme court. he was a friend and mentor to countless members of our community. judge williams was part of the greatest generation of african-americans, those who fought the often lonely fight for civil rights and justice, enduring struggle and hard is to make our state and country a better place for everyone. his presence in the state of delaware and particularly in my home city of wilmington, will be sorely missed. my thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends. thank you, mr. speaker. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the gentleman from florida rise? i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. speaker, as a freshman i m the first to make fun of myself and quite frankly both parties. it seems last session s budget negotiations consisted of democrats making videos of republicans throwing your grandmother off a cliff. a wonky republicans would be in the corner talking about the debt to g.d.p. rasheon other things that most hardworking americans don t have time to think about our understand. let me tell you what we can all understand. republicans are doing what senate democrats have not done in years. we will pass another budget. so why does this matter to you? it matters because a balanced budget means jobs, opportunity, and ultimately more money in your pocket. more money in washington means less money for you. mr. raddle . mr. radel: being bipartisan, you know who understood that more than clin anyone was president bill clinton. and with the republican house the budget was balance. we conservatives are working hard to balance that budget today for your opportunity and your job. we are here working for you. thank you. i yield my time, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. for what purpose does the the gentlewoman from hawaii rise? ms. hanabusa: to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute. ms. hanabusa: mr. speaker, the republican budget sometimes called the ryan budget also called the path to prosperity is really more of the same. more of the same that we have seen for the past three years. the only difference is it s worse. it s worse. the budget is supposed to be the blueprint and sets forth the philosophy and policy of the majority. look at some of the problems. there s many of them. let s concentrate on seniors. see how it affects them. the voucher is back. medicare cost also rise for seniors. there is no closing of the doughnut hole anymore for your prescription drugs because obamacare is repealed. and we are going to lose $810 billion in medicaid which is a cut of 1/3. and 2/3 of it goes to disabled and seniors. yet the irony is that the majority says it repeals obamacare. yet it keeps $716 billion in medicare savings, and all revenues from obamacare puts $1 trillion. so $ trillion of its balancing the so-called budget is on the backs of obamacare. obamacare that it says it repeals. this cannot be what this body wants to be identified with. a path to nowhere. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back. for what purpose does the gentleman from indiana rise? unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. thank you, mr. speaker. it s hard for president obama to find a solution when he doesn t understand the problem. this week he told abc news that he he doesn t believe that our country faces a debt crisis. yesterday senate democrats outlined a budget that never balances but sinks us further and further into debt year after year. the american people understand that nearly $17 trillion of debt is no way to run a country. mr. stutzman: hoosiers know that every penny washington borrows today will be taken from taxpayer pockets tomorrow. folks back home know this and so do house republicans. that s why i m proud to support the budget my friend and colleague, chairman ryan, introduced this week. mr. speaker, this budget actually balances in 10 years. something our democrat colleagues budget in the senate never does. it never balances. mr. speaker, our budget encourages economic growth and promotes opportunity for all americans. by simply filing the tax code, scaling back government overreach, and strengthening the promises made to seniors, our budget puts this country on a responsible balanced path. i commend chairman ryan and the house budget committee for their work. yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does address the house for one minute and revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute. mrs. davis: while it is time to debate the budget again, but despite the differences in this chamber, we could come together and choose to invest in our middle class. we could compromise and responsibly reduce spending while protecting the most vulnerable. we could reach across the aisle and protect the jobs of our teachers, police office oers, while ending the ludicrous tax loopholes for oil companies. but instead, instead we see another case of political gamesmanship. instead of providing targeted tax cuts to working class families, the republican budget increases tax breaks for the wealthiest in the country at the expense of middle income taxpayers who will pay an average of $2,000 per family. instead of solidifying the safety net for our seniors, the republican budget guts it by trading medicare into a voucher program and instead of healing our still fragile housing market, the republican budget refuses to protect the mortgage interest deductions that our middle class families depend upon. what we should be doing is working together to put the american dream back within the reach for our middle class. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back. for what purpose does the gentleman from kansas rise? unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. speaker, i have made it a priority since day one to support pro-growth, pro-job legislation that encourages entrepreneurship and sports innovation. mr. yoder: all in the name of strengthening our economy and making certain the remains globally competitive and is the place where the hardest working and best minds exist. to remain competitive we must continue to have the best trained work force in the world. quite often programs in washington, d.c., are cumbersome and difficult to use. we must all endeavor to make the federal government more efficient and effective. that s why today, mr. speaker, i rise in approval of the skills act and encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this commonsense legislation that will eliminate burdensome and frustrating roadblocks that preventout of work americans from accessing beneficial work force development programs and job skills training efforts that will only help our national economy. mr. speaker, everyone must have a chance to succeed in our current economy. a chance to realize the american dream. let s pass the skills act so we can work together. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the gentlewoman from florida rise? without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for ne minute. mrs. wilson: mr. speaker, mr. ryan s budget would cost millions of people to lose access to health care and tens of millions more to lose their jobs. my question is simple, why? i have been here 802 days and we have not considered a serious jobs bill yet. there are approximately 12 million people unemployed. it s unemployment not debt that s at emergency levels when people lose their jobs they lose their dignity, they lose their health care, and eventually lose their home. shame, shame, shame. there is only one responsible way to reduce the deficit, get everyone trained, get everyone working, and get everyone contributing to the tax base. people are hurting. people are suffering. they want an opportunity. mr. speaker, our mantra should be jobs, jobs, jobs. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back. for what purpose does the rise?man from wowed, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute. mr. speaker, i rise today in opposition to the republican budget proposal that s soon-to-be considered by the house. ms. titus: the policies therein were debated and soundly rejected in the last election. in las vegas and across the country americans made it clear that our budget should be a path forward for a strong middle class and a serious investment in the next generation. instead, the republican budget shrinks investment in infrastructure and education, cuts funding to research and development, eliminates the safety net for our most vulnerable, and ends the medicare guarantee. furthermore, it should include a question mark or a giant asterisk because so many aspects of it railroad vague and so many details are missing. this budget isn t a path to prosperity. it s a collection of inconsistent assumptions and mathematical gimmicks. it s full of phantom revenue and undelineated cuts. people in my district, district one of nevada, want congress to pass a budget that represents a balanced approach, not one based on partisan ideology that s out of touch with their priorities. so i say let s get to work on that. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back. for what purpose does the the gentlewoman from hawaii rise? ms. gabbard: to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute. ms. gabbard: thank you very much, mr. speaker. i rise today to highlight some of the unique immigration challenges that we face. the good news is washington is finally focused on fixing this very complex issue. comprehensive reform is crucial to our families, young people, and our economy. in hawaii for example filipino families often wait up to 24 years to reunite with their loved ones. we are a community of immigrants. immigrants who came to hawaii seeking greater opportunity, who toil in day in and day out working in our pineapple fields and sugar plantations and yet many are still waiting to be reunited with their loved ones. this is unacceptable and unnecessary. it also hurts our economy with small businesses face unnecessary draconian audits and automatic labeling as fraudent businesses simply do to their size, stifling their ability to grow and create jobs. we must address these unique immigration issues in hawaii, across the pacific, and across the country as part of our national reform legislation in order to reunite families and grow our economy. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back. for what purpose does the the gentlewoman from california rise ? i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute. ms. hahn: thank you, mr. speaker. march is women s history month and so i d like to point out that this week the republicans and chairman paul ryan once again put forth a budget that hurts women. there s no morality in a budget that takes food from the mouths of struggling women and children while slashing taxes for millionaires and billionaires. these attacks on breast cancer research, on child care, on the affordable care act for families, on maternal health and on education are not what we owe our mothers, our sisters and our daughters. make no mistake, women, especially poor women, will shoulder the burdens of these cuts. at a time when so many americans are struggling just to make ended meet, we must do more ends meet, we must do more, not less, to provide a strong safety net for all americans. i call on my colleagues to support a budget that provides compassion of the government, to help american women in need and invest in the future that they deserve. thank you. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? i ask unanimous consent to address the house. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. speaker, while i recognize that this republican budget is just a political document that will never become law, i am still disappointed at what a cynical, cruel and dishonest document it is. it s cynical because it repeals the protections and benefits of the affordable care act while keeping in place all of the cost savings in order to pay for another tax cut for millionaires. mr. hinojosa: it s cruel because it would gut medicaid, a program designed to protect our most vulnerable seniors from sickness and death by over $800 billion. this budget would slash pell grants for students, food assistance for the needy families and head start school programs for children. most of all, it s simply a dishonest document. my republican friends claim that their budget will cut taxes and balance the budget. they say they will pay for it all with trillions of dollars in savings from closing tax loopholes but the budget conveniently refuses to name any of them. mr. speaker, we should reject this budget and its misplaced priorities. i urge my colleagues to support the democratic alternative which presents a bald way to bringing down our deficit that doesn t leave our seniors at risk. thank you, mr. speaker, and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. speaker, i rise today in strong opposition to the republican budget proposal. this plan hurts the middle class, repeals health care for millions of americans and does nothing to guarantee seniors the benefits they earned and have been promised. mr. veasey: this offers no new rule solutions. this is the third time this plan has been introduced, even though the country clearly rejected it this past november. congress needs to listen to the american people and work together on responsible, long-term solutions. the house republican plan has devastating consequences for seniors, our parents and our grandparents. the republican budget turns medicare into an expensive private insurance program for seniors. our country made a commitment to care for our parents and grandparents and it s important we uphold that commitment. let s not forget that one day our kids will grow older and will depend on these vital programs. we need to balance our budget and reduce the deficit, but we must not do so on the backs of our middle class and our seniors. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. pursuant to clause 12-a of rule 1, the house will stand in recess subject to the call of and his opening comments this morning on the senate floor. i asked senate democrats to put forward thoughtful budget that americans are both of both parties could rally around. that controls spending, gets our economy healthy again and advances the serious reforms necessary to make government programs more efficient, effective and responsive to the needs of the americans. i asked them to please shelf the tax hikes. that s because we understand the negative effect more taxes would have on our fragile economy and the millions of americans still looking for work. it s also because we know washington democrats already got $600 million in taxes they demanded earlier this year. and remember, that s in addition to the more than $1 trillion they got in taxes from obamacare as well. so now it s time for the balance they promised. washington doesn t need to tax more. it needs to finally figure out how to spend less. i said these things were the least senate democrats owed the american people, given their lack of responsibility in not producing a budget for the last four years. i m sorry to report that the plan they put forward yesterday will do none of these things. none of them. instead of getting washington spending under control, their proposed budget doubles down on the same wasteful stimulus spending we already know doesn t work. we tried that. in fact, at a time when americans believe about half of every dollar they send to washington is wasted, the democratic budget would increase spending by nearly 62%. their budget will do more harm to the economy than to help it. and it will let medicare and social security drift ever closer to bankruptcy. and then there s the democrats $1.5 trillion tax hike. that s trillion with a t. let me just repeat that. any senator who votes for that budget is voting for a $1.5 trillion tax hike, the largest tax hike in american history. so the senate democrat budget is more than just disappointing. it s extreme. extreme. it s really one of the most extreme, most left-wing budgets of the modern era. it says something, i think, about today s washington democrat. there was a time when the democratic party cared about fiscal responsibility, when democrats understood the need to be concerned about the impact their policies would have on hardworking taxpayers, a time when they would have rejected this budget as a joke. a joke. but those voices of reason have been mostly chased out of today s d.c. democrats. the few who remain have been sidelined and silenced throughout the budget process. even the chairman of the finance committee has been pushed aside so his fellow democrats can quickly ram through their massive tax hike. so it will be no surprise to hear that my conference opposes this left-wing manifesto masquerading as a responsible budget. and when americans get a chance to digest their budget and the one house republicans put forward earlier this week, they ll see some very clear differences between a budget that balances and one that enshrines waste and cronyism. between a budget that helps bring the economy back to health and one that kills jobs. between a budget that measures compassion and how many people it helps and one that counts compassion and how many hard-earned tax dollars are sent to washington for politicians to waste, between a budget that strengthens medicare and one that would put medicare even further out of reach for future generations. in short, it will see a bold reformist republican budget centered on their needs and an extreme democratic budget centered on the needs of washington bureaucrats and politicians. i hope senate democrats think again before they choose to pass such an extreme budget forward, because i think they ll find americans agree with republicans on the most important point. e need to grow the economy, on the floor earlier today talking about the 2014 budget. the senate gavels back in at 2:00 eastern. that will be on c-span 3. in c-span, in about 45 minutes or so, 50 minutes, we re going to take you live to the first day of the conservative political action conference. they are meeting in washington with speeches from a number of republican leaders, including senator marco rubio and rand paul. our coverage this afternoon at 1:15 eastern here on c-span. good afternoon. senator reid, thank you for allowing me to speak. first we re in the middle of our budget markup and we re going to get back to that in just a few minuteses but i wanted to come in and tell all of that you the senate budget reflects the pro growth, pro middle class agenda that the american people went to the polls and supported last november. our budget is built on three principles. number one, we need to protect our fragile economic recovery, we need to create jobs and we need to invest in long-term growth. number two, we need to tackle our deficit and debt fairly and responsibly and number three, we need to keep the promises we ve made as a nation to our seniors, to our families and to our communities. now, the senate budget takes us the rest of the way to the $4 trillion goal we all know about it and beyond. it builds on the 2.4 trillion in deficit reduction that was already done. we add an additional $1.85 trillion in new deficit reduction for a total of $4.25 trillion in deficit reduction since the simpson-bowles report. this is a jobs and economic growth budget. we believe that with the unemployment rate that remains stubbornly high and a middle class that has seen their wages stagnate for toong, we cannot afford any threats to our fragile recovery. that s why our budget uses equal amounts of responsible spending cuts and new revenue from the wealthiest americans to fully replace the cuts from sequestration that threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs this year and cuts that will endanger our economic growth for years to come. the senate budget is a balanced and it is a responsible approach. now, the house of representatives is also working on their budget resolution as you know and there are serious differences between the visions and the values and the priorities within our two approaches. but the american people are going to have an opportunity to examine these budgets side by side. they are going to be able to decide which approach is best for our economy, best for our jobs and best for the middle class. and they ll let us know whether they want us to go back down the path of trickledown policies that decimated our middle class and threw our economy into a tailspin or if they would prefer our approach we ve seen work before, tackle our deficit responsibly, reinvest in our middle class, build a strong foundation for growth and restore the promise of american opportunity. we are in our budget markup now, we are considering dozens of amendments this afternoon so senator reid, i will go back to that. but we will be on the floor next week and we will work to get this budget out of the senate in a responsible way. thank you very much. during my athletic days i played baseball. i always wanted to bat cleanup and i was lucky to make it in the lineup, i never batted cleanup. so, dick, you go next. ok? [laughter] you have to say this for congressman paul ryan. he is consistent. unfortunately being consistently wrong doesn t earn you any points when it comes to helping senior citizens across america. paul ryan s budget for fiscal year 2014 is as bad fozz seniors as his budget bad for seniors as his budget last year and the year before that. paul ryan s budget is march madness when it comes to seniors. thankfully the american people have already made it clear that they reject paul ryan s approach and that the house republicans brazen attempt to balance the budget on the backs of seniors is unacceptable. this year s budget isn t a path to prosperity for america s seniors, it s a path to poverty. the ryan budget included an ill-conceived, unclear scheme to shift more medicare costs to seniors. once again ryan medicare voucher schemes are short on details. we don t know exactly how much more seniors will pay out of pocket, but here s what we do know. if it follows his budget, ryan plans to replace medicare s guarantee of coverage with a voucher program that beneficiaries could use to purchase private health insurance or they can join some version of traditional medicare. in my state of illinois, 1.8 million seniors would be forced out of traditional medicare and into a voucher program under the paul ryan approach. this voucher program will force seniors back home in my state to pay more for the care that they worked their entire lives to take care of. here s what else we know. private health insurance companies will go after enrolling the healthiest beneficiaries, leaving medicare to care for the sickest. most of the at-risk seniors. this will cripple medicare. and make seniors around the country pay that much more. under the ryan plan, 3 1/2 million seniors across the country and 133,000 in illinois would may more for prescription drugs next year. 37 million seniors across the country and 1.4 million in illinois would be forced to now pay for preventive health services under paul ryan s budget. that s the real impact of his policies. just last year c.b.o. laid out some possible outcomes of shifting to this premium support. here s what they say. it will reduce access to health care and diminish the quality of care. c.b.o. also said beneficiaries might face higher costs. the budget offered by senator murray strengthens and preserves medicare for future generations. according to c.b.o., medicare will spend $500 billion less through 2020 when compared to their 2010 estimate. this means incidentally the affordable care act is saving money. and yesterday i believe congress reaffirmed the affordable care act when an amendment was offered to abolish it. there are ways to modernize medicare, ways to reform it, ways to make it more efficient and do that without harming beneficiaries. paul ryan knows it but he chooses to ignore it. instead he has a plan that would make seniors fend for themselves against insurance companies and spend higher and higher percentage of their income on prescription drugs and they wouldn t receive the care that they need because they just couldn t afford it. that may be paul ryan s vision for america but it is march madness. it is not my vision for america, and it s not the america that our seniors want and deserve. thank you, dick. and dick and paddy have talked about the value choices and the difference between the ryan budget and the budget that we re supporting. but there s another issue. the ryan budget just doesn t add up. it does not reduce the deficit in 10 years. when you impose deep cuts on medicare and gut programs that help the middle class and then turn around and give huge tax breaks to millionaires, that s a value choice. but congressman ryan is also claiming a different kind of balance. he says that by 2023 his plan will bring outlays in revenues into total balance and reduce annual deficits to zero. what hasn t been focused on is that that s just that true. not true. would his budget truly achieve balance? only if you believe in magic. the truth is congressman ryan s fiscal plan relies on a lot of budgetary sleight of hand in order to create the illusion of a balanced budget. the document is filled with deceptive gimmicks, far-fetched assumptions and phony arithmetic. the d.p. dpcc has put out a report, it s called paul ryan s hocus pocus budget. the house g.o.p. s five magic tricks that create the optical illusion of a balanced budget. among the magic tricks ryan performs, presto, he proposes that more than $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest americans, yet claims this won t add to the deficit. ryan would cut the top rate from 39.6% to 25%. independent experts say that the only way to achieve tax cuts on this scale in a deficit-neutral way would be to eliminate the middle class credits and deductions. the avage tax increase for middle class families would be $1,300. does ryan really plan to follow through with such a major tax hike on middle class families? hardly. but the alternative is to add $4.5 trillion to the deficit and eliminate any chance of balancing the budget in 10 years. second, he has unrealistically rosie assumptions about tax and spending levels. for instance, despite the massive tax cut rate that ryan is promising to the nation s top earners, he claims that revenue levels would average around 19% of g.d.p. during the 10-year budget window. the independent tax policy center begs to differ. they found that assuming ryan doesn t plan to raise middle class taxes for his rate cut, total revenue under the ryan budget would be 15.5%. this discrepancy creates a $7 trillion revenue hole, the tax gap would leave the ryan budget $1.2 trillion short of balance in the 10th year. third, ryan claims $716 billion in medicare savings from the affordable care act. despite promising to repeal that law. of course congressman ryan campaigned with mitt romney throughout the fall, criticizing the president and congressional democrats for making cuts to medicare. they falsely claimed that these reforms would cut medicare and hurt seniors. yet now ryan has once again is once again using the same savings to help his baseline. he publicly acknowledges he is cherry picking this $716 billion in savings in his budget because it makes it easier for him to make the math work. but you can t say, well, i m going to eliminate obamacare and then say, but i m still going to gain the $716 billion. and to take one more example, the $810 billion in medicaid savings that ryan cites are not savings at all. they re just costs transferred onto the state tabs. by blocking by block granting the program he doesn t bring efficiency to the program, simply shifts the burden. so, this is just the beginning of the fuzzy math, the details are all outlined in this report. the bottom line is, ryan the ryan budget is anything but balanced. certainly not in the sense we democrats mean but not even by his own sense of balance to. make the numbers line up, congressman has had to resort on creative accounting and several policy flip flops. upon closer inspection, his claims about achieving a balanced budget in 10 years quickly go up in smoke. and now for the las vegas sun. we re going to get a new name. for the las vegas baseball team. call it 51 but that s not a good name. named after area 51. it doesn t exist. [laughter] i m sorry that paddy s not here to hear me say publicly how proud i am of her. she had some big shoes to fill. kent was an economic guru. he was very, very good. patty murray has stepped into this budget foray and done wonderfully. i m very, very happy with her budget and the one reason i m happy about her budget is it reflects how we used to do things around here. during the clinton era. we re going back to that, that s what barack obama s been trying to do with us. patty murray s budget gives a really guideline to do that. where we have the ability to reduce the deficit. as we all know, we have to make a few investments and she does that. all the economists, all the economists say you can t continue cutting, cutting, cutting your way to prosperity. we ve done very well with what we ve been able to do to have a government that is doing better, a country that s doing better economically. we have a long ways to go. and murras dg p us in the right direction. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] senate democratic leaders from within the hour talking about the 2014 budget proposal. just an update, the senate budget committee will resume their deliberations, marking up the 2014 proposed budget. you can follow that on c-span 3 beginning at about 2:00 p.m. eastern. here on c-span, in about 20 minutes or so, we ll take you live to the first day of the o political action conference to hear from senators marco rubio and rand paul. that will be at 1:15 eastern. also today on capitol hill, the senate judiciary committee passed on a party line vote of 10-8 s. 150, a bill that ends the importation and manufacture, 157 specifically named guns, as well as large capacity ammunition magazines. ahead that have vote this morning, senators dine feinstein and ted cruz and others engaged in a discussion on the constitutionality of the proposed assault weapons ban. if i might pose a question to the senior senator from california. to the senior senator from california. you mentioned that there s some 100 pages of the bill that specify particular firearms that if this bill were passed, congress would have deemed prohibited. firearms if this bill were passed congress would have deemed prohibited. it seems to me that all of us should begin as our foundational document with the constitution. and the second amendment in the bill of rights provides the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. the term the right of the people. it s found in the first amendment. the right of the people to peaceably assemble and to petition their government for grievances, it s found in the fourth amendment, the right of the people to be found unreasonable from searches and seizures. and the question i pose to the senator from california, would she deem it consistent with the bill of rights for congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the second amendment in the context of the first or fourth amendment, namely, would she consider it constitutional for congress to specify that the first amendment shall apply only to the following booksnd shall not apply to the books that congress has deemed outside the protection of the bill of rights? likewise, would she think that the fourth amendment s protection against searches and seizures could properly apply only to the following specified individuals and not to the individuals that congress has deemed outside the protection of the bill of rights? would the senator yield for a question? let me just make a couple of points in response. one, i m not a sixth grader. senator, i ve been on this committee for 20 years. i was a mayor for nine years. i walked in, i saw people shot. i ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. i ve seen the bullets that implode. in sandy hook, youngsters were dismembered. look, there are other weapons. i ve been up i m not a lawyer, but after 20 years i ve been up close and personal to the constitution. i have great respect for it. this doesn t mean that weapons of war and the heller decision clearly points out three exceptions, two of which are pertinent here. and so i you know, it s fine you want to lecture me on the constitution. i appreciate it. just know i ve been here for a long time. i ve passed on a number of bills. i ve studied the constitution myself. i am reasonably well educated, and i thank you for the lecture. incidentally, this does not prohibit you use the word prohibit. it exempts 2,271 weapons. isn t that enough for the people in the united states? do they need a about a bazooka? do they need military weapons to kill people in close contact? i don t think so. i come from a different place than you do. i respect your views. i ask you to respect my views. mr. chairman senator is out of time. mr. chairman, i can t add anything to that. senator cruz. mr. chairman, i would ask yet another question of the senior senator from california. i think nobody doubts her sincerity or her passion and yet at the same time i would note that she chose not to answer the question that i asked. which is, in her judgment, would it be consistent with the constitution for congress to specify which books are permitted and which books are not and to use the the answer is obvious no. and if i may ask could we keep on the i appreciate we have a discussion on books. i know that they have that in your state of texas where educational board tells people what books they should or should not read in their schools. something we would not do in vermont. we are not going to talk about your right. let s stick to guns. let me just mr. chairman, i appreciate your acknowledging that the state of tk allows books. i would specify a little more broadly. pornography books. protected by the first amendment. it s obviously there are different tests on different amendments. and i think what the senator is going to point out was something that didn t occur to me at the moment. there are certain kinds of pornographic materials that would not be covered by the first amendment. and is it the view of the senior senator from california that congress should be in the business of specifying particular books or for that matter with respect to the fourth amendment particular individuals who are not covered by the bill of rights? sir, congress is in the business of making law. the supreme court interprets the law. they strike down the law, they strike down the law. the tests in heller with respect to unusual weapons, two other things i think do not cover in other words, they cover an exemption for assault weapons. if this is brought up before if this is brought up before the