we ll find out what the economy is doing right now. larry, we just heard gary talk about revenue growth. you said earnings are doing well. revenue hasn t been so hot. it s been objection right? do you think you ll see a breakout in revenue and market demand? i think it s too late in the cycle for that. i think it s been driven by cost control. one little hiccup that could come soon, estimated a 0.7 rise in the cpi because of the rise in gas prices. the broader picture is you ve got to like equities. all right. in the meantime, we are heading towards the close, and we will set a new all-time high for what has been a rather unloved bull market that we ve seen this time around. the dow jones industrial average will be closing at an all-time high that we last saw in october 2007. what does it all mean? where do we go from here? that s what we re going to get into coming up in the second hour of the closing bell. i ll see you tomorrow. maria will see you tonight as well at 7:00 p.m. eastern time. have a good day. and historic day on wall street. the dow jones industrial average closing at an all-time record high. hi, everybody, welcome to the closing bell. i m maria bartiromo coming to you from the floor of the new york stock exchange, and a jam-packed floor with the dow blew past its previous high before the financial crisis in october 2007 after several failed attempts over the past couple of weeks. the dow shot up right from the get-go closing at 4:00 at 126 points higher at 14,254. that, the highest close ever for the blue chip average. a good day for the nasdaq and the s&p 500. let s take a look. double-digit moves there with the nasdaq composite up 42 points and technology one of the winning sessions at 3224 the last trade on the nasdaq. s&p 500 up 14.5 point, 1539. nasdaq way above its all-time record high which, of course, is above 5000, but the dow jones industrial average at an all-time high tonight. we ve got full team coverage today on this historic day. bob pins on the floor of the nys and mary thompson and kayla tausche standing by at cnbc headquarters looking at stocks and sectors that led the way and lagged. after weeks of waiting, the dow finally does it. what a march it s been. march 2009, maria, 6,547, the dow jones industrial average, and from there it s almost been straight up, 117% rise in the last four years. what a run. as for today, well, we started strong right off of the bat. that s because we had good numbers out of china. we also had a strong european open and that helped us, look at that move right off of the open here. it was a day for buying growth. not only did we hit an historic high on the dow, industrials, hit an historic high and transports as well. energy stocks and material stocks strong as well. finally we had building stocks all throughout the board, building material stocks and home building stocks all strong throughout the day. maria, 3-1 advancing to declining stocks. the only thing missing was a little bit more volume, about average for today. back to you. all right, bob. mary thompson running through the best and worst performers on the dow since the previous record hit back in 2007. pretty good list. reporter: starting with the best of the blue chips. home depot has more than doubled since the last record. back in 2007 it was actually the poster child for excessive executive pay, but having shed its building supplies unit and focused on its core retail business it s benefitted from a rebound in housing. ibm, up 74% since the last record by focusing on servicing software and emerging markets and mcdonald s, up 69%, thanks to the fast food giant s push into new markets and its ability to remake its menu to drive sales. now a look at the losers. hewlett-packard s inability to follow through on promised makeovers makes it the third worst performer in the dow since 2007 high. down 62%, though it s among the best performers this year. up over 40%. bank of america the best performing blue chip last year, but it s a 78% decline over the last five years representing the persistent drag around the financial crisis like the mortgage giant, countrywide, and the worst performer on the dow since the last record high, alcoa, the aluminum company down 80% neither peak. maria, back to you. thanks very much. every day there s individuals winners and losers but on this history-making day we want to look at the sectors that have floored and others that have flo soared. home depot and mcdonald s among the high flyers in the five years since the market was last at these levels, just two of the components helping the consumer sectors, staples and discretionary leading the pack, up just about 37% apiece since that last record. health care and technology rounding out four sectors total that are in positive territory. since that last real, for the rest of the sectors though, it s been tough sledding. rocky oil prices have been plummeting natural gas keeping energy companies in the red and similar commodity woes for industrials and al coa the single worst dow component in that time. heavy cost burdens for utilities and telecoms in the last five years pushing those companies towards the bottom of the sector barrel here. not one group is faring worse than financials losing half their value in the interim. valued at most investors, maria. don t expect to make up as much in this rally going forward. all right, kayla, thank you so much. kayla tausche with the latest there. will history repeat itself tomorrow. will we see another new high? joining us right now cnbc contributor michael yashikami and nathan back ak-and john and warren myers will be here with us from the floor of the nyc once he s closed out all of his trades for the day. john, to you first. where does this market go next? well, we think, again, steady as she goes. still debating the fact that if this is a bull market or not four years into, it we like the fact that transports made a new high. we like the fact that transports are telling us something with gdp at 0.1%. they are telling us that the oil and gas is a real story. we think that the transports are rallying so much because the oil and gas is is where the future growth of this country will be, whether it s export or the fact that oil is going to give us a nice growth dividend going forward, you know. we see that a lot of the commodity stocks really haven t moved that much, but yet transports are off the chart, so we think that s more of a u.s. centric story, the fact that japan is obviously going to continue to ease their monetary policy. people are talking about china. japan s wages are 50 times that, the average employee in china, so people lose sight of the ball very quickly. pikal, would you be telling clients at this point to take some profits, or do you want to keep risk on and keep looking for new opportunities to put new capital to work in stocks? you ve got to take profits, maria. we ve got stocks. for example, mcdonald s is a position we ve owned for quite some time. qualcomm is a position we own and chevron and johns johnson & johnson. these are positions that are hitting all-time highs, and if you re looking at your allocation and making sure you re balanced, you ve got to take profits. things go up and things go down. investors make the mistake of buying, but they don t sell, so i think you carve some of the profits off and you move into other assets that are undervalued that you think have opportunity going forward but you re absolutely right. when the market is at an all-time high you don t sit there and watch it you take profits. pay a little tax and the last i heard when you make profits and pay tax, it s not a bad thing. nathan, what about you? you say we could see a pullback. what do you think? absolutely a pullback, maria. we re playing a game called where s waldo. in this case it s where is the cash, right? if you look at the brokerage accounts by the new york s own accounting, take cash long margin debt, guess what, there s not much money yet. we re in negative territory we ve not seen in terms of cash levels shall i say since 2011 right before we got a 20% correction so the cash has got to come from somewhere, otherwise this isn t going to keep going. corporations aren t doing a lot of spending. banks aren t doing a lot of lending, and what i m watching for, maria, the great rotation where people start buying stocks with their bonds. they sell their bonds. when rick santelli says to us, see what s happening. getting killed over here on the bond side, that s when you ll be able to say the rally might be sustainable on the stock side. otherwise take profits. if you ve got a kid that s got to go to college, a wedding, whatever it is, take some profits now because when the stock market gods push the chips out, they also pull them back. i don t understand that. you re telling me that when the rotation begins where money is coming out of bonds and going into storks you think that s the beginning of the end? well, that s the beginning of the end for the bond market, that s for darn sure. but that s all new money for the stock market. not for the equity money. new money for the equity market. great for equities but not the bond side of it. that s what i thought. good for the stock market. absolutely. great for the stock market, and i think the market will do great. but in terms of market capitalization it did not, so that means there s 1 billion less shares that were outstanding than they were prior, so the fact that home depot made a new high in terms of price but not market cap means when that rotation comes to the forefront there s going that much less stock for all that money to buy. let me get to warren myers here. warren, you re on the floor of the exchange. you just finished settling out your trades. yes. from your standpoint, you re a i go on the floor watching the flow all day long. what happens tomorrow morning? do you think the fact that we saw some selling at the end of the day today, that we had some sell imbalances at the end of the day, does that portend to a down open tomorrow? not in the least. may actually happen that way, but one does not necessarily indicate the other, by any stretch of the imagination. you know what, we ve been looking at and seeing is just strong underlying momentum, upward momentum in the equity markets for quite some time. you look at the transports have been very strong hitting new highs along with the dow, that s a very positive sign. net cash flows into equities has been increasing over the last five, six months as opposed to deficits. that s a very positive sign, and the other thing we look at a lot down here is the is the bullish and bearish ratios, and they are not signaling anything too extreme yet so i think there s a little bit more legs in this upward momentum, and i think this market can continue a little bit higher. go ahead, john. this market is 13,7 from a forward pe, 16.5 would be about where you would expect it to be, so we ve got only at most 20%, 25% less if we are in fact getting to the end of a bull market. certainly a time to be cautious if you haven t been in this market, for sure. john, where do you see the conviction? tell me what stocks and sectors investors really wanted to own the last month or so. i think we saw a lot of money starts moving to the medical stocks actually because of obama care, very strong interest in housing-related stocks and financials continued to do well. mortgage-related stocks, the fact that fannie and freddie are moving out of market. that s put obviously impetus into stocks into mbia as well as mtg, so those stocks are doing very well off of some very good levels as well. we re seeing good conviction as well in the energy stocks, right? again, you know, back to the oil and gas story, transportation. warren buffett was on your station the other day saying that his railroad carloading to terms of petroleum are off the charts, so even though the gdp is still just 0.1%, there s different sectors and stock picks are real having their pick of the litter right now. in terms of going forward, we think that as long as rates stay low which we expect them to do and as long as the peak to trough in terms of s&p earnings, the trough was $92 per s&p earnings back in 2007, usually every ten years s&p earnings probably almost doubled, so if we put a double on that and let s say 75%, a 160 handle and a 15 multiple on that, you know, still looking at 2,400 out to 2017, so the economic numbers are not going to be straight line better. the stock market is not going to go a straight line higher, but over time the trillions that the fed is doing and the amount of technology, new technology that we have, there s no place bert to be. that s really the question, isn t it. mikeal, you said you want to take profits right here. where are you going to go? where are you going to put that money? you go into cheaper stocks. okay. stocks with more of a discount. i still think you have to keep risk on. you just rotate out of the higher risk stocks that have gone up, and i also want to say watch financials. we ve talked about this a lot, but financials are still de-leveraging. huge layoffs were announced by jpmorgan the other day. citigroup is certainly going through a layoff pattern right now, so i think you re going to see these companies, even though they are getting killed on net interest margin, i think you ll see these companies get more and more profitable. the money has been going to health care, i could see it rotating somewhat out of health care into cheap discretionary items, in other words, stuff that really is cheaper than retail, maybe the cost cos of the world and actually see it move into financials. that s where i think the rotation will happen. leave it there. gentlemen, nice conversation. appreciate all your time tonight. we ll be watching this market rock and roll. much more ahead on this jam packed edition of the closing bell, a record setter. what do you do now that the dow has hit the best level? talking to wall street s top money pros including james paulsen who helped over see 370 billion in assets and bob dole as well as the head of starwood capital group. wait until you hear how he is allocating capital or how high or low they see the dow going from here. back in a moment with all of they will. and billionaire steve forbes gives us his two cents and more on the market action. you re watching cnbc, first in business worldwide. [ female announcer ] it s time for the annual shareholders meeting. there ll be the usual presentations on research. and development. some new members of the team will be introduced. the chairman emeritus will distribute his usual wisdom. and you? well, you re the chief life officer. you just need the right professional to help you take charge. welcome back. get this. it took more than five years to reach the all-time high today, but the last time we saw a record break, the blue chip average fell 54% within the following 17 months do you to in large part the financial crisis so what s next for the markets that seem to only want to go up on the bearish side of the story is harry dent of hs dent, and our own jeff cox is also on the bear side. bullish side, cnbc contributor ron insana and investment strategist james paulsen. good to see everybody. thanks for joining us. jeff, you think this is the best it will get for the marks. you re expecting a sizable drop coming. why? maria, history is on my side. look, when you look at the market, where we were, where we got to now. every time the last 11 bear markets that we ve seen this happen, the market has always had a major pullback. i think it s not a bad thing. i think we don t need to get crazy about it. i think it could set up a very nice opportunity, but history tells us this is the way it goes. history tells it, but can you really compare any other moment in history to this moment when the federal reserve, ben bernanke and company have been the most aggressive fed keeping an environment where there is no alternative to u.s. stocks? that s a great point, maria, but look at the dow has gone up 3/1,000 of a percentage point in the last five years and the fed balance sheet has increased 275%, national debt increased 78%, but bottom line here, markets are moved on two things. fear and greed. we can talk about all of the other things we want to talk about, but fear and greed are the two main market movers. fear always takes over when a market gets this greedy. all right. what do you think, ron? you don t think jeff is right? it depends on the size of the correction that he s talking about. talking about a bear market, i absolutely categorically disagree. talking about 5% to 10%. that can happen at any time. that s ordinary in the course of what i think is a secular bull market, something that has been described as quite some time. maria, you make a good point. when you talk about comparing to other market periods, if you look at the dow from 1929 after it crashed, and that may be the closest analog that we have to the experience of 2007-2008, it took 25 years for the dow to go from 381 in september of 1929 to get back there in 1954 after having fallen, you know, 90%. in this crisis, you know, we went down as you said 54% and it only took five careers to recapture the high. policy matters. this time to a certain extent is different, and one thing would i say, interesting to note, nobody is in washington this week and wall street is doing really well. maybe the message of the market is that our elected representatives ought to stay home for the remainder of the year and let this thing go on. harry, you re calling this historic level today the top before the top. what does that mean? we re topping her short term and will see a small correction, maybe 6%, 8%, 10% and on the last rally that we ll come into the summer that we ll see divergences. yes, this is the most aggressive central bank stimulus ever, ever, ever but the worst demographic trends downward around the world ever by far and the highest debt ratios in history so this is a war between the fed and the fundamentals, and i think in the end the fed is going to lose, and we re going to see a series of crises until demographic trends bottom around 2020. i think the most important number is 1600 on the s&p 500, not the new high in the dow today, been expecting that, but that s when you go through a trend line, through the past two bubble tops, and it s going to be very hard technically to get over that. if we get over that i ll change my mind but i don t think we get over 1500 substantially this year and if we don t this year, i don t think we see that for a long time. doug cass came up with some statistics about today s record high environment versus the environment we saw when the market hit an all-time high the last time back in 2007. here s some stats for you, guys. gdp growth, then 2.5%, now, 1.6%. americans unemployed, then, 6.7 million, now 13.2 million. americans on food stamps, then, 26.9 million. now 47.69 million. the the debt outstanding, then 9 trillion. now 16.5 trillion. what does this tell you, jim? well, i guess i agree with jeff there could be a correction at some point, maria, but i think there s still a fair amount of upside. i ve got a couple of thoughts i guess where we are today. one is compared to where we were, we haven t gone anywhere from ten years but look what s happened over that ten-year period of time. the multiple in the stock market has gone from 35 times earnings to 15, more than a halving of its value while the bond yield has fallen by almost three-quarters, the competitive bond yield, while earnings have doubled from where they were. that s a massive absolute and relative revaluation but we re back to where we were in 2007 but far more cheaper than we were then. that s because the economy is so bad. maria. whoa, one person at a time. finish your thought, jim. okay. one other point. i think the catalyst that s been driving this last four years has been that things have turned out better than feared. we ve been worried about armageddon and the world never ended. what s going to happen now is things are going to start turning out better than expected, and that s subtle but big. in other words, what if the unemployment rate gets to the 6s this year. what if it gets to the 8s? come on. 6 isn t even possible. where are we right now, 7.9%, where are we right now? when if it gets to 6.9. let s talk reality. 7.9 to 6.9% in the next seven months. i argued for the 7s and got to the same response. maria, let s look at there s been a drop because of the drop in the participation rate. labor force has been growing 130,000 a month. participation rate is near 30-year lows. that s why the rate is going down. let s recast this a little bit. number one, all those data points that were cited by doug cass, during the crisis, the government took on the debt burden of the private sector to bail out system. this was something we ve never seen. a wise policy move because the alternative was the 1930s. we re going through a secular change in the economy. we re going through a major energy change. manufacturing is coming home. technological innovation and in turn housing, and i agree with jim, are the big positive surprises that overshadow what anybody else might be talking about. all right. we ll leave it there. gentlemen, great conversation. thank you so much. very interesting and important insights from all of you. appreciate it. the rally took many by surprise, but not viewers of the closing bell. bob predicted that on this program that we would make a new high in the quarter. he s up next. later a person whose name and capitalism go together. steve forbes weighs in on how long the party on wall street may last, and before the commercial breaks today, we ll give you mini history lessons. don t worry. no quizzes here, but it was october 07 the last time the dow made an all-time high. what topped the music charts back then? it was crank that by soldier boy toppinging the top 100 chart. neil and buzz: for proving there s nowhere we can t go. but, at some point. giant leaps gave way to baby steps. and with all due respect, you re history. if you taught us anything, it s that you can t cling to the past. if you want to create the future. that s why, instead of looking behind. delta is looking beyond. pushing u.s. aviation to new heights. all 80 thousand of us. busy investing billions in the industry s boldest moves. it s biggest advances in technology. bringing our passengers the best, the most spacious fleet in the sky. and earning more awards than any other airline. to show for it. so rather than simply saluting history. we re out there making it. your financial advisor should focus on your long-term goals, not their short-term agenda. [ male announcer ] join the nearly 7 million investors who think like you do. face time and think time make a difference. at edward jones, it s how we make sense of investing. a talking car. but i ll tell you what impresses me. a talking train. this ge locomotive can tell you exactly where it is, what it s carrying, while using less fuel. delivering whatever the world needs, when it needs it. after all, what s the point of talking if you don t have something important to say? only hertz gives you a carfirmation. hey, this is challenger. i ll be waiting for you in stall 5. it confirms your reservation and the location your car is in, the moment you land. it s just another way you ll be traveling at the speed of hertz. welcome back. is there enough momentum to keep this market rally going? joining me now to break is down, bob dolt and at our headquarters mandy drury and simon hobbs joining the conversation. bob, let me kick this off with you. you said it. you made your 2013 prediction on this program. you said we would hit an all-time high by now. we did. nice going. what now, do you think? i think the path of least resistance, maria, is still to the upside. we have an economy that s okay, not great. inflation is low. the fed is giving us all we need and there s not a lot of alternatives and stocks are the place to be by default or aggressively, whichever you prefer. at some point something s got to giving right? do you expect a move in interest rates to sort of turn the party around? well, i think interest rates out the curve, not at the fed s level. we ll continue to creep higher. we were 150 not that many months ago. we re 190 today. they will continue to creep higher, but i think it s a signal, maria, the world is less bad, and less bad is good news. it means the deflationary threat causes rates to move up a little bit and stocks to continue to move higher. it feels like it has been, but it won t be a straight line. it does feel like it has been actually. mandy, it s interesting to note that there were other asset classes that participated in the euphoria today, not just stocks. oil up and commodities up like gold also higher, even though that hasn t really participated in this real, but very much an across-the-board situation in a number of assets classes today. why? yeah, you know, it s really interesting. i m glad you mentioned gold because while the equity marks have been basically blowing their whistles and putting on their party hats gold has been sulking for the past months saying i didn t get the party hat. remember, they used to trade together for some time. like early last year, gold was kind of trading like a risk asset, just like stocks, and gold now has really been falling behind. why? well, i guess, you know, there a number of headwinds for gold at the moment. atfs which have been sold down at the moment, a lot of big money selling out of gold, and there also has been a bit of a rotation out of commodities and into stocks which i think is one of the reasons that people that i ve been speaking to say that we ve seen is momentum in equities. simon hobbes, what about europe, seems to have taken a back seat to the euphoria in the u.s. but not a lot has changed in europe. yeah. let me say here in the united states, if i may. i think the most important thing that i ve seen in the last 24 hours is an off-the-record briefing of the c.o.o. of one of the components of the dow 30 in which he said so worried about the cost of fixing the defendant sit that he was not investing in america anymore, not creating extra jobs in growth and one of the components of this rally has obviously been the fed and the drive to get people to buy the stocks with the dividends, but other components has been c.o.o.s returning cash to shareholders and buying back the stock. i worry that we ve underestimated the degree of pessimism amongst c.o.o.s when they do that about how they see the future. a lot of people suggested we need growth come back big time in the spring in order to sustain this rally. this c.o. yesterday was indicating he thought the path over the next two to three years would be so bumpy he wasn t prepared to extend his own business, and i think that speaks volumes to those that might be bearish of this market. i m sure that s true, simon, but at the end of the day what are the alternatives? where is this ceo going to go? returning the cash to shareholders. that s an admission he can t find a safe place to put it and in his case he doesn t feel america is a safe place in fixed assets. bob, what about that? the whole return to shareholders that simon aptly put the conversation that he s had with one of the ceos of the dow tells you really a another positive for the market, because what s happening at the end of the day, because of activist investors or because of just, you know, no ideas of what else to do with the money, companies are returning money to shareholders. isn t that a positive? doesn t that propel this market even higher? yes, all true, maria. companies are raising their dividends. s&p 500, double-digit gains in dividends and payout ratios are still low. the percentage of profits being paid out is still at a low level and you now have half the companies in the u.s. stock market with a yield higher than the ten-year treasury. that s way above norm a. i think underscoring stocks expenses. why are they not investing in the american economy? why are they returning cash to share holders? because of tax policy, i think. that is part of it. the s&p 500 is companies headquartered in the u.s. but it s not a u.s. average, but it s a global average. earning surprises in the fourth quarter came mostly from multi-nationals as u.s. corporations are investing and growing overseas, gaining market share, and that s why the stock market is doing a lot better in the u.s. economy. usually a stock market discounts what is happening 18 months in advance. i don t hear a conversation now today on cnbc much about where we will be in 18 months. i hear a conversation about, well, you should buy stocks because the dividends are higher than you get in the treasury market. yeah. well, i think there is an indication that the economy, the landscape is getting better. perhaps that portends to what s going to continue to happen in the next 18 months. i would argue it s getting better, maria, but it s also the big downside. the big black holes that people are worried about, the probability of those in their minds is shrinking. that s part of why the market is rallying. i m going to be on later on with you guys. later on tonight for the special talking about those black holes or black swans or walls of worry, all the things that, you know, essentially this market has blown past and able to shrug off, and it s kind of interesting when you look at it that way so i ll be joining you later on tonight. look forward to it. see you a little later. thanks, everybody. coming up a special guest you don t want to miss, the man behind the starwood hotel empire. he ll offer his unique perspective on the market action. then, i ll speak with somebody whose name is virtually synonymous with capitalism, his name is forbes, steve forbes. the last time the dow closed at a record, the average price of a gallon of gas, was, get this, $2.76, a dollar less han what we are paying right now. back in a moment. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 seems like etfs are everywhere these days. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 but there is one source with a wealth of etf knowledge tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 all in one place. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 introducing schwab etf onesource™. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 it s one source with the most commission-free etfs. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 one source with etfs from leading providers tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and extensive coverage of major asset classes. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 all brought to you by one firm tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 with comprehensive education, tools and personal guidance tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 to help you find etfs that may be right for you. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 schwab etf onesource tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 for the most tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 commission-free etfs, tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 you only need one source and one place. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 start trading commission-free with schwab etf onesource. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 call, click or visit today. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 investors should carefully consider tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 information contained in the prospectus, tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 including investment objectives, risks, tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 charges, and expenses. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 you can request a prospectus by calling schwab tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 at 800-435-4000. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 please read the prospectus carefully before investing. welcome back. the mission statement for the starwood capital group promises in part to be, quote, a world class investment firm that identifies values that others may overlook, end quote. here now to tell us about those values that he sees in this historic stock market, heating up real estate market and the leisure market is the chairman and ceo of starwood capital group. barry, always nice to have you on the program. welcome back. thank you, maria. good to see you. where do you see value in this market? we closed at an all-time high, so happy to close where the dow is at the highest level it s ever been. do you still see value in this market? well, you know, i focus on the real estate sector. the dividends are obviously extremely attractive of the reits. discussing this at our monday morning meeting where the reits haven t been more active in acquisitions. i think the conclusion, two conclusions i think we came to. one, private capital can leverage more than the public stocks. the shareholders do not want the public companies to lever, even these historically low interest rates. right. so you re not seeing a lot of the reits do a lot of acquisitions which is kind of curious about this point of the cycle, especially since their stocks have gone up, so they haven t issued a lot of stock and not really competing heavily to buy properties which is good for people like myself and firm and we bought the shopping center. we ve bought a lot of hand and tri-point recently on the new york stock exchange, our mortgage companies, star property trust, has hit an all-time high itself today, so we re happy that we participated in this record rally. it is interesting. i think there s also been a turnover in the management of many of the reits, not necessarily the entrepreneurs that found those companies, and i think sometimes i think they are probably just there to more maintenance and watching and managing the company for steady growth as opposed to their real wealth-creating entrepreneurs that build the companies and often were the ones that took them public. it is interesting, because it is fascinating to see that they haven t really participated in this maybe, you know, very attractive spread between cap rates or yield on property and interest rates which are quite low. interest rates are really behind this story, right? i mean, one of the reasons that real estate has done well, you know, one day we re going to look back and say, wow, can you believe i borrowed at 1%, that i bought that house at 3%? what s ahead? well, i think the debt could be more important than the asset for private investors. we just borrowed for five years at 2.77%, 80% of the purchase price of an asset, so it s kind of hard not to get positive leverage, meaning that you can earn in that case 12%, 13% on your cash, so, you know, i think it s an interesting time for private investors and property, especially if you think the company just mopes along like it s doing at 1%, 2% and you don t need fast growth. would you argue that fast growth would induce new supply and that wouldn t be good for the real estate markets. at the moment there s not a lot of new construction and almost all the property types, clearly the housing market is turning around, that s in the united states, across the whole united states and stronger in certain areas than others. i think the fed is getting exactly what they wanted. higher asset prices and bank-selling properties and bidding wars. we re selling 13 multi-family problems out of the bank portfolio. we had 400 signed agreements, so it s 425 i think is the number. it s $1 billion of base chi new condos we converted to rentals that will be for sale. they are great assets so they will abrigate you know, i m sure the pricing will be good, but the buyer is going to get good assets and lower replacement costs and i think a very good risk reward investment for the investors versus the stock market, versus high-yield bonds which are record lows themselves. the bottom line. fair to say you re a seller in this market. do you worry when we talk about all-time highs, that perhaps it s time to scale back? you want to be a seller rather than a buyer here, barry? yeah. i m very i m nervous. when it gets easy in the market i get very worried because everybody is i call them intellectually hedged. sort of think the market. they know all is not right in the world but they still are buying stocks and chasing performance, and the hedge funds had a bad year last year relative to the s&p, so i see my friends, many of them leaning the hedge funds and taking on more risk and more exposure to keep up with the indexes, so i think for me that scares me, when everybody is sort of saying i m worry but they are all invested, you wonder how much more cash can go into the market. there s a great movement of money out of the bond market into the equity market and, you know, in our business, in the real estate business, the impact of foreign capital flows into the united states is definitely being felt. there s nowhere to put money anywhere, and these guys would rather not take the risks in nigeria or argentina, they have got burned and in debt so they aring looking at us as basically a safe haven for capital. they look as property as an alternative for bond and when the government is buying 75% of all the bonds that tissues. and that foreign money is coming from asia, bear? from asia, from asia, from the middle east, certainly china, korea. you re seeing it from singapore and also the middle eastern countries which are generally underweighted to the u.s. property sector. you know, they have for a while we were on the black list while we were fighting the gulf war. they really couldn t invest here and today, especially with the nervousness back home, you re seeing more and more capital feeling comfortable about moving some portion of their assets herance and some portion of those assets is a lot of money. yeah. it really is on the margin does impact. you saw this recent deal that korean investors are going to buy half of the zeckendorf building. pricing is buoyant but their alternative is to buy 5-year ponds that yield less than 1% so pret pretty difficult to beat that as a benchmark. thank you so much. see you soon. now what? steve forbes on why he says we have a long way to go until we re really back. steve forbes will join us next but first, check this out. back on october 9th when the dow was at this level, ben stiller s movie the heartbreak kid. back in a moment. [ indistinct shouting ] [ indistinct shouting ] [ male announcer ] time and sales data. split-second stats. [ indistinct shouting ] it s so close to the options floor. [ indistinct shouting, bell dinging ] .you ll bust your brain box. all on thinkorswim from td ameritrade. sales event has begun. featuring the powerful gs. just when you thought you had experienced performance a new ride comes along and changes everything. get great values on your favorite lexus models during the command performance sales event. this is the pursuit of perfection. welcome back. the dow s run to an all-time high has been impress f-but steve forbes says the overall markets have a long way to go to get us back to where we were in the late 90s. steve forbes joins me right now to talk more about it. good to see you. thanks, maria. thanks so much for doing us. are you doing i inflation adjusted, we really have to look at this market based on inflation, and it should be at a different level here? yes. don t get too excited about this. it s nice, i ll take it, especially in nominal terms, but we have to remember we reached this in real terms in the late 1990s and since then the economy, for all the woes, is much larger, much pitcher and much broader-based and yet the stock market is stuck. this is like the between the mid- 60s and early 80s, powering ups and downs and we didn t make much progress. a lot of people basically said this is all about the rally. i named this rally ben because this is basically an environment where there s very few alternatives. what kind of an impact is the action from the federal reserve having on the market, do you think? perversely it s hurting the market long term. how can you say it s hurting the market? ? we know they have created no alternatives in return. over the short term it s helping the market. but long term you say this is hurting it, why? like steroids for baseball. it ultimately wrecks the player. the government is making it easier to make it borrow money for mortgage-backed securities and the like and small businesses, unincorporated businesses, households, have a hard time getting credit which is why the growth of the economy, 2.5% in 2010, 2 in 2011 and 1.5% last year. that s not good. not creating the foundation of small businesses creating the jobs and the big companies are the future. what about the skeptics who will say, look, if you can t borrow now at 1%, at 3%, when are you going to borrow? this is the time to borrow? this is like the old soviet union. somebody said health care is flow but you can t get it. for smaller businesses, riskier businesses and the regulators jump on banks when they do it so banks have excess reserve, lend to big companies and lend to the government but not to the small businesses. have you this perverse environment. the job creators, the real ones who create future prosperity, are having a hard time, uncertain time in getting credit. not what you want. it s like rent control for housing. but federal reserve vice chairman janet yellin says she sees no reason for the fed to reign in the stimulus, the risks of not being not aggressive enough outweigh the risks. when you hurt the patient, hurt it more. if the patient is sick, bleed it more. rent control, very good for luxury housing and poor market for people of lower middle class people getting housing. the markets have not flinched given even the dysfunction in washington. keeps going higher. sequester deadline came and went and same thing with the fiscal cliff at the end of the year. what gives? what gives is the extraordinary vitality of the american economy despite all the abuses in washington and compared to what you see in japan, compared to what you see in western most of western europe, we re in relatively good shape, but even eventually this economy will buckle if they continue with the perverse policies, raising taxes, piling on regulations and the federal reserve starving small businesses for credit. you think we ll see a correction soon? may see a correction, but just remember, the market keeps going up and down. we re not having that great leap forward that we are in the 80s and 90s. let me ask you about another issue, and this is prince alwalid. he s severed ties with the forbes billion airs list. he put out a press release stating prince alwaleed has taken this step because he felt he could no longer participate in a process that involved incorrect data. he says you have short changed him on this list. he s worth a lot more than you have him down on the list. well, first of all, he is very successful, $20 billion is not chicken feed. said it should be 29 billion. we raised him 2 billion and explain online and in the upcoming issue which comes out tomorrow how we arrived at this figure, and, you know, 107 times earnings, very hard to do, so it s a matter of scorecard. the man is immensely successful, but he thinks it should be higher and we feel 20 billion versus 18 last year is a good valuation so he wants it at 30, we say 20 and we ll see who is right in the next few years. did you change your methodology? no, that s always been the same. looked behind the assets and tried to get the real value and try to make we went out of our way. put the highest multiples we could on most of the holdings that we could, and weould get it above $20 billion, so 20 billion, he s crying. he should be happy. i d be happen we 20 billion. wanted to be in the top ten and says he should be in the top ten. we ll keep following it. we ll follow him, too. even though he won t talk to us, we ll follow him. always nice to have you on the program. look forward to the list tomorrow magazine comes out. up next, history today, but what about tomorrow? our panel of market proems weigh in on the dow s potential charge even higher still. back in a moment. here we are, me and you on the road and we know that it goes on and on [ female announcer ] you re the boss of your life. in charge of making memories and keeping promises. ask your financial professional how lincoln financial can help you take charge of your future. oh, oh, all the way oh, oh oh, oh, all the way it s not what you think. it s a phoenix with 4 wheels. it s a hawk with night vision goggles. it s marching to the beat of a different drum. and where beauty meets brains. it s big ideas with smaller footprints. and knowing there s always more in the world to see. it s the all-new lincoln mkz. but we can still help you see your big picture. with the fidelity guided portfolio summary, you choose which accounts to track and use fidelity s analytics to spot trends, gain insights, and figure out what you want to do next. all in one place. i m meredith stoddard and i helped create the fidelity guided portfolio summary. it s one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. now get 200 free trades when you open an account. welcome back. 30 seconds on the clock. our panel will tell us if tomorrow we see another record high and why. we have laif ps midell and chad morganlander. gentlemen, thank you for joining us. each of you have 30 seconds on the clock to tell us what you want to prepare for for tomorrow s opening bell. laif? sure, hi, maria. this indicator fell below zero on february 20th. since then, today was really the first time that the oscillator has made a significant move back above the zero line. tomorrow, we ll be watching this indicator to see if it can remain positive. this is a critical time for a new rally, because a decline back to zero is a sign of failure. we re watching factory orders, as well. all right, thank you so much. chad, you re up. 30 seconds on the clock. you think we hit a new high tomorrow and what do you want to be prepared for? two things tomorrow to look for. factory orders that are going to come out. we re expecting a better than expected number, consensus has it at negative 2% kind of clip. and the fed beige book is coming out tomorrow. well expect that all 12 districts are going to show an improvement within economic activity. thank you. all right, we will leave it there then, if you re done, thank you so much gentlemen. we appreciate it. we ll recap this historic day on wall street next. stay with us on the closing bell. back in a moment. i love making money. i try to be smart with my investments. i also try to keep my costs down. what s your plan? 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(announcer) scottrade. voted best investment services company. welcome back. we have breaking news right now on hugo chavez. michelle? a number of wire services reporting that hugo chavez is dead. the 58 leader of venezuela apparently dying after a long battle with cancer. he ruled the country of venezuela for more than a decade and remember, they are a very big supplier, venezuela, the country, of oil to the united states. though, it has declined over the years, due to lack of investment into the oil facilities. nbc has confirmed that chavez has died. big supplier of oil to the united states. it has declined because he began giving away a lot of it to other caribbean nations and other countries within latin america.
start for little children. big oil, over little children. instead of closing tax loopholes for corporations that shipped jobs overseas, 750,000 jobs will be lost here. because of the sequester and the continuing resolution that contains the sequester and the fix we re in because of the refusal of the republican leadership to close those loopholes. instead of ensuring americans pay their fair share, our military readiness will be impaired. unless the defense we have kids who won t get proper training to take them into harm s way an health care for america s military families will be cut. there is an answer to all of this, that is we need to close, stop the tax, the spending in our tax code. everybody talks about reducing spending as our colleagues on the other side of the aisle do. and we all adepree we need to reduce it. that s why $1.6 trillion in spending cuts and we can try to find more. but why can t we stop the spending on the tax code, the spending of tax giveaways. they re called tax expenditures. they cost the taxpayer. if you re concerned about how much the deficit is costing every individual american, why don t we calculate how much the tax break for big oil corporations sending jobs overseas the oversea the list goes on and on, how much they cost america s working families. there san answer here to be hopeful, we can come together to say ok we all agree, reduce the deficit, cut spending make some changes that we can without hurting beneficiaries, and mandatory spending. why, why, why are these tax loopholes for special interest such sacred cows for the republicans? such sacred cows they won t allow mr. van hollen s bill to come to the floor are they afraid of the debate, afraid of the outcome of their vote. with that, i think the gentleman for his lead i thank the gentleman for his leadership on putting forward a balanced proposal to prere-deuce the deficit, to avoid sequestration, which we didn t, but as a counter to what the republicans are putting forth and more than a counter it s about leadership it s about what is possible if we can work together in a bipartisan way to get the job done for the american people. i thank you, mr. van hollen and yield back my time. the speaker pro tempore: the minority leader is reminded to adrets remarks to the chair. the gentleman from indiana is recognized. mr. messer: appreciate the eye contact. let me make three quick points. . as to the underlying merits of the bill, transparency matters. it matters that we let the american people know what s happening here. this calculation called for under the bill shows that in recent years we have been wracking up $6,800 in debt for every american taxpayer each year. that s a lot of money. folks on the other side of the aisle talk about the need to close tax loopholes, there is broad consensus we need major tax reform. there is broad consensus that the loophole ours tax code is riddled with should go away. then the question is what do you do with the money from those deduction duckss? put it back in the american economy? help grow the economy? the best way to balance our budget and get this house back in fiscal order is to have a growing economy with more taxpayers who can therefore pay additional tax revenue because they have a job. there s been a loft talk on the other side of the aisle about the need for a balanced approach. but that balanced approach seems to ignore the fact that we had a $600 billion tax increase that passed this body on january 1. the president promised this campaign 4-1 spending reductions to tax increases, we re not yet even to 1-1. and we talk in this chamber about balance. mr. speaker, i would like to yield two minutes to the distinguished gentleman from florida mr. bilirakis. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. bilirakis: thank you, mr. speaker. thank you for this very good. washington continues to spend money we don t have. we all know the government boffer rows 46 cents on the dollar, much of it from china. and we re sending the tab to our children and grandchildren. across america working families have had to tighten the belts, it is pastime for washington to do the same. out of control spending is not an option. with a national debt of more than $16 trillion, every american has a $52,000 share. we must control spending so washington will not saddle future generations with burdensome debts that crowd out the private sector and lead to increased taxes and higher interest rates. the lack of fiscal discipline and the rising cost are a dangerous combination necessitating action to prevent washington from dipping into the bottomless cookie jar. this legislation before us was simp would simply require the president s budget submission to provide an estimate of the cost per taxpayer of the deficit. of the deficit the budget would run. this common sense legislation commonsense legislation forces taos face the fiscal danger with eyes wide open. i support this good bill, this effort by my colleague and urge my colleagues to do the same. i yield back the balance of my time. thank you. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from maryland. mr. van hollen: thank you, mr. speaker. may i ask how much time remains on each side. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from maryland has nine minutes and the gentleman from indiana has eight minutes. mr. van hollen: all right, mr. speaker. again, i have to remind people as they listen to this debate, that this bill does nothing, zero, reduce the deficit. nothing. all it does is ask for a calculation which we said we welcome, which one of our members actually did on the floor of the house here as she gave her presentation and that we can all do. but by all means let s say to the president, put that calculation in your budget, even though that calculation is out of date three days after the budget is submitted if we don t get control of the deficit and do in it a smart way. now, i agree with the gentleman when he says the best way to deal with the deficit is to grow the economy. that s what we should be focused on which is why we re asking today for the fourth time for a vote on our proposal to replace the sequester so that we don t lose 750,000 jobs. 750,000 jobs is the number of jobs created between october of last year and january of this year. according to the chairman of the federal reserve, if we continue to allow that se quester to remain in place, we will see one third less economic growth. 23 you don t believe the nonpartisan, independent,ed of the congressional budget office who does professional work, and if you don t believe the chame of the federal reserve who is not a partisan, maybe our republican colleagues will believe the house republican leader, mr. cantor, here s what he said on the floor of this house. not that long ago. with respect to the sequester. i quote. under the sequester, unemployment would soar from its current level. he goes on to say, it would set back any progress the economy has made. mr. cantor. he then referred to a study that said that jobs are more than 2 job of more than 200,000 virginians in my home state are on the line. that s mr. cantor. here s what the republican chairman of the armed variouses committee said about a month ago when he we got the number fless last quarter showing the economy was slowing in part in anticipation of these cuts. mr. mckeon said, quote, this is just the first indicator of the extraordinary economic damage defense cuts will do, unquote. you ve got across the board cuts in biomedical research to try to find treatments and cures for diseases that hit families throughout this country. you re going to be putting people out of work who do that important research for our country. and in the end of the day, in addition to the furloughs and the disruption that will cause in the economy, throughout the entire economy, 750,000 fewer jobs will result at the end of the calendar year. so why in the world are we debating a bill that we already passed, i believe unanimously, one month ago that does nothing about jobs, nothing about the deficit rather than take up think proposal we put forward to replace the sequester in a smart and balanced way, through targeted cuts but also the elimination of these tax breaks. and the answer is unfortunately that our republican colleagues, many of whom have signed that grover norquist pledge, have said they re not willing to close one tax loophole for the pup of reducing the deficit. not one penny. we hear all the talk about reducing the deficit, you can t take away one tax break for a corporate jet to reduce the deficit you can t say to a hedge fund manager, you re no longer going to get a tax break. so if we re as concerned about the deficit as we should be, let s get at it in a balanced way, not a sequester way which will result in 750,000 fewer american jobs. that s what we should be focused on today, mr. speaker. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from indiana is recognized. mr. messer: i think in this debate you re seeing two different philosophies of how we move forward as a country, one side of the aisle believes the key to america s future is raising taxes and bigger government. and our side of the aisle that believes the future of america is by reducing spending. let s use tax reform to put more money in the pocket of the taxpayer. the gentleman mentions the c.b.o. many, many times over and over again and fails to mention that the leadership of c.b.o. has said that a balanced budget in the long-term will help grow our economy by as much as 1.7% each year, annually if we balance this budget. he cites majority leader cantor s statements, we have virtual unanimity in this caucus that we need to rere-place the structure of those $85 million in cuts but our side believes we need to replace them with other, more sensible budget reductions to get this government under control. mr. speaker, with those comments, i yield two minutes to the distinguished gentleman from wisconsin, mr. duffy. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. duffy: i thank the gentleman for yielding my friends talk about loopholes and tax reform. they may forget that over the last two years, this house and this party have put forth legislation that do away with loopholes as part of a larger tax reform proposal. my friend across the aisle continually talks about a smart and balanced way to balance the budget. he talks about responsibility, but if you ask him for his legislation, where when does a democrat bill balance, when does their budget balance, it never does. does it balance in 10, 20, 50 years? 100 years? does your budget balance in 100 years? never does it balance. that s not a balanced approach. the senate hasn t put forward a budget in four years. the president s budget, not one democrat in this chamber or the senate voted for the president s budget. and that one too. never, never balances. that s not a balanced approach. america deserves better. but under this current legislation, america and americans have a right to know how much their government is accumulating in debt in their name. grandparents and parents, they have a right to know how much debt is going to be passed on to their grandchildren and children. those little preschoolers, toddlers, infants that will inherit this massive debt. they have a right to know. how about those young adults that are getting out of high school and tech school and out of college. they have a right to know as they look at their car loans, at student loans, at that new house loan, they have a right to know how much they are going to inherit and pay back over the course of their working years of this irresponsible debt. americans have a right to know this legislation is important because this is the first step to making sure america knows the fiscal trouble we re in and to encourage our friends across the aisle to get together and not use terminology of a balanced approach but actually give us a balanced budget. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from indiana reserves. the gentleman from maryland. mr. van hollen: thank you, mr. speaker. the american public does have the right to know. we passed virtually the most identical bill 30 days ago approximately and i m not objecting to this bill. people have a right to know. we should have transparency. we should reduce the deficit and this bill does nothing to reduce the deficit. what we need to do is make sure that we get our deficits under control, that we stabilize the debt and that we make smart choices for the people in this country. yes, there is a difference of opinion. we believe that as part of reducing the deficit we should make targeted smart cuts but we should also cut some of those tax loopholes. now the gentleman mentioned that we passed a tax increase on $600 billion over the next 10 years. that s right. we said for higher income earners you ll pay the same rates as you did during the clinton administration. but the gentleman suggested that budget history began on january 1 of this year. we were all here, not everybody, but most of us when we passed the budget control act in the summer of 2011. what did we do in that act? we capped spending. $1.5 trillion in spending reductions. that was the right thing to do. now we ve done $600 billion in revenue. so i think most people can do the math on this. we are not even close to the kind of ratios that the bipartisan commission, the bipartisan fiscal commission, simpson-bowles, we re not even close to the balance they talked about in terms of revenues and cuts. not even in the ballpark. so let s focus on the fundamental question which is number one getting the economy moving again, not losing 750,000 jobs this year, and then reducing our deficits in a smart and balanced way over a period of time. but yes, by all means, let s have the president do a calculation which one of the earlier republican speakers did on the floor of the house. we can all do that. of course as indicated, that calculation changes day-to-day, but by all means let s get it, but let s not pretend that this piece of legislation does one thing to create one job or reduce the deficit by one penny. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from indiana is recognized. mr. messer: thank you, mr. speaker. i yield two minutes to the distinguished gentleman from indiana, my good friend, mr. young. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. young: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today in support of my friend, neighbor, colleague and fellow hoosier, mr. messer, and his bill, h.r. 668. this legislation would require the president s budget proposal to make clear the per taxpayer cost of any budget deficits. now we ve repeatedly heard president obama proclaim his desire to have the most transparent administration in history. in furtherance of that objective, then, this should be welcomed legislation to all parties. to many americans and to many of my colleagues, federal budgeting might seem like an abstraction and thus unimportant because dollar amounts in terms of billions and trillions of dollars are beyond normal human comprehension. most people don t think in those terms. in fairness, most of us don t think in those terms, so let s clarify this process by bringing these numbers down to the individual level. let s tell the american people, for example, under the president s last budget you owe $7,000 just to cover the deficit. that resonates. folks get that. math is pretty simple. the median income in indiana is around $45,000. income in payroll taxes will eat up about $9,000 of that. people will understand what it means when you tell them that under the president s budget you need almost 20% more per year per hoosier just to balance the budget. now, this is important, contrary to some of the things we heard earlier, maybe this bill will help incentivize those who are drafting budgets in the future to put together the budgets that actually balance at some point in the distant future so we don t have to have the sequester to in some kay get spending under way get spending under control. we know we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem in this country. so it s time the federal government and the white house in particular comes clean about the direct impact of our federal deficits on our nation s families. so i urge my colleagues to support this measure of good government by voting yea for h.r. 668 and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from maryland is recognized. mr. van hollen: thank you, mr. speaker. may i ask how much time remains on each side? the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from maryland has two minutes. and the gentleman from indiana has three minutes. mr. van hollen: all right. does the gentleman have any more speakers? one more speaker. why don t i reserve the balance of my time? the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from indiana is recognized. mr. messer: thank you, mr. speaker. i yield two minutes to another very good friend of mine, the third hoosier speaking and good friend speaking on this bill today, the distinguished gentleman from indiana, mr. stutzman. the speaker pro tempore: thank you, to my friend from indiana. this is i believe the fifth speaker from indiana. maybe we re getting something right in indiana. i don t know what it is. thank you for carrying this bill. we do have a balanced budget in indiana. we have made sure that we have taken care of the children and education. we ve made sure that our law enforcement is taken care of, but we ve also made those difficult choices early on that washington could really learn from in budgeting. i congratulate congressman messer for bringing this particular bill. it s a good government bill. i know the other side of the aisle is talking about the sequester, and i find it ironic that the washington times today has a headline that says, 400 more jobs were created in spite of the sequester. so i don t believe that the sky is falling here. this legislation requires the president to do some simple math and include with his budget, should he choose to submit one, an estimate of the cost of the deficit per taxpayer. taxpayers just simply deserve to know how much they owe for washington s out-of-control spending. after all, every dime that the federal government borrows is saddled on this generation and the next generation and generations to follow. right now the cost of washington s $16 trillion of national debt totals more than $147,000 per taxpayer. in fact, approximately every minute, mr. speaker, the federal government borrows another $4 million per minute, leaving this generation empty promises and massive debt. this is no way to run a government. if the president refuses to break the cycle of bailouts, borrowing and taxpayer and tax hikes, taxpayers deserve to know the true cost of the president s irresponsible decisions. the american taxpayers deserve transparency and that s exactly what this bill does. mr. speaker, i applaud my colleague from indiana and i thank him for bringing this bill to the floor and i urge support of all of my colleagues here in the house of representatives, and with that i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from maryland is recognized. mr. van hollen: thank you, mr. speaker. it s always good to see a show of hoosier unity on the floor of the house, and i look forward to joining my colleagues in voting for this bill. in the state of maryland, we also have a balanced budget but we also have a capital budget and other parts we do differently. look, mr. speaker, i support this bill, i support transparency, i supported virtually the identical provision 30 days ago. that s really not the issue. yes, we want more information and we ll get it, but the real issue here is the loss of jobs. now, the previous gentleman mentioned the washington times does an article saying more jobs were created. thank goodness we are finally seeing more and more jobs created. we will have economic growth. there will be jobs created. the question is how many fewer jobs we will have as a result of the sequester. the c.b.o. hasn t said it will stop every job from being created. what the chairman of the federal reserve has said and what the nonpartisan congressional budget office has said is that the sequester, if it remains in place through the end of the year, will be a drag on growth so we will have fewer jobs created. in fact, they estimate we will have 750,000 fewer american jobs by the end of the year if we don t do something about the sequester. so mr. speaker, i just go back to the original question. why take up something we ve already done, already passed virtually unanimously when we have a much more pressing issue? and when we today will ask for the fourth time this year when it counts to vote on a bill that would replace the sequester in a smart and balanced way without the loss of jobs, that s the fundamental question, and why this house is shirking that responsibility and refusing to hold a vote on a proposal that would prevent the loss of 750,000 jobs is a question i think the american people are asking themselves. so mr. speaker, let s get on to the business and focus on jobs and really reducing the deficit and not playing these kind of games on the floor of the house. thank you. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from indiana. mr. messer: thank you, mr. speaker. i appreciate the gentleman s help and comments on this bill. it s a good government bill. it s transparent. it tells the american taxpayer how much the federal government is racking on their dime. i hope it passes. it makes an important point that the bill is not a cure-all of the work and we have lots of work to do. far too many families in this economy have had to come home and deal with a job loss. the $85 billion that we re talking about in the sequester, while a lot of money, is 2% of our total federal government at $3.6 trillion budget. it s two pennies on every dollar. we agree that this sequester should be replaced. we disagree on how. surely we can find two pennies to save instead of raising taxes and taking more money out of the pocket of the american taxpayer. with that i close, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: both gentlemen s time has expired. the question is will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 668. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 having responded in the affirmative mr. messer: mr. speaker, i ask for a recorded vote. the speaker pro tempore: does the gentleman ask for the yeas and nays? mr. messer: yes. the speaker pro tempore: the yeas and nays are requested. all those in favor of taking this vote by the yeas and nays will rise and remain standing until counted. a sufficient number having arisen, the yeas and nays are ordered. pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20, further proceedings on this question will be postponed. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from virginia seek recognition? mr. speaker, i move that the house suspend the rules and pass h.r. 338, the stop tobacco smuggling in the territories act of 2013. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: h.r. 338, a bill to amend title 18, united states code, to include certain territories and possessions of the united states in the definition of state for the purpose of chapter 114 relating to trafficking and court and contraband cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from virginia, mr. goodlatte, and the gentleman from virginia, mr. scott, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes this gentleman from virginia. mr. goodlatte: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on h.r. 338, currently under consideration. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. goodlatte: mr. speaker, i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. goodlatte: cigarette trafficking is a very lucrative crime, both here in the united states and abroad. it is estimated that illicit cigarettes account for over 10% of the more than 5.7 trillion cigarettes sold globally each year. here in the united states approximately four billion of the cigarettes sold each year are illicit. cigarette smuggling is generally carried out by large criminal organizations that take advantage of the significant disparity between the taxes levied on cigarettes across the states. these differences create a highly lucrative job by purchasing cigarettes in one locality and transporting themming to another for resale them to another for resale below market value. criminals can make a profit of $1 million on just a single truck lold load of illicit cigarettes. this crime also harms state and federal revenues. according to the justice department, this illicit activity costs the states and the federal government an estimated $5 billion each year. this is money that could and should be put to better use. in 2009, congress took steps to cush contraband cigarettes with the prevent all cigarette trafficking or pact act. it prohibits cigarette trafficking over the internet. h.r. 338, the stop tobacco smuggling in the territories act of 2013, provides a technical correction to ensure the criminal prohibitions against cigarette smuggling apply to the territories of american samoa, guam and the northern mariana islands. just as they do in the rest of the country. without this fix, cigarettes sold in these territories without evidence taxes were paid do not fall within the definition of contraband cigarettes. this is a modest but important change to helpties courage crime and increase tax revenues in these territories. i want to thank mr. faleomavaega for his work on these issues as well as the ranking member on the full committee and subcommittee for their support of thevert. i thank mr. sensenbrenner as well and urge my colleagues to join me in support of this bill and reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from virginia, mr. scott is recognized. mr. scott: i yield myself such time as by might consume mr. speaker, i rise in support might consume. mr. speaker i rise in support of this bill, it is simple and straightforward, it amands the cigarette contraband trafficking act to include the territories of american samoa, guam and u.s. virgin islands in this act. the act applies to the sale of contraband smokeless tobacco in certain specified quantities. the act authorizes the imposition of criminal penalties and fines. as drafted, however, the bill does not apply to american samoa, the commonwealth of the northern mariana islands and guam. the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms is prohibited from investigating in those territories. h.r. 338 will cure this obvious oversight. mr. speaker, cigarettes are believed to be the most illegally trafficked product in the world and in twikse alone, more than 10% of worldwide sales, 600 billion zpwrerts counterfeited. contraband cigarettes present numerous issues. legally manufactured cigarettes are diverted from legal trade channels to the underworld for resale, evading the imposition of taxes and costing territorial governments a significant of cigarette tax revenue each year. it also facilitates unfair computation that hurts the bottom line of legitimate businesses. contraband cigarettes are not subjected to safeguards, therefore could contain taxics toxic ingredients that could affect the health of the smoker. it also results in easier affordability for our youth resulting in addiction at earlier ages. the ill list trade adds to the health care cost and the growing debt from fact use. currently, the use of tobacco claims 5.4 million a year lives a year and that number is expected to rise to eight million by 2013. i strongly support h.r. 338 and thank delegate faleomavaega for his leadership in spearheading this issue. i urge my colleagues to support the legislation and preserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves his time. mr. goodlatte is recognized. mr. goodlatte: i reserve my time. mr. scott: i yield such time as he may consume to the delegate from american samoa. mr. faleomavaega: i thank the gentleman for yielding, i want to thank my good friend the chairman of the house judiciary committee whether good lat and mr. john conyers, the ranking member. i would like to thank my good friend jim sensenbrenner, the chairman of the subcommittee, and the gentleman from virginia, my good friend, for their support in the subcommittee. i want to acknowledge speaker john boehner and majority leader eric cantor and democratic leader nancy pelosi for their support. my district faces a serious problem of tobacco smuggling. as many as 2.8 million cigarettes were smuggled into the territory. this resulted in the loss of about $275,000 in tax revenue in the territory. mr. speaker, securing a sustainable, stable source of local revenue stream is essential and must be encouraged for the territories as it is always done for the states. mr. speaker, it was for this reason that i began to look into this important issue. i was disappointed to find that under the current law, prohibitive great prohibiting cigarette smuggling not all territories were included. it is illegal to ship, sale, transport or po says more than 10,000 cigarettes not bearing the stamp of the jurisdiction in which they are found. it s punishable by up to five years in prison. continue the contraband cigarette trafficking act does not apply to american samoa, the territory of guam and the northern mariana islands. historically, when congress considered the bill in 1978, the senate version defined states, the district of columbia, puerto rico and a territory or possession of the united states. however the house provision include excluded the smaller territories. for some reason unknown to me, the conference substitute dotchted the house provision. the house provision is described as more accurately delineating the scope of the legislation. the bill before us today will correct this oversight under the current law this important piece of legislation will amend the contraband cigarette trafficking act in the territories. i urge my colleagues to support the bill and yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. mr. goodlatte: i close by saying this is a serious problem and the los to the territories mr. faleomavaega and others represent are lost revenues that they can use to meet legitimate obligations and we want to help them combat that. i strongly support the legislation and urge my colleagues to do the same and yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the question is will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 338? those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair mr. goodlatte: on that i ask for the yeas and nays. the speaker pro tempore: the yeas and nays are requested. those in favor of taking this vote by the yeas and nays will rise and remain standing until counted. a sufficient number having risen, the yeas and nays are ordered. pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20 further proceedings of this on this question will be postponed. pursuant to clause 12a of rule 1, the house will stand in recess subject to the call of the chair. become to the budget for a moment. senator mcconnel said the budget will be coming out on april 8. can you clarify that? i don t have any information for you. i don t believe the white house is looking to the senate to make announcements for it, so i m not sure. he said the budget timing is politically motivated and irresponsible. do you want to comment? i don t. april? jay, as the white house sees the pulse of the american people, has there been an uptick in letters and calls to the white house about sequestration and what s happening. i don t know the answer to that, we can take it and see. also, i want to find out when will the president say when? i m reminded of something he said at the podium last week, he said he has to make hard decisions some in his party may not look and virginia congressman bobby scott said the solution to sequester are about as bad as the sequester itself. when does the president said, ok, this is how far i will go. the president made clear he does not support budgetary practices that claim as their goal putting our fiscal house in order that ask all of the burden to be borne by senior citizens or middle class families or the most vulnerable among us. he will not support that approach. i think that has been consistent throughout the several years we have had this debate. what he has been willing to do is make clear that if we take a balanced approach, we can enact spending cuts in our discretionary, nondefense budget that are serious but allow us to continue to invest in key areas of the economy like education and research and development and education and clean energy technology and we can do that in a way that still bricks our discretionary, nondefense spending to a level it has not been since dwight eisenhower was president. if we do it in a balanced way, we can reform our entitlements in a way to preserve these incredibly crucial programs for senior citizens for generations to come an strengthens them, rather than he alternative which is if you don t do it in a balanced way, you have to gut these programs or end them as we know them or voucherize them in a way that shifts costs to senior citizens. the president is has those in his party who are vehemently opposed to cuts in those. when will the president listen to his own party? i think the president made clear when he was here on friday, as he has many times, that he has made some tough choices in his proposals, that he understands are difficult for some democrats, often many democrats, to go along with. he believes they re within the context of a broader deal, you will, won the context of a balanced deal that includes tax reform, the entitlement reforms, it protects the seniors and others. i think your question in a way makes his point which is that he has led on this issue in a way that i think leadership has often been defined in washington which is making decisions that are difficult, politically, within your own party and what we have not seen from republicans thus far in this debate, at least from the leaders, is a commensurate willingness to make the tough call and say, you know what, in the name of broader deficit reduction and getting serious entitlement reforms and getting our fiscal house in order we should go along with reforms that produce revenue much as the speaker of the house said he wanted two short months ago. you said tax reform generates rev mue revenue for deficit reduction, how is that different from tax reform that generates revenue? the speaker said he still believes the loopholes should be closed and that the revenues should be funneled into tax cuts. as we know and every economist will tell you, lower rates result in disproportionate benefits to americans. we haven t seen anything laid out specifically on how they would envision this tax reform. you re saying they should funnel that into tax beaks as opposed to deficit reduction. how do you funnel revenue into deficit reduction? as the president the president s plan would generate revenue through tax reform as well as savings through entitlement reforms and the combination would account for roughly $1.8 trillion in further deficit reduction. quick question, would the president sign a comprehensive bill that did not include a path to citizenship? the president made clear he believes a path to citizenship is a vital component of comprehensive immigration reform. it s in keeping with bipartisan efforts in the past and with the discussions under way in the senate with the so-called gang of eight system of he is encouraged by the progress that s been made thus far in the senate by that bipartisan group and he hopes that progress will continue. would he sign a bill that didn t include a path to citizenship? i m not going to speculate but i think it s clear, he believes a pathway to citizenship is vital to a comprehensive immigration package. so yes. on the comment yesterday, i m wondering if as a result, does the white house believe it has made it harder for the president to work with the republicans in congress now that jeb bush has come out the path to citizenship? does it move the whole debate to the right? i leave it to you and others to assess the political dynamics at play here. i note that numerous republicans believe that part of comprehensive immigration reform has to include a pathway to citizenship. i would also note that just to be clear that the president s pro what the president has put forward in his blueprint, what others have been considering, does not give an advantage to illegal immigrants. it makes clear they have to go to the back of the line when it comes to applying for citizenship and that s a key component of the president s blueprint. all the way in the back. donovan, you re next, sorry. how do you think this will affect the region? i don t know, i don t have a specific reaction, obviously, we worked very closely with our international partners, our partners in the asia-pacific region. we are a pacific power and we have significant interests in the region. we engage with and work with our chinese counterparts on a variety of issues both economic and security related. but for specific reactions to that, i would probably refer you to the defense department. donovan? thanks, jay. s that followup on something kristen and april asked. gallup had a survey that showed that 51% of the american people have no idea whether the sequester cuts are good or bad and it s been noted that the president s approval rating dropped seven points in a week. it s clear the american people are blaming him. before we say anything is clear based on one poll, could we just remember, think back a few months to the summer and fall of 2012 and understand that, you know, we re here focused on the president s agenda, getting the work done we think is most beneficial to the middle class, and you know, i just, i would caution everyone, i m not saying this is a bad poll as at at all, i have no idea, i haven t looked at it but i would caution everyone not suffer from amnesia about the folly that comes from chasing one poll from taking one poll s results and making a grand conclusion. sorry about that. over half don t know whether se quester is good or bad. he s been asked i m stunned that sequester that that many people even know what se quester is. it is it s a term that most people are familiar with only if they ve done jury duty. it doesn t really make a lot of sense when it comes to budgetary issues. but sorry, proceed. they know furlough. but he s been out there, speaking across the country and also addressing it from here. how does the white house account for that seeming failure to break through to get his messages out? again, i would argue that most americans are focused on their daily lives, what they re doing to ensure that they re taking care of their families, that they re making ends meet and to april s point, whether they know or have heard about sequester or sequestration, they ll know that something bad has happened if they get a furlough notice or a layoff notice or a notice that says their child in direct contradiction to ed s question, actually loses a slot in head start. they will know. and it will be unfortunate. the president said and it is absolutely true, we will manage the situation. but it cannot be lost on anyone that it s unnecessary. none of this achieves the stated objectives, sequester doesn t do it. increases in border patrol, increases some of the priorities moneys say they have. it does not happen under sequester. i think for these reasons republicans decry se quest sequester. descry sequester. the speaker of the house said it would harm the national economics. some republicans call it a tea party victory or a home run as two house republicans have on the record. we couldn t disagree more, it may be a narrow political victory in some conference room on capitol hill, that, none of the republican it achieved none of the republican party s stated objectives and does direct harm to the national defense and average folks across the country. the negotiation it was said today the negotiation with iran is a waste of time. do you agree? we are in p-5 plus one conferences with iran. we are clear-eyed about iranian behavior and that behavior led to situation where they re more isolated and suffering through an unprecedented sanctions regime. more isolated than ever before and suffering through the sanctions regime and that regime has done harm to its economy. and iran faces a choice, abide by u.n. security council resolution, to abide by international norms and obligations. and by doing so, rejoin the community of nations. and iran s isolation. give greater hope for the iranian people or continue down the path of flouting those obligations and endure the consequences through greater isolation and greater sanction and you know, the ultimate fact that it is our policy that iran will not and cannot acquire a nuclear weapon. the window of opportunity here, as i said the other day, i think yesterday, will not remain open forever when it comes to iran s chances to get right with the world. thanks. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] president obama visiting service members at walter reed national military center in bethesda, maryland. later today he ll have his first meeting at the white house with new defense secretary hagel. later this afternoon at the white house. back on capitol hill we re waiting to take you back live as the u.s. house will gavel in for a couple of votes. earlier they debated a bill that would require the president s budget to include an estimate of the cost per tax payer of the deficit and one against tobacco smuggling in u.s. territories. later this week, they will take up a bill on the budget. the rules committee will meet this afternoon. that will be live on c-span3 and c-span radio and c-span.org. earlier today, while we wait for the house to come in, earlier today we spoke to an analyst, a defense analyst who looked at the impact of the sequester budget cuts to the defense department. host: robert levinson. first of all, this focuses on defense contract spending. how do you define that? what is it? that s the money the department of defense spends on goods and services. it s about evenly divided between goods and services and it s somewhere around $315 billion a year. host: dow howe did you gatt they are data? guest: we at bloomberg government ingest this contract data reparted reported to the federal government, we ingest that, manipulate it, clean it up and we have tools for extracting the data in various ways and one way is by congressional district. host: we learned yesterday we don t have a good number on how many federal contractors across all agencies there are. do we have a good handle on the money being spent on defense contracting. guest: we don t have a good handle on the number of people working as defense contractors. even the department of defense, secretary gates talked about not having a good number. in terms of contracts and the dollars we spend we have a good handle on that. we know how much money is spent because these contracts are reported through a system. there are classified contracts that deal with intelligence work and other things which aren t reported but the rest is reported and we have a good handle on that. host: what was the headline out of this report. guest: the headline is counterintuitive, the democratic districts, those represented by democratic districts of congress, tend to get a little more defense contract dollars han the republican districts. host: here s one, contract spending. host: two republicans and eight democrats. guest: in the top 10. a lot of this is industrial stuff, goes to urban areas where there s more capability, that probably explains part of that. host: do we know what type of spending is going on in these districts? goip in most cases the big contract dollars are not guest: in most cases the big contract dollars are not, representative clay is not a big voice on the defense issues, doesn t sit on defense committees but he has a huge amount of boeing manufacturing in his district. he s in a good spot because like with the sequestration a lot of his money is coming from saudi arabia to buy fighter jets from the fighter jets. he does ok. host: what about jim moran? guest: he s probably the most vulnerable in terms of cuts coming to defense contracts. it s not big manufacturing or big aircraft it s i.t. services. i think the biggest contractor in his district is actually a translation company providing translation service for the department of defense. he s got a wide variety of companies headquartered close to washington, d.c. and services kind of businesses. the top republican is kay granger s district in texas, the 12th congressional district of texas, almost all lockheed. i think it s a little over $9 billion in her district, almost all lockheed and a good portion of that is the f-35 fighter jet, the largest program. these are two ways that defense dollars flood. the f-35 s or submarines or ships or the services for the department of defense. host: this report flips on its head the perception that republicans protect the pentagon more, protect pentagon spending more than democrats do. guest: there s a perception that republicans are more protective of the defense department, it s not necessarily because of the spending somehow if the spending moves to democratic districts. however what you re seeing now more with republicans is a real focus on austerity, on cutting budgets, on restricting the deficit and many more republicans than in the past have been willing to talk about the pentagon needs to be trimmed as well. host: how will sequester will sequester impact on this defense contractor spending? guest: sequester impacts it very much. for the department of defense it s about $7.9% or 7.8% on the discretionary side that s cut. it goes across the board so it will affect the contracts. now, the department of defense says it doesn t want to break contracts which it can co, but it pays penalties if it does that. so it doesn t want to break host: are there big penalties? guest: in some cases it can be. basically if the pentagon terminates a contract, there s sort a negotiation to say the negotiation process between the government and the contractor to say we ll leave this to take you back live to the house floor as members return for votes. and n the first electronic vote will be conducted as a 15-minute vote. remaining electronic votes will be conducted as a five-minute vote. the unfinished business is the vote on the motion of the gentleman from indiana, mr. messer, to suspend the rules and pass h.r. 668 on which the yeas and nays are ordered. the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: h.r. 668, a bill to amend section 1105-a of title 31 united states code to require that annual budget submissions of a president to congress provide an estimate of the cost per taxpayer of the deficit, and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: the question is, will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill. members will record their votes by electronic device. this is a 15-minute vote. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.] the speaker pro tempore: on this vote the yeas are 392. the nays are 28. with one present. the bill is passed and without objection the rulls are suspended, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. the rules are suspended, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. the unfinished business is the vote on the motion by the gentleman from virginia, mr. good lat, to suspend the rules and pass h.r. goodlatte, to suspend the rules and pass h.r. 338. the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: h.r. 338, a bill to amend title 18, united states code, to include certain territories and possessions of the united states in the definition of state for the purposes of chapter 114, relating to trafficking in contraband cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. the speaker pro tempore: the question is will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill. members will record their votes by electronic device. this is a five-minute vote. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.] the speaker pro tempore: on this vote the yeas are 421. the nays are five. 2/3 of those voting having responded in the affirmative, the rules are spuppeded, the bill is passed. and without the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. if members would please clear the well, take your conversations outside the chamber. the chair will now entertain requests for one-minute speeches. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas seek recognition? to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman from texas is recognized for one minute. mr. poe: madam speaker, the president s sequester has gone into effect and according to the white house, the sky is falling. the administration is on the tour du fear with the american people, yet it has the power to prioritize spending. who made the priority list? pakistan. that s right, madam speaker. in the midst of doom and gloom of sequestration, the administration is quietly shelling out an additional $37 million to pakistan. that s over half of the $67 million being cut from public education in texas. pakistan is the benedict arnold nation in the list of countries we call allies. pakistani leaders are continuing to vilify the united states on one hand and with the sleight of hand take our money. money i believe ends up in the hands of radical extremists. pakistan plays a dangerous dishonest deceit game by pretending to be our ally while simultaneously giving a wink and a nod to extremism. mr. president, fund our schools not a disloyal ally. that s just the way it is. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentlelady from connecticut seek recognition? without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute. ms. delauro: i rise in strong support of the fair minimum wage act introduced by congressman george miller. which would raise the minimum wage over three years to $10.10 per hour, then index the wage to inflation. it is long past time to get this done. the minimum wage in america used to be equal to about half of average wages. today at $7.25 an hour, it is barely a third. the purchasing power of the minimum wage has been dropping steadily since 1968. if the minimum wage kept up with inflation over the last 40 years, it would be at $10.55 an hour. this failure to keep pace particularly hurts women who make up nearly two out of three workers making the minimum wage. at that rate, a year of full-time work comes out to $14.500 a year. for a mom with two kids, it s over $3,000 below the poverty line. for tips workers the situation is worse. they make only $2.13 an hour, $2.13. low minimum wage is not bad for workers, it s bad for business and the economy. low wages limits consumer demand. it stalls our country s economic growth. it hurts everyone. raising the minimum wage would not just be a raise for 21 million workers, it would create 140,000 new jobs, boost our g.d.p. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady s time has expired. ms. delauro: we waited long enough. it s time to make sure all our workers make a decent pay for a hard day s work. i urge my colleagues to pass this legislation. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from minnesota seek recognition? to address the house for one minute. revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. speaker, i just want to congratulate the minnetonka high school girls hockey team who recently won the minnesota state high school hockey tournament, the first girls hockey team to do so, to win three consecutive state championships. the path to achieving greatness is never uncontested as these girls found out. the night before the championship, madam speaker, they played lakeville north for a four hour, 17 minute marathon game that finally ended in a win after a goal from amy peterson in the sixth overtime. mr. paulsen: the hard work and ted case of this team truly exemplifies what it means to be great student athletes who excel both on the ice the and the classroom. all their players and coaches deserve great praise for their determination this season. it s an honor to be able to represent and recognize such all star athletes. congratulations and go skippers. . the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from north carolina seek recognition? to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. bath bath madam speaker, we are merely five days into the sequester, this totally engineered crisis that didn t need mr. butterfield: madam speaker, we are merely five days not sequester, this totally engineered crisis that didn t need to happen. coast guard station elizabeth city, cherry point marine corps air station are integral parts of their local communities and also help to form the backbone of our national defense. the sequester has already impacted the coast guard with air operations being cut by 11% and maritime operations cut by 24%. these cuts have reduced maritime safety and security in the waters off of our coastline. furlough notices have already gone out to thousands of civilian employees at fleet readiness center where maintenance is conducted on navy and marine corps aircraft. the furlough amounts to a loss of $81 million. the 848 employees at butner federal correctional center in my district received furlough notices and will lose up to 10% of their salaries because of sequestration. the impact of the sequester are already been felt in martin county where the public school system has lost $400,000. this means that teachers are stretched even thinner and are forced to do more with significantly less. madam speaker, we need to rethink the sequester. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from california seek recognition? request unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. madam speaker, last week in a friday afternoon announcement designed to bury the news, the state department released a very troubling supplemental environmenta document regarding the keystone x.l. pipeline, a progress that would be undone in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning into a green energy economy. unfortunately, environmental protection seems to be a foreign policy to our state department, but even this pro-industry report cannot gloss over the fact that keystone x.l. would unlock development of some of the dirtiest, most climate-damaging fuel on earth and it would lock the united states into deeper dependence on expensive tar sands fuel which takes this country in the wrong direction for our environment and our economy. mr. huffman: just this morning in the subcommittee on energy and mineral resources, we heard about the enorm potential for wind energy to generate jobs and also cost-effectively improve energy independence. other forms of clean energy hold the same promise. madam speaker, it s time to get serious about climate change and clean energy job creation and importing dirty expensive tar sands fuel is the wrong way to do that. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker s announced policy of january 3, 2013, the gentleman from georgia, mr. gingrey, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority. majority leader. mr. gingrey: i thank the majority leader for yielding this time to discuss an extremely important issue facing our country, facing the patience in this great country of ours that are going to be have a very difficult time in finding a position, madam speaker. in march of 2010 when the so-called affordable care act, or pi pack or pa packa, was passed pipaca, was passed into law, it had positions for all patients across this country and also to bring down the cost of health care. well, we re two years into this bill which will become fully effective in january of 2014. and what are we seeing? madam speaker, the c.b.o. reported just recently that some seven million people have actually lost their health insurance, the health insurance provided by their more. and those who still do have health insurance, particularly those who get it maybe not from their employer but from the individual market, small group policy, the cost has actually increased some $2,500 a year instead of coming down as anticipated and predicted and promised, in fact, by president obama. but that just absolutely is not happening. so what we re going to be talking about, madam speaker, is, again, what needs to be done to correct this situation, because the thing that was never really discussed to my satisfaction when this bill was crafted was, how are you going to get the best and the brightest young men and women in this country to continue to go into the field of medicine, to become the doctors, particularly the primary care, internal medicine, pediatrics, pediatricians to provide that care when the reimbursement system under medicare called the sustainable growth rate where year after year after year for the last six or eight years we ve actually cut the income to the providers to the point, madam speaker, where they can t provide this care? they can t even break even. so this is what we re going to be talking about, this flawed sustainable growth system, and it has certainly contributed to the physician shortage crisis that we see today. now, i have a number of slides that i want to present to my colleagues, and we ll go over some specifics on that, but i m very pleased to be joined today in this hour with the co-chair of the house g.o.p. doctors caucus, my good friend and fellow physician member from tennessee, dr. phil roe. i m going to go ahead and yield to dr. roe at this point. mr. roe: dr. gingrey, it s good to see you moving your arm so well and recovering from your surgery so well. i think the question that comes up, and dr. gingrey and other members and i have discussed this, when i got here and dr. bringry i ve been here four years. dr. gingrey came some couple terms before i did, we did this for a reason because we wanted to impact the health care system in our country. the problem with the health care system in our country was costs are exploding. if you look, as he point out, the affordable care act has been anything affordable. the average family of four when you have to buy an essential benefits package which the government will determine what that is in 2016 will cost a family of four $20,000. that s unbelievable when you think that the per capita income in my district is $33,000. so i think we are we are at a point or going to be at a point where no one can afford it. what dr. gingrey is mentioning in the s.g.r., sustainable growth rate, what does that mean and why should i care if i m a senior? dr. gingrey and i both have medicare as our primary source of insurance. well, it started the idea was medicare started back in 1965, a great program for seniors who did not have access to care. it has met a great need since then. started as a $3 billion program. the estimate was from the government estimators in 25 years this would be a $12 billion program. we don t do millions here. billions. and the real number in 1990 was $110 madam speaker, $110 billion instead of $12 billion. they missed it almost 10 times. there have been various schemes to control the costs always reducing payments to providers. they are those who take care of us. nurse practitioners. it could be a chiropractor, podiatrist or your hospital. when you say providers, those are the folks and institutions that care for us when we re ill. so in 1997, the ways and means committee brought together something called the budget control act, and this is a very complex formula based on how you re going to pay doctors. their zip code, where they live, the cost of an office, the humidity in the air. it s an incredibly complicated scheme to pay doctors. and the idea is this, we have this much money to spend in medicare, and so we ve put a formula together to only spend this much money. if we spend less than that money, that will go as a savings. if we spend more than that much money, then we ll cut the doctors and the providers that amount of money to make that line balance. so what s happened mr. gingrey: will the gentleman yield back? mr. roe: i ll yield back. mr. gingrey: i want to point out to my colleagues and dr. roe the poster we have before us. this is exactly what the good doctor is talking about right now in regard to what s been going on since, what, the year 2000, and dr. roe, you may want to refer to this slide. mr. roe: if you ll mr. gingrey: i yield back. mr. roe: the particular slide that dr. gingrey has in there is telling. basically what it says is each year we ve recalculated what our physicians will be paid, then that number has actually we haven t met those metrics, which means we have to cut. what has congress done? congress has realized what we re talking about is not payments to doctors. what we re talking about is access to care for patients, and what happens is if you go back to 2003, i think it was 2003 when there was a 5% cut in medicare payments, we real o sed at that point right there realized at that point right there if you continue to do that that access would be lost. let s fast forward to 2013, what we are just facing. doctors were facing a 26.5% cut, the providers were mr. gingrey: dr. roe, that would be mr. roe: that s correct. that number right there. providers also that was avoided by one-year so-called doc fix. and what has happened over the last 15 or so, 16 years, the line that the ways and means committee, now law, says we have to spend this much money but we ve actually spent this much, that is a deficit in spending that we got to make up somewhere in our budget or add it to the budget deficit. now i go back to when i was in practice just four five years ago now in johnson city, tennessee, i was having a harder dr. gingrey, i don t know about you, but i was having harder primary care access for my patients that i operated on or maybe somebody that had been my patient for 30 years and if he was 40 years when i started caring for her and she was 70 years old and needed a primary care doctor, that was getting harder and harder to do. when you look at today s young medical students, we are having a much harder time convincing these young people go into primary care. it s pediatrics. family practice. family medicine. it s internal medicine and also ob-gyn. i certainly served as a primary care doctor, as dr. gingrey did, for many, many years. that would be the only doctor they d ever see. that s getting harder for our patients to do. dr. gingrey, that s my primary concern is access for seniors to their doctors. mr. gingrey: dr. roe, if you ll yield back to me for just a second. mr. roe: i ll yield. mr. gingrey: i ll return to you. again, i wanted to point out to our colleagues this poster, this slide that s on the easel before us, is exactly what the gentleman from tennessee is talking about in regard to shortage of primary care physicians. and as he pointed out, primary care is a family practitioner, is a general internist. of course pediatricians provide primary care to our children, but so many of these doctors are the very ones that take the medicare, take the medicaid, take the schip, the state health insurance program for children, they see them. and what dr. roe is referring, it shows in the dark blue the areas of these states, several states, including my own of georgia. tennessee is not quite as bad, but in my state of georgia, there are anywhere from 145 to 508 areas in the state of georgia where there is insufficient number of doctors to take care of these folks. tennessee is a little bit better. there are only 67 to 99 areas. all of this blue are critical areas, are they not, dr. roe, and i yield back to you? mr. roe: that is correct. so much so that in california what they re recommending i don t know if they carried it out or not but they recommended expanding the definition of primary care to a lower level provider. that would be a nurse or nurse practitioner or p.a. or that sort of thing. i think this sort of designation i think the other thing, dr. gingrey, that we haven t talked about and we should probably spend some time on is the age of our practitioners. in our state of tennessee where you see that, we re not quite as dire need as georgia. our friends to the south. the problem with it is that 45% of our practicing physicians in the state of tennessee are over 50 years of age. i m concerned that with the ad vent of the affordable care act, the frustration i see when i go out and talk to prociders, i m afraid many of them will punch the button for the door. i know in my practice, where we have about 100 primary care providers in our practice. in my ob/gyn group, we had over 120 years of experience walk out the door and retired. that s not a good thing. that quite frankly is the crux of it all. access if you do not have access, you will decrease quality and increase cost. that s our concern, ultimately the cost will go up if our patients can t get in to see us. i yield back. mr. gingrey: i thank the gentleman. what the gentleman from tennessee is talking about is having an insurance card, a health insurance card, even having a medicare card, does you very little good if you have to spend two hours going through the yellow pages trying to find some physician, primary care doctor, in your area that you would have to get in your car and drive, if you don t have access, you don t have anything. this bill, this massive bill that was passed two years ago at the cost of almost $1 trillion, that money was taken out of medicare to create this new entitlement fund for younger people so they can have health insurance, what we ve done is made the crisis in the medicare system that much more difficult. what dr. roe was talking about, colleagues, in regard to not just the shortage of the physicians, but the what happens in the waiting rooms all across our country, slide shows the number of primary care physicians per 1,000 population. the number of primary care physicians for 1 per 1,000 population. we ve already gone over, we re talking about, again, general internists and family practitioners primarily and pediatricians for schip and medicaid. you look at that map across the country, again, look at my state of georgia, in the deep red, there are several states, texas, yk, mississippi, alabama, utah, nevada, idaho in the west, where there are a number of primary care physicians per 1,000 of the population, it s fewer than one. less than one doctor per 1,000 people that need that care. many other states, including tennessee, it s somewhere between one and 1 ppt 2. i don t know how you get 1.2 physicians, i don t know exactly what that provider looks like, but you know how that math is calculated. clearly the shortages is a the shortage is acute and it s only going to get worse and worse. with that, i want to yield to one of my good colleagues, my good friend on the energy and commerce committee, whose father was the chairman of the health subcommittee of the energy and commerce committee for many, many years before he retired, his son took his place and now the gentleman from florida, gus bilirakis, is serving on that health subcommittee with me, and i yield time to the representative. mr. wall: mr. bilirakis: we must mr. bilirakis: since coming to congress, doctors in my district have consistently stressed the unsustainableability unsustainability of the s.g.r. and how it impedes long-term business models. it s a temporary stop-gap measure to avert the payment flip. doctors have to have certainty. we a shortage of doctors in the state of florida and it s only going to get worse. we must repeal the s.u.r. and replace it. it has led to uncertainty for medical providers, again, as i said, which threatens patient care. again, access to care is what it s all about and i m glad that the chairman of the energy and commerce committee, chairman upton, has made this a top priority, fixing the s.g.r., again, not only is he associated with reimbursement rates and physician practices, it affect house the center for medicare and medicaid services plans to update medicare advantage rates. i know that seniors in my district. congress not allows the s.g.r. cuts to take effect, congress is assuming these cuts will take place as it determines the medicare advantage adjustments. we always fix it at the end of the year. but they re assuming that the cuts will take place. i worry this will result in reduced benefits and increased premiums for the many seniors who like, really love, their medicare advantage program. mr. gingrey: i thank the gentleman from florida, what he is addressing right now is goes back to the creation of this law. the affordable care act, sometimes referred to as obamacare. money was taken out of the existing medicare program which is already strained almost to the bursting point and the medicare advantage program probably 20% of medicare recipients select that model because it gives them more bang for the buck. it gives them more coverage and it includes things and the gentleman from florida knows this. and this is what he s referencing. it includes more than just an annual physical when you turn 65. it includes more than being able to go to see a doctor and have it reimbursed under medicare when you have an episode of illness. there s a strong emphasis on medicare advantage to wellness,, let s say you do go and see the doctor because of an episode of illness and maybe several prescriptions were written and it s very important that the patient take the med case on a regular basis and not run out of med case, under medicare advantage, there would be a nurse, maybe in the doctor s office who within just a few days of that encounter would call the patient to make sure that he or she could afford to get those prescriptions filled and they were taking them in the right way. and that s what the word advantage was all about. medicare advantage. rather than just the traditional fee for service medicare. but this new law created two years ago, and will go into full effect in january 20, 14, literally gutted that medicare advantage part, did it not, representative bilirakis? it cut that program 12% to 14%. it just literally gut, i m talking about $130 billion were taken out of that one program. and so now, seniors that were on medicare advantage are having to look for new doctors, look for new programs, try to, again, go through those yellow pages and find somebody that will see mama, with has been going to this other group for years. and totally satisfied. so you know, when the president said to the american public, you like the health insurance plan you have, don t worry, you can keep it. you will not lose it. that wasn t true. i don t think he deliberately told an untruth, but it clearly is not true. as i say, and i said at the outset of this hour, some seven million people have already lost insurance provided by their employer and many more of these people that were getting their medicare through the advantage program, they have lost that through no choice, madam speaker, of their own. no choice of their own. they have been forced out of those programs. so i yield back to my colleague and we ll continue this colloquy. mr. bilirakis: i couldn t have said it better myself, dr. gingrey. again, i have constituents in florida, it s about 20% in my district. closer to 40%, who have chosen medicare advantage. it s all about choices as far as i m concerned. if i wanted to get hearing aids, if i want to get a gym membership what have you, i should have the choice to choose my plan. it works so very well in our area. we weren t going to give seniors a choice. my father as you referenced work sod many years to fix this s. fwmplet r. and i m very proud to serve on the health committee but i appreciate the two doctors here and all the doctors who have really sacrificed to run for congress and do what s good for our people, patients, treating patients is what it s all about. thank you very much for allowing me to participate. mr. gingrey: i thank the gentleman, and i thank ms. dad, representative bill bilirakis, who served with distinction for so many years, i hope he s enjoying a happy, healthy retirement. i hope he s able to find the care, but i bet you not under medicare advantage as his son just told us. i want to yield back to the gentleman from tennessee. mr. roe: i thank the gentleman. why do i have concern about this. i had the misfortune for going through health care reform 20 years ago, what happened, what happened was we had a large group of people in our state, who didn t have access to quality, afordable health care, we reformed our medicaid program, opened it up, had an open enrollment time, where we ll have the various plans compete against each other. i heard discussed the public optioned in the debate four years ago. so what happened? what happened to us was our cost tripled in 10 years in that plan. it went up three times. you can see before it s implemented, the costs have already doubled. costs to patients are going up, cost to businesses going up. it was supposed to low they are cost, bend the cost curve down and didn t do that. so we started cutting our providers, we cut our nurses, nurse practitioners, p.a. s. our practice where we were, we as an obstetrician, as you were, we took emp because pregnancy is one of those conditions where you either are or you re not. we felt like if those folks needed care, we kept seeing critical care patients like that. but many elective things, orthopedic, dermatology, those kinds of things got cut off. and people would have to drive hours to see a specific, especially a specialist. i saw access get denied in that system when the cost of the whole system went up to where no longer the state could afford it. that s why patients patients should be worry. we have, you and i know these numbers, 10,000 people a day, 3.5 million people this year will be medicare age, no p people on the plan with less money and if we have more people and we re not producing more doctors, you can do the math. in 10 years, we re going to have 35-plus more million people on medicare and who is going to care for those people? another thing i want to bring sup that we re not just talking about how doctors are paid. we re talking about increasing quality. one of the measures we re going to look at when we look at the new payment form, right now, the way you and i were paid when we were in practice was, patient came new york you got a fee for that visit, that s called fee for service medicine. that s going to change. we re going to look at quality outcomes and measures, and i ll give you an example about why that s important. 1% of our medicare recipients use 20% of all medicare dollars. so we have to look at how we manage the care of those patients better. for instance, congestive heart failure. if someone leave thinks hospital, we know that certain metrics are taking place. weights every day, blood pressures, check in with a provider, you can prevent rehospitalizations and save tremored byity, mortality and costs. it increases the quality of life that patient has and the quality of care we have. we re going to be evalue wate on the outcomes we have and the quality of care we provide our patient, which we all agree should be done. i think coordinating care with, hopefully with better electronic records and i have, i could spend an hour talking about that but if we have a coordinated electronic system where when youed or aerotest at your office or the hospital, we have access to it so that test is not repeated and duplicated that will make a huge difference in cost. i just had a duplicated test myself done, you may have too when you had your procedure, i had a surgical procedure done two weeks ago this last monday and there was some testing on myself that didn t have to be done but because of various rules and regulations and inability to get that information easily it was repeated. it was easier to repeat it and pay for it than go find it. and i think that happens across 300 million people, actually 47 million of us who get medicare now. so we need to do that, better coordinate that information sharing and transparency. mr. gingrey: if the gentleman will yield for just a second because i wanted to weigh in on that issue of electronic medical records. i m normally as the good doctor from tennessee knows, walking around in a sling, i should have probably, madam speaker, should have it on right now, madam speaker, but i m resting my arm on the podium, but i just recently had rotator cuff surgery back home in georgia. madam speaker, i m blessed with a great physician who did a wonderful job and has a fabulous staff. but going through the process of doing the paperwork, i bet i filled out the exact same form, the exact same form four different times. and that was wasting my time. that was wasting their time. of course what they want to make sure is that no mistakes are made. obviously they want to make sure, they re operating on the right arm, the correct arm, i should say. and i understand why. i am sure many of you, your parents and your grandparents and you yourself, my colleagues as patients have gone through all of that. but what dr. roe is talking about, and i yield back to him, electronic medical records is indeed in my opinion the wave of the future. and honestly i believe if we had concentrated on that two years ago, to make sure it was fully implemented so that duplication of testing, unnecessary procedures, maybe medications prescribed to which the patient had a dangerous allergy, you really do ultimately save lives and save money by having electronic medical system and then the other thing, if we had had medical liability reform. the president promised that before this obamacare bill, 2,700 pages was put into law but nothing in there about medical liability reform. here again, and i think the gentleman from tennessee would agree with me on that, but i yield back to him and i wanted to interject my thoughts on electronic medical records. mr. roe: i went from paper to electronic records. it s a difficult process. it would be easier than transferring thousands, tens of thousands of patient charts to it. when you start from scratch, it s a little easier. and certainly i think the electronic eprescribe i can t believe he couldn t read my prescription. anyway, they claim they couldn t. this solves that problem. you literally can put that in very well. i think there are disadvantages to it. overall i think it is the wave of the future. i think you are correct. i am going to bring up something now, let s say we go ahead and we do fix the s.g.r. payment that s based on quality and it s based on outcomes and transparency, hospital readmissions and so forth, all those metrics we talk about to better serve our patients and there will still be fee for service because i m sure, dr. gingrey, you re rural georgia representative as i am a rural east tennessee representative. i have county that have one doctor. you can t do an accountable care organization or all of these things in a small rural county. so fee for service medicine will still be there for those patients so they can have access in small rural counties and don t have to drive long distances. but let s say we do all of this wonderful stuff and we fixed this payment model and it all looks good, the affordable care act in it, the independent payment advisory board, and this independent payment advisory board trumps what we just did. all these things that you re going to do and your energy and commerce and thank you very much for what you re doing on that, all these cuts that you see right here let me depiff you the data. give you the data. mr. gingrey: the green, the top of the line is where we in the congress mitigated these cuts because we can do that. that s what it says in the constitution. we re in charge of the purse strings. and so when a recommendation, as dr. is referring to, madam speaker, recommendation of the cuts, in the pink, below the line over from 2001 to 2012, almost every year, 5%, 3%, 4%, 10%, and in the aggregate, that number just keeps getting bigger and bigger and what dr. roe is about to explain to us is how we were heretofore able to hit gait by making these mitigate by making these changes above the line and say, no, we are not going to cut the doctors, because we know if we do that they will not be there for our parents and our grandparents, ourselves and our children. i yield back. mr. roe: i thank the gentleman for yielding. i think we have just correctly we have, the congress, and using its constitutional authority, has overridden the s.g.r. 15 times since 2002. i think that s the correct data. what i was ipab does and the affordable care act, it sets the same metric. it has a real a very complicated formula. same as s.g.r. and if you have if you have expenditures above those projections, cuts will be made. there is no judicial review, no administrative review. it takes a 60-vote margin in the senate to override this. let me tell you how important this is, as dr. gingrey pointed out. whether you agree with the plan or don t agree with the plan, there was an article in the new england journal of medicine that was published in june of 2011. i recommend this anyone to read. it will take you 30 minutes or less to read it. and they went back with the c.m.s. and looked at the last 25 years and said, what if we had ipab then, what would it do? 21 of the 25 years, cuts would have occurred to providers. i know exactly because of what i have seen in tennessee, i know exactly what would happen. what happened is you cut those providers right there as you re seeing up there, dr. gingrey, i can tell you access to care, that entire map of the united states right there would be a bright red because you would not have the providers to take care of those patients. and that is a concern to me because that is current law. this year those 15 bureaucrats are supposed to be nominated by the president. what happens if he doesn t nominate those 15 people? one person, that s the h.h.s. secretary mr. gingrey: secretary. mr. roe: secretary sebelius makes those recommendations. i go on the talk shows like you do. they say in the bill it says you cannot ration care. that s true. this board can t ration care. what it says it can t pay the providers. the hospitals are not included in this but will be in five short years. mr. gingrey: dr. roe, if you yield to me. if you look at the slide, these blue areas, these states where the shortage areas, acute shortage areas like georgia and florida, this whole map of the united states would be blue. mr. roe: that is correct, dr. gingrey, and i think that s something that unless you are very deeply buried into this and you are a medicare recipient out there today, you don t see this. when i go home and i see my physician friends and talk to my friends who are on medicare, they don t know this has happened or potentially could happen to them. but it can and it will and it is the law right now unless we change the law. i would strongly encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and we have bipartisan support for appealing the ipab is put that constitutional authority back in the hands of the people who are directly responsible and responsive to the american people, us, the representatives, and let us make those changes and the senate the same thing. with that i yield back. mr. gingrey: and i thank the gentleman for yielding back to me. i want to continue a colloquy with him and maybe even ask a question with him. in regard to the ipab, and dr. roe, madam speaker, explained very clearly how that is a section of obamacare, a very important section which gives these 15 bureaucrats appointed by the president and they basically can now say from year to year, well, the doctors and the hospitals are going to be cut so much reimbursement. these cuts are going to occur and you can no longer, as we showed in the first slide how over the years congress has been able to mitigate because you read the constitution. we, the members of the congress, control the purse strings. and so fortunately we were able to make these changes into what was suggested, but this ipab board of 15 bureaucrat, they re not making a suggestion. they re telling us what has to be done. and the question i wanted to ask, dr. roe, madam speaker, when this case went before the supreme court, questioning the constitutionality of the law saying that if a governor of the state, like the governor of georgia, governor nathan deal, an 18-year member of this body, by the way, makes the decision not to expand medicaid because the state can t afford it and the state s already going broke on the current medicaid program , is it constitutional for the government, the federal government said that, well, if you want to expand the medicaid program, we re going to make sure you can t participate at all and all of your current recipients of medicaid in the state of georgia are out on the street. so that was the question that was asked of the supreme court. as well as, was it constitutional to force people to engage in health care if they didn t want to? if they didn t want to purchase now, i m not saying that i m recommending that they don t, but the question before the supremes was, is it constitutional under the commerce clause to make people engage in commerce if they don t want to do it? well, the supreme said in a very pain, strain, pretzel-like decision that was constitutional. but dr. roe, if you know whether or not this question about ipab was addressed by the supremes, is it constitutional or not, i m not sure. i m thinking it wasn t addressed. can you speak to that? mr. roe: that s correct. i had the privilege of being in the chamber when a good part of this health care debate was going on in front of the supreme court. first time i d ever been there. fascinating. i totally misread it. as you pointed out, first time in american history that the supreme court said that you had to purchase a good service, even if it s good for you shes good for you, that you had to purchase it. we never forced people into commerce before. i think you have the right to make good decisions and bad decisions. if you can afford health insurance you need to purchase it. i have for my family my entire life and would recommend strongly encourage people to prothemselves in that way. but does the government have the right to do it? but this court 5-4 said. the court also said they didn t have the right to force states into expanding their medicaid if they did not want to. and the ipab specifically was not brought up. i believe it will be challenged and should be. no one has standing yet because it hasn t come into effect. in other words, they haven t issued any rulings or the secretary hasn t to say i ve been harmed by that ruling so therefore i can bring a case. i yield back. mr. gingrey: so you re saying it s in the law but because it hasn t been applied yet, and in fact, indeed, as dr. roe pointed out, madam speaker, the board, the ipab board, 15 bureaucrats, have not even one of them their salary has been set. i think they re scheduled to make $150,000 a year and probably have a car and a driver and health insurance and retirement plan and not too bad a gig if you can get it but so far i don t think any have been appointed. and so that s what dr. roe is referring to, madam speaker, when he says there s not standing yet. if you went to the supreme court they would say the case is not right. i m standing here as a physician trying to sound like an attorney. i will get myself in a lot of trouble here in a minute, madam speaker, but dr. roe explained that very well, but i do agree with him, colleagues, i do agree with dr. roe that will be challenged and certainly should be struck down. you look at the constitution, our fifth and sixth graders probably could make that decision and it wouldn t be a 5-4 split decision. it would be 9-0. i yield back. mr. roe: i thank the gentleman for yielding. actually the ipab board is 15 bureaucrats that will make $165,000 with a six-year term and they can be appointed twice to that term. it s something what bothers me about it is, no, it says in the bill you can t ration care. but we are elected representatives, we should be able to go back home and face our constituents and they re going to say, dr. roe, i have a situation where i can t see my doctor, because they re not accepting patients because this particular board has cut their reimbursements enough that they can t afford to see patients. i think the thing in the affordable care act, another couple of things i want to talk about, not just s.g.r. effects, but there is a tax out there in the affordable care act that hasn t been very well discussed that tax is on individual insurance accounts, for instance, there are companies out there that are self-insured and they are going to get a bill for each person that has insurance, say a family of four or five, they get a family of four or five people, one company in particular, they have no reinsurance, they cover everything, they re totally self-insured but this basically is a tax that will go into a fund to indemnify insurance companies so they won t have a loss of more than $60,000 a year, this is billions of dollars when you stretch it across the country and these insurance companies are going to not have the loss to encourage them to accept patients on the exchange. that s as wrong as it gets to take a company that s doing everything right, they re going ahead and providing the health insurance coverage for their employees, and po penalize them for that. there are many, many issues in the affordable care act we could talk about but i want to finish any comment thopes sustainable growth rate by saying in the past, since 2001, just so that our viewers out there will understand this, since 2001, your medicare doctor at home has gotten an average increase in his or her payments when you come see them of .29% per year. .29% per year. when you look at all that graph that dr. gingrey has down there and do all the math, that s the increase, a minimal increase, hasn t come near covering the cost of inflation. again, dr. gingrey, i want to conclude, to say that the major concern i have, and i saw it in my practice, is the cost of care and number two, access to care. and i m concerned as our patients age and our population ages, and look, a good thing is happening in america. almost every 10 years we live we re adding three years to our life expectancy. in 19 0 in 1908, the life expectancy was 47, 48. 1922 when my mother was born, still living, i might add, living alone, by herself, doing great, she has medicare and i m going to tell my mother now, later today i m going to call her prescription in, she needed some medicine called in, doyle that for her today, but i look at her and think about her need for access to care and if it s cut off what does she do? i yield back. mr. gingrey: i thank the gentleman for yielding back to me. he talked about his mom, i stand here thinking about my own mom who is 95 years old and her body is getting a little frail but mom s mind is perfect, perfect, madam speaker. she has enjoyed the benefit of medicare and social security for many years. many years system of these legacy programs are hugely important. they re hugely important to our side of the aisle. madam speaker don t my colleagues all thised mei-scare stuff, things you get rhetoric about, they don t care about seniors, they re going to push somebody s grandmother over the cliff in a wheelchair, that s just a bunch of bull. i think every member of this poddy and every member of congress cares about seniors and cares medicare program. but i also have 13 fwrirn. 13 grandchildren. i want this medicare program to be there for them someday. just like it s been there are mom all these years. so as we talk about these issues, we would do nothing to harm current recipients of medicare and social security. we use the term, the phrase, i guess you d say, hold harmless. hold harmless any changes that we would make, whether it s the payment system to our doctors and hospitals for providing the care, it would not take away any benefit, it would not cause our current seniors to have to pay a higher premium, a co-pay a deductible, all we re doing is trying to come up with something to save the program for them but most importantly for these youngsters that are coming behind us. the next two generations. that s what we re all about. my colleague if he has more comments, i would like to refer back to himism know we re getting short of time in the hour so i refer back to the gentleman from tennessee. mr. roe: i do, dr. gingrey. one of the things i know you did and i know i did was come here to this great body and work on the repair of our health care system, improve on it. one of the major pieces of the health care system is our medicare system. i can note tell you the patients i have seen who have benefited, whose lives have been help and saved by the medicare system and by the doctors and nurses and hospitals and other providers who have cared for them. you have too. i ve operated on them, seen them get cardiac care. whatever it may be. that have improved the quality and improved and lengthened the quality of life, not just to live longer but to live better. look at the number of patients we see that our orthopedic friends, that we have that are mobile, that are being active that have had joint replacements and so forth. if you re 80 years old or 75 or 80 years old, you understand that your life is not going to be that much longer. but you also want the quality of that life to be the absolute best it can be and it cannot be if you can t get your knee fixed if you re in pain or your hip fixed if you re in pain. i think one of the things our side of the aisle is committed to, the other side of the aisle may have differences of opinion but i want to be sure we shore up and save this great system of medicare. and we had i had a meeting today after lunch about the medicare part d program that was passed by the republicans at some political risk for them. that s been a plan that s actually come in under budget and it came in under budget because seniors are able to go shop and purchase exactly what they want that meets their needs. that is exactly what we want to do in the medicare system. when our intunlt published, i think next week, we re going to look at a system in which we fix, help fix and save and sustain medicare as you pointed out not only for your mother who is 95 and my mother who is 90, but for my two grandchildren who are 7 and 9. they also deserve the same great system and we re going to have to change it but i think we can make it better. i believe it can be more responsive you see what patients to when they get medicare advantage you saw what they did. there was a little confusion, i admit, when medicare part d first came out. there s no confusion now. people shop for the best value that meets their needs. that s what we should do. let me give you an example. i turned 65 a very short time ago. what happened to me when i turned 65? nothing. i got one day older. except what happened was i had a plan that had an alphabet soup. a, b, c, d. the day before i had a health care. why when you turn 65 years of age don t you have a health care plan and in that health care plan i can pick out, i don t need fertility coverage at age 65, thank you very much. i think that s the kind of thing that allow seniors to pick what meets their needs at that particular point in their life. not just one size fits all. but what they need. seniors have done that, they do it with everything else in their life. no reason it should change when you hit 65. you can pick out one plan, like you and i do here with the federal employees benefit plan. it will be cheaper, it will be a better plan for them. that s one of the things we re going to be discussing in the next several month whence the republican budget is published. i yield back. mr. gingrey: madam speaker, as we get near the closing of the hour, i want to just mention several things dr. roe has alluded to these, talking about the medicare advantage and what a beneficial program that was. unfortunately it s now been gutted, literally gutted, cut at least 12%, to create this new program, obamacare, medicare part d, the gentleman from tennessee is talking about the preprescription drug part of medicare that we did my first year, when i first came here in 2003. the medicare modernization. and modernization and prescription drug act. seniors for many, many years have wanted to get their prescription drugs covered by medicare but they couldn t. and of course when you have to go to the drugstore and get five prescriptions filled and most of them are brand name, not generic, some generic, maybe, but these brand name drugs, we finally did this for our senior well, spent maybe $750 billion creating that program and we got criticized for it. it wasn t paid for. we didn t offset by cutting spending somewhere else. i think maybe that criticism under the current system is legitimate but really when you think about it you scored dynamically, you realize if people, senior, all of a sudden could take their blood pressure medicine and not have to worry about a stroke, could take their diabetes medicine and not have to worry ry about eventually having renal failure from diabetes or an amputation, in the long run what i m saying, madam speaker is this program, medicare part d, medicare advantage, electronic medical records if we scored things in the right way dynamically, at the end of the day, 10 years 20 years, whatever, we re going to save money. because people are not going to have to have coronary bypass surgery, won t have to have amputations, won t end up the rest of their lives in a nursing home because they ve had a catastrophic stroke that left them totally incapacitated. i m going to yield back to the gentleman from tennessee to close us out. mr. roe: i have one quick statement, dr. gingrey. when you brought this up, in 2003, i want to thank you, because i remember sitting at my desk in my office in 2003 working and i can take this pin right here and in about a minute or a minute and a half, i could write two or three prescriptions that would take up a patient s entire monthly income. that was a decision patients had to have. republicans stepped up to the plate, made a very difficult decision, maybe we should have some criticism for not having offset bus seniors out there today don t have to make the decision about whether to break this pill in half or don t take it today or whether i buy food and you ran across that in your practice some. i would look in our area, many widows i would see would have a $600 or $700 a month social security check and $100 or $200 a month pension. you write three prescriptions and it s gone. you could easily do that. i want to thank you for your vote and i yield back. mr. gingrey: i thank my colleague and madam speaker, i thank you and i thank the leadership of the republican party for allowing us to bring this information to our colleague in a bipartisan way. we are all about solving these problems. we talk basically about the sustainable growth formula, the way we pay doctors for volume of care. clearly we have to go to paying for cault of for quality of care. we don t have time to get into the details of that today. in the next special order hour, that the doctors caucus leads, we ll get into more details about what we re going to recommend to our committees, to our leadership, to both sides of the aisle in regard to solving this problem. with that, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from colorado seek recognition? madam speaker, i ask unanimous consent to remove as co-sponsors from h.r. 423, the following representatives, representative ileana ros-lehtinen, representative janice schakowsky and representative steve stivers on february 26, 2013, three names were added as co-sponsors that were not intended to be included. mr. coffman: they were meant to be added to another bill i introduced, h.r. 435. their removal is only necessary due to a clerical error on the part of my office rather than a decision by the four offices. thank you, madam speaker. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. the chair lays before the house an enrolled bill. the clerk: h.r. 307, an act to re-authorize certain programs under the public health service act and the federal food, drug and cosmetic act with respect to public security and all-hazard preparedness response and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker s announced policy of january 3, 2013, the chair recognizes the gentleman from iowa, mr. king, for 30 minutes. mr. king: thank you, madam speaker. it s always my honor to be recognized to speak here on the floor of the united states house of representatives and prifrpbled to har from dr. privilege to hear from dr. phil roe. i have a few things on my mind that i d like to inform you of, madam speaker. i d start with this. sometimes we need to take a look at the bigger, broader direction that this congress is going and this country is going. one of the things i ve learned being involved in the legislative process, and being back in the iowa state senate some years ago, my colleagues said, we are busy doing that which is urgent we are not doing things which are important. and that should frame all the things that we do. we should have a long-term plan. we should have a big picture plan and the things that we do should fit into that. we should be putting the jigsaw the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. how does that broader view fit? our founding fathers understood it. they knew the perspective of history and knew where they stood in history and acted accordingly. they understood human ufrls. they made deep, long-term, broad, deliberative decisions that were difficult and debate and hard fought out and at the thought those pieces in place for us. it s clear for me when i read through the documents of our founding fathers that they understood history and human nature. it s not as clear to me, madam speaker, when i serve here in this congress and engage in debates here on the floor and in committee and in subcommittee and around in the places where we re often called upon to comment or listen to the comment of others that we re looking at this from the big picture. something that brought this home for me was on a trip i was involved in dealing with negotiations with the europeans and one of the speakers who was an expert on the middle east made a presentation about the muslim brotherhood. i m not here to speak about the muslim brotherhood except this. part of his presentation was that the muslim brotherhood is, according to the speaker, a hollow ideology. i put that in quotes. a hollowed ideology. their belief system isn t anchored in those things that are timeless and real. those things like the core. i am going to expand a little bit on the core of faith, the core of human nature, but a hollow ideology. so when he used that term and professed that, how they can t continue, that they ll eventually expire because they re sunk by their own weight rather than void by a belief system saying a full ideology. i began to look at our western civilization and we are here in the united states, madam speaker, the leaders of western civilization. and so when the allegation of a hollowed ideology is placed on the muslim brotherhood, i wonder, can i make the argument that our ideology wholesome? are the pillars of american civilization carried here and do we strengthen this nation so that the next generation have the same opportunities we had or do we ignore antley wiggle through the day-to day issues rather than dealing with how we got here? so i look back at the time when i first ran for office and i was putting together a document that i wanted to hand out to my hopefully future constituents and i believe i should put a quote in there that sounded wise, hope knee was wise, and as i sat in my construction office about 1:30 in the morning and i wrote up this little quote. part of it is naive and another part of it i think is appropriate. and the quote was this. human nature doesn t change. that if we ever get the fundamental structure of government correct, the only reason we need to reconvene our legislative bodies are to make appropriations for coming years or adjustments for new technology. madam speaker, when you think about what that means, if we ever get government right, if we ever get our laws in place, our regulations in place so they reflect and bring about the best of human nature since human nature doesn t change and it heapt changed throughout the generations, then just make the adjustments for appropriations and new technology, that s a correct statement i believe. but it s pretty naive about the reality of coming to a consensus on getting the fundamental structure of law correct, let alone the fundamental structure of regulations correct without regard to the changing technology that s always thrust upon us here. we are continually going to be in an argument, in a debate about the fundamental human nature, how people react to public policy and about where we like to see society go. now, those of us on my side of the aisle believe that we have values that are timeless. whatever was true 2,000 years ago is true today. and whatever was sinned 2,000 years ago is sinned today. there are many on the other side of the aisle that society isn t going in the right direction unless you re constantly changing thing with regard to the values we re changing, just grasping for change. if change is the mission and they are launched upon that mission, they believe they re doing good because they re eliminating the things that we ve had and adopting something different, not necessarily something better. and they don t even argue that it s better but they argue for change. so i would say this, madam speaker, that we have fundamental values, that these fundamental values have been clear to our founding fathers, are rooted in human history. they go back to the time of adam and eve, but the thing we should keep track here are things our founding fathers looked out as well. that being the rule of law is one of the essential pillars of american exceptionalism. without it we can t be a great country. most of the pillars of american exceptionalism are listed in the bill of rights. our founding fathers got it right. when they guaranteed us in the first amendment, the freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the press, all of that rolled up in one amendment. think what that means. and i would argue especially to our young people, madam speaker, that if we don t exercise these rights and our founding fathers made it very clear, these are god-given rights. thomas jefferson wrote it in the declaration. signed by the hands of those founding fathers that pledged their lives, their for turns and their sacred honor that those rights come from god. it s the first time that concept had been argued and established and put down as the foundation of this republic. but it s not the beginning of these god-given rights. it is the most it is the most defensible version of it. but i would take us back to the originalins of the rule of law which seems to be origins of the rule of law which seems to be forgotten here in the house. i tested them in a couple of places, madam speaker. the rule of law, the foundation of the rule of law i would say it was founded by moses, mosaic law. as that law was handed down and we went through that time, the birth of christ, and we saw during that period of time that the time of christ that the greeks and the romans had embraced mosaic law even though they sometimes good-natureuredly teased each other about borrowing their ideas of the rule of law from moses, it flowed into greek law and roman law. if you look at history, the romans float across western europe all the way up into england and ireland. they established themselves in a big way because of the rule of law. that rule of law was about the time that the dark ages began around 406 a.d., around 410 a.d. when rome was sacked and we saw ourselves go into the dark ages. and i ll say the uncivilized began to destroy anything they saw was the evidence of the civilizations of the greeks and the romans. and as they tore down the buildings, they tore down the symbols, those things that reminded them of the former civilization and out of that came the roman church collected and protected many of those documents of the classics and the irish amongst collected and protected many of the classics of the era, of the greeks and the romans, and we went through those hundreds of years of the dark ages when people forgot about how to think. about the age of reason. how to apply deductive and inductive reasoning, rational thought. that disappeared and it became the rule of emotion rather than the rule of law. the society driven by instinct and emotion rather than the society that was ordered by rational thought. and how did this come back together? we think we couldn t lose this again together, madam speaker, but it was lost at one time. and it was reconstructed again after hundreds of years. i think about how that was bridged. there are a number of symbols of the bridging of the classical period, of the greeks and the romans, through the dark ages into the middle ages and in today. some of those symbols, one of them would be the cathedral of the dome in colon, germany. if i have my history right i didn t commit this to precise memory for the purposes of delivery but conceptually i will. the origins of that cathedral and that church and that diocese began about 330 a.d. can you imagine before the fall of the roman empire, the christian faith was building gothic edifices in western europe as monuments and symbols of the deep core of their belief system, not a hallowed ideology, but a full ideology, driven by a christian faith and followed on by individual rights that are and the foundation of that cathedral of the dome began to be laid around 330 a.d. the architecture plans, for the church that existed today, was about 832 a.d. then they began to build around a few hundred years. around 1100 or so they ran out of money. we haven t emerged out of the dark ages but we re beginning. hundreds of years of dark ages and the construction of this church had stopped. they d run out of money. the dark ages had suppressed it. the image and the vision of this not hallow but full ideology had to wither through centuries. and coming out of the dark ages in the 1100 s or so they began their fundraising drive again. and for 600 years they raised money to finish the cathedral that was planned and architectural drawings that were put down on parchment about 832 a.d. they picked up those plans 600 years later, the same plans, to complete the church that was completed in the late part of the 19th century and exists today. that s an idea of the length of time that a vision can sustain itself, a not hallow but full ideology can drive itself through the collapse of the roman empire, through the dark ages, through the reconstruction period into the modern era and survive, only bombers that went over it in world war ii, that s a vision of not a hallowed ideology but a full ideology that s driven by culture, by civilization, by faith. and here we are today, and as i listened to that presentation of the hallowed ideology of the muslim brotherhood, i thought what is our agenda here in congress. does it reflect our value system? does it anchor in these core beliefs that go back in a timeless way? does it recognize that there are human ufrls that never will change universals that never will change? does it recognize we are motivated by those human universals and anchored in our value system? i don t know our agenda reflects that these days. it seems as though we re running herky-jerky from one economic issue to another economic issue not with a long-view picture but with the idea we are going to get past this crisis and somehow we are going to put this back together the other side of the crisis. that s the case with the fiscal cliff. that s the case with reordering the issues of sequestration, continuing resolution and later on the debt ceiling. these are the urgencies that are being addressed sometimes at the expense of the bigger picture. and it would be different if we were dealing with urgencies that were fitting the jigsaw puzz pieces together. i think we re puzzle pieces together. i think we re starting to lose sight who we are as a people and starting to lose grips of the fundamentals and there is a big difference in this country that we have not seen in the history of the united states of america, madam speaker, and the difference is this. those of us who believe that we have timeless values and that we need to be reconstructing and refurbishing the american conceptionalism, chizzling those pieces of american conceptualism down and replaces them with something or nothing is preferable to restoring them, i think that s being driven out of the white house and the people that share common cause, madam speaker, with the president of the united states. . and this movement that he is driving, it dwidse people against each other. when you see this concept of multiconsult ralingism, which is something that i embraced because i believed it was a good tool to respect all people of all races and all ethnicities and whatever their behaviors might be in life. but i began to see that the people on the other side were using it as a tool to divide, not to unite. a tool to put people pit people against each other rather than to draw them together and i ve seen the president use that in his politics repeatedly to the extent that i ve never seen in the history of this country. i did though recognize it when bill clinton was elected president. i wrote an op ed about the method that he used to appoint his cabinet. and that method was, i m going to put together a multicultural formula and i am going to and he said this, i am going to appoint a cabinet that looks like america. closed quote. that would be the quote from bill clinton when he was after he was elected, before he was inaugurated, as he put the cabinet together. and i thought at that time, the president of the united states should be putting together a cabinet that best serves america, regardsless of what they look like. but that wasn t what happened under the clinton administration and i m not convinced that s what happened under any subsequent administration, republican or democrat, since then. but this president has pitted us against each other along the lines of race and ethnicity and with sometimes little comments that are made that aren t so subtle. and these things divide us as a people rather than unite us as a people. when you hear the promise out there that people won t have to worry about their rent check, won t have to worry about their car payment, that somebody will take care of you, this idea that government s going to step in and lift the burden off of people and take away individual responsibility was something that was pervasive in the last two presidential races, particularly in the last one. and it undermines the efficientsy efficiency of the american people. we should be thinking, madam speaker, about a nation of over 300 million people that has some of the longest and the highest and most sustained unemployment rates in the history of this country, the great depression would be the exception, and a nation with around 313 million people in it, a little over 13 million people have signed up for unemployment, another number of people that approaches that of about 20 million people that are defineably underemployed and that s just a piece of those who were not engaged. when we look at the department of labor s website and we start to add up those unemployed to those who are of working age simply not in the work force, we come to a number of over 100 million americans, madam speaker, that are not contributing to the gross domestic product, that are of the age group that one would think we would get some work out of them. now i recognize in that group of over 100 million there are some that are retired. some are early retired. some are in school. some are home makers. now i start getting it s difficult for me to complete the list of reasons why people would not be contributing to our economy. but we seem to think that 100 million americans not in the work force doesn t seem to trouble very many people in this congress but it s ok for us to be looking at 11 million or 12 million or 20 million people that are in this country unlawfully who are working unlawfully and who are, at least theoretically, taking jobs that americans might take. at one point, madam speaker, i wrote an op ed that laid out an nail ji and it described the united states an analogy and it described the united states as analogous to a huge cruise ship, this would be a schaaling cruise ship, with 300 million people on it, and you need some people that will pull on the oars and swab the deck and trim the sails and work in the gali and clean out the cabins and do those things up in steerage and in first class and wherever else. and somebody there to man the navigation and take care of the cab dane. that s all jobs that captain. that s all jobs that happen on a cruiseship and our whole economy and society is tied together, 50 states and 300 million people. what kind of people, if they needed somebody else to pull on the oars or swab the deck or trim the sails oracle the clerk will designate the navigation, what kind of people would say, we have 300 million people on this ship and we ve got 100 million of them that are sitting up in steerage, but we need somebody else to do the work that those people in steerage won t do so let s pull off on that this continent and load another 10 or 20 million people on to do the work that people on this cruise ship won t do? no captain in his right mind would sail that ship over there and load a bunch more people on to do work if he had 100 million people up in steerage that have opted out because somebody is taking care of delivering the food, cleaning their cabin and making sure they have a place where they can stay. that s what happens to human nature when you have a domestic policy that is that makes it easy to turn that hammock to turn the safety net into a hammock. i have something that phil graham used to discuss about how it s one thing to create a safety net. and we re for a safety net here almost universally. but to turn the safety net into a homock and ask somebody else to come to do work that americans aren t willing to do is a reach i m not willing to accept. neither do i accept the idea that there s work that americans won t do. every single job category has americans working it in in it in a majority of that job category. we saw some that have data today, madam speaker. i d say this instead. we are a country that s richer than any country ever in the history of the world. we have more technology than ever in the history of the world. we have more cap capital created. we have more human capital, more know-how, more can-do people out there to pull on the roars and trim the sails and navigate the ship and do all of the things that need to happen. this country has all of those assets and all of those resources in greater number and supply by any measure than any civilization in the history of the world. and, madam speaker, we can t live within our means? we have to run a deficit of $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion and borrow money from the chinese and the saudis and by the way about half of this debt is held by domestic debt, the american people, that are buying bonds. but a nation that s the richest nation, the richest culture, the richest economy, the richest civilization in the history of the world has to borrow over $1 trillion a year just to sustain this lifestyle that we have, while we have 100 million, 1/3 of our population, that is of working age that s not contributing to the gross domestic product. think of what that means. think how posterity will judge us if we don t step up to our responsibilities, yet our get our spending under control, bring more of the people into the work force that are i d say living off of public benefits. i would be willing to submit that you won t find someone on the streets of america that can name for you all of the means-tested welfare programs, federal programs that are means-tested, that we have. that number used to be 72. then it went to 80. this is a number that has been calculated and pulled together by robert recter of the heritage foundation and i ask him, you know, eyesed to quote you at 72. now you say 80. what happened? he said, i found some more. i said is 80 the finite number? 80 different means-tested federal welfare programs? and he said, well, there are at least 80. why don t you say a minimum of 80? so 80, a minimum of 80 different means-tested federal welfare programs, some of them competing with each other, and no one can list them from memory and no one has the capability of understanding how they interrelate with each other, nor how they motivate or demotivate the people that they re designed to help. what kind of a country would do that? and why would we allow, why would we have 100 million people of working age not in our work force while we re running up a debt of 1 $1 $1.2 trillion a year, and we ve seen the per capita national debt now for a baby born in the united states, babies born today, their share of the national debt is $53,000. it went over $53,000 just the other day. so welcome to the world, you re an american citizen, born here by birth right citizenship, but you don t have a right not to contribute to paying off the national debt. your share is $53,000. $53,000. what kind of a country would do that and not tighten its belt and not put some of its people to work? and then i end up with these economic discussions, madam speaker, that come from smart people that will say, well, the labor force should be determined by supply and demand. why don t we let human migration follow where the jobs are? well, the answer to that is, millton friedman had the answer to that, he said, you cannot have open borders and a welfare system, especially one that is as generous as our welfare system is. and so which one can you fix? can you fix the border problem? can you fix the welfare program? i d like to fix them both, madam speaker. but one of them s a little easier than the other. we can control the borders and shut off the jobs magnet easier than we can make the case that we should be tightening down the welfare system in this country. but we need to do both, we need to bring this country back within its means. the entitlement system that s out there that fits within those 80 different means-tested welfare programs needs to be completely re-examined. i think congressman louie gohmert is correct when he says that we need to put all of the welfare into a single committee so they re responsible for all of the programs that we have. it s the only way we can begin to get a handle on. it the committee of jurisdiction is scattered out through multiple committees. but the big picture that i started to talk about in the beginning, madam speaker, is this. that we need to identify the pillars of american exceptionalism, we need to refurbish those pillars and the identification will become the things we ve inherited from the orins of western civilization. mow sake law, flowed through greek and roman law, the magna carta that was signed in 1215 that established individual freedom from the monarch or the despot, that no subject could be let s say no one other than a serf at that time could be punished arbitrarily. they had to have the right and the protection of the rule of law. and we have these guarantees in our constitution of freedom of speech. and i m exercising it now, madam speaker. and i encourage all to do that. if we stopped exercising freedom of speech we would eventually lose it because it would be defined away from us. freedom of religion fits the same category. if we don t exercise our freedom of religion it becomes redefined away from us. how about freedom of the press? and i would submit, madam speaker, that those who abuse freedom of press, those who do not journalistic integrity are undermining our first amendment right. if every newspaper out there printed things that they knew were dishonest, if they just drove purely a political agenda on the front page, on the side where they re held accountable for journalism, or in their commentary when they print falsehood as fact, it undermines all of our freedom. because when someone abuses the freedom, they diminish that freedom for all of us. now, think in terms of this. if that s hard to understand for some folks, madam speaker, i put it this way. if everybody went out there and abused the second amendment right, it wouldn t be long and we wouldn t have the right to keep and bear arms regardless of what the constitution says. we have to utilize those rights, we have to exercise them in a responsible way. the abuse of god-given rights, the abuse of these rights and especially in the bill of rights undermines the rights that we have. but we do have freedom of speech, religion and the press and assembly. and if we stopped exercising then we would lose them. and we have the right to keep and bear arms. not for hunting, not for target, not for self-defense and not for collection. all of those four reasons to keep and bear arms are, i ll say, they re additional rights, it s just the poe bow it s just the bonus that comes along with it because our founding fathers understood that a well-armed populous was protection against tyranny and i agree with that and defend the second amendment because that is what keeps us from defending ourselves against tyrants. but you can go on up through the bill of rights. the right to property in the fifth amendment. private property should not be take without just compensation. public use was taken out of it. i think one day the supreme court, if we raise an adequate objection, will have to revisit that decision. it was an unjust decision that didn t reflect the language in the fifth amendment. but property rights is another core of american exceptionalism. without these rights, freedom of speech, religion and the press and the second amendment rights to keep and bear arms, without property rights, without being tried by a jury of our peers and a right to face our accusers, without the concepts of federalism and these enumerated powers in the constitution that being reserved for the congress and the balance of them that revert to the states or the people respectively, without those components we would not emerge, we would not have emerged as a country that we are. and we can t sustain ourselves as a country that we are to be if we don t protect those pillars of american exceptionalism. and in the core of those pillars of american exceptionalism is, as i said earlier, the rule of law. when the rule of law is usurped by a king or a despot or a president of the united states it deminute it diminished us all and it diminishes the potential destiny of the united states of america. and we ve seen, as the president of the united states has decided that he will enforce the law that he sees fit and he will not enforce the law that he doesn t agree with and it s clear in a number of ways, madam speaker, the president suspended no child left behind. he won t enforce that. essentially has waived it off the books. . he took an oath and it s in the constitution and he taught constitutional law. but he similarly set aside no child left behind. isn t the issue i m advocating here, is the president must take care that the laws are faithfully executed. behind that, he suspended welfare to work. in the middle 1990 s, there were three times that president clinton vetoed the welfare reform law and signed it and took credit for it. that s politics. wubr one component was welfare to work. of all of our programs that we have, minimum of 80, of all of them, there s only one, madam speaker, that requires work. that one is the tanf program and it says in there that it specifically prohibits the president from suspending or waiving the work requirement. the president did so any way. and sticking with this rule of law that has been so damaged by our president, it s also true with immigration law. the immigration law that requires that people who are in violation of it be put into the process for deportation. the president has decided he won t do that. it s one thing to have prlal discretion. the executive branch has to decide which highest priorities are there for the resources of law enforcement. but when the executive branch, the discretion is always on an individual basis, not on a group basis, not on a clear-the-board basis. what has the president done? he has issued a memorandum written by secretary napolitano by the department of homeland security and said we aren t going to enforce immigration laugs against people has my time expired? ask indulgence to make a concluding sentence here and i didn t see that coming here, madam speaker. i m here to endorse the rule of law and stand up and defend the constitution and i appreciate your attention. and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker s announced policy of january 3, 2013, the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. gohmert, for 30 minutes. mr. gohmert: thank you, madam speaker. now that the sequestration has taken place that we were told a year and a half ago would not. the president said during the debates last fall said would not. but they have taken place. as the president traveled around the country demonizing us back here hoping for a better way to cut, hoping for something to be reached in the way of an agreement that would have given more flex built, but that didn t happen and people too busy going off and doing other things to be here in washington with us and work out some kind of an agreement. one bit of good news, though, you know we had heard from the secretary of homeland security that the lines would be long in the airport. there would be delays. there would be all kinds of problems. initially, it was announced that f.a.a. officials would be pulled from between 150 to 200 arptse. they were going to make americans feel as much pain as possible. but with all the tough news for travelers, we can all be comforted. this is dated march 5, story by elizabeth harrington. the t.s.a. was able to get a deal to buy new uniforms. the lines will be longer, traveling, we are told by homeland security, they are going to make america feel pain because we managed to cut less than 2% of government spending when it s increased over 20% the last four years, when every american who works, pays taxes, had their taxes go up 2% on january 1. this was merely taxes going up 2%, giving basically a tax on government, 2%. same one america suffered, same amount. but we have officials in this administration who say we can t stand a 2% cut. heck, the house itself, our budgets have been cut 11.5% over the last two years and we did it. and you have t.s.a., f.a.a. and homeland security, we can t live with a 2% cut like every american taxpayer has. so at least we know that t.s.a. will have new uniforms while the lines are getting longer. also worth noting, a story here by terance jeffrey, march 4 of this year, that president obama borrowed six times as much in february as the sequestered cuts all year. i recall in 2006, the last year republicans were in the majority for speaker pelosi took the gavel. democrats on this side of the aisle appropriately beat up republicans because we had a budget we had an appropriations that year that spent $160 billion more than we brought in and we should have gotten it imbalance and they were right. i would have never have dreamed that within a few years that with the democrat in the white house and with a democratic majority in the house, democratic majority in the senate, that they wouldn t spend 1 $160 billion. they would spend $1.6 trillion more than we took in. and here with all the gloom and doom and claims about how bad it s going to be, and oh, it s going to be horrible, we find out the president borrowed $253.5 billion in one month, shortest month of the year in february, six times more than the sequester was, with all the complaints. interesting story here in townhall.com by heather ginsberg, president obama s golf trip could have saved furnish furloughed jobs and how much it cost for the loss golf outing. that s pretty tragic. i think we have one of the most gracious and graceful first ladies that we ve ever had. she made a wonderful quote previously. she said, quote, this is what the white house is all about. it s the people s house. it s a place that is steeped in history. but it s also a place where everyone should feel welcome and that s why my husband and i have made it our mission to open up the house to as many people as we can, that was our first lady. a wonderful, wonderful position to take. i m sure she was not consulted today when the white house in its frustration that all of us in congress the cut we re having in congress will put us around 20% cut of our budget in the house. senate hasn t cut themselves 11.5%. but we will have cut every office, at least 20% in three years time. but the president, even though his budget, his government has grown about 20% in four years could not live with just pulling back 2% of that 20% increase. so today, as the story indicates from today this is from the washington examiner, never say the white house isn t affected by sequestration. the visitors office just notified congress that tours of the white house are canceled until further notice. quote, due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that the white house tours will be canceled effective saturday, march 9, 2013, until further notice, unquote. the white house e mailed the legislative office explains, unfortunately, and this is a quote, unfortunately, we will not be able to reschedule affected tours and we regret having to take this particular action especially during the popular spring touring season, unquote. well, knowing that the story reports here, we could have had 341 federal employees that could have kept their jobs and not been furloughed if the president did not take his last golf outing. seems to me that there are so many people coming to washington , it appears to me as many as democrats as republicans, possibly more, and they have wanted, they have counted on the quote from the first lady. they were so looking forward to touring the white house. i filed an amendment with the rules committee this afternoon so that we can work together. the amendment to the continuing resolution of funds and i m hoping, begging and pleading that the rules committee will make this amendment in order. amendment to house resolution 933, offered by mr. gohmert of texas. at the end of division 7 before the short title, insert the following, none of the funds made available by division of this act may be used to transport the president to or from a golf course until public tours of the white house resume. that way we will both work together so the president will not be able to take a golf outing that causes 341 more federal officials to be furloughed and lose their job at least temporarily and then perhaps by avoiding furloughing all of these federal employees, we will be able to get the democrats and republicans across america, people that don t even have a party, because they are just americans, they will be able to get their tour of the white house and all it will cost is one or two trips less. with that, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. pursuant to clause 12-a of rule 1, the house will stand in recess s i think i would point you to a couple of things. one is we believe that a c.r. should be practical, nonpolitical and subject with the budget control act. it is our understanding, at least in the last point, that the c.r. in question is consist went the level of the levels of the but the control act. i would await for a further response from us as our experts examine it and make aelse isments about it. but our interest is not in, you know, as long as these goals are met, that we do not, you know, go head-long into mohr manufacturing crisis. we are focused on trying to find commonsense solutions to the challenges that face us. the president has when it comes to deficit reduction which is the issue on the table. consistently put forward. commonsense, middle of the road solutions that represent balance and have met republicans halfway and he will continue to pursue that with the congress as we try to address those both the sequester and the broader challenge of reducing our deficit in a way that s fair and that puts us on a fiscally sustainable path. but for more on the c.r., we ll have to wait while we assess it. a number of republican senators have said that the president reached out to them on the sequester. the president is engaging with lawmakers of both parties and will continue to do so. he stood before you on i believe it was friday and talked about the need for bipartisan work around on common ground when it comes to reducing our deficit. we should be able to achieve that. he put forward a proposal that addresses the need for entitlement reform and a very serious way. as parent of a comprehensive package that includes tax reform, that would close loopholes and cap deductions in way that speaker boehner said was his position just two months ago. so both sides, if you will, are for entitlement reform and tax reform and really one of the issues that seems to be still a matter of debate is what do you do with the revenue gained from improving our tax code, closing unnecessary loopholes, eliminating special breaks for the well connected and well off? do you take that and convert it into tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy or do you apply it to deficit reduction? which is, you know, a conservative and reasonable position to have. that s the president s position. so he is reaching out and talking to members about a variety of issues, not just our fiscal challenges, but certainly the fiscal issues are among the issues he s talking about with lawmakers. should the reaching out be i guess thought of in any way as perhaps the president or the white house not being very comfortable with what the house is talking about right now? terms of extending c.r.? this might have evolved into one of those manufactured crisis? i wouldn t link the c.r., which is a measure that again, if it meets the test that i talked about, would simply continue to fund the government and avoid a government shutdown, it does not in any way would not in any way resolve the challenges about the sequester or more broadly how to further reduce the deficit, so we put ourselves on a fiscally sustainable path by achieving that $4 trillion-plus goal over 10 years of deficit reduction. that work remains to be done. and the president is interested in, you know, finding the members of the caucuses common sense and to work with them to bring about a resolution to this challenge. we should be able to do it. he has put forward and finally i think there s some recognition here although occasionally you see some republican leaders insist the president doesn t have a plan. perhaps they don t have the internet in those offices. but the plan is available to all of you, it has been it has lived in various incarnations, including the president s submission to the supercommittee, the president s budget as well as the president s proposal to speaker boehner at the end of the year. which remains on the table and available to be taken up. and we hope it is. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] jay carney from the briefing earlier today. the house comes back tomorrow, 10:00 a.m. eastern, and they will begin work on the resolution funding the federal government through the remaining six months of fiscal year 2013. the so-called continuing resolution. the topic came up today during a briefing with speaker john boehner and other republican house republican members. here s part of what he had to said say. our goal is to cut spending, not shut down the government. that s why we will move the c.r. this week and we hope the senate will take this bill up and move it quickly. the president on friday agreed that there s no reason to get into some debate about shutting down the government. it s just not smart a smart thing to do. can you handle if they do [inaudible] i m not going to predict what the senate will or won t do with our bill but i would hope they would take it up expeditiously and pass it. speaker boehner, for all intents and purposes it looks like president obama s putting up you need a hair cut by the way. [laughter] it s looking like he s putting up a white flag in terms of these budget battles. that he wants to move on to other issues such as immigration and possibly gun chrome. what do you feel about that and what s the appetite for those two issues in the house of representatives at this time? because of the president s reluctance to cut spending, we ve been caught in this battle of having clips and having these deadlines. this is no way to run a government. but until the president gets serious about the serious structural spending program that we have, we re going to have to deal with it. i suggested to the president the other day, the best thing we can do is find some way to get the senate to finally do their work, have a large agreement that begins to address this spending problem, puts us on a path to balance the budget over the next 10 years and get out of this cliff business. it s not good for the country, for us to continue to go through this. and i would also agree that because we ve had all of these fiscal cliff issues, there are a lot of other issues that the american people want us to address. next week we ll be addressing the skills act where we take these job training, retraining programs, simplify them, combine them so that we can put more effort into training people for the jobs that the american businesses have available today. there are a lot of other things that we need to do. immigration and gun control though, how s that look? we have a long list of things that we d like to deal with. i m sure his list is a little different than ours. but, listen, made it clear on immigration, we need to continue to work in a bipartisan fashion like we have been to deal with in very complex issue. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] here s a look at our primetime schedules on the c-span networks. starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern, allen kruger talks about fiscal policy and ways to reduce the national debt on c-span 2. the house foreign affairs committee holds a hearing on north korea s nuclear program. and the effectiveness of sanctions. and on c-span 3, testimony from agriculture secretary tom vilsack on the state of the rural economy. all these programs tonight starting at 8:00 eastern on the c-span networks. tomorrow, attorney generic holder testifies on oversight issues at the justice department. it will be before the senate judiciary committee. you can see that tomorrow beginning at 9:30 a.m. eastern on our companion network, c-span 3. earlier today the head of military operation notice middle east and central asia said the u.s. would leave 13,600 troops in afghanistan after 2014. we also hear about the danger of iran s nuclear program. and the future of operations in iraq. this is the senate armed services committee from earlier today. the hearing s three hours. good morning, everybody. this morning s hearing is the first in our annual series of posture hearings that the combatant commanders, to receive testimony on the military strategy and operational requirements in their areas of responsibility. our witnesses are two extraordinary military leaders. general james matusz, commander u.s. central command, and admiral bill mcraven, commander u.s. special operations command. on behalf of our members, please pass along to the men and women serving in both areas our sincere gratitude for their dedication and sacrifices and we also thank their families. whose support is so essential to the well-being of their loved ones, to the well-being of our nation. general mat us, this is your third and your last posture hearing before this committee. and this committee is favorably reported out your successor, general lloyd austin, to the full senate. general, we want to thank you for your more than 40 years of military service and your distinguished leadership of our armed forces. this year s posture hearings, with the combatant commanders, are being held under the spector of budget sequestration. which threatens to impose arbitrary cuts on our military forces unrelated to our national security requirements. already sequestration is having an operational impact in the sent comarea with the defense department s postponement of the deployment of the u.s.s. hairy truman aircraft carrier to the persian gulf. i hope general mattis and admiral mccraven will talk about the risks and associated with sequestration and the expiration of the continuing resolution. our transition strategy in afghanistan is entering a critical phase in the coming months. excuse me. afghan forces will move into the lead for security throughout afghanistan beginning this spring. this transition has been under way for some time. and afghan forces are already in charge of security for more than 85% of the afghan people. this shift to an afghan security lead is exempified by the statistic that in 2012 afghan forces for the first time suffered more casualties than coalition forces, as afghan security forces are stepping up, coalition forces are shifting to a support role. deploying security force assistance teams to advise and assist afghan units throughout the end of 2014, when the mission ends. casualties are down. and during a one-month stretch from mid january to mid february of this year, forces suffered no fatalities. but it seems the bad news out of afghanistan is splashed across the headlines while good news barely makes a ripple. the press gave wide coverage in december to the defense department report that found only one of 23 afghan brigades was rated as independent. yet when senator reid and i visited afghanistan in january and talked to our regional commanders, we learned that afghan forces in the volatile and critical east region have been successfully conducting over 85% of the operations unilaterally, without coalition forces even being present. afghans want their own forces, providing for their security. and they have confidence in those forces. general mattis, the committee would be interested in your assessment of whether our mission in afghanistan is succeeding, whether our transition plan is on track and whether the afghan forces will be ready this spring to assume the lead for protecting the afghan people, excuse me, throughout the country. last month president obama announced plans for withdrawing by february of next year. 34,000 of the 66,000 u.s. troops in afghanistan. as important as the size of the cuts in u.s. troop levels over the coming year is, the pace of those reductions is also important. the president has previously stated that cuts in u.s. forces would continue at a steady pace after the recovery of the u.s. surge force at the end of last summer. it s now being reported that the bulk of their withdrawl of the 34,000 troops is likely to occur next winter, after the 2013 fighting season. and we need to understand what the pace of u.s. troop withdrawal will look like and how it fits with the overall transition strategy. looking ahead, significant challenges in afghanistan remain. fundamental to the country s stability will be a demonstrated commitment by the united states and the international community to an enduring relationship with afghanistan. i am encouraged by reports that nato defense ministers recently reconsidered plans to cut afghan security forces by 1/3 after 2014 and are now considering maintaining those forces at 352,000, at least through 2018. that sends an important signal of commitment to the afghan people, to the taliban and to afghanistan s neighbors. and pakistan needs to recognize that an unstable afghanistan is not in its interests and pakistan s continuing failure to address the safe havens for u.s. ises conducting cross-border insurgencies conducting cross-border attacks into afghanistan will make it impossible for the united states to have a normal relationship with pakistan. in addition, the government of afghanistan needs to address its failure to deliver services and also the rampant corruption that undermines the afghanistan people s faith in their government s institutions. the sencom oo also presents other vexing challenges. iran s continuing pursuit of its nuclear program is one of the most significant national security issues of this day. i believe most of the members of this committee share president obama s view that all options, including military options, need to remain on the table and that preventing iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is not only our policy but that we are determined to achieve that policy goal. iran is also actively expending expanding their threat network that has promoted violence across the region in yemen, gaza, sudan, syria, iraq and elsewhere. iran continues to provide financial and material support through the revolutionary guard in to groups seeking to overthrow or undermine governments or terrorize innocent civilians. general mattis and admiral mccraven, you are the two commanders most involved in confronting these current challenges and planning for contingencies involving iran. we look forward to hearing your views on these matters. in syria, the death toll continues to rise daily. the mass atrocities committed by the assad regime over the past two years have solidified the commitment of all but a few in the international community that the required outcome in syria is that assad must go. the united states is the largest contributor of nonlethal and humanitarian aid to the international response efforts, but these contributions have not been enough. general mattis, the committee looks forward to hearing your views on the situation in syria and to learn of what our closest allies in the region say about the possibility of extending additional aid to the opposition. the committee is also interested in our commander s reactions to recent reports about u.s. counterterrorism operations and whether more of these counterterrorism operations should be conducted under title 10 authorities. for example, secretary panetta said recently, quote, the advantage to it is that it becomes much more transparent in terms of what we re doing, closed quote. he s referring of course to more counterterrorism operations being conducted under title 10 authorities rather than title 15. john brennan in his recent confirmation hearing to be director of the c.i.a. stated that, quote, the c.i.a. should not be doing traditional military activities and operations and noted that, quote, on the counterterrorism front there are things the agency has been involved in since 9/11 that in fact had been a bit of an be aeration from its traditional role, closed quote. beyond the current conflict in afghanistan and the fight against al qaeda and its affiliates elsewhere, admirable mccraven has spent significant time developing his vision for the future of special operations. in light of the continuing high demand for special operations throughout the world and the focus of last year s defense strategic guidance on innovative, low cost and small footprint approaches to achieve additional excuse me, to achieve national security objectives, admiral mccraven has rightly focused on the need to develop greater capabilities within our special operations forces, tone gauge with partner nation forces to engage with partner nation forces with the goal of confronting mutual security challenges before they become threaten threats to the u.s. or our interests overseas. what the misdemeanor airline calls enhancing the global what the admiral calls enhancing the global special operations network. the committee looks forward to hearing about any changes to existing authorities that you believe would help you be more effective in these areas. our special operations personnel and their families continue to face the highest operational tempo in their history. i understand they have documented the negative impact of these repeated, high-stress deployments, including ancrease in marital problems, substance abuse and suicides. and now has a standing task force dedicated to helping special operators and their families deal with these issues. admiral, the committee would appreciate your assessment on the state of your forces and the adequacy of the support provided by the military services to address the unique challenges in the special operations community. thank you, mr. chairman. mr. chairman, a lot of the things you covered i was going to, so i ll just paraphrase some of the concerns. first of all, i appreciated the opportunity to meet with both of you and also appreciate your long years of service. but i think you d have to agree, as we discussed, you probably have not faced a situation that you re facing today, we ve already sustained and sequestration coming up, with the c.r. problems that are there, it is in fact unprecedented. i anticipate that this might be a possibility about six weeks ago. we introduced legislation that would allow the service chiefs to make determinations as opposed to just a straight cut that would women come with sequestration that would come with sequestration. i called all five service chiefs, include the guard, and asked them, if we were in a position where in taking the same top line, the cuts that are mandated for the military, if you could take that and operate within that and make determinations as to where those cuts would be, would that be less devastating than if you just went ahead and did it with a straight line cuts? they all said yes. the second question i asked them is, you know, do you have time to do that? between now and the next six weeks? as we approach the first of march. and they assured me that they did. so we re kind of looking at that right now. i m hoping that we ll be able to pass this and give that added ability to make determinations within the same amount of money that would be less devastating. general mattis, i think we look at sencom, one of the biggest problems there as we ve talked about is iran. the influence continues to spread across the middle east into africa, european and the europe and pat civic. they re developing more complex antiaccess and antidenial weapons than ever before. we all know that our unclassified intelligence said way back in 2007 that they are gaining this capability, nuclear capability, and they should have it by along with the delivery system by 2015. they re having a lot of influence over the surrounding areas. assad in syria is getting a lot of the stuff from iran. the flow of syrian refugees into jordan and lebanon will probably exceed more than a million as quickly as june of this year. so all of these problems are out there and we ve talked about these and we know how serious it is and it is unprecedented. admiral mccraven, you play an instrumental role in shaping our global counterterrorism campaign. despite our successes in the battlefield, al qaeda and affiliated terrorist organizations remain resilient and have developed sophisticated networks that transcend national borders. so you ve both got your work cut out for you and i can t think of two better people to take on this huge responsibility right now than the two of you. and i appreciate very much your service and what you re going to be rendering in this, that addresses our problems today. thank you, mr. chairman. thank you very much, senator. general mattis, let s start with you. mr. chairman, and ranking member inhofe, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. i have submitted a written statement, request it to be accepted for the record. it will be. it s my privilege to appear alongside admiral bill mccraven. we ve worked together for many mcraven. we ve worked together for many years and continue to do. so in the middle east we confront what is a significant risk to our interest in the region, specifically a perceived lack of enduring u.s. commitment. to counter this misperception, we must clearly communicate our intent and demonstrate our support through tangible actions. in afghanistan we are conducting a steady and deliberate transition. u.s. leadership among 50 nations fighting together in the largest wartime coalition in modern history provide continued support of the afghan security forces as they set conditions for their long-term success. iran remains the single most significant regional threat to stability and prosperity. reckless behavior and rhetoric characterize a leadership that cannot win the affection of its own people or the respect of any responsible nation in the region. iran s continued support to the murderous assad regime in syria, coupled with its maligned activities in iraq, afghanistan, lebanon, bahrain, yemen and gaza and globaly in sudan, turkey, azerbaijan, thailand, india, georgia, bulgaria, nye jeer contraia and even here in nigeria and even here in washington, d.c., in the attempt to kill the saudi ambassador, and elsewhere in the world, as well as in the cyberdomain, raises a risk of iran an miscalculation that could spark a disastrous conflict. as we address the very real challenges we collectively face, i am confident u.s. central command will continue working by, with and through our regional partners to ensure a measure of stability in the region. our military to military engagements, security cooperation efforts, exercise programs and information operations will continue to need your support, including innovative and flexible authorities and the necessary funds so we can continue doing what is required to protect u.s. national security interests. as our nation confronts a period of fiscal austerity, our ability to adapt our ways and means to continue to meet our operational areas are impacted by three key factors. first, the need for budget certainty. right now i do not have any budget certainty. second, my need for time to adapt to reduced budgets and take the cuts smartly. specifically my third request is for flexibility to determine where to shift available funds in a manner that reduces risk and consistent with the intent of congress and of course much of that flexibility must be granted to the service chiefs. with your support and with the continued devotion to duty of our troops and the commitment of our military families, we will stand by our friends to maintain a measure of reasonable stability in defense of our values and our interests. i look forward, mr. chairman, to answering your questions. thank you very much, general. admiral. good morning. mr. chairman, ranking member inhofe, distinguished members of the committee, i also appreciate the opportunity to address the committee today and talk about the magnificent work being accomplished around the globe by the men and women of the u.s. special operations command and i have also submitted a statement for the record. thank you. before i begin however i would like to recognize my colleague, my mentor and my friend, general jim mattis. in the coming months, mattis will be completing a 41-year career in the service of our country. during that time he has fought in every major conflict in his era. he has led soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines with a degree of caring, passion and professionalism that would make every american proud. mattis has always been known for two things. his incredible operational ac men and his candor. i know of no other general who is as well versed in the art of war and no other man who speaks his mind the way jim mattis does. every warrior who has ever served by his side feels honored and privileged to have done so and i count myself in that group. jim, you have been particularly supportive of the men and women of special operations and on behalf of all those great warriors and americans everywhere, i salute you for your service and your sacrifice to this nation. it has been my distinct honor to have served with you. mr. chairman, this is my second opportunity to address this committee since i took command in the summer of 2011. since that time i m proud to say we have continued the great work initiated by my predecessor and at the same time we have adamented to the changing strategic and fiscal environment to keep relevant now and in the future. in afghanistan we developed a new soft structure which brought it into alignment. this has allowed the special operations forces to have a common view of the enemy and synchronize our resolve. it has made soft even more effective than ever before. to partner with our afghan partners, we have trained afghan security forces so they can stand on their own against this determined threat. in addition to afghanistan special operation forces are in 78 countries around the world, at the request of those nations, we re helping to build their capacity and strengthen our partnership. in the 2012 defense strategic guidance, former secretary panetta wrote, we are shaping a joint force for the future that will be smaller and leaner, but will be agile, flexible, ready and technologically advanced. it will have cutting-edge capabilities, exploring our technology, joint and network advantage. it will be led by the highest quality battle-tested professionals. it will have a global presence, strengthening alliances and partnerships across all regions. i believe the secretary s words speak to the core capabilities of s.o.c. and therefore socom is working with joint chiefs to ensure we are postured now and into the future to meet the objectives of this strategy. finally, i have made the caring of our caring for our force and their families my top priority. in the past year my command sergeant major and i have met with soldiers and their families from around the interpriles. we have listened to their enterprise. we have listened to their concerns and we are aggressively implementing programs and plans to help for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the force. we have a professional and moral obligation to take care of our warriors and their families and we greatly appreciate the support of this committee and other members on the hill in our efforts to take care of these men and women. thank you again for your commitment to the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines and civilians for the department of defense and specifically for those great warriors who make up the special operations command. i look forward to your questions. thank you so much, admiral. we re going to have a we re going to have a seven-minute first-round.
five-year veteran with the charleston police department being charged with murder. this comes incredibly quickly. this shooting took place saturday afternoon, just four days ago. and the state law enforcement department there in the state of south carolina has charged him with murder. in this video, it s dramatic, you see in the initial moments of the video the victim in this case, 50-year-old walter scott, very close to the officer but starting to run away. you see some objects fall to the ground. officer slager apparently said that he feared for his life or he felt like he was in danger because the victim had reached for his taser. but walter scott gets about 25 feet away, four seconds later and eight shots, walter scott drops to the ground. he is later pronounced dead at the scene. and then one interesting piece, if you look closely at the video, at one point you see slager go back to where the initial confrontation had taken place and dropped something next to walter scott s body. it s not clear if that s the taser. then moments later he goes back and picks up that very same object. it is clear, john and christine, that this video played a dramatic role in these murder charges being filed against officer michael slager. john and christine? ed lavandera, thanks. this was a traffic stop for a broken or cracked taillight. now, on top of the state murder charges, officer slager faces an fbi investigation for possibly violating walter scott s civil rights. he s also likely to be named in a civil lawsuit planned by scott s family. they were outraged heartbroken when they spoke to the media last night. their lawyer called slager, quote, a cop who felt like he could get away with just shooting someone in the back. walter scott s brother, anthony, remembered him as a coast guard veteran and the father of four children. i have i had two brothers. i had two brothers. but now i have one brother. but out of my brothers, he was the most outgoing out of all of us. he had he knew everybody. he knew he knew family i didn t know. he knew he had friends i didn t know. he was well known in the community everywhere. everywhere. and he was just an outgoing type of person. and loving and kind. that was just his nature. city officials in north charleston, they spoke out as well. the mayor says he is grateful that someone was there to capture that moment on camera and step forward with the video. the police chief says he has been devastated by the actions of his officer. the video is very demonstrative of exactly what happened. without the video and that was the only witness there was, actually was the gentleman that was making the video it would be difficult to ascertain exactly what did occur. we want to thank the young person that came forward with the video. you ve been around me a long time. and you know i think that all of these police officers on this force, the men and women, are like my children. so you tell me how a father would react to seeing his child act do something. i ll let you answer that yourself. south carolina political figures reacting to the police shooting and these murder charges as well. in a statement released overnight, governor nikki haley said what happened in this case is not acceptable in south carolina. on twitter, senator tim scott said after watching the video, the senseless shooting and taking of walter scott s life was absolutely unnecessary and avoidable. my heart aches for the family and our north charleston community. i will be watching this case closely. a broken taillight. a broken taillight. new this morning, u.s. officials are investigating a breach of white house computers by russian hackers. u.s. officials briefed on the investigation say the white house hack is connected to a damaging intrusion into the state department computers we ve been telling you about since last year. justice reporter evan perez picks up the story from washington. evan. reporter: john, christine, russian hackers in recent months broke into sensitive parts of the white house e-mail system. they even conceived parts of the president s schedule not disclosed to the public in realtime. the hackers are believed to be working for the russian government. and according to u.s. officials, they pulled off one of the most serious cyber breaches of u.s. government agencies. this breach is one reason why u.s. intelligence officials recently increased warnings about the cyber threat from russia. the white house disclosed suspicious activity in its unclassified e-mail systems in october. but officials say even unclassified e-mails contain sensitive information that s valuable to foreign spies. the hackers got in first by breaking into the state department s e-mail servers. then they tricked someone into giving them access to the system serving the executive office of the president. federal agencies are now warning employees to beware of so-called phishing e-mails. these appear to come from trustworthy e-mail accounts but actually contain malicious software which gives hackers the ability to take over their computers. john, christine? evan, thank you. happening now, the united states is deepening its involvement in the battle for yemen. speeding up delivery of weapons and increasing intelligence sharing with saudi arabia. for two weeks the saudis have been launching airstrikes against houthi rebels who they say are being trained and armed by iran. let s bring in senior international correspondent nic robertson who is live for us in saudi arabia. nic? reporter: good morning, christine. those saudi coalition-led airstrikes over the capital, sana a not so heavy last night, targeting areas around key oil fields areas that houthis are believed to be moving into, trying to take control of. so those strikes apparently to stop them there. strikes around aden yesterday do appear to have sort of blunted the houthis attackthere. aden quieter han it has been. but this is the clearest indication yet of antony blinken that the saudi authorities here intend to continue this air campaign. this is what he said. saudi arabia is sending a strong message to the houthis and their allies that they cannot overrun yemen by force. in support of that effort we have expedited weapons deliveries we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we ve established a joint coordination and planning cell in the saudi operations center. reporter: now, with this increased intelligence sharing, it doesn t allow the united states to provide direct targeting information to the saudis. however, what it does do when the saudis have decided what it is they re going to target to share that with the united states. the united states to review it then advise potentially for any civilian targets. and yesterday there was a case where a civilian target was right next to a military a civilian school was right next to a military target. the military target was hit. it had been hit before but the school was also hit, and six children were killed. so this additional intelligence sharing agreement may improve that situation, christine. we certainly hope so. nic robertson for us in saudi arabia thank you, nic. critics of the deal to curb iran s nuclear program are being disingenuous. those words straight from the head of the cia. john brennan told students at harvard s school of government critics shouldn t rip apart a solid deal. he said it s impossible to expect iran to dismantle everything. brennan did say he understands why some could have reservations opinion another breakthrough in the historic thaw between the united states and cuba might happen as early as today. the state department expected to recommend that cuba be removed as a state sponsor of terrorism. once a state department recommendation is made, secretary of state john kerry will pass it along to president obama who has said he would quickly accept that recommendation. congress would then have 45 days to override the president s decision, but they would need a vetoproof majority to do so. it sounds like a schoolhouse rock episode, singing it on the capitol steps. one week before tax day taking a toll on the agency and possibly you if you re close to the filing deadline. the irs commissioner is conceding that customer service is what he calls abysmal this year. that means not good. only four in ten callers to the agency s toll-free help line are getting through to a real person. and when they do reach a real person the customer service agents are instructed to only provide the basics like how to get tax forms and where to get online information. audits are down but so is patience. running out. patience is in short supply. big oil getting even bigger. the big story, shell is buying bg group, a british firm with prized oil fields off the coast of brazil. the biggest oil merger in something like 20 years. this is a $70 billion deal. we like to call that a super merger. if completed, it will add 25% to shell s gas reserves and 20% to production. oil prices have tumbled. that s what you call a crash in a commodity from $100 a barrel last summer to $50 a barrel now. that puts some producers in a crunch. bigger firms can swoop in to take over. shell just the latest to add to its expansive portfolio. rock-bottom prices also mean more layoffs for people who work in the oil industry. since june there have been more than 50,000 oil job cuts in the u.s. thanks to falling oil. this is a cnn money analysis. layoffs are up almost 4,000% in the oil patch in the first quarter. no surprise when you see a commodity decline like that boom. i am struck at how big these companies are. you re talking about mergers in the 50-plus billion dollars, tens of thousands of employees. huge companies. the world runs on oil. i guess so. it does. 11 minutes after the hour. dramatic closing arguments in the hernandez trial. a former nfl star accused of killing his friend. now the defense admits he was at the murder scene. this was a new development late in the closing arguments. we ll tell you all about it next. the beautiful sound of customers making the most of their united flight. power, wi-fi and streaming entertainment. that s. seize the journey friendly. 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(supergrass alright ) plays throughout kellogg s frosted mini wheats® feed your inner kidult. new york state is reinventing how we do business by leading the way on tax cuts. we cut the rates on personal income taxes. we enacted the lowest corporate tax rate since 1968. we eliminated the income tax on manufacturers altogether. with startup-ny, qualified businesses that start, expand or relocate to new york state pay no taxes for 10 years. all to grow our economy and create jobs. see how new york can give your business the opportunity to grow at ny.gov/business the jury in the boston marathon bombing trial resumes deliberations this morning. on tuesday, the panel sent the judge two notes after a long seven-hour day. now, the judge did not share the contents of the notes publicly but told the jurors that he will answer their questions today. cnn s alexandra field has more from inside the courtroom. reporter: christine, john, a jury made up of seven women and five men spent more than seven hours on the first day of deliberations trying to determine the fate of dzhokhar tsarnaev. he faces 30 different counts. 17 of those charges coming with a possible death sentence. if the jury finds him guilty of just one of those counts, this trial will go into a sentencing phase in which the jury will have to determine whether or not to spare tsarnaev s life. the defense has never denied dzhokhar tsarnaev s participation in the attacks, but it is still the responsibility of the jury to determine whether or not the government met the burden of proof in each of those 30 counts. deliberations will continue at 9:00 in the morning. the jury has already sent two notes with questions for the judge about this case. christine? john? jury deliberations today in the murder trial of ex-football star aaron hernandez. during closing arguments on tuesday, the lawyers for hernandez acknowledged for the first time that their client was at the murder scene. this came as prosecutors say that evidence clearly shows hernandez had a calculated plan to kill odin lloyd. cnn s susan candiotti picking up the story. reporter: a day of passionate closing arguments by both prosecutors and defense in the case of aaron hernandez. prosecutors for the very first time identifying hernandez as the trigger man in the shooting death of odin lloyd. and defense attorneys for the first time saying that aaron hernandez was, in fact, at the crime scene, saying this. calling him a 23-year-old kid who in their words witnesses something committed by somebody he knew. indicating that they are trying to shift the blame on the two other people who were in the car that night. now, the jury spent about an hour and a half deliberating and will have their first full day of deliberations beginning in the morning at 9:00 a.m. christine and john? susan, thank you. rand paul is on the campaign trail now. his first full day as a declared presidential candidate. the kentucky senator will hold a rally in new hampshire, of course, home of the nation s first primary following the nation s first caucuses in iowa. in his tuesday announcement the libertarian republican took direct aim as the nsa surveillance program. warrantless searches of americans phones and computer records are unamerican and a threat to our civil liberties. i say that your phone records are yours. i say the phone records of law-abiding citizens are none of their damn business. zbloe paul paul took aim at both parties, saying it is time to take the country back from what he calls special interests using washington as a piggy bank. rahm emanuel has won a second term in office in chicago s first mayoral runoff, he beat his rival, jesus chewie garcia. during his victory speech, he thanked the crowd for putting him through the paces. made an oath to be a, quote, better mayor because of it. the mayor also promised to do things differently in his new term including a pledge to unite that city. that was really really close in the end. a really tough battle for rohmahm emanuel emanuel. and he is pledging to be a different kind of player. to be more inclusive, not so divided. he said i m just going to be different than i ve been my whole life. right, the thing that made him famous and good at his job in washington was tough on him in chicago. a pivotal election in the embattled city of ferguson, missouri. voters tripled the number of black members on the city council. they elected two black candidates. the move will change the political fabric of ferguson after all the unrest that began last august. that s when officer darren wilson shot unarmed teen michael brown. he avoided charges in that case. tiger woods at the masters. this is after taking some time off to work on his game to get his health back. he is there, and i guarantee you cbs is thrilled. the masters thrilled. coy wire you know what? even coy wire is thrilled. the bleacher report is next. it s not uncommon to see professional athletes struggle with money in retirement. that s not the case for former nhl player jim montgomery. for him, retirement means a lot more hockey. during your skates glisten off the ice and push forward and hear the snap of the ice break away underneath you, and then the competitiveness of trying to get that puck first against an opponent to feel that with your brothers and your best friends on the ice is something special i wish everyone could experience. i m jim montgomery. i was a professional hockey player for 12 years. and i retired, and now i m a professional hockey coach at the university of denver. people don t open up their arms like they do when you re a professional athlete. so it made sense to me that in coaching i was going to have to volunteer or make very little money my first couple of years coaching. as a coach, you re trying to impart on these young men so that they can enjoy that brotherhood together and you re more of a father figure. how you help them grow individually as people will help ensure that they have great careers in whatever path they choose. a terrific retirement series. you can see jim s whole story at cnnmoney.com/retireyourway. sometimes the present looked bright. sometimes romantic. there were tears in my eyes. and tears in my eyes. and so many little things that we learned were really the biggest things. through it all, we saved and had a retirement plan. and someone who listened and helped us along the way. because we always knew that someday the future would be the present. every someday needs a plan. talk with us about your retirement today. everyone wants to switch to t-mobile. but your carrier has you locked up paying off a phone. not anymore. now t-mobile will pay off your phone. stuck in a contract? we ve got you covered there too. anyone can tease you with a lower price for a limited time. only t-mobile guarantees your price will never go up. that s right, never. ditch your carrier. and switch to the un-carrier today. sfx: clicking sounds so shiny. i know mommy but it s time to let the new kitchen get some sleep. if you want to choose wisely choose angie s list. you can get a finished project that you ll love. call, click or download the app for free today. wish your skin could bounce back like it used to? new neutrogena hydro boost water gel. with hyaluronic acid it plumps skin cells with intense hydration and locks it in. for supple, hydrated skin. hydro boost. from neutrogena. the traffic jam. scourge of 20th century city life. raiser of blood pressure. disrupter of supply chains. stealer of bedtime stories. polluter. frustrater. time thief. [cars honking] and one day soon we ll see the last one ever. cisco is building the internet of everything for connected cities today, that will confine the traffic jam to yesterday. cisco. .tomorrow starts here. many of the world s best golfers in augusta, georgia, for the masters which starts tomorrow. that includes tiger woods who hasn t won a major tournament in almost seven years. coy wire with this morning s bleacher report. seven years since a major and it s been almost two months since he s been in a tournament. what s he been doing, chilling on his yacht? he told the media exactly what he s been up to. listen. i worked my [ bleep ] off. that s the easiest way to describe it. i worked hard. tiger said he s been practicing from quote, sunup to sundown to get ready for what will be his 20th appearance at the masters. he s ready to rock. it s not all work and no play for tiger, though. he s going to participate in the par 3 contest. and both of these kids will be caddieing for him. in hoops news the women of uconn and notre dame faced off in the finals of the ncaa tournament in a rematch of last year s title game. uconn has dominated all season. and last night was no different. they dominated on offense. look at that. money. and they beat up the boards bullied their way to a victory. 63-53. the lady huskies earning their third straight championship and tenth title. that s head coach gino auriemma 10-0 in championship games. the huskies are 78-1 in the past two seasons. wow! yesterday we told you about how former republican presidential candidate mitt romney finished in the top 1% with his ncaa bracket picks. well that was only good enough for 6,326th place among the 11.5 million entries in espn s challenge. who ended up on top? how about this kid, 12-year-old sam holtz tied for first place, but he won the tiebreaker. unfortunately for the little fella from lake zurich illinois you have to be at least 18 to claim the grand prize. that would have been $20,000 gift card and a trip to the 2015 maui invitational. man! orlando hawks coach made a huge announcement that the team s pregame news conference yesterday before their matchup with the suns. he said that the hawks signed 8-year-old lake bozman to a contract. now, lake is fighting leukemia. in february he was scheduled to go to disney world with the burt show and burt s big adventure. he was too sick to made the trip, but the bufrtrt show made it up to him in a big way. they signed him to a one-day contract and sat courtside for the game. check him out on twitter, hanging out with some of the guys from the team. he even got to hang out with the cheerleaders. the coach said quote, we look for very very special people to add to our team who are brave and strong. and it was a great night for atlanta. bozman and the hawks, they crushed the suns 96-69 and broke a franchise record for wins with 58. that s great to see. in some ways that s the most important deal they ll sign all year. makes the biggest difference. those are the sports stories i love. john berman reads batting scores. it s baseball season. i have to check the stats during commercials. 27 minutes past the hour. a police officer charged with murder caught on camera shooting an unarmed black man in the back multiple times. the victim running away from the officer. new developments after the break. if you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis like me and you re talking to your rheumatologist about a biologic. this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain and protect my joints from further damage. this is humira giving me new perspective. doctors have been prescribing humira for ten years. humira works for many adults. it targets and helps to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers including lymphoma have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. talk to your doctor and visit humira.com this is humira at work a police officer accused of murder this morning. caught on camera. shooting an unarmed black man in the back as that man tried to run away. this morning, how the officer will defend himself and what the victim s family is now saying. disturbing video. welcome back to early start. i m john berman. i m christine romans. it s 31 minutes past the hour. developing this morning, a south carolina police officer remains behind bars. an officer behind bars he is charged in the murder of an unarmed black man who was running away following a traffic stop for a broken taillight. north charleston police officer michael slager arrested after this disturbing video emerged. [ gunshots ] let s bring in cnn s ed lavandera for the latest. reporter: john and christine, this dramatic video has ended with officer michael slager, a five-year veteran of the north charleston south carolina police department being charged with murder. this comes incredibly quickly. this shooting took place saturday afternoon, just four days ago. and the state law enforcement department there in the state of south carolina has charged him with murder. in this video, it s dramatic, you see in the initial moments of the video the victim in this case, 50-year-old walter scott, very close to the officer but starting to run away. you see some objects fall to the ground. officer slager apparently said that he feared for his life or he felt like he was in danger because the victim had reached for his taser. but walter scott gets about 25 feet away, four seconds later and eight shots, walter scott drops to the ground. he is later pronounced dead at the scene. and then one interesting piece, if you look closely at the video, at one point you see officer slager go back to where the initial confrontation had taken place and then drop something next to walter scott s body. it s not clear if that s the taser. then moments later he goes back and picks up that very same object. it is clear, john and christine, that this video played a dramatic role in these murder charges being filed against officer michael slager. john and christine? now, on top of the state murder charges, officer slager faces an fbi investigation for possibly violating walter scott s civil rights. he s also likely to be named in a civil lawsuit planned by scott s family. they were outraged and obviously heartbroken as they spoke to media last night. their lawyer called slager, quote, a cop who felt like he could get away with just shooting someone in the back. walter scott s brother, anthony, remembered him as a coast guard veteran and the father of four children. i have i had two brothers. i had two brothers. but now i have one brother. but out of my brothers, he was the most outgoing out of all of us. he had he knew everybody. he knew he knew family i didn t know. he knew he had friends i didn t know. he was well known in the community. everywhere. and he was just an outgoing type of person. and loving and kind. that was just his nature. now, city officials in north charleston also stepping in front of the cameras following officer slager s arrest. the mayor there says he is grateful that someone was there to capture this moment on camera to capture that video of the shooting. the police chief says he has been devastated by the actions of his officer. the video is very demonstrative of exactly what happened. without the video and that was the only witness there was, actually, was the gentleman that was making the video it would be difficult to ascertain exactly what did occur. we want to thank the young person that came forward with the video. you ve been around me a long time. and you know i think that all of these police officers on this force, the men and women, are like my children. so you tell me how a father would react to seeing his child act do something. i ll let you answer that yourself. south carolina political figures reacting to the police shooting and murder charges as well. in a statement released overnight, governor nikki haley said what happened in this case is not acceptable in south carolina. on twitter, senator tim scott said after watching the video, the senseless shooting and taking of walter scott s life was absolutely unnecessary and avoidable. my heart aches for the family and our north charleston community. i will be watching this case closely. new this morning, u.s. officials are investigating a breach of white house computers by russian hackers. u.s. officials briefed on the investigation say the white house hack goes back to that damaging intrusion into state department computers we ve been telling you about since last year. justice reporter evan perez picks up the story from washington. reporter: john, christine, russian hackers in recent months broke into sensitive parts of the white house e-mail system. they even could see parts of the president s schedule not disclosed to the public in realtime. the hackers are believed to be working for the russian government. and according to u.s. officials, they pulled off one of the most serious cyber breaches of u.s. government agencies. this breach is one reason why u.s. intelligence officials recently increased warnings about the cyber threat from russia. the white house disclosed suspicious activity in its unclassified e-mail systems in october. but officials say even unclassified e-mails contain sensitive information that s valuable to foreign spies. the hackers got in first by breaking into the state department s e-mail servers. then they tricked someone into giving them access to the system serving the executive office of the president. federal agencies are now warning employees to beware of so-called phishing e-mails. these appear to come from trustworthy e-mail accounts but actually contain malicious software which gives hackers the ability to take over their computers. john, christine? our thanks to evan for that. happening now, the united states is deepening its involvement in the battle for yemen. state department officials say the u.s. is speeding up delivery of weapons and increasing intelligence sharing with saudi arabia. for two weeks the saudis have been launching airstrikes against houthi rebels who they say are being trained and armed by iran. for the very latest on this, let s bring in senior international correspondent nic robertson live in saudi arabia. good morning, nic. reporter: yeah good morning, john. that increased intelligence sharing could be very useful for the saudis. what we are told at the moment is this is not information that the u.s. will give the saudis to help them to target things specifically not give them target information. however, when the saudis do build their target list the understanding is that u.s. intelligence officials could review that and use their knowledge and information to warn the saudis. this military target may be close to a civilian target to help the saudis mitigate against collateral damage. that was certainly a problem yesterday. a military base was targeted. a school was close by. the children were just coming out of lunch break, and six of the children were injured when the school was hit. we heard of another incident as well where a lack of intelligence for the saudi air force seemed to lead to a loss to their side on the ground. one of the southern separatist commanders who ostensibly is on the same side of the saudis said that 20 of his tanks and heavy armor were hit in a saudi airstrike because they don t have the coordination on the ground. he said they had won them in a battle from the houthi side and then essentially lost them to the allies in the saudi-led coalition strikes. so all this additional help is what the saudis need at this time it appears, and the clearest indication yet, speeding up the supplies of weapons. again, an indication really that the saudis intend to continue this air campaign for some time to come, john. nic robertson for us. so interesting to see the u.s. representation in saudi arabia giving very direct approval of what s going on there. nic robertson, thanks so much. a big deal this morning. big oil getting bigger. that s the top story this morning in money. shell buying bg group, a british firm with prized oil fields off the coast of brazil. it s a $70 billion deal. if completed, it would add 25% to shell s oil and gas reserves and 20% to production. energy prices of course have cratered from over $100 a barrel last summer to about $50 a barrel now. and that puts producers in a crunch. bigger firms use this they swoop in maybe to take over. shell just the latest to add to its expansive portfolio. and rock-bottom oil prices also mean layoffs in the oil patch. since june there have been more than 50,000 oil job cuts in the u.s. that s because of the falling price of oil. this is cnn money analysis for you, folks. layoffs in the first quarter in oil, in energy jobs in the u.s. are up almost 4,000%. in many cases, those are very decent-paying jobs too. so we keep saying there was so much action in petroleum engineering, for example. and now not so much. there s some layoffs there. but if oil prices rise again, you can expect that energy companies will just as quickly start hiring. also acute regional effects like in north dakota and texas and places like that. about 20 minutes till the hour right now. we have explosive new re lagss in the aaron hernandez murder trial. the former nfl star s attorneys with a shocking admission about the day that prosecutors say aaron hernandez killed his friend. that s next. kellogg s® frosted mini-wheats®. have 8 layers of nutritious wheat. and one of delicious sweet. to satisfy the adult.. and kid - in all of us. 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day. using wellness to keep away illness. and believing that a single life can be made better by millions of others. healthier takes somebody who can power modern health care. by connecting every single part of it. for as the world keeps on searching for healthier. we re here to make healthier happen. optum. healthier is here. jurors convening again today in the murder trial of ex-football star aaron hernandez. during closing arguments tuesday, hernandez s lawyer acknowledging for the first time his client was at the murder scene. cnn s susan candiotti picks up the story. reporter: a day of passionate closing arguments by both prosecutors and defense in the case of aaron hernandez. prosecutors for the very first time identifying hernandez as the trigger man in the shooting death of odin lloyd. and defense attorneys for the first time saying that aaron hernandez was, in fact, at the crime scene, saying this. calling him a 23-year-old kid who in their words witnesses something committed by somebody he knew. indicating that they are trying to shift the blame on the two other people who were in the car that night. now, the jury spent about an hour and a half deliberating and will have their first full day of deliberations beginning in the morning at 9:00 a.m. christine and john? interesting developments. susan, thank you for that. let s take a look at what s coming up on new day. chris cuomo joins me with that. hey, how you doing? obviously we have this developing story that is very troubling. it is a disturbing case in south carolina. you re looking at it right now. a man clearly running away clearly fired upon by a police officer who does not seem to be in any imminent threat from anything of the suspect who shoots multiple times. now charged with a homicide. the question is what happened before this videotape came out? what were the authorities saying? what was the officer saying? what was his lawyer saying? very important for us as we continue to try to understand how these cases come out and cause so much outrage. we re also going to talk to the brother of the victim as well as members of law enforcement to get both sides of this situation. but that video is going to drive our story. u.s. officials say russia is behind a cyber attack on the white house. the computer system of course. while no classified information was breached this time the question is how do they do this? what if they do it again? and how do you stop this access to sensitive material which could clearly compromise national security? we ll have experts as well as christiane amanpour weighing in. all right, christine, those are the two big stories, but we ll take you through everything. we asked the transportation security what keeps him up at night, and he said cybersecurity. thanks chris. 47 minutes past the hour. isis cleared from tikrit but evacuated residents, they are afraid to return home. we bring that you story next. the beautiful sound of customers making the most of their united flight. power, wi-fi and streaming entertainment. that s. seize the journey friendly. new york state is reinventing how we do business by leading the way on tax cuts. we cut the rates on personal income taxes. we enacted the lowest corporate tax rate since 1968. we eliminated the income tax on manufacturers altogether. with startup-ny, qualified businesses that start, expand or relocate to new york state pay no taxes for 10 years. all to grow our economy and create jobs. see how new york can give your business the opportunity to grow at ny.gov/business a week after iraqi forces reclaimed tikrit from isis many families are very hesitant about returning home. they fear isis fighters may not be completely out of the area. and now they re stranded in makeshift camps in baghdad. senior international correspondent arwa damon has that story for us in baghdad. reporter: good morning. we ve been speaking with a number of families from the province where tikrit is located, and none of them have gone back home. now, one family we spoke to from the city of tikrit itself very concerned about the remaining pockets of isis resistance also concerned about the explosives that isis has left behind. but they re saying that even if and when tikrit is deemed safe enough for them to go back home they re probably going to wait and see. the father of two young girls we met, two teenage girls, saying that he simply does not trust the situation. there are also great concerns amongst these sunni families that the shia volunteer fighting force that has been responsible for a lot of the gains made against isis could potentially carry out revenge attacks against them. a lot of these families living in fairly decrepit housing, half-constructed buildings. some of them are from areas in the province that are actually been liberated three to four months ago, but they still are waiting before they go back. not just because their homes have been destroyed, but again, because they are that concerned about the potential security situation. it s not a risk at this stage that they are willing to take at least not until they hear some sort of guarantee from the iraqi government that they will be secured and that the region will be safe enough for them to be able to go back home. john and christine in arwa damon in baghdad, thanks arwa. critics of the deal to curb iran s nuclear program are being called disingenuous. those words straight from the head of the cia, john brennan. he told students at harvard s kennedy school of government critics should not rip apart a solid deal. he said it is impossible to expect iran to dismantle everything. brennan did say, though he understands why some could have reservations. big oil getting bigger this morning. the biggest oil merger in 20 years. that s next. when you re living with diabetes steady is exciting. only glucerna has carbsteady clinically proven to help minimize blood sugar spikes. i m a bull rider make it part of your daily diabetes plan. so you stay steady ahead. let s get an early start on your money. wednesday edition. another big merger. the biggest oil merger in perhaps 20 years. that has european and asian shares mostly higher. a big morning for hong kong. u.s. stock futures are up as well. shell paying $70 billion for british gas producer bg group. oil stocks soaring. the first super merger in oil in at least a decade. crashing oil prices making tie-ups more attractive. these companies can cut costs dramatically when they tie up like that. help wanted. the number of job openings in the u.s. is at a 14-year high. 5.1 million job openings in february. the first time above 5 million since january 2001. this is one of my favorite job market charts. this is the number of job seekers for each opening. that number keeps falling. fewer than two people now looking for work for every job opening. at the worst of the recession, seven people seven unemployed people were vying for each job opening. that was terrible math. senator elizabeth warren says the minimum wage simply must rise. she told conan o brien last night about her mother s minimum-wage job at sears. and here s the key part. that minimum wage job saved our home. it saved our family. but it was a time in america when a minimum-wage job would keep a family of three afloat. we must raise the minimum wage. right. so other families. there s been a big push by states and companies to raise the minimum wage. but at $7.25, the federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009. and when adjusted for inflation, it s at a decades-long low compared with the cost of living. a police officer charged with murder shooting an unarmed black man in the back. dramatic video, now murder charges. new day picks up that story right now. there was no witness? dogs get treated better than this guy did. this looks like cold-blooded murder. hackers working for the russian government obtained access to the white house email system. they ve been targeting our infrastructure for a long time. we are in the peak of our air campaign. we ve expedited weapons deliveries, they cannot overrun yemen by force. a jury set to decide the fate of dzokhar tsarnaev. he faces 30 different counts 17 of those charges coming with a possible death sentence. announcer: this is new day, with chris cuomo, alisyn camerota and michaela pereira. good morning, welcome to your new day, it is wednesday, april 8th 6:00 in the east michaela pereira is off, jb joins us. a lot of news for you, a south carolina police officer charged with murder after repeatedly shooting an unarmed black man in the back. killing him. new video is the key, the distinguisher, making this case different than so many others the incidents shows from the video, officer likele slager shoot ing shooting the victim. the officer said he feared for his life as he fired eight shots at scott. scott s death reinnighting the debate between excessive force and trust between the police and the black community. our coverage begins with martin savidge in south carolina with more. we re standing outside the home of the parents of walter scott. they ve been speaking out saying that they are grateful that the truth is known. grateful for that video. . [ gunshots
saying the gay community won t rest until, quote, there are no more churches. governor huckabee thanks for being here and happy easter. michael, great to be with you. thank you very much. happy easter to you. thank you, sir. so the question of the week should the baker have to bake the cake for the gay couple? well i think the question is really whether or not a person of conscience is able to say no to something. this is not about discrimination. it s about discretion. the fact is if the baker said no you can t come into my shop you can t eat a cupcake, i m not going to serve you a doughnut that s discrimination. but if the baker is asked to do something that would require him to do something artistic that is not within his personal convictions, of course he should be able to say i can do this but i can t do that. that would be true for anyone. how would you distinguish that circumstance governor from the woolworth s lunch counter circa 1960 with an african-american patron? well i don t think there s any any comparison michael, and i think it s a false parallel. in the first place, if a person walks into a lunch counter, he doesn t walk in saying i m gay, don t serve me. there s no one who is suggesting that a person is going to be turned away because of sexual preference. i mean i don t know of anybody who can say that that s happening in great numbers or at all, for that matter. what we re talking about is whether people who have a business and are asked to participate in a service ceremony or something along the lines of that have the artistic freedom to decline. try going to a muslim bakery and seeing whether or not they will do a same-sex wedding cake. it s not just christians. but the issue is religious liberty, whether or not people have a right to believe what they want to believe, practice their faith, and not have the government come down on them and tell them they have to do something and beyond that to try to have people put them out of business because they don t agree with a particular view of marriage. i find that very strange that in america where we re supposed to be tolerant and have diversity, this is intolerance and a lack of diversity and a push toward uniformity. governor huckabee you said earlier this week it won t stop until there are no more churches and it occurred to me and i listened to the totality of that interview, that in this particular instance it wasn t the lgbt community that i think caused the reversal in both arkansas and indiana, but rather business interests. you know, traditionally republicans supporting business interests, whether it s entities like walmart in your home state angie s list in indiana. react to that alliance, the alliance between the gay, lesbian community and transgenders and those business entities that would have traditionally been in the chamber of commerce realm with the gop. michael first of all, the reason those corporations put the pressure on indiana and arkansas was because to the militant gay community put the pressure on them. i found it a little hypocritical when you have companies even and i love walmart, big company in my home state, but they do business in china, for gosh sake. i don t think the chinese are exactly the paragone of human rights. you ve got apple computer. they re selling apple computers in saudi arabia. is tim cook going to sell out of there? i don t think so. he doesn t mind making millions if not billions of dollars in cultures and countries where human rights are really an issue, and for anybody to try to draw some comparison between xa what s happening by not getting a wedding cake made and people having, you know their hands cut off or being hanged or in prison i mean that s i find that a stretch and i think these corporations really ought to either be consistent quit making money from these countries that are really oppressing human rights and quit bowing to the pressure and just sell their stuff. that s what they re in business for sell stuff. but that s the argument that s made from the other side about the baker and the florist and the candlestick maker. you re in business to bake a cake. just bake the cake and go home and be a good christian, whatever that means. a lot of people will do that michael. they will bake the cake. but shouldn t they have the discretion? that s once again the issue. if they want to turn the business down they re not turning down the business of being open being willing to serve any customer what they ve got on the shelf. again, it s the relation owls lib religious liberty when people are asked to do something which violates their conscience. the big confusion was it didn t guarantee the baker, the florist, the pizza maker was going to win. it just meant he would have a hearing in court. over the 22 years that riffer has been in place, very few times has the religious objector even won. i m not sure why democrats loved riffer in 1993 and you had al gore and bill clinton trumpeting it as wonderful and charles schumer sponsoring it and 22 years later, because of political pressure now they run from something they once embraced. i find it hypocrital. what s your opinion of the deal that s been announced, the parameters of the deal that s been announced with regard to iran? very disappointing and very frightening. i think particularly for the stabilization of the middle east. i m not sure why we would ever think that negotiating with iran to begin with makes a whole lot of sense since they ve never kept a deal they ve ever made. for them to have nuclear even capability is illegal. for them to push that they re going to end up with 6,000 centrifuges instead of 19,000 michael, it s like giving a pyromaniac, you know 6,000 gallons of gasoline instead of 19,000. but he s still got a bunch of gasoline to start a fire. and you re talking about a country whose primary leader han erer who has been leading chants death to america and has vowed to wipe israel off the face of the map. not exactly the kind of folks you want to sit down and make nice with and assume they ll keep their bargain. i don t think they will. president obama said there are three choices, one to negotiate a deal such as is now being put together two is to bomb iran three is to walk away from the table. first of all, are those the three options? and if so which does governor huckabee favor? well the president has missed one. the fourth one, and one that was working, was to continue to put heavy saxnctions on them and bankrupt them force them to accept something other than now on their terms. i don t understand why we took p pressure off when the pressure was working. we really haven t gotten much out of this deal michael. it doesn t sound to me like that anything is happening in tehran other than laughter but there s weeping in saudi arabia kuwait egypt, jordan and the rest of the middle east where they now understand that the americans have capitulated and will let iran move forward. somebody who is a blogger made an observation this week that i thought was interesting, that there s been more pressure to put sanctions on indiana than on iran. i thought that was a pretty wise observation. it s been a real almost distraction from something that is a whole lot more significant in terms of our national security than anything that s been occupying the front pages here. governor i want to show you something that the president said this week and allow you to respond to it. roll the tape please. so when you hear the inevitable critics of the deal sound off, ask them a simple question do you really think that this verifiable deal if fully implemented, backed by the world s major powers is a worse option than the risk of another war in the middle east? what s your response to that, governor huckabee? first of all, i m not sure how verifiable anything is with the iranians. if you think they re going to let inspectors see everything you have a different view of the iranians than i do. and secondly the notion that the only option is either to bomb them and have a big war all over the middle east or let them have nuclear devices, if they get nuclear devices, do you think that they re going to just sit there and hold them and not use them for some nefarious purpose? the same people who have already murdered americans, kidnapped americans, financed more terrorism around the world than anybody, funned hamas and hezbollah? these aren t good people. so why do we expect something good from bad people? we re expecting good fruit from a bad tree and it rarely if ever will happen. i want to ask a question about your intentions with regard to 2016. first of all, are you prepared to make some news today? will you say you re formally getting into this thing? well let s hold off just a little while. we re working on the process and it s coming along, but i ve said all along it will be during the spring. so that gives me a few more weeks to finalize the decision. all right. while you re working on the process, ted cruz senator cruise is airing the first commercial of the 2016 cycle. let s both take a look. were it not for the transformative love of jesus christ i would have been raised by a single mom without my father in the house. god s blessing has been on america from the very beginning of this nation. over and over again when we face impossible odds the american people rose to the challenge. this is our fight. and that is why i m running for president of the united states. i m ted cruz and i approve this message. that s the type of a message that i anticipate coming from you and i think the problem politically is that it s also the type of a message that i anticipate coming from senator santorum from ben carson from a number of individuals who are thinking of running i ll say, for the republican nomination. here s the question if you re all in are you guaranteeing the nomination of jeb bush? oh i don t think so. i mean first of all, i don t remember doing many ads like that. i spoke a lot about joblessness, about the fact that people are working hard and getting further behind. i think the narrative on me is that the only support i had was evangelical evangelicals. i ve often said if all the evangelicals had supported me in a monolithic way, gosh i would have been the nominee. i had working-class people who were the rank-and-file, sort of nuts and bolts of my 2008 campaign, and i would suspect that a lot of the support that i m going to have are going to be those same kind of people. many of them yeah sure, many are people of faith, but not all of them and a lot of them are just working-class people who feel like they ve been left behind and while the economy is supposedly recovering according to washington it s certainly not recovering for a lot of people across america who are lifting heavy things every day. governor huckabee thanks for your time. michael, great to be with you again. thank you. you too. coming up, the showdown between gay rights and relsigious rights isn t limited to wedding cakes and pizza. the stakes are higher once you re denied medical care. coming up, the couple whose pediatrician refused to care for their newborn. and stunning details investigators are learning about the actions of the germanwings co-pilot in the days leading up to the fatal crash. and dozens of cell phones have been recovered from the crash site. what that means for the investigation. it tastes better when you grow it. it tastes even better when you share it. it s not hard, it s doable. it s growable. get going with gro-ables. miracle-gro. life starts here. people ship all kinds of things. but what if that thing is a few hundred thousand doses of flu vaccine. that need to be kept at 41 degrees. while being shipped to a country where it s 90 degrees. in the shade. sound hard? 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(announcer) the subaru xv crosstrek. symmetrical all-wheel drive plus 34 mpg. love. it s what makes a subaru a subaru. welcome back. premeditated murder. that s how one official described the horrific crash of germanwings flight 9525 and now we know new details about the co-pilot s deadly path of destruction. investigators say that he purposely used the controls to speed up the plane s descent. officials also say that the 28-year-old researched ways to commit suicide and cockpit door security in the days before the crash. investigators are also taking a closer look at mobile phones found at the crash site. joining me now is psychiatrist dr. gail soughts and former faa safety inspector david soucy. okay you two. you know i have my questions. you do. doctor eight straight days of doing online research sound like a chroniced is dal i dkronchronic suicidal ideation and not a fleeting thought. is that typical? it s not typical mass murder. this doesn t even fit the picture of depression and justed is just ed is dal ideation. some who think about suicide do think about it for a while, plan and for some it s an impulsive act. this sound like a planned act which makes us think about whether if there had been an evaluation present or some way to let doctors be able to communicate for effectively this kwoufb could have been prevent. how does this fit with the diagnosis of depression? it doesn t. most people who are depressed, if they re going to harm themselves harm only themselves they do not kill a large group of people. so this really doesn t fit. what does it fit with? you have to think about sociopathy somebody who just had a plan they wanted to be infamous they wanted to be important, they wanted to hurt others and were willing to take themselves with that plan. and you also have to think about another diagnosis, which no one s mentioned, and that is bipolar disorder. that is because when you look at his age and past depression one possibility is he wasn t just depressed when he was actually hatching bipolar disorder and an episode of brewing mania or hypomania. people can become at high risk for suicide anded a high risk for simply risky ventures. david sousy, speeding up upon descent descent. how would that have felt in the cabin? well at that point, in the sense, it would have been they would have definitely known what s going on. they would have heard the engines spooling up higher. they would have felt the actual movement back in the seat because of the way he did it. he increased the speed very rapidly, and he did it twice. so he did that by adjusting the speed. there s three different controls that he can adjust, the descent, the speed, and the altitude of the descent as well. so it s tragic. it could have been noticeable. this black box when they found it actually was black because it was submerged eight inches in the soil. and my understanding is that it was detected by law enforcement on a second go-around. i remember from many of our conversations about mh-370 how in water the black boxes were emitting a signal. why isn t that done in this kind of circumstance? it really should be. the difference in water is the fact that it could be pretty much anywhere because of the drift and the float. and the idea here is that when the impact happens it s a heavy box, lit go directly towards and real close to the actual impact spot. so typically it s easy to find. i m not sure why they department use a metal detector in this sense because a massive piece of stainless steel like that or steel itself would have been noticeable with a metal detector. you d look at all this metal and think that doesn t make sense, but most of the metal around there is aluminum which wouldn t be picked up by the detector. i m surprised they didn t catch it on first pass. what else is this black box going to tell us? it ll tell us a number of things. what i m hopeful is it will also tell us whether or not the switch was depressed and held in the down position. one of the thins that still remains in my mind a question is did the pilot have access, did the system work where you put in the code and the door opens? because there was no buzzer that went off, which is part of that system. so if it did not go off, then that means he was depressing that switch down. if we can conclude ha the switch was depressed, then we don t have to look any further into the door system to see fit worked properly but if it didn t work properly that needs to be fixed. and the flight data recorder will tell us if that happened or not. doctor 30 seconds left. might medication strbhave been a trigger? in some cases when someone is depressed or manic and you give them many medication and it s in the early stage, it can energize them actually aid in hatching a plan. i don t want to blame suicide on medication because it is critical and very helpful for many people but in materialiest stages of medication someone should be monitored closely because there can be some increased risk. dr. salts, david soucie thank you both. now that a frame swoshg in place to stop iran s nuclear program, president obama has the tough task of trying to sell the deal to those oppose it. one of those voices is the first navy s.e.a.l. in the congress. he s passionate about why he feels iran cannot be trusted. and as the final four get ready to battle it out, the ncaa says in response to a lawsuit it s not our job to ensure educational quality. you re about to meet a man who gives new definition to the word student-athlete. and then i saw him slowly coming down the aisle. one of those guys who just can t stop talking. i was downloading a movie. i was trying to download a movie. i have verizon. i don t. i get that little spinning wheel. download didn t finish. i finished the download. headphones on. and i m safe. i didn t finish in time. so. many. stories. vo: join us and save without settling. verizon. welcome back. there s been strong reaction to the proposed deal that would limit iran s nuclear program and none stronger than from israel s prime minister benjamin netanyahu, who says the agreement threatens israel s survival. president obama insists the u.s. and the world are keeping a close eye on iran and he s optimistic that this deal is the best option. joining me is contributing editor of the atlantic and national journal, peter byner. many americans are trying to evaluate this deal. what should they be comparing it to? they should be comparing it to the potential alternative, which was the u.s. walks away. in all likelihood the international sanctions regime collapses because russia and china have a strong interest in doing business with iran. they re not going to maintain sanctions forever in the absence of the possibility of a deal. and i think the pressure therefore on iran goes down and because we have no other alternative we move toward war. i think while this deal is not perfect it s far better than the alternative which would have led to the collapse of the sanctions regime and also the collapse of the inspections that give us allow us to know what s happening with iran s nuclear program. i ask that question because during the course of this week with my radio audience we had the same exchange and many people were calling and viewing it against the alternative of a complete eradication. of the iranian nuclear program. to those people you would say what? we don t have the capacity to destroy the iranian nuclear program completely. it s worth noting under international law iran has the right to a peaceful nuclear program. we can stop them from building a weapons program, but they have every right to have a peaceful nuclear program. of course it s hard to know where the line between one and the other is which is why it s so important we have the sanctions. but we don t have the capacity to force iran into complete capitulation. we tried that with iraq. when iraq did not completely capitulate to us we tried invading it and then we did own the entire place but we saw what happened after that. let s work through some of the other criticisms. what stops iran from getting a nuclear weapon in 15 years? well even after the entire even after 50 years, iran still a member of the iaea will still be under international inspections, but to the same everyone else is. for the next 15 years they are subject to super heightened inspections other countries don t have to go through. we don t know it s conceive that believe iran 15 years later could be cheating and playing hide-and-seek with those inspectors but i think the bet of this deal is that an opening of iran to the rest of the world is more likely to produce political change in iran. and part of the reason we re so concerned about an iranian nuclear weapon is because of the nature of this regime. when you look at the iranian people celebrating out in the streets, they re not celebrating because of the technical details of this deal. they re celebrating because they know that the possibility of an opening to the world will help them economically and it will help them politically, will empower them and disempower their oppressors in this regime. what if it helps them economically and they use that funding to support sides that are antagonistic to sides to the united states around the globe? they may well. our own allies like saudi arabia qatar, also support groups around the world that are antagonistic to us. iran supports hezbollah, for instance or the houthis in yemen but some of our gulf allies essentially support jihadist groups like al qaeda and isis. this will remain a problem nonetheless. this nuclear deal does not solve all of america s problems with iran but it does create the basis for a dialogue a conversation with iran and i think it makes the price of iranian bad behavior higher because then iran jeopardizes the relationship they now potentially have with the rest of the world. prime minister netanyahu said this week he views this as a threat to the survival of israel. does he have the political power to derail this deal? i don t think so. first of all, i think it s important to note that while benjamin netanyahu has repeatedly called iran an existential threat several high-ranking officials and former officials in the israeli security establishment have said in fact that s not true, that while they see iran s potential nuclear weapon as a threat they don t believe it s an existential threat to israel it s not a threat to israel s survival. israel is after all, a country with a couple hundred nuclear weapons. why are those nuclear weapons there but for deterrence to deter any country that could develop a nuclear weapon from using it? and i think that s the perspective many in the israeli security establishment see this through. final question. was prime minister netanyahu a benefit to the americans in this negotiation? i know you paid such close attention to what was going on in switzerland and elsewhere. was there a good cop/bad cop routine that secretary kerry was able to play out? it s a good question. it s hard to really know. i don t know enough about the thinking on the iranian side to know that. what i do know is that i think benjamin netanyahu has actually made it easier for barack obama to sell this deal at home. he has made the fight over this deal so partisan that i think he s made it harder for democrats to ultimately oppose barack obama on what will be the signature foreign policy initiative of his administration and it is democrats that the opponents of this deal need if they re going to override an obama veto. i think netanyahu has made that prospect harder. peter beinart, thanks so much. happy passover. thank you. so has netanyahu made it easier for obama to sell this deal? has the deal become so partisan that democrats can t oppose it? joining me now is the fist navy s.e.a.l. elected to the house, a member of the armed services committee, republican congressman ryan zinc. great to have you here. please react to what you just heard from peter beinart. i think it s a false narrative. the negotiation should be clear. no legal pathway for iran to have a nuclear device no enrichment of uranium, no facilities that could be used to have a nuclear device and robust inspections. from our perspective i think that s fair and above board. we re talking about a nuclear armed iran which will almost assuredly result in a nuclear arms race in the middle east with saudi, perhaps uae, turkey jordan, all having nuclear weapons. in an area that s notoriously unstable. congress we have a right under the constitution, the president has the power, but certainly congress has, you know, the advise and consent of a treaty under the constitution and will exercise it. congressman zinke, the president said this week any critic of the deal and clearly you re in that category needs to answer the question of why a verifiable deal is worse as an option than the risk of another war in the middle east. go ahead and respond to the president. i think it s a false narrative. one is the devil s in the details. clearly there s celebration in the streets of iran. they re very somber in israel. and we don t know the details of the framework are here. so i think the president should consult congress we should look at the details and make sure this is not a legal pathway for iran to have a nuclear weapon. but it s a false narrative by saying that sanctions didn t work. sanctions worked to the point where that s why iran came to the table. so it s not a question of war. that s a false narrative. the question is what can we do what do we have the capacity to do. sanctions certainly worked before and if this deal is bad, we should take it. we don t have to take a bad deal. we don t have to have a path where iran has a nuclear weapon. it s also been pointed out this week that a military option if it were to be exercised, and you re not advocating that i understand but you have expertise and that s why i want to ask you, that a military option would probably wipe out an iranian nuclear capability only for a period of two or three years viewed against this prospect of 15 years of no iranian nuclear capability. doesn t that make this proposal more appetizing? well no. we re talking about iran having a nuclear weapon. this is a khomeini regime which has had multiple multiple times has said they would want america destroyed. you know if you re looking at iran through a lens of are they a responsible nation-state has their conduct been one that would suggest they should have a path to a nuclear weapon and the answer most assurely is no. this is iran. you know one of the founders of worldwide terrorism. it wasn t that long ago you know remember the hostage taking. remember beirut. remember africa. remember iraq in the war. you have embedded troops right now, iranian troops in the territory of iraq. so, you know i don t think it s a good idea and it s not in our best interest given this state is also oil rich and has gas. they don t need a nuclear capability. i think the only reason why they re approaching a nuclear capability as far as power goes is to generate enough material to make a nuclear weapon. congressman ryan zinke, thanks for being here, sir. always a pleasure. coming up next while college basketball s elite gear up for tonight s final four the ncaa is preparing for a showdown of its own. the surprising statement that sparked a major backlash. i ve lived my whole life here in fairbanks, alaska. i love the outdoors, spending time with my family. i have a family history of prostate cancer. i had the test done and that was when i got the news. my wife and i looked at treatment options. cancer treatment centers of america kept coming up on the radar. so we flew to phoenix. greg progressed excellently. we proceeded to treat him with hormonal therapy, concurrent with intensity modulated radiation therapy to the prostate gland. go to cancercenter.com to learn more about our integrative therapies and how they re specifically designed to keep you strong mentally, physically and spiritually throughout your treatment. i feel great today i m healthy, i have never been in a happier place, i can t imagine being treated anyplace else. fighting cancer has given me opportunities to live. i think i chose extremely well. call or go to cancercenter.com. cancer treatment centers of america. care that never quits. appointments available now. hmm. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. everybody knows that parker. well. did you know auctioneers make bad grocery store clerks? that ll be $23.50. now .75, 23.75, hold em. hey now do i hear 23.75? 24! hey 24 dollar, 24 and a quarter, quarter now half, 24 and a half and .75! 25! now a quarter, hey 26 and a quarter, do you wanna pay now, you wanna do it, 25 and a quarter- -sold to the man in the khaki jacket! geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. welcome back. all eyes are on inn and not just for the religious freedom bill that s sparked so much controversy. college basketball fans have converged on indianapolis for tonight s much-anticipated final four. despite the excitement in the arena, a dark cloud is hanging over the ncaa in response to a lawsuit filed by former university of north carolina athletes. the ncaa has said it s not their job to ensure educational quality. any next guest knows all too well about balancing academics and the pressure of playing sports at high level. marlon rolle played football at oregon state university is a rhodes scholar, played in the nfl and is now a medical student. they say we don t have day-to-day responsibility for what actually happens in the classroom. thank you for having me. i believe there s more the ncaa can do as well as individual institutions. i think that once the ncaa and institutions realize that this once amateur model of college sports no longer exists then we can start making real progress. as you said i m a second-year medical student to be a pediatric neurosurgeon. the i see a patient this patient has all the clinical signs and indications of low-bar pneumonia, i tell my attending physician. my attending physician says this is a broken foot, that attending physician is denying what s happening, analogous to what s happen in the ncaa. there s so much money and pressure and highlights and exposure for these young athletes that it s bordering on professionalism. the rhodes scholarship application process is legendary for its rigorous nature. what was the reaction of your football coaches in college when they became aware of the fact that you were making that application? i wanted to do the rhodes scholarship since i heard about bill bradley s awesomeness basically in college and being a rock star in that respect. when i got to the university i went to the office and said i want to be a rhodes scholar like my hero bill bradley. when i applied, it s very intense, you have to write a cv personal interviews write a personal statement saying why you want to be a rode scholar and how this education at oxford can help your interests moving forward, there was a little bit of resistance from a few coaches but for the most part i got a lot of support from florida state, from administration teammates, faculty because they felt that if i did well and i showed that, you know you can actually balance academics and athletics in a major division i college institution like florida state, then that would be good for the program, that could be good for student/athletes and it could be good all the way around. they told me i could interview for the scholarship, i just had to win it. i did and it s been remarkable for me. when you delayed your entry to the nfl, was the nfl as understanding as the coaches that you just described? not at first. you know the i believe some people in the nfl are used to a certain athlete, used to a certain player, and when there s a player that comes from a different sort of frame of mind has a bit of a different ideology and doesn t have i would say 100%, you know outlook or perspective on just football you know, my parents wanted me to have a breadth of knowledge at an early age. they came from the bahamas and made sure i focused on many different aspects, being a great leader, a great citizen, a great christian, a great brother, a great person. football was a part of me but it didn t describe all of me. i received more resistance from the nfl. however, it was a great opportunity to play at the highest level and i got out the game healthy, safe, no concussions, hands good so, i can operate in the future and excited about the choices i ve been able to make in my life. there s so much money wrapped up in the final which as you know tips off this evening. some say that money ought to be shareded with the athletes. the response is the athletes get paid in terms of scholarships for education. what s your take on that issue? see, i got to florida state with a framework and a structure and support from family that could help buttress my journey. i came in a good vision understanding i m not only coming to this school to play football and do well but also gain and accrue intellectual capital, develop some relationships and networks do multiple things, enrich my college experience ep so when i left whether i played football or went on to be a doctor or did something else, i would be ready to take on the world. a lot of me my teammates and classmates didn t have that same support. i believe ncaa and some institutions should fill that void some of these athletes are missing in their life. wlit s paying players directly, making them millionaire, i m not sold on that idea but perhaps putting a fund together to help these athletes reach their goals, i think that s a good idea. final question yes or no. jameis winston, round one? round one and first overall pick. no question. whoa. okay. dr. rolle, wanted in surgery. thank you, myron. thank you, michael. appreciate it. coming up, it s one thing to refuse wedding-related sfs to same-sex couples for religious reasons, quite another when a pediatrician tells you she can t care for your newborn baby. but that s what one michigan couple says happened to them and their story is next. the pursuit of healthier. it begins from the second we re born. after all, healthier doesn t happen all by itself. it needs to be earned. every day. from the smallest detail to the boldest leap. healthier means using wellness to keep away illness. knowing a prescription is way more than the pills. and believing that a single life can be made better by millions of others. healthier takes somebody who can power modern health care. by connecting every single part of it. realizing cold hard data can inspire warmth and compassion. and that when technology meets expertise. everything is possible. for as long as the world keeps on searching for healthier. we re here to make healthier happen. optum. healthier is here. welcome back to the program. the debate over religious freedom and gay rights has sparked all kinds of talk about flower cakes, a even pizza. but what if a pediatrician said she couldn t care for your child because of religious reasons? christy and her wife jamie, say that s what happened to them the physician refused to treat their newborn daughter because they re gay. i spoke to them recently. krista and jamie contreras and their daughter bay, all three join me now. thanks for being here. when you interviewed the pediatrician before the birth of bay, were there any signs of trouble? no. we really liked her, thought she really liked us. we didn t have any clue she had a problem with our sexual orientation. so bay is then born and at age 6 days it s time for her first pediatric visit. what happened? well, we go into the room right when we got there, and we were just waiting for dr. roy, and a different doctor actually came in and said bile the one seeing you today. dr. roy decided she won t be able to care for bay and take her on as a patient. did you know what that meant? did you recognize those words, prayed on it to be a reflection of the doctor s view of your sexuality? yeah. she made it pretty clear because she said she prayed on it and followed it up by saying i don t care you know, i ll take care of anyone, you know they re loving parents, i ll care for any baby. so she kind of explained it in a roundabout way of what she meant by that. we really could recognize the red flag there that there was an issue with our sexuality. eventually and it s not immediately, but eventually you get an apology letter from the pediatrician which i ll show the audience now. there are two lines i want to focus on. first of all, one line says after much prayer following your prenatal i felt that i would not be able to develop the personal patient/doctor relationship that i normally do with my patients. this was intended to be a holistic approach. at some level, did you say i ges we re glad she told us because we wanted a full sense of care for the family unit not just for baby bay? yeah. definitely we re glad we re not in the care of a doctor who doesn t support our family. it would have been really nice of her to let us know that ahead of time. i don t know that we would be sitting here right now if she had let us know ahead of time. i m sure it would have hurt and we wouldn t have been very happy with it but at least we could have continued on to our plan to continue to meet with pedia pediatricians and find the one, you know that was a good fit. help me interpret another line in the apology letter. please know that i believe that god gives us free choice and i would never judge anyone based on what they do with that free choice. what choice is she referring to? obviously, i mean she makes it pretty clear, especially with the prayed about it line that she s referring to us being gay and basically saying that, you know we chose our sexual orientation. so, you know that word really jumped off the page at us. if that s what she believes, you know that s what she believes that s her beliefs but, you know to say she doesn t judge us by that when she s definitely judging, you know, by that and saying that we chose this lifestyle. but bay didn t choose anything. bay is sitting here as a 6-day-old baby and because her parents are, you know, gay that you can t care for her. so it was interesting. i want to make something else clear. there s no litigation pending, no litigation contemplated. you re here today to build awareness of an important issue. explain. yeah basically, in michigan this is totally cool. it s legal. she did nothing wrong according to our laws and we just want to, you know we think, yes, bay was 6 days when we were sitting in that doctor s appointment but if what if she was 6 years old and was asking why is my family being treated different they en in another family and not understanding? we want to raise awareness to the status of the laws kurptdly are in hopes to change those laws, you know to add lgbt protections to different laws in the state of michigan and hopefully around the country. only 22 states prohibit the type of conduct that we re discussing and there s no federal law on the books that gives protection to your family unit in a circumstance like this. yeah. and michigan has the rfra on the books. if that goes through, it furthers the doctors rights to keep discriminateing in any business at that point saying here s a license to discriminate however and to whoever you want. i think we need to be aware of what laws are being passed right now. you know all you need is a history book that shows this isn t going to better our society for anyone involved. we just want to make people aware this is happening to families like ours and others like ours all around the country. jamie and krista best of luck. all good health with bay and thank you so much. thank you. thanks for having us michael. sharing our story. we really appreciate it. i ll be right back. people ship all kinds of things. but what if that thing is a few hundred thousand doses of flu vaccine. that need to be kept at 41 degrees. while being shipped to a country where it s 90 degrees. in the shade. sound hard? yeah. does that mean people in laos shouldn t get their vaccine? we didn t think so. from figuring it out to getting it done, we re here to help. thank you so much for joining me. happy passover. happy easter. and you can follow me on twitter if you can spell smerconish. see you next week. onthe baptist. he s got it! the fearless prophet who hails the coming of a new messiah. he believes that some reckoning is imminent. the preacher who baptizes jesus. setting him on his mission towards god. it s at that moment that something profound changes for jesus. now science joins the quest to connect past and present, testing john the baptist s relics to discover a link to the man the bible says was john s cousin. jesus himself. to help us answer who
nightly news. reporting tonight, lester holt. good evening. that bizarre aerial stunt in washington, d.c., is still rattling nerves today with the question what if on a lot of minds. we re talking about that copter that flew undetected to the u.s. capitol yesterday through some of the most restricted air space in the country. it was piloted by a florida mailman with a political message but who, as far as we know, had no intent to do harm. but what if someone else was at the controls, someone with deadly intent? tonight we re not the only ones asking, and some of the answers we re getting aren t totally reassuring. our national correspondent peter alexander is on the story for us. reporter: first, the stunt, now the scrutiny. this is not good, people. reporter: this unprecedented act of civil disobedience is today refocusing new attention on a longstanding security vulnerability, the threat posed by low-flying lightweight aircraft. secretary of homeland security jeh johnson. this individual apparently literally flew in under the radar, literally. reporter: federal authorities today charged 61-year-old florida mailman doug hughes with violating restricted air space and operating an unregistered aircraft. the maximum penalty one and three years each. a judge released hughes and ordered him to stay out of washington until a hearing next month. hughes told the tampa bay times last year he wanted to deliver a message to washington to end big money in politics. i d rather die in the flight than live to be 80 years old and see this country fall. reporter: instead, his flight sparked a discussion about security. how did it happen? how did the helicopter get through? why weren t there alarm bells that went off? why wasn t it intercepted? reporter: this was basically the gyrocopter s flight path as it rounded the washington monument heading straight down the national mall for the capitol building. but had he taken a left turn, the pilot would have had a straight shot for the white house. the nation s capital is teeming with law enforcement, secret service, capitol police, park police. but none stopped what hughes once described as a flying bicycle. who should be in charge of that restricted air space ultimately? we ve got a well-coordinated federal response to dealing with issues of those who penetrate the restricted air space. without permission. reporter: secret service, military, capitol police. a well-coordinated response. reporter: the u.s. no longer flies fighter jets 24/7 over d.c. like after 9/11. but a senior military official tells nbc s jim miklaszewski even if jets were already in the air, they would have been ineffective against such a small, slow-flying target. after getting a head s up from hughes tampa bay times reporter ben montgomery drove to washington to watch, but the secret service says the paper never alerted authorities. that s not my job to pull the plug on somebody doing something like this. reporter: today the white house even weighed in. press secretary josh earnest saying this episode has prompted security teams to re-evaluate their security measures throughout the nation s capital. lester? all right, peter alexander tonight, thank you. we ve reported a lot of stories lately about americans allegedly trying to make their way to syria to join isis, but tonight an ohio man is accused of not only going there and receiving terrorist training but also coming back to the states with plans to carry out an attack right here at home. nbc s justice correspondent pete williams has details. reporter: american officials say today s charges reflect a growing fear people in the u.s. going to syria, getting training, then coming back as committed terrorists. prosecutors today accused a 23-year-old somali-born man from columbus, ohio. abdirahman sheik mohamud of buying a one-way ticket to athens greece last year getting to istanbul and making his way into syria. for two months they say they got training in weapons, explosives and hand-to-hand combat following his brother who had gone there in 2013 to join al qaeda in syria and was killed in a battle last year. court documents say when he returned to his family s house in columbus he talked to others saying he wanted to target the military, police or anyone in uniform and wanted, to quote, kill three or four american soldiers execution style. his arrest is a first since isis began recruiting. this is the first case of an american traveling, you know, overseas to syria, training with terrorist groups there, then returning home to be arrested and indicted. reporter: he was arrested on state charges in february and had been under surveillance for months. tracing americans who have been to syria is an urgent priority for the fbi, as attorney general eric holder told us recently. we probably have hundreds under some kind of surveillance. reporter: authorities say tonight that mohamud s pro-jihadi postings on facebook helped attract the attention of investigators. his lawyer says tonight he will plead not guilty at a court appearance tomorrow, than he was caring for his mother when he was arrested. lester? pete williams, thank you. now to that dramatic 911 call for help and the most unusual. for the first time we re hearing that airport worker trapped in the dark in the cargo hold of an alaska airlines plane in midair. the worker realizing where he is and pleading with a 911 operator trying to grasp exactly what it is that he is trying to tell her. our national correspondent miguel almaguer reports. alaska 448, prepare for takeoff. reporter: the alaska airlines flight was departing seattle bound for los angeles when the 911 call came in from the plane s cargo hold. 911. hello. i m trapped in this plane. i called my job, but i m in this plane. you re where? i m inside the plane. i feel like it s up moving in the air. flight 448. can you please have somebody stop it? reporter: the caller, an employee at menzies aviation, who loads bags on to the plane, told authorities he took a nap. trapped with a flight on the move, dispatchers are confused. where are you in a plane at? i m inside a plane. alaska airlines plane flight 448. are you at the airport? i m not in the airport. i feel like it s moved because i feel like reporter: the emergency call lasts 48 seconds, then suddenly drops off. yourself, or are you with somebody? reporter: with the plane climbing at 5,000 feet, passengers hear banging and a scream from below their feet. and he was like help, help. we re like what? reporter: airborne for 14 minutes, the trapped man was near the nose where it s pressurized and temperature controlled. the pilot made an emergency landing. the baggage employee able to walk off the plane. with the airlines still investigating, we were able to speak to that trapped man who called 911 over the phone this afternoon. he tells us he s in good health, back on the job and he says late tonight he s still feeling a bit tired. lester? miguel almaguer, thank you. tens of millions of americans on the the alert for another multi-day of severe weather including tornadoes. alerts up already tonight. meteorologist dylan dryer is here with us. what areas concern you most right now? right now the southern plains where we re seeing most of our activity. we have a tornado watch in red here, but we also have several severe thunderstorm watches popping up in yellow. the biggest threat as we go through tonight besides an isolated tornado or two, will be for damaging wind gusts, up near 65 miles per hour. also some very large hail. tomorrow the threat is going to shift a little further into southern texas. you can t rule out a tornado, but we re still looking at our main threat as being of large hail and damaging wind gusts. over in the rockies, the concern has been the snow. take a look at denver where the snow plows are out once again. and on i-70 just west of denver, slippery roads were causing some accidents out that way. in the colorado rockies baseball stadium, we were seeing that covered with snow because of the snowfall that we had in that area that we are looking at about 48 over the next 48 hours an additional 18 to 24 inches of snow. but the concern will be for the highest elevations. this is mainly for the ski resorts. we should see just an additional inch or so in denver. lester? all right, dylan, thank you. there s an alarming new warning tonight from the cdc about a dramatic jump in teens who use e-cigarettes. among high schoolers the number of students smoking or vaping e-cigarettes tripled in just one year. doctors warn that little is known about the potential health risks. here s nbc s tom costello. reporter: the splashy marketing is designed to lure a younger generation away from traditional cigarettes, but tonight the warning from the cdc is that e-cigarettes contain potentially dangerous chemicals and nicotine that carried their own health risks. we don t want to be playing a game of tobacco and nicotine whack-a-mole where we re addressing one type of tobacco product and allowing others to skyrocket. reporter: but that s what s happening. traditional cigarette use has dropped to a record low, just 9% among teens, while e-cigarette use has tripled to more than 13% of all teens. 2.5 million people. another 1.5 million smoke hookah pipes. i enjoy it a lot more. i think it tastes a lot better. i think the smell is a lot better. reporter: ian king used to smoke a pack a day. now he carries bottles of e-cigarette flavors with him. so this is better, you think? yeah. i mean, you re not it s not like with cigarettes where you get tar in your lungs because it s a vape. it s like vapor. reporter: the fda hasn t decided whether to regulate e-cigarette sales to minors, but researchers worry that teens may be especially vulnerable. the biggest concern is nicotine. nicotine exposure to a developing brain, we don t know the impact of that. it hasn t been studied long enough. reporter: the cdc is concerned that the nicotine could lure kids into regular tobacco use. but the e-cigarette industry tells nbc news the cdc s attack defies logic. e-cigarettes do not have any tar or any of the chemicals that are in tobacco. researchers admit they don t yet know all the risks and that is the danger. tom costello, nbc news, washington. turning overseas to iraq where a major city is in danger of falling to isis. thousands have reportedly fled ramadi which lies just 70 miles west of baghdad. the u.s.-led coalition is carrying out air strikes in three villages which isis militants overtook yesterday on the edge of ramadi. an update tonight on the search for missing malaysia airlines flight 370 still ongoing in the southern indian ocean. today malaysian officials said the search area will be expanded by another 23,000 square miles if the plane isn t found in the current search area by the end of may. malaysia, australia and china are leading the search to find the plane which vanished in march of last year. back in this country tonight, the nfl has reinstated the minnesota vikings adrian peterson. the star running back who missed most of last season while facing child abuse charges. the move clears the way for peterson to return to the league pending he fulfill all the obligations of his plea deal with authorities. a true self-made success story played out on wall street today when etsy, the online marketplace where people sell unique and hand-made items, went public. the initial stock price was $16, but that quickly doubled at open. etsy which launched as a small company ten years ago, now has an estimated valuation of well over $3 billion. nbc s rehema ellis has our report. reporter: bill mowat and his wife started their company a-heirloom, making cheeseboards in the shape of states and selling them online four years ago. there s a bit of nostalgia, and it s a useful item. it becomes a conversation piece. reporter: and the personal touch is a moneymaker. up to $45,000 a month, double that during the holidays. it s important that we have a lot of control over the quality of things and what kind of materials are being used. reporter: their small business is taking off with the help of etsy, the online marketplace founded ten years ago caters to artists selling vintage and hand-made arts and crafts. from leg warmers to glass-blown ornaments. now with a wide reach etsy has more than 1.4 million sellers, attracting nearly 20 million buyers with sales close to $2 billion last year. today the company that prides itself on having a majority of its sellers work from home made a big business move and went public. sellers are excited. they re hoping that it brings more eyeballs to their site and an even wider, more global reach than they had before. reporter: fashion designer rubin ruell is like 56% of etsy s sellers. he took his own money to start what is now a thriving business. in sales i m pulling in over six figures a year. and i would say that from 2013 to 2014 my sales did double. reporter: the challenge now is for the artists who turn etsy into a billion dollar company to hold on to that home-made appeal. rehema ellis, nbc news, new york. elsewhere on wall street today, a great day for etsy, but a down day for the market overall. all three major indexes finished slightly in the red. a lot more news still ahead on a busy thursday evening including the new warning tonight from doctors about the risks of snoring and sleep apnea. do they contribute to memory loss and possibly even dementia? also a warning that will warm your heart. a brave little boy and a loving father asking for help to wipe away his tears. you won t believe the response they got. we have some news tonight that you need to hear if you snore or you re one of the long-suffering people who lives with someone who does. new evidence is out showing that snoring and sleep apnea have apparent links to something that scares us all memory loss. nbc s stephanie gosk has more. reporter: snoring can be maddening. often more for the people who have to listen to it than the people who actually do it. but new research suggests heavy snoring and the more serious condition, sleep apnea, could also have significant health consequences. both reduce oxygen levels to the brain and disrupt sleep. the study, published in the journal neurology reviewed medical histories of more than 2,000 people between the ages of 59 and 90. heavy snorers and those with sleep apnea were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, a possible precursor to alzheimer s, about ten years before those who slept well. i don t think sleep apnea causes alzheimer s, but our hypothesis is that it might accelerate the process. reporter: it could be a contributing factor then? that s correct, yes. reporter: as many as 40% of all adults snore. men more than women. and those numbers only get higher as we get older. but there is treatment, including this breathing machine. that blowing air pressure basically acts as a stent to open up airway. reporter: is that uncomfortable at all? is it difficult to sleep with? it depends. some people find it a little bit difficult to get used to at first. reporter: patients who used one in the study delayed mental decline by a decade. researchers say the message to snorers is get help for both the person who sleeps next to you and your brain. stephanie gosk, nbc news, new york. up next here tonight, cracking your knuckles. is it really bad for you like your mom used to say? tonight we finally have an answer. also the big star wars reveal. hans solo, chewy, our first look as some familiar faces return and some new ones appear. one of the great mysteries of the human body may have been solved. scientists used an mri to see what happens when we crack our knuckles. they say the popping sound comes from a vacuum or a bubble forming in the joint fluid. and for anybody whose mom ever told them to stop, the study found no evidence that cracking your knuckles is harmful. scary moments for the country group lady antebellum whose tour bus caught on fire along the highway outside dallas this morning. singer hillary scott posted on social media that the bus blew a tire then the fire sparked forcing a fast evacuation. no one is hurt, though. scott was on her way to dallas for this weekend s american country music awards. the release date feels so far, far away, but today the cast of the new star wars movie united on stage complete with androids. not among them harrison ford, who is said to be doing well after his plane crash last month. but fans did get a thrill to see him in the brand-new trailer. the first official look at ford playing han solo in over 30 years. when we come back, a father who asked for help cheering up his son. they never expected a response so big. finally tonight, it started with a dad who wanted to help his young son feel better after surgery. neither could guess how many people it would touch. so many coming forward to let this little guy know that scars aren t merely reminders of trauma, instead they can be symbols of healing and bravery. here s harry smith. reporter: 7-year-old carter gentle was born with a heart defect. he s had a dozen operations because of it. when he came home from the hospital after the last surgery, his scars made him cry. he was upset with the way he looked and how the scars made him feel. he was afraid that people would think he was ugly. reporter: so carter s dad mark posted a little message on facebook. i asked my friends to give him some likes and some comments just to make him feel better. reporter: then what happened? an hour later i looked at the post and it had a thousand likes and that thousand turned into, you know, 10,000. before we knew it, we were at 100,000, and as of right now we re sitting on about 1.4 million likes. reporter: likes and messages like these. scars are like a badge of honor! wear them proudly, my friend! you are a superhero! i think your scars are awesome just like you. oh, and the girls will like your scars when you re older. i promise. and we all have scars. just some of us have ones that are more visible than others. you are perfect just the way you are. to help carter understand what was happening online, his dad set his phone to ping with every new post. he would just look at me with these big eyes. like, dad, i can t believe that s for me. you know, and it was just it was neat. it was really, really fun. reporter: today carter was playing outside like a kid without a care in the world. those scars maybe not such a big deal after all, especially with so many people on your side. awesome! reporter: harry smith, nbc news. i think carter s going to be hearing a lot of pings starting right about now. that s going to do it for us on this thursday night. i m lester holt. for all of us at nbc news, thank you for watching, and good night. announcer: nbc bay area news starts now. people wonder why he is causing the trouble that he is. right now at 6:00 advertising for a different archbishop. the papal plea coming from several high-profile san francisco catholics. good evening and thanks for joining us. i m jessica aguirre. and i m raj mathai. is the vatican paying attention to san francisco? it s a rare and high-profile move to oust the local archbishop. and it has bay area catholics taking sides. 100 local catholics have taken out this full-page ad in the chronicle, demanding action from pope francis, but will the vatican respond? nbc bay area s mark mathews is in san francisco. mark, the story and this ad generating a lot of buzz. it certainly is. you know the people behind the ad say that they tried for weeks to talk privately with the pope or his representatives, and it was only when those talks stalled that they decided to go public. archbishop salvatore cordileone has become a national voice in opposition to same-sex marriage traveling to the nation s capital to take part in demonstrations there. he maintains homosexual acts are inherently evil. he wants catholic school teachers to sign a morality clause supporting and abiding by those views, so opponents are taking the unprecedented step on calling on the pope to replace him. let me tell you that not only do the people who have signed this letter represent the broad spectrum of catholics in this diocese, they represent the very bedrock