we are the world s policeman. the other so-called world powers are either too cheap, morally indifferent, or happy to sponge off of us as they have neglected their duty to keep some semblance of order. we are unwilling to let crazy people romp through our neighborhoods. but we are not is the world social worker. to the extent we take it upon ourselves, the goal or the obligation to bring universal selfridge, make sure people can listen to madonna, bring about democratic elections. that is not our job. we are not good at doing it. we are good at building roads, crushing opposing armies. no government is good at the work of nationbuilding. [bell] we will alternate. tucker, you will go first. federal debt does it matter? we can simulate our way to prosperity. you are insane for suggesting it. it matters because i believe in math. here is what i know, which is saying i believe in science. you often hear we are for science. we do not believe in evolution. we are on the side of science. anybody who ignores the obvious point that if you expend more energy than you bring in, you die, whether you are a business, person, or country. the person who ignores that is against science. in the long run, a country that spends more than it raises cannot continue. it is a threat to this country. it is a threat to our economy. common sense confirms it. any belief in science tells me to believe that there is no bigger problem. [bell] let me quote the cheney who said ronald reagan taught us deficits do not matter. dick cheney was wrong. he is wrong then and he is wrong now. deficits matter. anyone who supported the bush has no business talking about debt. [booing] i helped bill clinton balanced the budget and built a surplus because we had good economic times. good economic times should pay down the deficit as clinton did but to reagan and bush did not. in bad times you have to stimulate and the airtime as president obama is doing. it is like listening to lectures on hygiene from type 40 typhoid mary. is more important to america s pursuit of happiness? which is more dangerous to america s pursuit of happiness? eight 350 format before a 44 ounce big gulf. if you come to my house, you would find guns but no cans of soda. i have the right wing position on the giant drink soda thing. i do not like the idea. idea of thee the government telling me what size soda i can drink. i am with tucker and probably most of you. i have the right wing position on gun safety. i have the same as ronald reagan who was for a waiting time before you buy a gun. the same as george w. bush he was for a ban on assault weapons. the same as when lapierre who was for a universal background check before he flip-flopped. i have the right wing position big drs if you give a pepper to a bad guy, he will get fat. but if you allow that bad guy, bad things happen. as someone who is neither a criminal or insane, i disagree. arearms and big gulfps integral to american happiness. thee is no higher right in right to protect yourself and your family. without firearms, you are incapable of doing that. is that simple. i do not think i should have to get the government s permission before i buy or sell a firearm. i do not want to ask mom s permission. moms russia this is a battle in the class war. ulps.ban big glup his is a class-based attack on your simple pleasures. the right to smoke, tan, had a shower head. stand up against those attacks on your right to please yourself. [laughter] shouldican seniors they be more afraid of private social security accounts or obamacare? should not seniors be as afraid as they are. both parties get a lot especially the credit parties both parties get a lot. it is caring people. this is the safest country in the world. it is financed. every person will die. the faster we accept it, the happier we will be. you ought to be concerned when the government decides it has the power to determine basic choices about your healthcare. not let them take away your drink. people my age should be concerned about this attempt to organize us into war efficient units. there is not one person smart enough to organize millions of americans into more efficient units. we should be afraid of that. [bell] whohank god for harry reid stopped bush s plan to privatize social security. you want it to turn your grandmothers retirement to lehman brothers, bear stearns? aroundsecurity has been 75 years, run by the government 75 years and has never missed a check. thank god for social security. the medicareare, program, call your mother. call your father. ask them if they love being on medicare. they left it. only 5000are has employees. private insurance has hundreds of thousands. government is more efficient and health insurance. lower overhead, better outcome, lower prices. the only change i want to make is to change the eligibility of medicare into birth. us all get on it and we will have a real system. i will not answer that. have you been to the dmv lately? when secretary of state hillary clinton appeared before the senate hearing on benghazi, here s what she said dead americans. is it because of a protest or because guys would kill some americans? what difference does it make? is herlast question question what difference does it make? we know americans were killed and their deaths must be avenged. when our embassies and consulates and 11 places were attacked by terrorists in the list administration, none of you said boo. and yemen, all around the world. republicans voted against spending the money to harden those authorities and make them safe. if you are upset about what happened in benghazi, i suggest republicans look in the mirror. it is bush s fault. we have not a single perpetrator in custody despite the fact there were security cameras. why is that? it is hard to bring them to justice if you do not bother to find out who they were or why they did it? hillary would not be an effective police officer. it matters because details matter and justice matters and the truth matters. it is worth taking the time to find out what happened. let s prevent it from happening again. that is the end around one. d- that is the end of roun one. thehe second round, fighters are allowed to ask each other questions. try to ask the questions that the mainstream media is too afraid to ask. it is open field. your choice. we will begin with tucker. two questions, two minutes each. you are close to the former vice president al gore. his concern in life is saving the earth from an environmental holocaust. given that goal, were you surprised to discover he took a $100 million from the oil rich family that runs qatar and the next time you see him will you ask them to give that money to an environmental charity? when our grandchildren inherit a planet that is still alive, they will think al gore. [laughter] climate orbelieve in gravity or any of that. it is real. this is ingenious. he is bleeding the funds from the enemy and using it for good. god bless al gore. it is ingenious. that was valiant. mr. carlson, mitt romney could live anywhere he wants except the white house. inchose to sell his mansion conservative utah and buy a mansion in liberal la jolla, california. why did he sell? mitt romney. the name rings a bell. vallejo,e who is from california, la jolla , it is despicable. i would have been happier had he moved to highland park, texas, for example. if you are interested in drinking cop located coffee and going surface, go ahead. i do not judge other peoples recreational choices. ver each other] i asked you this question last year. i did not get a satisfactory question. you know more about this than anyone. you are close to the clintons. you know secretary clinton well. she believes she will run for president in the next cycle? do you think she should? aslex absolutely. absolutely. she will be a great president. you agree. now that we have moved towards hypotheticall hillary candidacy, all of the right-wingers are saying she is evil. that is a sign you are afraid. i have no idea if she will. i think she will live a life, write a book, reacquaint herself with the real world. she is a real woman. she is not a republican society lady. what she will do is go around trying to empower women because where women are empowered, the whole society does better. is a global force for good. i hope and pray she wants for president. i hope and pray she wants for president. professional bush basher. his plan for relief was wonderful. it was outstanding. it was america at best. it saved more lives than anything any democratic president did in africa. what has barack obama done that artisan right-winger question it would have been honorable it would have been honorable had he raise the money himself. what is the one thing that obama has done that i applaud? , thes second inaugural president to walk down the length of avenue chewing nicorette i respect that. living in a world where all of your buddies are telling you the most simple thing you can do is use tobacco products. this guy to flaunt his nicotine addiction and public was courageous, compelling, and inspirational. go, barack obama. [bell] nra. it does not represent most gun ownerers. you have to deal with reality. the nra is the only organization working to protect the constitutional right that new york times hates. sequester. the y2k of politics. it came, went, and no one noticed. it has not gone. it is incredibly dumb. it will hurt this country. a self-inflicted wound. rich people. writer is my favorite rich person. i cannot hate all rich people. i hope to join their ranks. poor peropople. a group that i have great sympathy for and deserve a shot. there is a myth that conservatives hate the poor. they love them because they have created so many of them. i will give you credit for that. ashley judd. why does every right-wing guy i know think it is horrible that she is posing naked in movies but think it is fine that scott brown dated. i have a different taste and nudity. against scott brown s nudity. ashley judd is crazy but is the gift that keeps on giving. clint eastwood. oscar for the best political convention. i will not attack a legend. the guy has done great film. i honor that. [applause] the tea party. harry reid s best friend. take you for saving the senate majority. president ronald reagan. principles. liberal. a sign of tax increase and pro- abortion law in california. ahead of his time. reagan was a liberal. president barack obama. clark s greatest president of the 21st century. a cold, remote, and deeply cynical. god. god is love. [applause] satan. satan is hate. the dark lord of good inte ntions. hugo chavez. e now.qaan s roommat [laughter] [indiscernible] [bell] that is the end. who is the winner? is it paul? son?t tucker carlon go back and read the papers. we want to thank each of these. i want to thank paul because it is a little more of an uphill climb. we are delighted to have you. thank you so much. i appreciate it. continuous coverage. rick perry.or mitt romney will a trust mitt romney will address the conference of this afternoon. god bless texas. god bless texas. thank you. they said you have to turn to the left. i said i do not go left well at all. it is a big honor to be asked to speak. i want to say thank you to those of you who have allowed me to come. for all of the bad things that i say about washington, i never mind coming here. this is a fabulous place. i wase got here, surprised to step off of our united flight and see that everyone was still here. from what i have been reading about the sequestration, i figured president obama had shut the place down and send everybody home. that would probably be the first that idea he has had when you think about it. just kidding. well, mostly. i come from what a lot of people might seem to think is a foreign country. we have a balanced budget. we have a surplus. thane creating more jobs the other states in the union. we are doing this with a part- time legislature that meets for 140 days every other year. our legislatures come in and pass laws and then they go home and live under the laws they just passed. if we had ak part-time congress in washington, with a kit less what they really get less done? what we are getting is a lot of hysteria. from a president more concerned about the next election and saving programs for the next generation. president obama is campaigning full-time against the sequester that he created. he has used schoolteachers and border patrol agents and airport security and janitors as part of his portrait of pain. now he has decided to shut down white house towards. now, the only people who can tour the white house are those who contribute half $1 million or more. would beident posture laughable if he had not taken it one step too far. onto our criminals streets to make a political point. when you have a federally sponsored jailbreak. , at is what this is federally sponsored jailbreak. you cross the line from politics asspend as aform of senescence as form of cynicism where everything goes in order to win the next election. if the president cannot handle $85 billion in cuts that he suggested, how can we ever believe that he will tackle trillion dollar deficits, unfunded entitlement obligations that amount to trillions of dollars more? our deficit is approximately equal to our gdp. $0.40dollar we spend is barred from some bank in a place like china. the resolution to this debt ceiling debacle led to the first downgrading of american credit in the history of this country. we have a president who refuses to put a single plan on paper that addresses the deficit spending, entitlement reform, those are inexplicable. he is willing to do a photo op with he s more than willing to do a theo op to talk about 1% of total annual budget. if the president is word about overtime pay for capital janitors, i say what about the stagnant wages of millions of american workers? what? americans resigned to food stamps? what about small businesses and homeowners that cannot get loans because of dodd-frank? what about more than 20 million americans who cannot get full- time work due to the most anemic recovery since the great depression? mr. president, your plan to tax and spend our nation to l asperity will fai spectacularly as the economics you have borrowed from john maynard keynes. thes be clear about what is crux of the debate in washington. americans will surrender to the creation of a massive welfare states in the image of western europe. thequarrel is not with legitimate role of government but the unlimited role of government. [[cheers and applause] in research and defense capabilities and infrastructure and border security are vital american issues and issues that washington needs to address. turned the constitution on its head and the federal government has inserted itself into every aspect of american society. to ead of allowing states become laboratories of reform, washington s central planners are coopting other responsibilities reserved to the states and individuals under the 10th amendment to the u.s. constitution. of fiscallicy coercion is now at the heart of the debates of medicaid expansion proposed under obamacare. unfortunately, some of our friends and allies in the conservative movement have folded in the face of federal bribery and mounting pressure from special interest groups. .hey tell us to take the money in the case of texas, four billion dollars. that s because it is free. thathere s nothing free comes from washington, because for starters, it is our money. this is our money. to money we have tacked on the national debt either by borrowing from china or pulling it off the printing press. secondly, nothing stops washington from changing their rules down the road and the increasing the states share, which in the case of texas will be up to more than $18 billion over 10 years. that is a lot of money. that is a lot of money for the 14th largest economy in the world. all we have is a promise to. il we have is a promise, and got a promise from the federal government that apparently it afford to keep dangerous criminals behind bars. cannot afford. it is as if the merits of the expenditure do not matter any more. but i say they do. i say medicaid does not need to be expanded. it needs to be saved and reformed. we care about our poorest texans. we want them to have the best care possible, and that cannot happen with a program that is on its way to bankruptcy. if you do not believe me that medicaid is broken, just ask our president. four years ago, he said, we cannot simply put more people into a broken system that does not work. he yet that is exactly what is doing or has tried to do in the case of texas. no program has grown more rapidly in the last 15 years at the state level of than medicaid. washington s solution is to grow it faster, regardless of the fact the medicaid program is unsustainable. here is what we need. instead of this one-size-fits- all medicaid expansion under obamacare, flexibility to innovate, to enact patient- centered market-driven reforms, state accountability requirements, combined with limits on federal overage we reach.eral over we need a medicaid program that emphasizes personal responsibility with copays on a sliding scale, deductibles and premium payments for emergency room care, small contributions so patients take ownership over their utilization of care. we need to make an asset test to make sure that care is there for those who need it most. we need the ability to offer medicaid clients health savings accounts, getting patients more control over their health care spending. [applause] nothing about the medicaid expansion should move citizens from existing private coverage and employer-sponsored coverage to the public rolls. nothing should do that. medicaid dollar should be used to keep people on private insurance, and the best way to help states provide health care is to allow states to design better, more efficient, more effective care using medicaid dollars. this will allow each state tailor the programs, specifically serving the needs of those unique challenge the state s have. we know more about and care more about the physical and economic health of our citizens than the federal government does. the states like texas flexibility to actually fix medicaid and to create more cost-inefficient health care for our families, our neighbors, and for our health care providers. absent those changes and needed flexibilities, the medicaid expansion amounts to one large incremental step towards a single-payer socialized medicine. that is where we are headed. i for one will not accept that as long as i am the governor of the state of texas. [cheers and applause] myre are some who say position is ideological, but that is only true to the extent that being able to pay one s bills in the years ahead is ideological. washington does not worry about how to pay bills. they just charge it to our grandchildren s account. but in texas, our constitution requires a balanced budget. it s so happens that a balanced budget in one of the lowest tax and spending burdens in the nation funds our number-one ranking when it comes to job creation. we are leading the way in job creation in all categories, on all salary levels, from entry- level to the executive suite. ofas comes back to the crux the issue. i mentioned earlier, i said we do not believe in growing government to grow the economy. we did not believe in a massive expansion of government as a source of economic stimulation. we believe in putting more money in the hands of entrepreneurs and family. we believe low-wage jobs should not be looked upon as they are a stepping stone to a higher- wage job. we believe the best source of revenue for public priority is job creation, not higher taxation. [cheers and applause] if washington were serious about job creation, it would not pour hundreds of billions of dollars into so-called stimulus. it would reduce the red tape on energy exploration on federal lands and waters. the single fastest whey to boost our economy and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars is to unleash the energy exploration across america. shale formations of america the cheapest natural gas in the world, and natural gas is clean. why would this administration limit energy solutions on this continent only to make us more reliant on energy produced in foreign lands? the administration s policy of benign foot dragging on keystone, its blocking of coastal exploration, its regulations imposed by the epa and other agents is what that means is america is at the mercy of middle east mullahs and south american dictators. common sense tells us it is time to drill for american energy to create american jobs and american prosperity. it is time for us to have a western hemispheric energy strategy. my approach is pretty simple. make what americans buy, buy what americans make, and sell it to the world. [cheers and applause] that is what we need to be doing in this country. let me close by just sharing with you my take on conservatism in america. now, the popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away from conservative ideals, as evidenced by the last two presidential elections. that is what they say. that might be true if republicans had nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012. that might be true. but now we are told our party must shift and appeal to the growing hispanic demographic. let me say something about what appeals to hispanics in states like texas. it is the free enterprise agenda that allows small businesses to prosper, free of government interference. it is the policies that value the family unit as the best and closest form of government. it is the belief in life. and faith in god. no one who risks life and limb to reach our shores comes hoping for a government handout. they want opportunity, freedom, and they want and other way to provide for their families, and that is true whether they are first-generation americans or like hispanics in texas, families living here a long time before davey crockett and james bowie and sam houston made their way south. [cheers and applause] my friends, this is what we as conservatives stand for. we are not the people of equal outcomes, of quotas, of race- based appeals or a nanny state. we re the people who say everyone deserves a shot, but success is only the product of hard work and innovation, where the ideology is blind of color and solely grounded in a merit system. we are compassionate without being cynical. government can be a tool to self-improvement, and self- empowerment. not self-entrapment. these ideals are as old as america, and they will live on as the prevailing sentiment long after we are gone, because they are what make america unique. we will never bend to the social and economic agenda of western europe. yet it is an interesting place example of government. we will continue to pursue a uniquely american vision seated in liberty, personal responsibility, and individuality. god bless you, and may god continue to bless this country. thank you. more from cpac now. next, newly appointed south carolina senator tim scott addresses the political active conference. a reminder, washington journal starts at the top of the hour. good afternoon. thank you. that was good to hear, governor. when you are old and trying to be beautiful, you have to talk about somebody else s hair. thank you all for being here. how many red blooded conservatives are in the room? [cheers and applause] i cannot hear you over here? [cheers and applause] . we will continue to expand the opportunities of conservatism and i will tell you how and why. a quick story. anybody willing to listen to a quick sry? good. one of the mostin m life happenf 1982. i was a 16-year-old rising senior and a football star in my own mind. [laughter] were po not poor. i used to drive her to work 45 minutes and then 45 minutes back. one friday afternoon i drive her to work, actually it was friday morning and i got sleepy. anybody gets sleepy while driving? so i started rolling the windows down. i did not say pushed the button. i had to roll down the windows. windows back up and then i turned the heater on a and then turned it off. i turned on the air conditioner and then turned it off. i turned the radio on and then turned the radio off. the next thing i knew i woke up driving down the road at 70 miles an hour. i did what any 16 year-old would do. i panicked, so i slammed on the and jumped on the steering wheel at the same time jerked the steering wheel. my car started to roll back into traffic. i remember going back in traffic and hitting carpet. car. my body started towards the windshield, so i grabbed the steering wheel and i yelled jesus! glass went everywhere. we stumbled back and i was direction and i came back and in that direction and my car landed in a ditch headed the other direction. glass was everywhere. i was laying on the side of the car. i could hear people yelling and running towards me. i heard one lady very specifically. i think he s dead! i yelled back, i m dead! the highway patrolman came and ems showed up. the highway patrolman meltdown and said, son, your mom will be happy you are alive. i was lying there with glass in my back and i looked up at him and said, sir, you don t know my momma, she s going to kill me, because this is her first car, a 1982 toyota corolla. an ugly brown car. what i learned from that was i andso fixated on the car what the officer was trying to was about why myeth mother would be concerned about me. as we helped to connect the american people with why to our whats to policies that we stand for, that we will win people. when we win people, we will win elections. it was said that when you find your why you find your way. . that is exactly what we are going to do. when we talk about things like obamacare, this is a what. it is an atrocity. $800 billion of new taxes, new revenues coming to the government from obamacare. 3.8% excisethe the tax in obamacare, creating $123 billion. this comes out of the same pocket where we just took the capital gains rate from 13% to 20%. now when you add this on top, we are talking about a 25% tax. we are headed in the wrong direction. when we think about the other taxes and revenues that come out of obamacare, we only can think about awful legislating. i think about how i talk about obamacare in addition to the taxes, and i think about my granddad. my grandfather was 93 years old and incredibly healthy. still drives his ford f-150. abouttiful car i think obamacare, the independent payment advisory board bad breaks the link between a patient and doctor. i want my family making the decision for my grandfather. i don t want 15 unelected bureaucrats making the decision for my grandfather s future. i want that to be a family decision. [applause] i know we are going to do it right. and communicate the impact of obamacare, we talk about that, we find ourselves having a conversation with the american people that they truly do not like obamacare prevent why they re on our side, because we in america are conservatives, without any question. we are conservative nation going in the right direction. i think about taxes. how many feel we are taxed too little in the federal government? spend it took we much in the federal government? [applause] i remember when i first started running for congress a couple years ago. i started talking about taxes and revenue streams and the budget. i started talking about the fact that we were spending $3.40 trillion. what i would say to get people to take a nap in the middle of a speech was not necessarily a good thing, by the way. we want you to stay away. i would go through all the numbers in about 20 seconds. we spend about $700 billion on social security. $692 billion on defense. billions on non-defense discretionary spending. $519 billion coming out of medicare. $400 billion in mandatory spending. $300 billion just to service the debt. the 25 yearack to historical average, we find ourselves paying over $800 billion just to service our debt. $273i would close with billion sent to medicaid. whoh.ody would say, the federal government has a $22,000 income. we set a budget at $34,000. where does that make sense? nowhere in america would anybody across the kitchen table is understands their income $22,000 decide to spend $34,000. only in the federal government can that happen. that s why i ve understand that we have to control our spending. with a $16 trillion debt and an annual deficit of one trillion, we have to bring fiscal sanity back to washington. when your on the campaign trail, we have to talk about the necessity of bringing in our spending, restraining it. i have to make it digestible for guys like me that about a trillion dollars and i say that in my audience and people understand we are spending so much money that we have to borrow 43 cents on the dollar. what does that mean? i talk about my grandfather s f- 150. when i ask people what does $1 trillion look like. they say i don t really know. ,o i tell them that $1 trillion 33,333,000 ford f- 150 s. that s a lot of money. then i talk about the necessity of performing our tax code. anybody believes our taxes are still too high? [applause] absolutely. we have the world s highest corporate tax rate at 35%. 70%need to bring it down to or as far as we possibly can. then we have to quit double taxing our profits we make in other countries. we re talking about repatriation. we have to allow for our money to come home to our nation without double taxation. when that happens we will grow our economy, because we need to grow our economy and not our government. that is the key. we have to grow our economy and not our government. when we do that, i think we will unleash opportunities in this country. another issue i find incredibly important is the issue of school choice. i m a big believer in school choice. it s a part of the opportunities of our future. if we remember that every parent deserves a choice. and every child deserves a chance. i think back to my young days growing up in a single-parent household. i think about the tough times that my mother who worked 16 hours a day, she went to work every day all day long, came home. when my grades were bad, she would pull out is which. switch. as a freshman in high school, i did not do very well. , was failing world geography civics, spanish, and english. when you fail spanish and english, they don t call you bilingual. they call you ignorant because you cannot speak any language. that s where i was. i had the blessing of meeting a conservative republican who became my mentor, a man named john, a chick-fil-a operator. he started teaching me some of the most valuable lessons i have ever learned. he taught me that having a job is a good thing but creating jobs is a far better thing. he said if you have an income, that s a good thing. profit, youreate a can do the most amazing things. he started to change my life. mentor, i john, my was becoming a red blooded conservative, because he taught me how to think my way out of poverty. my mother taught me discipline. that combination made such a huge impact on where i am today. i think about why it all solidified. i think back to 1986 when john was 38 years old, very successful business owner, chick-fil-a. he died. , a blood clot stop his life. that was the time when all of these lessons came together. i realized very quickly that i needed to honor johns memory by the way i live my life. so i set my mission statement to positively impact the lives of a billion people with a message of hope, which has a lot to do with my face, and opportunity, that has to do with the johns message of being. financially being after 13 years as a member of the county council and on the local level and then going to the state house and then getting elected to congress and now appointed to the senate i will say that john s dream still lives. i believe that america s finest hour is still ahead of us, that our greatest stand is not yet happened, because we are an opportunity society. we are not a society that believes in redistribution. [applause] we are an opportunity society. if we do what it is that we need to do, all of america will stand up and join the conservative movement and tell us not only win elections but win the hearts of people. thebless you and god bless most amazing country, america. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] more from conservative political action conference today. four more republican presidential former republican presidential candidate mitt romney at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. tonight, former florida governor jeb bush mentioned as a possible presidential candidates, we will have live coverage of his remarks at 8:45 eastern on c- span. are is some of what we covering this morning. the house is expected to finish work on the job training measure today. the house is in at 9:00 eastern. on c-span2, ahead of the medicare payment advisory committee will give recommendations to a house subcommittee on health. that starts a 9:30. on c-span3, a senate panel will investigate trading losses at jpmorgan chase, including a $6.2 billion loss on credit derivatives last year. you can see live coverage of that at 9:30. minutes, wall0 street journal reporter damian paletta will compare the differences in the house and senate budget plans for 2014. later, a discussion on drug abuse and mental health. we will talk with peter delaney
1:15. up until then from this morning s washington journal, senator sanders from vermont. host: senator bernie sanders, senator from vermont, here. thank you for being here. you served on the budget committee. we saw senator patty murray, the chairman, introduce her budget plan. here s the headline in the washington times there are no sacred cows that calls for $1 trillion in new taxes. what s your takeaway? guest: well, what it does is also call for substantial cuts, but it deals with deficit reduction in a balanced way. what the republicans want to do is do deficit reduction simply by cutting, cutting, cutting. doing away with medicare as we know it. right now converting that into a voucher system which we very, very onerous for senior citizens, making devastating cuts in medicaid which means that millions of millions of american people and kids will lose their health insurance. massive cuts in education, in nutrition. basically every program that in the middle of a terrible recession working people depend upon would be done away with. what my view is i think the senate agrees what the committee is moving toward is to say, wait a second, we are seeing a middle class collapse, poverty at a high rate while the wealthiest and corporations are doing extraordinarily well. we are looking at record breaking profits for corporations and yet their effective tax rate is the lowest since 1972. and we have one out of four major corporations in had country not paying a nickel in taxes. so the issue that we have to deal with is do we really want to cut social security, medicare and medicaid, education, head start or do we want to ask the wealthiest people and the largest corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes? so what i think the murray budget is about is raising revenue. there are substantial cuts in it. also, by the way, when real unemployment in this country is not 7.7% but over 14%, when for young people the unemployment rate is even higher than that. we are putting about $100 billion into helping to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, our roads, bridges, water systems to put people back to work. so the point that i would make is that while certainly we have to concentrate on deficit reduction, we also have to create millions and millions of jobs in this country and put our people back to work. host: so would you vote for senator murray s budget plans right now? does it go far enough for you? guest: it doesn t go as far as i d like. when we have in this country the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any country on earth and worse today there has been in any time since before the great depression of 1929 let me just give you one example, if i might. today, the top 1%, wealthiest 1% in this country own 38% of the wealth. you know what the bottom 60% are? very few people do. 2.3%. 2.3% for the bottom 60%, top 1% owns 38%. one family in this country, the walton family of wal-mart, owns more than the bottom 1/4. the last study done on the subject from 2009 to 2011 showed that 100% of all of the new income that was developed in this country went to the top 1%. bottom 99% lost. median family income going down. so when you have that inequality, when you have the middle class shrinking, large corporations enjoying record breaking profit. i think you have to ask them to play a role in deficit reduction, no go after the elderly, the sick, the poor. host: the new york times shows the latest republican and democrat budget on the table. guest: look, we have, as i mentioned today, real unemployment including those people who ve given up looking for work and those people working part time, it s over 14%. it is horrendous. people of color, the young people the numbers are even higher. we have got to put our people back to work. focusing on deficit reduction is very important, but creating the millions of jobs that our economy desperately needs is even more important. i would go further than that. everybody i could tell you in the state of vermont and i suspect in the other 49 states, we have a serious problem with roads and bridges and water systems and schools, broadband. we need to invest in our infrastructure to make this country more productive. when you do that you create jobs. so i am a big fan of investing in the infrastructure and strongly supportive of that proposal. i would have gone higher. host: you can see here in wall street washington journal, republican plan and blue plan in for the democrats. you can see that there. guest: that s the real issue. do you really think that the only way we can move to deficit reduction is cut, cut, cut? when revenue at 18.2%, the lowest in 60 years, i think there needs to be a balanced approach and we need to close outrageous loopholes that corporations enjoy. host: talking to bernie sanders, independent in vermont. folks are eager to talk to you. let s go to edward in grand prairie, texas. democrats line. hi, edward, how you doing? caller: ok. i wanted to representative sanders, senator sanders, my concern is that you guys are being easy on the republicans about raising tax. the democrats not raising tax. all they re trying to do is get rid of the welfare program called subsidies. you guys don t emphasize the fact that we re subsidizing these corporations. and we talk about the 1%. we re not raising their tax. we re just trying to get them to pay their share of their taxes like every other citizen. and when we talk about corporations not paying any tax, we are saying that we re not raising their tax, we re trying to get them to pay tax like other organizations. you know, one thing and looking at the programs is that we talked about how income has decreased. the reason is because you had many of those people who voted for republicans doing the reagan administration and during the johnson administration that kill the union which at the time was about 35% of the citizenship. now it s 6% and over that period of time the work has decreased while the corporations have increased. and this is i don t understand why you guys are being nice to these republicans. guest: edward, thank you. i think my republican colleagues would probably disagree with you as to how nice i ve been to them. you make several good points. first of all, when we talk about the decline of the middle class, median family income going down, most of the new jobs created in this country are low-wage jobs. the gap between the wealthy and everybody else is growing wider. there are a couple of factors involved. trade union is certainly one of those reasons. we used to have far greater representation. so workers could sit down and collectively negotiate a contract to get a decent wage. we ve lost millions and millions of decent union jobs. and the second issue, though, has to do with our disastrous trade policies. and i voted against all of these things, from nafta to permanent normal trade relations with china. congress, at the behest of large corporations said we ll open up our markets. but the truth is in the last 10 years or so we have lost some 50,000 factories in this country. many of them going to china or low-wage countries. and those trade policies would say to corporations, you can throw american workers out on the street, move to china, bring your products back in this country, be disastrous for the american worker. in terms of tax policy, let me tell you this because i ve been working on this issue for a while, we have been losing every year about $100 billion in revenue because large corporations, whether it is the bank of america, citigroup, exxonmobil, many of these large corporations are stashing their profits in the cayman islands. front page story in the wall street journal about that i think last week. what we have got to do is end these loopholes with these large corporations many of whom, by the way, if they re young corporations, bailed them out. congress bailed them out when their recklessness almost destroyed the economy. they needed help of the american people. when it comes to paying taxes, they prefer to put their money in the cayman islands. that s an issue that has to be addressed. right now at 12% of profits, corporations are paying the lowest effective corporate tax rate since 1972. so this is an issue that we need to address. host: senator mcconnell, leader of the republicans, talking about the democratic budget plan. this was before it was unveiled officially and here s his feedback on it. we hear it contains yet more wasteful, quote, stimulus spending, spending that turns out to be a lot more effective at generating jokes for late night comedians than jobs. and in order to finance more spending we hear it relies on more than $1 trillion. that s a trillion with a t in new taxes. including on the middle class. remember, washington and democrats got more than $600 billion in taxes this year, so where s this new revenue going to come from, charities, the home mortgage interest deduction? will they go after families and small businesses yet again? at least there s one thing we most certainly know. their budget will never balance. not today, not tomorrow, not ever. host: senator mcconnell. senator sanders, what s your response? guest: well, he s wrong in every instance. the first point actually is what we ve done in the budget committee is have made cuts in health programs including medicare but we do it without cutting benefits. here s how we do it. by the way, the budget committee is the committee that comes up with the blueprint. it is the finance committee, the appropriations committee that go more into details. here s what mitch mcconnell doesn t appreciate. his friend in the house, congressman ryan, ends medicare as we know it and turns it into a voucher program. and that means that if you are 64, 66, 67, government gives you an inadequate check and say go after the private insurance companies. you got your health care. if you have cancer, if you have diabetes, if you have a serious health problem, what kind of health care do you think you re going to get when you re 67 years old when you have an inadequate check? that s their plan. then they want to make massive cuts in medicaid. now, what we have said is at a time when in the united states we are spending almost twice as much per capita on health care this is not just medicare but all of our health care systems, and in many ways our outcomes are not as good as other countries, of course we can make the health care system more efficient. one of the things you could do in medicare is against republican opposition is demand that medicare negotiate prescription drugs with the pharmaceutical industry. we can save very substantial moneys. put more money into primary care so people don t have to go into an emergency room at 10 times the cost of going to a primary care physician. so there are a lot of things you can do to save money without cutting benefits. they decimate medicare and medicaid. second point, he talks about stimulus. yeah, let me be very clear. when the infrastructure of this country is collapsing, in vermont and all over this nation we need to put huge amounts of money in rebuilding bridges, many of which are unsafe, our roads, our rail systems, and when we can create jobs, yeah, i think that s exactly the right thing to do. and he talks about raising taxes. what we are talking about is ending loopholes. maybe mitch mcconnell thinks it s a good idea that companies like the bank of america can put their profits into the cayman islands and go to a year in 2010 where this usually profitable corporation doesn t pay a nickel in taxes, if mitch mcconnell thinks that s a good public policy, i strongly disagree with him. i think what you re seeing is a big philosophical divide. in my view, in this instance, the republicans are standing with these large corporations, one out of four of them are not paying a nickel in taxes and we think, hey, before you cut social security, medicare, medicaid, education, we are going to ask these guys to start paying your fair share. host: in the excerpt senator mcconnell talked about balancing the budget and a couple questions came in from twitter related to that. sandy beach wants to know, ryan s budget, kongman ryan s budget balances in 10 years. congressman ryan s budget balances in 10 years. when does yours. and another asks, explain why deficits don t matter. guest: deficits do matter and let s talk about how we got to where we are right now. when clinton left office in 2000 and bush took over, this country had a $236 billion surplus. and then what happened in the next few years under bush is we went to war in iraq and afghanistan. you know how we paid for those wars, we didn t pay for it at all. we gave huge tax breaks for the wealthy. we passed the medicare part d prescription drug program unpaid for. because wall street was deregulated and when i was in the house, i tell you, libby, i fought that very, very hard. they got deregulated and they came up with all of senator sanders in our video library at c-span.org. president obama is on capitol hill meeting with senate republicans at this hour and house democrats later. here s a look at the president as he arrived on capitol hill a short while ago. good to see you, sir. thank you so much. i appreciate. that s what i would expect out of our maine senator, bragging a little bit. yeah. thank you. the president with senate republicans and meeting with house democrats in about an hour or so. here on c-span we are going to take you live now to the conservative political action conference happening in washington. first speaker up this afternoon, senator marco rubio of florida. i believe that more today than i did just three years ago. and we have to do something about it. that s what we re here to talk about today. now what i sense from a lot of people i ve been talking to is this fear that somehow america has changed, our people has changed, that we reached this point in time and we have too many people in america that want too much from government and that maybe the changes that have happened are irreversible and that it will never be the same again. i want you to understand that s not true. our people have not changed. the vast majority of the american people are hardworking taxpayers who take responsibility for their families, go to work every day. they pay their mortgage on time. they volunteer in the community. this is what the vast majority of american people still are. what s changed is the world around us. it s changed in dramatic ways. just think how much the world has changed in the last 10 years. the global economy is real. we don t live in a national economy any more. everything you buy, everything you sell, everything you touch it s all impacted by things that are happening halfway around the world. the information age is real. it s made our lives easier. it s allowed you right now to take pictures with your phones and tweet every word i say for or against me. [laughter] it s changed the world and it s made our life easier. it s also changed our economy. you go into a grocery store today and you find machines doing the jobs that people once used to do. you find one person, because of automation, can do the work that five people used to do. it s the world around us that s change. and this is having an impact on our people. on our hardworking people. many have seen the jobs wiped out. jobs they ve been doing for 20 years disappeared overnight. many of them many of them to things the right way. for example, they pay their mortgages on time. and now when the housing bubble came they were stuck with a bill for bailing out the banks that caused it, for bailing out the people who took out mortgages they couldn t afford to pay. everywhere they looked they see trouble around them. they look to washington, d.c., as if they don t have enough troubles to begin with, every week washington s creating some sort of manmade crisis to worry about. and they look at the political process whether it s fair or not and what many of them see they think one side is fighting for the people that made it and all the other side does is fight for government policies to protect the people who are struggling. and they don t want to take anything away from anybody, the vast majority of americans and the hardworking middle class. they don t want to take away from people that made it. they don t want to hurt the people that are trying. but they re wondering who s fighting for them. who s fighting for the hardworking everyday people of this country who do things right and do not complain, that have built this nation and have made it exceptional? as conservative believers in limited government and free enterprise, that is both our challenge and our opportunity, to be their voice. and by the way, i can t think of a better call because our hardworking middle class is one of the things that makes america different and special from the rest of the world. every country in the world has rich people. unfortunately every country in the world has poor people, but few have the kind of vibrant wide spred middle class that america does, a widespread middle class that everyone said should have an equal opportunity to be part of the middle class or even better. it sets us apart from the world. and in that light you hear all this debate about fighting amongst conservatives and people who believe in limited government, that s a foolish notion. people who agree on all sorts of things work together all the time on things they do agree on. and there has to be a home and a movement in america for people who believe in limited government, constitutional principles and a free enterprise system and that should be us. [applause] now, in order to work together with people you disagree with, there has to be mutual respect. that means i respect people who disagree with me on certain things but they must respect me too. just because i believe states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot. just because [applause] just because we believe that life, all human life is worthy of protection on every stage of its development does not make you a [applause] in fact, the people who are actually closed-minded in american politics are the people who love to preach about the certainty of science when regard to our climate but ignore the absolute fact that science has proven that life begins at conception. [applause] and so our challenge is to create an agenda, applying our principles, our principles that still work, applying our time to the challenges of today. and what is an agenda like that look like? well, i think government has three things it can do to help. a limited government has three things it can do to help. the first is they can make america the best place in the world to create middle-class jobs. that s why we need, for example, to engage in the global economy through fair trade. we also need to engage in the world. if we re living in a global economy, america must be wise in how it uses the global influence. we can t solve every war. we can t be involved in every armed conflict. we also can t be retreating from the world. and so that balance is critically important for us to strike because we live in a global economy. beyond that we need to have pro-growth energy policies, including oil and natural gas. our regulation, our regulations have to be the product of a cost-benefit analysis. the government is trying to help the business community. in america business fields like government is their impediment, their competitor, their enemy. that has to stop. our monetary policy cannot be used to i flat things and distort our economy. the list goes on and on. we know about tax policy. we need to have a pro-growth tax structure, not one that takes from some and gives to others. and last but not least, we believe in solving our debt problem, because it s hurting job creation. jobs are not being created in america. there are jobs that are not being created in this country because we have a $16.5 trillion debt and it s only scheduled to get bigger. that problem has to be solved and you can only solve it, the only real approach that solves it is the combination of fiscal discipline and rapid economic combrothe. there is no tax increase in the world that will solve our long-term debt problem. the second thing that our government can help us do is help ourselves by acquiring the skills of the 21st century and that s why i think every parent in america should have the opportunity to send their children to the school of their choice. by the way, we should encourage career education. not everyone has to go to a four-year liberal arts college. we still need plumbers. we still need carpenters. why aren t we graduating more kids with an industry certification in a career, a real middle-class career? and last but not least, because i m running out of time, last but not least, do not underestimate i know this movement does not the impact of the breakdown of the american family is having on our people and their long-term future. now, government s role in solving that slimented. we have to talk about it for sure. government s role in solving this is limited. but ultimately we should recognize we do have obligations to each other. in addition to our individual rights, our individual responsibilities to each other, but not through government. through community. through our churches and through our neighborhoods. as parents and neighbors and friends. those are the best ways in which we can serve our fellow americans, through volunteer organizations where every single american through every walks of life can literally change life, one neighbor at a time. last but not least, the cost of living is real. that s why we need health care reform, but not a health care reform that injects the federal government in a takeover of the world s highest quality health care industry but a health care reform that empowers americans so they can buy health insurance from any company in america that s willing to sell it to them. my last point. my last point on cost of living and you ll hear a lot more about this. you should be concerned about student loan debt. it s the next big bubble in america. i know something about it. i graduated with over $100,000 in student loans. and i paid it off last year with the proceeds of my book which is available on amazon for $12.99 [laughter] anyway, we have and let me tell you who that really hurts. student loans, you know who that hurts? it hurts the middle class because many of them, their parents make a little bit too much to qualify for grants and they have to rely on student loans. there are all kinds of innovative ideas whether it s self-directive learning, whether it s empowering people with more information so they know how much they can expect to make if they earn a certain degree and how much they have to owe. it s a major problem for our future and a major problem for the american middle class. my time is up so let me close. couple things. if you look at our government you have a right to be pessimistic but here s the good news, our government has never been america. america has never been our government. america has never been our politicians. america has always been our people. with all the bad news out there you can still find the tremendous promise of tomorrow in the everyday stories of our people. let me tell you one story. there s this couple i know. they are on my son s tackle football team. he s 7 years old. he s 8 years old. this couple is married. she works as a receptionist at a medical office. he loads boxes from trucks at a warehouse. i don t have to tell you they re struggling. they live in a little small apartment. they share one car. they want they re not freeloaders. they re not liberals. [applause] they re not they re just everyday people that want what everybody else wants. they want a better life. they want a better life for themselves and even better life for their children. and they re desperate. sometimes when you re like that let me tell you no matter how much your principles may be, you re susceptible to this argument that maybe government is the only thing that can help and that s where we have to come in and explain that s not true. the first thing they really need is an economy, a vast and vibrant economy that s creating the kind of middle-class jobs that will allow them to get for themselves that better future. the next thing they need is the skills for those jobs. there are three million jobs available in america that are not filled because too many of our people don t have the skills for those jobs. that s what they they need skills for those jobs so instead of being a receptionist she can be an ultrasound tech. instead of loading boxes from a truck he can be fixing those trucks. and the third thing they need is a place where their cost of living is affordable, where their increased paycheck isn t let me tell you what the stakes are. the stakes are not just americans. the stakes are bigger than that. thank you. never in the history of the world has water been so popular. i appreciate it. let me tell you i ll close by telling you what i think is at stake. as you know yesterday there was a transition in the government of china. they have a new president. this new leader loves giving speeches where he refers to the china dream. what s the china dream? what does that mean? the china dream is a book, a book that was written by i think it was a colonel, a chinese army colonel. let me tell you what the gist of the book is. i ll save you the time of reading it. that china s goals should be to surpass the united states as the world s preeminent, world economic power. in the forward, the 21st century should be a race to see who can become the champion country to lead world progress. so while we are here bickering in this country and arguing about whether we should spend more than we take in or what government s role should be, there is a nation trying to sue plant us as the lead supplant us as the leader in the world. we re tired of solving the world s problems. believe me, i understand. i do. it s frustrating. but let me explain something. let me explain to you the chinese government is. the chinese government provides their people no access to internet. they ll hold prisoners with no right for recourse. the chinese government coerces people until they get confessions from them. the chinese government restricts the ability of people to assemble. if you escape china, they force people to return you. they have birth limitation policies which means in some cases they re forcing abortions and sterilizations. the chinese government uses forced labor. and this is what they do to their own people. we want that to be the leading country in the world? we want that to be the leading voice on this planet? that s the stakes. that s what s at stake in america s greatness. this is not just about national pride. the truth of the matter is don t take this for granted. what we have here is different and special and historic. in the vast history of the world and of mankind, almost everyone that s been born is poor and disadvantaged with no ability to get ahead. what s made us different is here people have had the real chance to get a better life no matter where they started out. and do not underestimate what that has meant for the word. now as soon as i m done speaking, i ll tell you the criticism on the left will be. number one, he drank too much water. number two, he didn t offer any new ideas. there s the fall is i of it. we don t fallacy of it. we don t need it. we have an idea and it s called america and it still works. [applause] you want proof it still works? you want proof it still works? look around the world today. who are they copying? they re not copying the former soviet union. they re not copying russia. they are not copying china. they are copying us. with every step towards free enterprise, millions of people around the world are emerging from poverty. millions of people around the world are emerging from generational poverty because they were inspired by the american idea. they may claim to hate us but they sure would like to be us. and the question is in the world we leave our children, what will be the dominant country in the world? what will be the light shining example of the world? a country like the one i described to you in china or in other places or a country like ours, that is what is at stake. i believe in my heart what i ve always believed. that if we give our people the opportunity at free enterprise and upward mobility, they ll do what they ve always done. they ll build and sustain a vibrant middle class and beyond. that if we give our children the skills they need for the 21st century, they ll do what americans have always done, they ll change the world for the better. if we do what we re supposed to be, we will be who we re destined to be, the single greatest nation in the history of the world. thank you very much. thank you. [applause] so who here stands with rand? i thought so. well, we re certainly honored to have him head our college conference last summer. i know he electrified freedom-loving americans with the recent filibuster. rand paul is a junior united states senator from kentucky. elected in 2010, he s proven to be an outspoken champion for fiscal responsibility. he s obviously a lawyer against government overreach. without further ado, please welcome rand paul. [applause] now, i was told i got 10 measly minutes. [laughter] but just in case i bought 13 hours worth of [applause] i also came with the message, a message for the president, a message that is loud and clear, a message that doesn t minutes words. that doesn t mince words. that s not exactly what i was thinking. however, i think he may have distilled my 13-hour speech into three words. the message for the president is that no one person gets to decide the law. no one person gets to decide your guilt or innocence. my question my question for the president is not more than just about killing americans on american soil. my question was about whether presidential power has limits. lincoln put it well when he wrote, nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man, give him power. president obama, who seemed once upon a time to respect civil liberties, has become the president who signed the law allowing for indefinite detention of an american citizen. indeed, a law that allows an american citizen to be sent to guantanamo bay without a trial. now, president obama defends his signing of this bill by stating that he has no intention of detaining an american citizen without a trial. likewise, he defended possible targeted drone strikes on americans by indicating that he had no intention of doing so. well, my 13-hour filibuster was a message to the president. good intentions are not enough. the oath of office states, i will protect, preserve and defend the constitution. it doesn t say, well, i intend to when it s convenient. mr. president, good intentions are not enough. we want to know, will you or won t you defend the constitution? eisenhower wrote, how far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without? if we destroy our enemy but lose what defines our freedom in the process, have we really won? if we allow one man to charge americans as enemy combatants and indefinitely detain our drone them, then what exactly is it that our brave young men and women are fighting for? [applause] one wrote, there can be no liberty if you can bind the executive and the legislative branches. likewise, there can be no justice if you combine the executive and the judicial branch. we separated arrest from accusation and trial and verdict for a reason. when lewis carroll s wife queen shouts, sentence first, verdict afterwards, the reader s response is supposed to be, but that would be absurd. in our country the police can arrest but only your peers can convict. we prize our bill of rights like no other country. our bill of rights is what defines us. it s what makes us exceptional. [applause] to those who would dismiss this debate as priff luss, i say frivolous, tell that to the young men and women who sacrifice their limbs and lives. tell that to the 6,000 parents of kids who died as american soldiers in iraq and afghanistan. tell them the bill of rights is no big deal. [applause] tell it to sergeant j.d. williams, who s one of my neighbors. he lives in auburn, kentucky, a few miles from me. he sacrificed himself to save his fellow soldiers. tell j.d. who lost both legs and an arm, tell him his sacrifice was great but we had to suspend the bill of rights he fought for. i don t think so. [applause] the filibuster was about drones but also about much more. do we have a bill of rights? do we have a constitution? and will we defend it? in his farewell speech in 1989, reagan said, as government expands, liberty contracts. he 1979, reagan said, as government expands, liberty contracts. he was right. as government grows, liberty becomes marginalized. the collective takes precedent over the individual. freedom shrinks. and our government today is larger than it has ever been in our history. everything that america has been, everything that we wish to be is now threatened by the notion that you can have something for nothing, that you can have your cake and eat it too, that you can spend $1 trillion every year that you don t have. the president seems to think we can keep adding to a $16 trillion debt. the president seems to think that the country can continue to borrow $50,000 a second. the president just believes we just need to squeeze more money out of those who are working. he s got it exactly backwards. [applause] i m here to tell you that what we need to do is keep more money in the pockets of those who earned it. [applause] look at how ridiculous washington politicians have behaved over this sequester. the president said over $1 trillion sequester that he endorsed and he signed into law. some republicans joined him. but the sequester didn t even cut any spending. it just slows the rate of growth of government. even with the sequester, the federal government will grow over $7 trillion over the next decade. only in washington can a $7 trillion increase in spending be called a cut. [applause] now, the president is trying to step up. he s trying to do his fair share. after the sequester was announced he said he s going to stop the white house tours for schoolchildren. they had to do this because these cuts were imposed by the sequester. but meanwhile, within a few days the president finds and extra $250 million to send to egypt. [booing] you know the country where mobs attacked our embassy, burned our flag and chanted death to america, he found an extra there are 250 million to reward them. you know, whose country where the president stood by the leader who called death to israel and all who support her. i say not one penny more to countries that are burning our flag. [applause] but i do want to help the president. i have a few suggestions for him. i m sorry i couldn t have lunch with him today. [laughter] maybe he ll be able to see this later on c-span. so when i asked the president if he wants to let the schoolchildren back in the white house, what about the $3 million that we spend studying monkeys on meth? does it really take $3 million to discover that monkeys, like humans, act crazy on meth? mr. president, what about the $300,000 for robotic squirrel? now, they wanted to study whether a squirrel that doesn t wag its tail, whether it will be bitten by a rattlesnake. only problem, they couldn t find a real squirrel to volunteer not to wag its tail. but i can tell you the bottom line for the $300,000 question, a rattlesnake will bite the you know what out of a squirrel not wagging its tail. mr. president, maybe we could have cut the robotic squirrel before we went to white house tours. now, for any of you college students looking for jobs, uncle sam s got a job for you. it pays $5,000, all expenses paid, the study is in hawaii but the requirements are onerous. only a few could qualify. you have to like food. the study is to develop a menu for when we colonize mars. i m not making this up. guess what a bunch of college students came up for the menu? pizza. [applause] you could cut one of these programs and return to letting the schoolchildren come to the white house. this government s completely out of control. we desperately need a new course and new leadership. [applause] the path forward for the republican party is rooted in the respect for the constitution and respect for the individual. part of that respect is allowing our americans to freely exercise one of their most basic rights the right to bear arms. [applause] but you can t protect the second amendment if you don t protect the fourth amendment. if we are not securing our homes, if we are not securing our persons and our papers, can we really believe that the right to bear arms will be secure? we need we need to jealously guard all our liberties. [applause] the facebook generation can ditect falseness and hypocrisy from a mile away. i know. i have kids. they are the corps of the leave me alone coalition. they doubt that social security will be there for them. they don t believe those that feed them a line of crap or [applause] ask the facebook generation whether we should put a kid in jail for the nonviolent crime of drug use and you ll hear a resounding no. [applause] ask the facebook generation if they want to bail out too big to fail banks with their tax dollars and you ll hear a hell, no. [applause] there is nothing conservative about bailing out wall street. likewise, there is nothing progressive about billion-dollar loans to millionaires to build solar panels. [applause] the republican party has to change by going forward to the classical and timeless ideas enshrined in our constitution when we understand that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. then we ll become the dominant national party again. it s time for us to revaive reagan s law. for lib revive reagan s law. for liberty to expand, government must sh ring. [applause] for the economy to grow, government must get out of the way. this month i ll propose a five-year balanced budget. my budget eliminates the department of education. [applause] and devolves money back to the states where they belong. my five-year budget will create millions of jobs by cutting the corporate income tax in half. by creating a flat personal income tax of 17%. and cutting the regulations that are strangling american business. the only stimulus ever proven to work is leaving more money in the hands of those who earned it. the constitution must be our guide for conservatives to win nationally, we must stand for something. we must stand on principle. we must stand for something so powerful and so popular that it brings together people from the left and the right and the middle. we need a republican party that shows up on the south side of chicago and shouts at the top of our lungs we are the party of jobs and opportunity, the g.o.p. is the ticket to the middle class. [applause] the g.o.p. of old has grown stale and moss covered. i don t think we need to name many names, do we? our party is the new g.o.p. will need to embrace liberty in both the economic and the personal sphere. if we re going to have a republican party that can win, liberty needs to be the backbone of the g.o.p. we must have a message that is broad. our vision must be broad, and that vision must be based on freedom. there are millions of americans, young and old, native and immigrant, black, white and brown, who simply seek to live free, to practice a religion, free to choose where their kids go to school, free to choose their own health care, free to keep the fruits of their labor, free to live without government constantly being on their back. i will stand for them. i will stand for you. [applause] i will stand for our prosperity and our freedom, and i ask everyone who values liberty to stand with me. thank you. god bless america. thank you. [applause] all right. we re going to move forward with our next panel about benghazi and the aftermath. heading the panel is the honorable roger nor agea, the founder and managing director of vision america and part of the american enterprise institute. he has more than two decades of policy focusing on the western hemisphere. twice supported by puppet george w. bush, ambassador s contact, the vision and insight on the united states foreign policy and aids programs. joining him will be joe, editor in chief and in-house counsel. he s author of occasional affairs, closed archives, south africa. he ran for congress in 2010 in illinois as a tea party republican. john solomon served as executive editor of the washington guardian. he s appeared in newsweek, the washington post and new york times. he uncovered the truth about the benghazi massacre. finally, joining us is a distinguished fellow at the heritage foundation and hosts a daily talk radio show. prior to heritage, he served 14 years as the united states congressman from oklahoma and was ranked one of the top 20 conservatives in the house of representatives. please welcome your next panel. good afternoon, everybody. how many people would love the opportunity to follow senator rand paul? well, we hope we can make it interesting just the same because our panel discussion is intended to talk about benghazi . now, it s interesting to me, when bill clinton was president of the united states, there were so many people who made excuses and said, well, of course, the president was lying. after all, it was only about sex. and everybody lies about that. and how many times have you had anything that involved federal spending or campaign finance and you can t get a straight answer? for example, what is the minimum cost to be in the organizing for america meetings with president obama? is there a discount valuable from that $500,000? so we re told that politicians are expected not to be truthful when it comes to money. however, i believe why benghazi has struck a resident chord with people all across the country is because in this case the concern is that the president and his people were lying about matters of life and death and that is in such a different category from anything else. and the shame of benghazi is not only the president but it s with the media itself and what they did and they failed to do to followed up with it. to follow up with it. our panelists meant to explore well, i don t think that we re able to give you a formal report of what happened, and if you ve read through the findings of this state department report, you find that it leaves just as many questions unanswered as answered. and we still don t know how many people were injured, are they still at walter reid medical center in washington, d.c.? have they been released? we can t get a straight answer about that. now, if you ve been one of the 12 u.s. senators who had a chance to dine with president obama this past week, what might have been one of your questions? what happened that night? it has been six months, and we still have mysteries and we re told, well, the f.b.i. is investigating things. if you look at the orders that were given to the f.b.i. about what they re supposed to be investigating, it s curious to me, because the state department investigated what went on in the state department and the f.b.i. was tasked to tell us what went on overseas, but nobody has been asked to investigate what went on at the white house that night. it s a glaring omission. who wants to know? do you want to know? . why do you want to know? what difference does it make? and when we get answers like that, nothing you ask is has any importance. what difference does it make? or the president i mean, his answer this week saying, well, i don t want to balance the budget just for the sake of it. i don t want to have to tell the truth to the american people just for the i don t want to tell the truth to the american people just for the sake of being open and honest. he has higher purposes to serve. and benghazi i suppose stands for the bact that the higher purpose was to make sure you had good rest so you could go to vegas the next day and raise funds there. so benghazi is about the shame of the media in failing to answer these questions. not even noticing that the things that the president commissioned as investigations omitted the white house itself. negotiate the state department nor the f.b.i. was tasked when that. if and when the f.b.i. finishes their work, maybe somebody will notice they didn t do anything about what happened at the white house or failed to happen at the white house. but by then the philosophy of the obama administration is that it s going to be too late. so now is the opportunity that we are going to be hearing from our panelists and each of us will present a little bit of a different perspective on the panel about what happened that night and then i ll have some q&a interaction with them and we ll see if even if we cannot answer the questions for you, perhaps we can help people to understand what are the right questions so that some day wlrks it be a presidential candidate or a cnn moderator or senators having dinner with the president, maybe somebody can come up with the right questions to ask about benghazi and then hope and pray that some day we will get the proper answers. let me turn the time over to our panelists to let them make their remarks. roger. thank you very much congressman. please hold your applause. thank you very much. i have somebody paying attention up front. let me begin by making a very stark appraisal by what we learned from benghazi. and i just ask you to remember the famous commercials during the 2008 campaign about the 3:00 a.m. phone call. well the primary lesson from benghazi is that 3:00 a.m. phone call went to voice mail. it is a manifestation of the fact we have a president who takes responsibility for only one thing as far as i can tell which is improving his golf score. and he does that because it s something that only he can do, right? well, when you are president of the united states, there are a lot of things that only you can do. benghazi is actually two separate scandals. staggering scandals, one is that terrible night and how it was handled and the other is the coverup. and people in this room understand probably more than most americans. let s review those things and take a quick look at them. i have about five minutes here. there was the actual attack and the response which showed gross mismanagement. a closs cal blunders along the way when that beam si was attacked. i had experience as assist psnt secretary of state when haiti was the third most dangerous post after baghdad and cobble. the ambassador was asking for precautions and we took them. i worked for two secretary of state of state in that time and both of them independently asked me about the security in port brens. and thank god i had an answer and we did our jobs and we were secure. if something had happened, i can assure you the last thing i would have said is what difference does it make. if i had said that, that would have been the last thing i said in that job. why weren t we ready for benghazi? there was the misinformation that the president said al qaeda was on the run. they were coming over the wall, not on the run. they murdered a uzz ambassador and raised the flag. worst of all that night dozens of americans left to fend for themselves for four to seven hours without any help coming. secretary panetta testified late many months after this process and said we can t have the american military in harm s way. well, ladies and gentlemen, if there are americans facing harm at the hands of a terrorist attack, in harm s way is exactly what the american military needs to be and where it wants to be. quite frankly, it is shameless that some irresponsible anonymous person gave an order to stand down rather than stage a rescue and doesn t have the guts to come forward and take responsibility for that decision. the second part of this whole scandal is the coverup itself which we know this. even before they first blamed that emp mouse video, they knew that wasn t true. but they served up that cover store repeatedly and in the case of our president indignantly for months there after. maybe because they were totally uninformed about what was going on. let me emphasize another sobering lesson from benghazi. and you all know this. american journalism as we knew it before our rock star president. american journalism is dead. rather than raise the tough questions the congressman was mentioning, they have behaved like hockey goallies in front of barack obama s net. it makes a difference in a dangerous world. u.s. credibility is sometimes the only thing that stands between where we are and grave security threats. what does that look like today? the best thing you can say about the middle east peace process is there is less peace and no process. the president will be visited israel for the first time since he s been in office. that the least of our problems. if he had ideas, they would probably be bad ones. iran is creeping toward a nuclear bomb. al qaeda is resurgent and spreading. the american people have spent so much blood and treasure are struggling to stand on their own because we are leaving them on their own. the muslim brotherhood is at the hell new mexico egypt. a slaughter is going on. and what is our mess stooge terrorist whom we do capture 7 deadly words, have you the right to remain silent. now more than ever we need a president who is engaged and make tough decisions and stand behind them. is there anyone that looks at benghazi and thinks we have such a president today? good afternoon. it s a privelenl to be with you here today and to be on this panel and to follow senator ran paul and in the spirit of debate i want to begin my remarks on benghazi with a small criticism of senator paul s stance on foreign policy. not a mccain gram criticism but a constructive one i hope. his filibuster was brilliant, long overdue. but while he was right on the constitution, he was wrong on the art of war especially on the distinction of a combatant and non-combatant. we will not deserve to be taken seriously on foreign policy. let s start on benghazi. the attack on the u.s. consulate in ept was the worst national security failure since the original 9/11. it truly deserve it is label scandal for three reasons. one because president obama and his administration lied about the attack. two because the media aided the coverup. and three, because the president did nothing to rescue those at the conslute including ambassador chris stevens. but benghazi was not just a security failure. it was also a constitutional failure. the president has a constitutional duty to act as commander in chief and he failed to do so. he did not, as he once claimed in a tv interview with a reporter in denver, one of the few reporters who got past the hockey goalee. he did not issue those three directors as he claimed when he knew what was going on in benghazi, nor did he communicate with his cabinet the evening after learning about the attacks. and we now know the cabinet members did not talk to each other either. president obama s dereliction of duty reinforced a global perception of american weakness. al qaeda has lost its leader but regained it s momentum. we have done little to challenge chinese perceptions in the pacific. we have we have failed to prevent iran from obtaining nuclear weapons n. speeches of course the obama administration insists all options are on the table including a military option. but iran considers our actions, not president obama s words which and what iran sees is a president committed to retreat. in june 2009, iran was surrounded east and west by u.s. led troops. over 60,000 in afghanistan and over 130,000 in iraq. that likely encouraged iranians to rise up against their government after the stolen election that summer. we could have helped the green revolution. we could have declared the government of iran illegitimate. well could have done something diplomatic but we didn t. had we intervened in that small way, we could have thepped iranians overturn their government and its nuclear program and its support for terrorism worldwide without firing a shot. but we allowed the regime time to regrufmente and five years later, by next year, iran will face no u.s. led troops in iraq, 12,000 at most in afghanistan and one less navy carrier in the persian gulf. that looks like retreat from their perspective. iran is the key in the region today. it has connections now with muslim brotherhood governments. it bridges the divide to fight common enmis, the u.s. and israel. yet the regime remains weak because it is hated by its own people. we can remove iran as a threat if we commit to a regime change by peaceful transition if possible and by military removal if necessary. e jim change is rarely the right policy. but it is the right policy in iran. the ironny is iran is one of the few places in the middle east where the obama administration refuse to support a popular uprising. but it must be toppled before ate tax the u.s. homeland in some way. we suspect and iran believes that president obama lack it is will to confront iran much less change immaterial. do we have the will to do so? that question has become more acute since senator paul s filibuster last week. it was a brave show of opposition. it proved one leader, a tea party leader was prepared to stand up for the constitution and the principle that individual liberty preveeds government power. he was wrong about one thing. it is not easy to distinguish between combatant and non-combatants. a foreign terrorist does not stop being a terrorist because he or she is far from the battlefield. if we step hypothetical example he used that a terrorist at a cafe is never a legitimate target then we cannot protect ourselves from terror. in our zeal to roll back power we will have placed ourselves in danger n. embracing the sequester, we cannot accept defense duties th cuts by putting our security at risk. we must replace those cuts with other cuts which we cannot be serious about protecting individual liberty from government if we are not also serious about protecting liberty from all enmisforeign and domestic. the reason we have our constitution and not the articles of confederation is our former system of government could not protect the nation or pay its debt. as we confront today s debt which is a national security risk, we should not make defense the first target for cuts. the benghazi attack happened because the president sacrificed military edness for domestic politics which we must learn from that mistake. our constitution calls for limited government. it also calls for a government that can defend the nation. as we pair back the expansive government that came along with the war on terror after 9/11, we must see that war through to victory and ensure our military is ready for the next challenges. we were warned no protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. that s the point senator paul is making. war may lead to cralliesed power and the destruction of liberty over time. when a democratic people engages in war after a long peace, it incurse much more risk of defeat than any other nation. benghazi reminds us that we cannot defend liberty if we do not take the fight to our enmis. thank you. good afternoon. to try to get the truth out to american public that yearns for it in a government that often doesn t want to provide it. in the course of my career, i have never been at anoint time where i have seen a weaker media. i think the congressman said you it right. benghazi is a failure of the american media. we do not today ask enough of the hard questions. why is that? what has happened to us that has made us a bad equivalent of the silence of the lams? we are shrunken. there has been a great exodus of brain trust. reporters who had 30 and 40 years of experience in military matters which matters when you are trying to cover things like benghazi have walked out the door. they have created the culture that the news of the moment is so important we must get the top line that no one bite the hand that feed them. so much of the media has become be holden to the people that hand out the daily news. if you are afraid to buck that trend you will never get to the bottom of the stories like benghazi. the other day i was writing a story that is not too favorable to the justice department. and i was speaking to one of the people there and there was evidence that the f.b.i. director had used a corporate jet for their own personal travel. and you can imagen the first few words out of the spokesperson s mouth. i won t utter them here because it s not appropriate for a family audience. through the course of a ten minute conversation the spokesperson said if you go with that, i will destroy you. i will make sure you are embarrassed. that didn t work because i m here today. but more importantly it s a threat which we live in a free society. when we stop as reporters exercising the first amendment which means asking tough questions and going against the grain, then we ve ruined what our founding father s intended for my profession. i want to share what we ve done. last summer uffs concerned about this trend so i made two decisions. one was to go back home to one of my favorite places. i was the executive editor of the washington times. i wanted to help strengthen one of the great newspapers in the capital. then i put my money with two colleagues and started our own website called the washington guardian. we re not interested in the top line of the news. we re interested in the other stories people aren t telling. we started labor day weekend and ten or eleven days later became the beginning of benghazi. i was about to go on a plane overseas on a trip and i saw these reports which and i said i wonder where diplomatic security is. we did a story we haven t been meeting security around the country. when i got to europe, i opened up the new york times , the washington post and several other outlets and their story was the state department said they did everything it could to fort fy embassies. that wasn t true. this was a spontainnouse attack about a crowd that got angry about an islamic video it was story. i said that s not possible. within 40 hours of the attack the washington guardian had a story it was al qaeda linked extremist and it came in two waves anded the absolutely nothing to do with the video that had been making its way on the internet. so what did the media report the next two days? it was the video. u.n. ambassador went on television and said it was the video and came up with a muted story. and people in the intelligence community were saying no that s not true. the media took that story for two weeks until it could no longer be sustained. then we got shards of the truth. that troubles me today. if you think about the most recent story line that we have which is that somehow the administration knew the truth when susan rise went on tv but a bunch of intelligence officers, probably people i talked to to get the truth early on edited out the story line. that s the official story line of the administration and the news media has done that. so a few weeks ago we decided what did the president know. and we were able to get a caller: of what was in the president s briefing two days after benghazi. and it said the president was told two days after benghazi and three days before susan rise went on television that it was unrelated to the video and an attack carried out by extremmist. how does the media not tell the american people the truth as we ve come to expect it? what can you do to change it? there are some bright spots. if i can disagree with the ambassador just a little bit. we re on life support but not dead yet. there are bright spots. new media places are cropping up. the washington guardian are coming back. and those places give us the best opportunity to get the truth back out and ask the hard questions that used to be asked in the white house press room in the ragegan days. we need people with the courage that are not worried about what we re going to tweet in five minutes but what the truth needs to be. we are seeing them crop up. get behind them, support them. if you have children that are thinking journalism is the last place to go, encourage them there are good things to be done. and you have a place to put your money. if you are subscribing to place that is don t give you the truth. there is on opportunity for folks at this convention here and all across the country to begin to send a message to my profession that it s time to clean up our act and reinvest in expertise and get the american people the truth. if you help us do that i promise you next year we ll have a better story to tell and not benghazi. so i look forward to the q&a. i want to give our panelists an opportunity discuss some important aspects and elaborate on some things. and i want you to listen closely to this quotation i m about to read you from president obama. it s from his speech given in cairo june 4 of 2009. and i want the panelists to address is benghazi a symptom of a president who is soft on militant islam? this is the statement that the president gave in cairo. quote i consider it part of my responsibility as president of the united states to fight against negative stereo types of islam wherever they appear. i ll read that once more. i consider it part of my responsibility as president of the united states to fight against negative stereo types of islam wherever they appear. did that play into what we saw with the tragedy in benghazi? gentlemen, john. i ll start because i know in the early days what the administration was telling me when i was trying to report those stories. there are two story lines that still resonate in my brain which one is we need to be sensitive to the libyan government. it s their right to investigate a crime like this. it s an act of war when you attack our embassy. that has dominated things that have happened in this administration. going back to my own profession, where is the american enter in letting libyans taken the lead on the investigation. why wasn t our military called immediately? i could have flown there quicker than the boots got on the ground that day. how can that be in america when lebanon was struck. we had jets going in just a few minutes. i think the sensitivity of lending too much creedens to the region beginning with the arab spring being more concerned about that. is it right or wrong that s for the american people to decide. as a journalist i hear this theme every day. it s not objectable for the president to defend muslims because there are millions of muslims who are american citizens but that s not what he said which he said islam as a religion or civilization or what have you and the connection is tied to the story that was told and reiterated in the media about the video where the president actually went to the united nations and gave a speech after benghazi talking about those who defame islam. i forget his exact remarks but saying he was going after those who defame is louisiana that s not why we elected him. that s not his role. i think the movie story is interesting. because what the president was doing was actually not very subtle. what the president was doing and the white house and everybody who bought into this idea there was this movie that caused all the trouble. who made the movie? it was someone in america. we didn t know the identity of the film maker at the time but it was a christian film maker. this was a rehash of a few years before where a pastor was going to burn the can you ran and our politicians felt they had to apologize for this exercise of the first amendment of the constitution. i m not saying it s a great idea but the first amendment doesn t protect speech that you like. so they reiterated this what the president was saying to the muslim world in benghazi was don t blame my administration, blame these craze bitter clingers in america who do these things to defend the rest of the world. what he was saying is the people who defend their faith, the people who who defend their liberties and don t give a damn about the rest of the world are the problem. absolve me and america. you don t have to accept american ideals and the american people which it was a rehash of the narrative that the administration was a part of in that case. the main stream media reiterated. there is a cultural battle that the administration is waging against people in this room, against the bitter clingers what like the second amendment, who use the first amendment, whether it s religion or speech. that to me was a disgrace. before we knew there had been deaths in benghazi, we knew there were people scaling the walls at the embassy in cairo. they were twitting apologies ability this film and we shouldn t be insensitive about religious beliefs of others. their first response was to dump on the first amendment. i think that was a disgrace that really set the stage for everything that followed. let me give you the quote from the united nations speech. and president obama said this, the future must not be long to those who sland ter profit of islam. but to be credible those who condemn that must condemn church that is are destroyed or the holocaust that is denied. and i will just note that the effort to provide balance as it were in that was totally missing in the speech that he maid in cairo. yes, i would say that the single biggest event in modern history that has thurt image of islam were the 9/11 attacks. and if you are going to prevent those sorts of attacks in the future against us and other incident people around the world, we have to do a more effective job of fighting terrorism than i think he s prepared to do. this sniper and foreign drone policy that snuffs out terrorists rather than capturing them on those occasions when you can and taking them to guantanamo, not manhattan and not telling them they have the right to remain silent is a better approach in this war. i think we all could pay very deerly for this ideological orientation that they have against guantanamo, against the tactics that kept us safer a dozen years. part of that ideology is in the president s mind the kind of orientation he had as a young man is this sort of third world anti-colonial anti-western orientation. and i think that s at the heart of a lot of this. and those attitudes he has make this a less safe world quite frankly. [applause] one of the key moments maybe a turning point in the presidential race was in the second presidential debate where mitt romney asked the president or accused he said you haven t called this an act of terrorism. obama said he d. candy interjected herself. you remember that moment. that i believe mitt romney asked totally the wrong question. i want to read you from the transcript the question that was posed by a member of the audience which was never answered by obama and i believe romney should have used his time to say mr. president why don t you answer the question from the audience and i ll give you some of my time to do so. this was the question. he said this question comes from a brain trust of my friend at global telecom supply yesterday. it just shows some of the wisdom of every day people as opposed to political people. we were sitting around talking about libya and we were reading and became aware of reports that the state department refused extra security for our embassy in benghazi prior to the attacks that killed four americans. here was the question. who was it that denied enhanced security and why? now i d like your comments about what it was right question that should have been asked and how would you have made sure that president obama answered it while on that national stage at a critical moment when the deaths were still fresh? let s go in reverse order if we can. when i said that american journalism is dead. of course there are exceptions. fox news and there is one breave soul at cbs that keeps her resume handy. cheryl on cbs. again, from my experience in the state department where we were making those decisions on a regular basis about the security of our embassies. first off, i had the title, it s a great honor to have the title of ambassador. if you are out in far corners of the world and you re under attack, your first concern is the people that work with you. and the very idea that nobody came and they made no effort to must ernie sort of rescue attempt at all is i think scandalous. and the very idea that the people who were responsible for security and making decisions about security, these people should be fired. [applause] . and i don t remember which senator it was who said it to hillary clinton senator johnson who was supposed to be on the panel and could not make it said i would have fired you. that s where i would have been. that was rand paul. up and down the line. if that sort of attack had happened in our administration, those people would have paid with their jobs and rightfully so and the media would have insisted there be accountability. that s the problem. a scandal like this happens, i m not talking about show trials. i m talking about the congress asking eskive questions in a timely way. people making themselves available to answer these questions and then some sort of accountability for those lives lost. i think it s tragic that the father of one of the slain men is standing there receiving the casket and next to him was hillary clinton and she leens over and says we re going to get the guy who made that video. what an utter scandal when she knewed the nothing do with that video. building a narrative. propagated this lie is outrageous to me. i think going back to the second debate, the question that romney allowed himself to get tracked into it was question of what did the president call this attack and did he call you it a terror attack and that s when candy intervened. there was an important question because it went to the question of whether obama had lied to the american people. but it really was a secondary question and the danger when you let the media define the questions and you let the media host the debates is you let them suck you into these things and it always a game of keep away. cheryl did a great job but steve croft was sitting on the videotape where obama said it wasn t an act of terrorism and didn t release it until two days before everybody went to vote. they had that tape and didn t release it until then. they said we did release it before the election, just happened to be three weeks late. the question is what were you doing when americans were in danger. and obama by that time had made a very specific claim, a claim that could be questioned. and this is the point about journalists not knowing what questions to ask and not having that experience or interest. obama said i gave three directives as soon as i heard about what was going on in benghazi. one was to make sure our personnel were safe. second was to start an investigation as to how it happened and the third is to make sure it never happens again. that s very nice. it s all after the fact but none of that address it is ongoing crisis unless you can argue that making our personnel safe does. when did he make those directives? is there any evidence of those? those are public documents. whatever they were, they can be obtained somewhere. evidence of the directives must exist. where are the journalists asking jay carney we ll is it here until you give us the directives. when were they issued and there is no issue to that because they were never issued. i think it was a huge lie. why do we know it s a lie? because subsequent testimony revealed the president spoke to no one, called no one, queened no meetings. the only thing that happened in a sense in those hearings in january and february which we finally got, the only criticism we heard from was general dempsi criticizing hillary clinton saying i can t imagine she wouldn t have known about the security requests denice. that s what the media has to do. it s so easy and they are not doing it. spot on. it s hard for me to handicap what question would have worked that night because in october we didn t have a complete story and tonight believe we have one now. i know what question if i could come back and be a white house correspondent. i know what i would ask the president of the united states promise he would bring to justice the people that committed this attack. when is he going to do that? how is he going to do that? it ners gets asked. what about the families who are sitting back there when 9/11 occurred justice began. you can go back to lebanon, you can go back when sad dam hugh sane violated the no fly zone. it doesn t seem that s a satisfied answer. if they hadn t thrown me out after the first question i d probably ask this question, when you were sitting there and susan rice went on television and you know what the real story was, did you feel compelled at all to correct the public record? he clearly had to know that story was not right. i know because his daily briefing told him. so why did he not feel obligated to correct the story line and then blame it on a bunch of sensors who told me the truth 48 hours after it happened. those are the questions if i had the chance i d ask. i want to give you a chance to based upon each of you have done a lot of work of digging into the rumors, the facts, the deceet, the unanswered questions about benghazi. i want to give you each a chance to speculate if you will and you can tell us the degree to which it s pure speculation, informed guesses or you really believe this is what happened. but what do you believe is the dirty little secret of benghazi? and secondly, what do you think president obama did that night that was so pressing? was his favorite movie on tv or what was it that he avoided making any calls or giving any instructions or whatever? i can be quick on this. the dirty little secret is hardly a secret. it s that the president talked about this once and walked away and forth about forgot about it. what he was doing? every minute of the president s time is blocked out. it s tracked very closely. what he wasn t doing was talking to any member of his national security team. when he knew and went to bed that night knowing that the man remember when he said these are my people. i send them out there. how dare you say that i don t care about their well being. well you have to care more than going out to dover and receiving their bodies when you leave them there defenseless. that s the fact that the president did not do his duty as commander in chief. i think the dirty secret is that the administration understood that there were americans at risk and decided that they could contain the risk if they did not send further troops in because there is always a risk when you send troops to protect fellow troops or civilians in danger, diplomats that there will be more casualties. and i think what president obama and his advisors were worried about was that there would be many many casualties. it s happened before many times in afghanistan, we lost navy seals when helicopters full of navy seals were shot down. we ve lost lots of civilian police officers, firefighters, similar circumstances. they want to be in harm s way. they want to be there. that s what they are trained to do and want to do. there is always a risk you are going to lose more lives and i think the president was worried having many casualties would be something he couldn t ignore politically. but if you could contain the casualties to the few there there would not be political damage. that sounds like a cruel thing to say about the president of the united states. you don t have to believe me. you can read on the web which had an article about how the president failed in afghanistan and the argument made based on journalism reporting was that every decision made by president obama about afghanistan was mediated through his political advise source. everything that was done was in sons response to the question what will republicans do about this, what will the media say about that. what are the domestic political consequences? he did not act as command ner chief that night. he acted as head of his campaign. the dirty little secret is that they decided to cut their losses and to contain the violence torks have people on stand by ready to go but not to sacrifice further u.s. personnel or assets in case there was more fire power on the ground than they knew about and they stood down for that reason. that s the secret. i m going to confess because by professional training i never speculate on something, at least not in public. but i think there are a few things i can offer insight on. the media has covered benghazi as if it was one continuous attack. it was two attacks four hours apart. the first attack was on the consulate its. military assets couldn t have gotten there short of launching cruise missiles which you wouldn t do to take care of that attack. then four hours later another attack with mortars that were very destructive. the two navy seals described as security guys weren t security detail at all. could is united states have the capability in four hours to get boots on the ground? and if we don t have that capability what are we doing in libya without a position to have that rescue capability? we need that answer which we know no one ever asked for any assets to go. could they have made it there? that s an important question for future protection of assets around the globe. a second question that comes to mind for me is why was chris stevens there on september 11. this is the question i get radio silence. no one wants to answer this question. it makes no sense for an ambassador to be sitting in a location where they were just denied additional security. i got his last memo to hillary clinton 11 hours before he died and he described benghazi as a decoo of violence. i m worried they can t protect us. they are threatening to pull our security. somebody has to ask why he was there. it was a symbolic day for terrorist. it was the most insecure lokes at the time. you don t go in without a good reason. so someone has to answer the question why did he go there and the administration doesn t want to answer that question. i don t know why but i m going to keep digging. final question and it s important to keep answers brief on this but the fact that this attack occurred at a time when the president said well osama bin laden is dead and we ve got al qaeda on the run and wanted it to appear that militant islam was impotent and yet we ve seen from that attack and the algeria attack at the b.p. facility, libya, molly, algeria, al qaeda affiliates in north aftercarks what is this telling us about the cooperation and sophistication of terrorism and how it remains a threat? al qaeda is on the run so they are in many different countries. they used to be in one country so we could bomb them. everyone i talk to them tells me al qaeda is still resurgent and i don t think the media has done a good job in highlighting that threat. i think one of the reasons terrorist groups survive is they get sponsor ship from states. they don t exist in a vacuum. there are states that train, arm, cover for them. iran is one of those states, syria is one of thotes states and there are others as well which we have to go to those states. it doesn t have to be militarily. but we ve got to stop the people who are accountable to the international community. who are accountable because we give them foreign aid. we ve got to stop them from promoting the acts of terrorism that is fueling the resurgence of al qaeda and other groups across the region. what we ve learned in spite of the fact that the president made the guttiest decision ever in the history of man kind to kill osama bin laden and made two very good movies about it, al qaeda is still a very pressing threat and we have to remember his ba la as well. i m a latin americanist. i ll mention they have a beach head in venezuela. it s elsewhere. they partner with the narco traffickers and that means the threat is right up to our border. i have to give credit to those who are focusing on this threat in the u.s. congress. because that s the one we will face next. and god forbid, someone john carrie is before the senate one of these days and has an opportunity say what difference does it make. thank you. thank you everyone for spending time was. captioning by the national captioning institute www.ncicap.org citizen united. 25 years ago we felt people were to defend our rights as ronald ragedown in his presidency. so citizens united was an organization dedicated to protecting our rights. advocacy and grassroots organization our goal was to reis tert the traditional american values of limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families and national sovety and security. with your support we ve made a tremendous impact on the cause for america. what s great about event brite is we see who came to our event. we can contact those people and ask them why they didn t show up. get them to come to another event. it s been great for our supporters. we didn t have a lot of money to advertise this event. it was a great way to get the message out in a cheap way. i work with a lot of political campaigns. it s easy to use. you data capture and ability to collect funds. all the things that are difficult were easy. ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, the fight is about to start. what you are going to see is a friendly competition. the president of let freedom ring and cpac 2013,. this is going to be fun. is everybody ready? are you ready for today s heavy weight bout? by the time this match is over, we ll be able to see who is right and who is left. we ll see some jabs, some glancing blows and maybe a knockout punch. and remember fighters fight best when the crowd let s them know how they are doing. so cheer as loud as you d like. are you ready? it s time to introduce our political fighting out of the left corner who was a commen date or for cnn paul big government. and fighting out of the right corner weighing in as the former host of cnn s cross fire, a fox news contributor and standing tall as the co-founder of the daily caller talker tucker. thank you. we ll have some fun here today. this is going to be a three round bout. there are no rules and a fighter can be saved by the bell. so let s shake hand, come out commen dating and let s go gentleman. now in the first round i ll be posting out a series of topics and each fighter will have one minute to respond. we ll go on an order that was decided backstage completely fairly documented after we made sure that all voters had i.d. we re going to begin with paul understand each case, each of them will answer the same question. so there is the bell, we are ready to go. it s round one, question one, america isn t that magnificent. i can see why you would get distracted. america is the world s police women. get over it. thank you colin and tucker. thank you for having me here. it s a beautiful facility here at the gay lord. i can t say gay but the lord. this is a great place to b. honestly i don t know if i ve ever been treated as well. you re fun, you re funny, you re polite. i hope when the left invites tucker to a liberal meeting, american society of newspaper editors or something tucker is as well treated. so america is the world s police women. we are the indispendable nation. we are the most powerful on earth. there are two ways to do it. the way bush did it, invade and take over at the cost of lives and your money. that s the stupid way. then there is the obama way. find the enemies, hunt them down without having to invade, ockmy and conquer their countries which i don t want america to be in the business of turning every land into wisconsin. we have four guys dead. what difference at this point does it make? is she here? she s not here. she s going to come on later. we ll come back to her. we ll come back to her. i want to thank paul for coming here and thank you all for being nice to paul who is a brave man. i want to thank secretary clinton for gracing us with her presence twice. of course we are the world s police women. it s been left to us because the other so-called world powers are too cheap, morally indirnt or happy to sponge off of us they have neglected their duty to keep some sense of order in the world. we are unwilling to let crazy people run through our neighborhood, yes we are the world s police women. what we are not is the world s social worker. so to the extent we take it upon ourselves, the goal or false only fwation to bring sufficient rans to countries, make sure that is not our job. we re good at building roads, crushing opposing armies. no government is good at the work of nation building, including ours. next question, and tucker you will go first. federal debt does not matter. we can stimulate our way to prosperity. you are insane for suggesting such a notion. i believe that that matters because i believe in math. here s what i know about math this is another way of saying i believe in size. you often hear the left lecture on science. we are on the side of science. anybody who ignores the obvious point that if you expend more energy than you bring in, you die, whether a business, person, or country. the person who ignores that is against science. in the long run, a country that spends more, than it raises, cannot continue. it is an existential threat to our country. that was established by cut back by economist after, miss. common sense confirms it. the federal debt, there s a bigger pie problem perry that to me quote dick cheney, who said ronald reagan taught us that deficits do not matter. dick cheney was wrong. he was wrong then and now. of course deficits matter, but anyone of you who supported the bush plans, has no right to speak. i helped bid bill clinton balance the budget and build a surplus. why? because we had good economic times. in good economic times, you pay down the deficit, but reagan and bush did not, and in bad times you have to stimulate in the near term, at that as they got president obama is doing you forgot the role. you have to touch up if you creep out if you supported creating the deficit. we democrats will balance the budget once again. paul, which is more apparent to america s pursuit of happiness, which is more dangerous, excuse me, that a 357 magnum you would find it 17 guns and no cans of soda pop. i have the right wing position on the giant drink soda thing. i do not like the idea, and i think bloomberg is a fine man, but i do not like government telling us what size so that today. this one, he to say, but i am with tucker and most of you. i have the right wing position on gun safety. i have the same position as ronald reagan, who was for a before you buy a gun. i have the same position as the president of the n andra beforee flipped plopped in the last few months if you give a dr. pepper to a bad back, all he will do is get fat. if you allow that bad guy who is either a criminal or insane, to get it done, then bad things happen. someone who is neither a criminal or insane, i disagree. both firearms and big gulps are integral to american topic have been asked for similar reasons. firearms are the root of the right to self-protect. if you do not have the right to protect yourself or your family, you have no rights at all. without firearms you are incapable of doing that. it s that simple. i do not think someone who is either insane or criminal i ought to get the government s permission before i buy or sell a far from someone who is equally law-abiding. i am a threat to no one. as for big gulps, this is another battle being waged by the left. they did not ban cappuccinos because their donors drink them pit imagine the great unwashed likes that. it is a basic attack on your symbol pleasures, and it is one of many the right to smoke, the right to get a tan. stand up for your rights to please yourself. american seniors should they be more afraid of our private social a separate accounts or obamacare ? senior should not be as afraid as they are. i think both parties get a lot, especially the democratic, but republicans, that it is carrying zero people and it is wrong. this is the safest and most secure country in history, and all of us, every person, will die. the faster we accept that, the happier we will be. that said, you ought to be concerned with the government decides it has the power and the knowledge to determine choices of what kind of health care humes secret you should pursue against that. he should not let them take away your big gulps. people my age ought to be concerned about this attempt to organize us into more efficient units. there s not one person smart and enough to organize 209 million of us into one efficient unit. i speak for a rabbani when i say thank god for harry reid stopped busch s plan to privatize social security. so you wanted to turn her grandmother postretirement to lehman brothers, bear stearns? that is the people who were in charge. social security has been around for 75 years and has never missed a check. thank god for social security. as for as for obamacare, call your mother, father, ask them if they like being on medicare. they love it. yes. and yet medicare only has 5000 employees. private insurance has hundreds of thousands of employees. government, more efficient and health insurance. more effective, lower overhead, better outcomes, lower prices. the only change i want to make is the eligibility age to birth. let s all get on medicare then we will have a real system. i will not answer that, but i would love to all on. have you been to the dmv lately? yes. house of service. when secretary of state hillard erie @ clinton appeared for the senate hearing on and got as they come here is what she said about the cause of the riot here is what she said. [video clip] what difference at this point does it make? the last question is round one is her question what difference does it make? the amount we no americans were killed and their deaths must be avenged. that is what she was saying, and i hope everybody agrees with that. one of the problems i have is when our embassies and consulates in 11 places were attacked by terrorists in the bush administration none of you bushboo. use by this time, crutch, saudi arabia, in yemen in athens, all run the world we were under attack, and republicans voted against spending the money to hard and those facilities and make them safe. if you are upset about been gauzy, i suggest my republican friends look in the mirror. i would say this it is worth at been shaving the deaths of americans abroad. we have not been we do not have a single perpetrator in custody. hard to bring perpetrators to justice if you do not bother to find out who they are. hillary would not be an effective police officer. it does matter because details matter, justice matters, because the truth matters. it is worth taking the time to find out what happened for one sabol reason that prevent it from happening again. that is the end of round one. [bell rings] and now for round two, the fighters are allowed to ask each other questions, and i remind the fighters that you should try to ask the questions that the mainstream media is to a freight ask, but it is open field, your choice, and we will begin with top recocuker. you are close to the former vice president al gore. his overriding its third is saving the earth from an environmental holocaust. he often says that. given that goal, were you surprised to discover he just took $100 million from the oil- rich family that runs qatar, and next time you see him, will you ask him to give that money to an environmental charity with his apologies? when our grandchildren inherits a planet that is still alive and functioning, they will think al gore, the nobel peace prize winner. you do not believe in climate science, as tucker pointed out. it is real. i think this is ingenious. this is gore at his best tree he is using these funds for good. he is a genius. that was valiant. here s my question. mr. carlson, matt romney could live anywhere he wants, except the white house, and so he chose to sell his mansion in utah and buy a mansion in liberal la jolly california. why did he decide to settle in california? mitt romney the name rings a bell as someone who is from la jolla, i would say he is inexplicable, to be honest with you. i would have been happier had mitt romney moved to highland park, texas, for example. there you go. or those louisiana. i will say if you are interested in drinking complicated coffee and going surfing, la jolla is fantastic. he does not drink coffee. that is right. just frother. frother. froth. i ask you this question last year. i will ask it again because you are qualified, of all the people in this room, you know more about this than any. you are personally close to the clintons. do you believe that she will run for president in the next cycle, and do you think she should? duel i think she should, absolutely. i work backwards and say which to be a good and president? the answer is no, she would be a great president. it is interesting now that we have moved toward some potential mythical one-day hypothetical hillary candida city, all right wingers are saying she is evil. that is a sign that you guys are afraid. i hope she does. i have no idea. i think she will live a life, write her book, reacquaint herself with the real-world, having been traveling the world, is not a republican society lady. she is a real woman. what she will do is go around in a non-governmental capacity trying to empower women because where women are empowered, the whole society does better. it is absolutely true. she is a global force for good, and i hope and pray that she runs for president. my last question. on the level, i m a professional bush basher, which is a unique gift i have. it is really easy. i will say this about george the bush his emergency plan for relief was wonderful. was outstanding. it was america at its best. it was george padilla bush at his best. it s a more live than any president what has obama this is an honorable thing, what i just did about bush. that program would have been wonderful if he had raised the money himself. it is not the government s role to pay for medicine to foreign governments. what is the one thing that obama has done that i applaud, and i have to say his second inaugural, just two months ago, the president walked down the length of pennsylvania avenue shooting nicoreete. i respect that appeared to be in the world living in the world where all of your buddies who worship you like jesus are telling you the most of the thing you can do, not commit abortion, but used a backup products summer that is the worst thing you could ever be great for this guy to flaunt his addiction in public was courageous, compelling, and an inspiration to all of us. bo, barack obama. that is the end of round two. now for the final round, the lightning round. we will play a word association game. i was a word in each fighter response with the first thing that pops into your mind and keep it short. we will start on the left with paul. are you ready? round three and begins. benghazi. not the result of the youtube video. iranian nukes. scary, but not as great a threat as medicare. unacceptable. must be stopped at all costs. argo ? i love and movie about the carter initiation. the only good thing that happened in the carter administration. [applause] afghanistan. never going to be belgium. think got obama is ending that war and bring those troops home. thank god. irs. jesus loves tax collector s point that is why he accepted the house about cox the hospitality of tax collectors. they call them publicans. if only the border patrol were as feared and effective. hispanic america. winnable. gracias.rats, and pro chinese cyber attacks. how can people be so stupid and not know why there are 6000 dead pigs floating through their river? i would say more threatening than anything happening in the middle east. sorry. putin. evil, yet hilarious. bush called him pooty pute. you have not seen the pictures. nra. does not represent most gun owners like me who are for president s obama s gun regulations. you have to deal with the reality. the only organization working to protect the constitutional right that the new york times hates. sequester. y2k up politics. it hasn t gone, and it is so incredibly dumb and it will hurt this country. a totally self-inflicted wound. rich people. right there is my favorite rich person right there. i cannot hate all rich people. arrogant, but i hope to join their ranks. poor people. it is a relative measure, but i would say a group i have great sympathy for and deserves a shot. there is this big that concern as 8 the poor. they love the poor because they created so many of them. ashley judd. why does every right wing guy i know think it is horrible to that she posed naked in movies, but thought it was fine that scott brown posed nude in a magazine? i was against scott brown s nudes. hair on fire crazy, but the gift that keeps on getting. clint eastwood. , oscar for the best club the best political convention. i will not tackle a legend. i am not going to attack and 80- year-old legend. i will not attack that. tea party. harry reid s best friend. thank you for saving the majority in the senate 40 part iers. understood. reagan. principles. principals and liberals. it was ahead of his time on gay- rights. reagan was a liberal. president barack obama. , greatest president of the 21st century. obvious. even you have to agree he was better than bush. i would say cold, remote, and deeply cynical. an easy gone go.d present in the details. god is love. just buy a lot of the draw, you lead with satan. and is hate. the dark lord of good intentions. last run amok hugo chavez. now.tan s roommate couldeally we sish i annoy you, but he was a that is the end here and we need to hear from you. who is the winnerwho is it paul begala, or is it tucker carlson? i win. you go back and read the papers again. we want to thank each of these. we want to thank you, and i is missing want to thank paul begala. a little more of an uphill climb for him. we re delighted to have you both. thank you so much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] isn t it funny how the left the paris barack obama tried reagan as they were similar in any way whatsoever? for instance, can you match and obama collecting chain saws? that is what ronald reagan did pick your seat chainsaws as birthday gifts from his son, and reagan would spend his time away from the white house not playing golf, but at his ranch, clearing brush and chopping down trees and which is something that barack obama is physically capable of doing. the nice tie the next time you hear a leftist try to compare obama to reagan, you can laugh out loud for these reasons. our next speaker governor rick paid very governor rick perry we are honored to have him reagan s ranch a few years ago. it serves as a place of inspiration for so many movement leaders. rick perry was elected in 2000 and he has maintained a strong focus on fiscal discipline, becoming the only texas governor to sign budgets the reduced revenue spending. he has overseen a 43% increase in public education spending can and has worked with the legislature to fund border security efforts. please give a warm welcome to governor rick perry. less texas. they told me to come in, i said, which were, and they said i have to turn to left. i said i do not turn left well. it is a big honor to be asked to speak, and i want to say thank you to those who have allowed me to come, and for all the bashing s that i say about washington. i never mind coming here. this is a fabulous place to come, and when we got here, i actually was surprised to step off our united flight and see that everybody was still here, and from what i have been reading about the sequestration, i figured obama would have shut the place down and send everybody home. actually, that would not be that would probably be the first good idea he has had. when you think about it just kidding. well, mostly, mostly. i come from what a lot of people might seem to think is a foreign country. we have a balanced budget. we have a surplus. we are creating more jobs than the other states in the union. and we are doing this with a part-time legislature that makes for only 140 days every other year. our legislators hours, they come in, pass law, and then they go home and live under the loaws just passed. we had a part-time congress in washington, would they really get less done? huh? what we are getting is a lot of hysteria. we are getting a lot of hysteria right now from a president more concerned about the next election and saving programs like medicaid, medicare, and social security. president obama is campaigning full-time against the sequestered that he created. he has used schoolteachers and border patrol agents, airport security, janitors as part of his portrait of pain. he has decided to shut down shuttours. apparently, now the only folks who can get a tour of the white house are those who contribute $500,000 or more. this president s posture would be laughable if he had not taken it one step too far. dangerously releasing criminals onto our streets instead of a political point. when you have a federally sponsored jail break and that is exactly what this is, a federally sponsored jailbreak, you cross the line from politics of spin to the creighton form of cynicism, where everything goes, everything goes in order to win the next election. here is my concern if the president cannot handle $85 billion in cuts that he suggested, how can we ever believe that he will tackle trillion-dollar deficits, unfunded intel but obligations that amount to trillions of dollars more? our deficit is approximately equal to our gdp. every dollar we spend, 40 cents is barred from some bank in a place like china. the resolution to this debt ceiling debacle led to the first downgrading of american credit in the history of this country. we have a president who refuses to put a single plan on paper that seriously addresses the deficit spending, entitlement reforms. those are inexplicable. but he is more than willing to do a photo-op with first responders and teachers to decry the spending reductions that amount to less than 1% of the total annual budget. if the president is worried about overtime pay for capitol others, i say what about the stagnant wages of millions of american workers, what about the one in seven americans resigned the food stamps, what about small business and home owners that cannot get loans because dodd-frank for some credit for americans all across this country? what about the americans who cannot get full-time work due to the most anemic recovery since the great depression? mr. president, nor plans to tax and spend our nation to prosperity, they will fail as spectacularly as the economics you have barred from john maynard keynes. let us be clear about what is the crux of the debate in washington. it is whether america ends will surrender to the creation of an massive welfare state in the image of western europe. my quarrel is not with the legitimate role of government, but the unlimited role of government. investments in research and defense capabilities and infrastructure and border security are vital american issues, and issues that washington needs to address. but we have turned the constitution on its head and the federal government has inserted itself into every aspect of american society. and instead of allowing states become laboratories of for form, washington s central planners are coopting the responsibilities reserved to the states and individuals under the 10th amendment to the constitution. if the federal policy fiscal coercion is now at the hearts of the debates of medicaid expansion, proposed under obamacare, some of our friends and allies in the conservative movement have folded in the face a federal bribery and mounting pressure from special interest groups. they tell us to take the money. in the case of texas, $4 billion, because it is free. but there is nothing free. there s nothing free that comes from washington, because for starters, it is our money. this is our money, our money that we have tacked on to the national debt either by borrowing from china or pulling it right off the progresses. secondly, nothing stops washington from changing their rules down the road and the increasing the states share, which in the case of texas will be up to more than $18 billion over 10 years. that is a lot of money. that is a lot of money for the 14th largest economy in the world. all we have is a promise to. all we have is a promise and i promised from a federal government that apparently cannot afford to keep dangerous criminals behind bars. it is as if the merits of the expenditure do not matter any more. but i say they do. i say medicaid does not need to be expanded. it needs to be saved and reform. we care about our poorest texans. we want the that the best care possible, and that cannot happen with a program that a as on its way to bankruptcy. if you do not believe me that medicaid is broken, just ask our president. four years ago, he said, we cannot simply put more people into a broken system that does not or. and yet that is exactly what he is doing or tried to do in the case of texas. no program has grown more rapidly in the last 15 years at the state level of than medicaid. washington s solution is to grow at faster, regardless of the fact the medicaid program is unsustainable. here is what we need. instead of this one size fits all medicaid expansion under obamacare, flexibility to innovate, to enact patient- centered market-driven reforms, state accountability requirements, combined with limits on federal overage we need a medicaid program that emphasizes personal responsibility with copays on a sliding scale, deductibles and premium payments for emergency room care, small contributions, so patients take ownership over their utilization of care. we need to take an acid test to make sure that care is there for those who need it most. we need the ability to offer medicaid clients held savings accounts, getting patients more control over health care spending. nothing about the medicaid expansion should move citizens from existing private coverage and employer-sponsored coverage to the public rolls. nothing should do that. medicaid dollar should be used to keep people on private insurance, and the best way to help states provide health care is to allow states to design better, more efficient, more effective care using medicaid dollars. this will allow each state tailor the programs, specifically serving the needs of those unique challenge the state s half. we know more about and care more about the physical and economic health of our citizens than the federal government does. give states like texas the flexibility to actually fix medicaid and to create more cost-inefficient health care for our families, our neighbors and for our health care providers. absent those changes and needed flexibility is, the medicaid expansion amounts to one large incremental step towards a single-payer socialized medicine. that is where we are headed. i for one will not accept that as long as i am the governor of the state of texas. there are some who say my position is ideological, but that is only true to the extent that being able to pay one possibility in the years ahead is ideological. washington does not worry about how to pay bills. they just charge it to our grandchildren s account. but in texas, our constitution requires a balanced budget. it s so happens that balanced budgets in one of the lowest tax and spending burdens in the nation cars funds with our number-1 ranking when it comes to job creation. we are leading the way in job creation in all categories, on all salary levellers, from entry-level to the executive wuite. vince in texas comes back to the crux of the issue. i mentioned earlier, i said we do not believe in growing government to grow the economy. we did not believe in a massive expansion of government as a source of economic stimulation. we believe in putting more money in the hands of entrepreneurs and family. we believe low-wage jobs should not be looked upon as they are a stepping stone to a higher-wage talks. we believe the best source of revenue for public priority is job creation, not higher taxation. if washington were serious about job creation, it would not pour hundreds of billions of dollars into so-called stimulus. it would reduce the red tape on energy exploration on federal lands and waters. the single fastest whey to boost our economy and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars is to unleash the energy exploration across america. shale formations of america the cheapest natural gas in the world, and natural gas is clean. why would this administration the lake energy solutions on this continent only to make us more reliant on energy produced in foreign lands? the administration must policy of benign is foot dragging on keystone, it is blocking of coastal s exploration, its regulations imposed by the epa and other agents is print what that means is america is at the mercy of middle east mullahs and south american dictators. common sense tells us it is time to drill for american energy to create american jobs and american prosperity. it is time for us to have a western hemisphere energy strategy. my approach is prado pretty simple. make what americans buy, buy what americans may, and sell it to the world. that is what we need to be doing in this country. let me close by just sharing with you my take on conservatism in america. now, the popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away from conservative ideals, as evidenced by the last two presidential elections. that is what they say. that might be true if republicans have nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012. that might be true. but now we are told our party must shift and appeal to the growing hispanic demographic. let me say something about what appeals to hispanics in states like texas. it is the free enterprise agenda that allows small businesses to prosper, free of government interference. it is the policies that value the family unit as the best and closest form of government. it is the belief in life, in the fe in vdot. no one knew risks lives and limbs to reach our shores comes hoping for a government handout. they want opportunity, freedom, and they want and other way to provide for their families and that is true whether they are first-generation americans or like hispanics in texas, families living here a long time before they crockett and james dewey and sam houston made their way south with my friends, this is what we as conservatives stand for. we are not the people of equal outcomes, of quotas, of raised- based appeals or a nanny state. we re the people who say everyone deserves a shot, but success is only the product of hard work and innovation. were the ideology that is blind of color and solely grounded in a merit system. we are compassionate without being cynical. government can be a tool to self-improvement, and self- empowerment. not self-entrapment. these ideals are as old as america, and they will live on as the prevailing sentiment long after we are gone, because they are what make america unique. we will never bend to the social and economic agenda of western europe. yet it is an interesting place to vacation, but it is a sorry example of government. we will continue to pursue a uniquely american vision seed in liberty, personal responsibility, and individual ity. god bless you, and may god continue to bless this country. thank you. caller: caller to formally introduce arnett speaker, i would like to welcome back to the stage al cardenas. whoa, where are you folks going? i m about to introduce you a great person. ladies and gentlemen, this next speaker embodies everything i talked about this morning in my opening comments. number one, what is the theme of this conference? next generation of conservatives. we are working looking for talented, young, a committed conservative leaders who can take this nation back to the america that we all want and came here to fight about. ladies and gentlemen, this great senator from the great state of south carolina is here to talk to us about how that movement works, the leadership that america needs, and his vision for getting america back to work and economic prosperity. help me applaud diversity in the best way the conservatives can, and that i that is by extending our hands of conservative principles to all america. the senator from the greece date of south carolina the senator from the great state of south carolina, you can continue to watch this conference at c-span.org. the federal to serve on investigative subcommittees of the committee on ethics during the 113th congress. mr. john c. carney of delaware, mr. gerald e. connelly of virginia, ms. janice hahn of california, mr. brian pittsburgh higgins of new york, mr. hakeem s. jeffries of new york, mr. ed perlmutter of colorado, ms. terri a. sewell of alabama, ms. dina tight us of nevada. signed with best regards, nancy pelosi, democratic leader. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentlewoman from north carolina rise? ms. foxx: mr. speaker, by the direction of the committee on rules, i call up house resolution 113 and ask for its immediate consideration. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the resolution. caller: house calendar number 8, house resolution 113 the clerk: house calendar number ght, house resolution 113, resolved, that at any time after the adoption of this resolution the speaker may, pursuant to clause 2-b of rule 18, declare the house resolved into the committee of the whole house on the state of the union for consideration of the bill h.r. 803, to reform and strengthen the workforce investment system of the nation to put americans back to work and make the united states more competitive in the 21st century. the first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. all points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. general debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the committee on education and the work force. after general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. in lieu of the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the committee on education and the work force now printed in the bill, it shall be in order to consider as an original bill for the purpose of amendment under the five-minute rule an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of rules committee print 113-4. that amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered as read. all points of order against that amendment in the nature of a substitute are waived. no amendment to that amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed in the report of the committee on rules accompanying this resolution. each such amendment may be offered only in the order printed in the report, may be offered only by a member designated in the report, shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for the time specified in the report equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the house or in the committee of the whole. all points of order against such amendments are waived. at the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the committee shall rise and report the bill to the house with such amendments as may have been adopted. any member may demand a separate vote in the house on any amendment adopted in the committee of the whole to the bill or to the amendment in the nature of a substitute made in order as original text. the previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or ithout instructions. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from north carolina is recognized for one hour. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. for the purpose of debate only, i yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from colorado, mr. polis, pending which i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman is recognized. ms. foxx: during consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for purpose of debate only. mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks . the speaker pro tempore: without objection. ms. foxx: house resolution 113 provides for structured rule providing for consideration of h.r. 803, the supporting knowledge and investing in lifelong skills act, also known the skills act. mr. speaker, the house will consider the skills act that re-authorizes the work force nvestment act, wia, of 1998. while this has received funding through the authorization process, w.i.a. expired in 2008. they have a unified work force development system and one-stop career-centered delivery system. reforming this is critical and occurring these economic difficult times where 20 million americans are struggling to find adequate work, we cannot afford to delay action any longer. delay is costly for those seeking to find work. today many un and underemployed americans are turning to work force education programs to develop the skills they need to be competitive for jobs. but instead of an easy to navigate responsive system, many have found the complex bureaucracy unresponsive to their needs and concerns. in january, 2011, the government accountability office, g.a.o., identified 47 separate and distinct work force development programs across nine different federal agencies that costs taxpayers approximately $18 billion annually. the g.a.o. report found that almost all of these programs were duplicative and overlapping and that only five of these programs had had any type of evaluation and that those evaluations had not been very effective ones. through the education and work force committee s oversight of the w.i.a. system, even more programs have been identified and the true number of federal work force development programs is greater than 50. we know this is a problem. we all agree this should change. president obama recognized the challenge of the current bratic system in his 2012 bureaucratic system in his 2012 state of the union address. let me quote the president directly. quote, i want to cut through the maze of confusing training programs so for now on people have one program, one place to go for all the information and help that they need, end quote. these are among the many reasons i introduced the skills act earlier this year. this legislation streamlines 35 duplicative federal work force development programs and creates a single work force investment fund to serve employers, workers and job seekers. the skills act has an employer-driven work force development system by ensuring that 2/3 of the state and local work force investment boards members are employers and repeals 19 federally mandated board positions. this legislation expands decisionmaking at state and local levels so that these individuals can make the best decisions to meet the needs of their communities. the bill also addresses the administrative bloat in washington by requiring the office of management and budget to identify and reduce the number of federal staff working on employment work force development programs that will be consolidated under this bill. the skills act holds these programs accountable for taxpayer dollars spent by requiring annual performance evaluations and establishing common performance metrics. the bill also allows states to determine eligible training providers, simplifying the bureaucratic process that has forced many community colleges and other providers out of the system and gives local boards the flexibility to work directly with community colleges to educate large groups of participants. additionally, the skills act encourages these programs to focus on in-demand jobs in industries so that participants will be able to succeed in the workplace upon completion and ensures that funds are spent directly on services rather than administration of bureaucrats. this bill improves transparency by requiring states and local areas to report annually on administrative costs. each day we delay is another day employers are not hiring the workers they need, another day unemployed workers are not receiving the best technical education and another day taxpayer dollars are wasted on red tape and well-intentioned but broken programs. we have a responsibility to move this process forward. the time to act is now, mr. speaker, and with that i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady reserves the balance of her time. the gentleman from colorado. mr. polis: i thank the gentlelady for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. polis: thank you, mr. speaker. today i rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bill, the supporting knowledge and investing in lifelong kills or skills act. re-authorization of the federal job training legislation has had the support of democrats and republicans, members on both sides of the aisle know that passage of this bill is critical to our nation s recovery and future competitiveness. i served on the state board of education in colorado from 2000 to 2006, and i recall the prior authorization of the work force investment act that we re still operating under. it dates to 1998. it came up after five years in 2003. i remember being on the state board and in our state like many states jurisdiction goes between both department of labor and the state department of education. under state department of education we have the out-of-literacy components and adult components of work force investment and under the department of labor we have other areas for responsibility. we said hopefully congress will act. that was 2003, 2004. that congress didn t act. we said hopefully congress will act. 2005, 2006, well, you know, we still need a re-authorization. let s hope congress will act. then i ran for congress. i was mountain next congress, 2009, i was in the next congress, 2009, 2010, democratic majority, it didn t pass. 2011, 2012, republican majority. no w.i.a. re-authorization. here we are now in the 113th congress and unfortunately we have a bill that lacks bipartisan support. unfortunately the republicans have departed from the long history of bipartisanship and commonaries of agreement, some of which were talked about by dr. foxx in her remarks, streamlining programs, reducing the numbers of programs that have shown to be ineffective by the g.a.o., having a work force investment system that s more nimble, able to react to changes in the economy, to changes in the employment sector, to changes in the types of skills that people need to succeed in the 21st century work force. but unfortunately we have a bill today which falls short in that regard. even though this bill gives great authority to governors, i have word from my own home state s department of labor and employment opposition to this bill. we have statements from many other disability advocates, youth groups, civil rights groups opposed to this bill. workers with disabilities, disadvantaged youth, returning veterans, low-income adults, migrant workers, minorities, these are all underserved populations that work force investment system is designed to serve. yet, these are the very populations that stand to lose the most under the current bill. instead of encouraging collaboration between these programs and streamlining these programs and rewarding what works and stopping what doesn t work, this bill forces effective programs to compete with one another for state funding, putting an additional burden on state and local budgets in the process. nstead of prioritizing incentives for businesses, for colleges, for local governments and work force organizations to collaborate, this bill requires only employers be represented on work force investment boards leaving many other stakeholders on the sidelines. of course, meeting the needs of employers is the goal of the work force investment act, but when you look at the stakeholders that will deliver on that and match the people to the skills, you need to include businesses, colleges, local governments and others who work in partnership with needs assessment driven by the employment needs of the private sector to help determine the outputs that are important for work force training systems so our economy can continue to grow and succeed. mr. speaker, this bill hands a blank check to governors with a message that says go ahead and use federal tax dollars however you like. you can eliminate services for the underserved, and yet we, the american taxpayers, are continuing to pay for it. well, look, we are custodians of taxpayer trust here in this body. frequently this body doesn t do a very good job of that with the deficits we have, the lack of any comprehensive way of reining in federal spending. even with regard to the sequester, which while it makes progress on reining in federal spending, does so in a nondiscriminant way rather than a thoughtful approach that would be in the interest of this country. and here we are passing out dollar bills, throwing dollar bills to the states. here comes uncle sam ready to bail out governors. they re playing the walnut game, moving it over to this account, moving it to this account. this is essentially a slush fund for state governors as it s currently constructed at the expense of groups that traditionally have high unemployment, including veterans who so capeably served our country, capablely served our country, particularly during our two mothse recent wars, the iraq two most recent wars, the iraq war, which has wound down and hopefully the afghanistan war as well as veterans of prior conflicts, including the first gulf war and the vietnam conflict who continue to suffer from unemployment above average levels till this day. in addition, this bill affects funding set aside for partnerships, my home state has used the funding for state energy partnership, scholarships to train coloradans, even leading to the creation of a new company this fund aloud colorado to form 10 strategy sector partnership which is leveraged more than three quarters of a million in private and public financing to train over 1,200 colorado job seekers in high-demand occupations this vital funding would be slashed from 15% to 5%. i would add that under the democratic substitute which we re grate thfl rule allows for, we the amount set aside would be restored at the full 15%. in addition this bill would freeze authorize funding bills over the next seven years. this on top of the fact that funding has been cut in half since 2001. at the very time when the changing neefeds global economy need to match sod americans can keep up with the skills they need to compete in the 21st century economy. and while making a cut there could save a few dollars now, we fail to invest in the future of bringing americans along to ensure that they have good jobs that our nation depends on, this would have profund negative impact on our budget and economy over time. there s many ideas that a number of us have had to make this bill better. many of them are included in the democratic substitute, which is allowed under this rule and will be debated with extended debate time and discussed. many of us would have preferred an open rule. we proposed an open rule yesterday in the rules committee . i had an open had an open rule been offered i would have loved to bring forth a number of amendments, including one that is a bill i co-sponsored with rosa delauro that would make it easier for women to get training in fields they are underrepresented in. there are many fields, while women have meat great progress across the economy where women only have a 2% or 3% or 4% presence, that are high-paying job with need to match women with skills so they can fulfill those opportunities. i would like to see if there had been an open process on the floor of the house of representatives a requirement that state and local work force organizations give time and effort on promoting to train people to start their own companies through entrepreneurship and innovation, in addition to increasing act stose entrepreneurship train, we can focus on reducing the skills gap in computer science by providing education and training for the jobs of their future. democrats have introduced their own work forest re-authorization bill, the work forest investment act of 2013 which would streamline programs, main stain strong maintain strong protections for veterans and other vulnerable populations and create stronger accountability for employment outcomes. while expanding the role community colleges play in job training. i m pleased this rule makes the democratic substitute in order. i wish it was an open rule that allowed for a full discussion for the many discussions ideas to come from the full body of membership. it will take both sides working together on this will with dr. foxx s effort, ranking member miller s effort, chairman kline s effort, ranking member hinojosa s effort, to create an authorization that will stand the test of time, replacing the 1998 law we all continue to operate under in a world that s changed significantly since then. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentlewoman from north carolina. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. i appreciate the comments of my colleague from colorado. he s on the education committee and i certainly wish that he and his colleagues had stayed in the education committee markup of this bill and offered the many ideas he said that they had to make it better but unfortunately they worked they walked out and did not take the opportunity to offer the amendments in the committee. i would now like to recognize my distinguished colleague from florida for three minutes. mr. yoho: i rise to support this bill. this bill will allow people to find gainful employment in the marketplace, which is what america is in dire need of right now, jobs. by helping people acquire the skills needed to find pliment, we employment, we give them the ability to help themselves and the ability to change their lifestyle as they pursue their mesh dream. the skills act would help the economy in several ways. one, by creating a more qualified work force to fill the needs of today s industries, thus it will bring more certainty to the marketplace, flfer employers, knowing there s a more readily available trained work force will be more likely to expand their business. another way that will create higher paying jobs, a third way is it reduces the numb of administrative agencies that oversee and run these programs by more than half, thereby causing government to be more streamlined, operate more efficiently and save the taxpayers money. the end result, we help people get back to work sooner and by doing so we make a stronger america. so many of our policies of the past, although well intentioned, have held people back and kept them out of the work force by not promoting the learning or advanced job skills needed in today s work environment. i believe we all would prefer to see people independent and self-sufficient versus dependent upon government. america is known as a general america is known as a generous cuventry, and let s help to keep her that way. but america is also known as the and of opportunity for those that choose to seize that opportunity. this skills act will help people awire the skills and if they desire to take advantage of the opportunity, to succeed in america. again, everyone wins and america is stronger. for these reasons, we should move forward with this legislation and i urge my colleague, both republicans and democrats, to vote in favor of the rule. thank you, mr. speaker. i yield any remaining time back. thank you. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from colorado. mr. polis: thank you, mr. speaker. it s my honor to yield four minutes to the gentleman from massachusetts, a colleague on the rules committee, mr. mcgovern. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for four minutes. mr. mcgovern: thank you very much. mr. speaker, the ongoing problem with this republican majority is their insistence on partisan political ploys at the expense of sound policy. it s their way or the highway and this is a good example this bill should be a bipartisan bill and should have brought both sides together for the common goal of putting people back to work. but the bill we re considering today doesn t in any way, shape, or form reflect bipartisanship. instead of bringing a bill to the floor to help our economy prosper and grow jobs, instead of bringing a bill to the floor where there s bipartisanship, this majority has given us a bill that will gut job training programs. this is not a good bill. in fact, it does real harm to job training programs that will help put americans back to work. and aisle particularly alarmed by the bill s egregious cuts to the snap education and training program. the skills act would destroy the snap education and training program as we know it. it would kill a program that provides low income individuals with the training that they need to get jobs, jobs that pay enough to get them off of public assistance. here s the deal. the snap education and training program works. it actually works. the author of this bill, my colleague on the rules committee, dr. foxx, does not take a meat ax to this program but instead cleverly reworks it in a way so while it will exist in name it will not be able to carry out its mission. rather than going directly at the program and redurings zeroing out the program fund, the bill instead eliminates the role of the snap agency in determining what kinds of services are provided to snap participants. under the skills act, the board is authorized to serb, quote, eligible snap participants, end quote. the way this would appear to work is the state snap agency would assign some group of participants to snap education and training programs but only to those programs provided through weir. a good number of states, including my state of massachusetts, have found these services to be inappropriate for snap resip yen yents. the fact is, childless unemployed adults can t participate in snap for more than three months out of every three years unless they re enrolled in training programs. n this legislation, work force boards are not allowed to meet these needs. as a result if jobs are not available, some poor individuals who are willing to work could lose snap benefit, could lose their food benefits. according to the general accounting officemark snap participants are not ready for program services such as training services offered at the one stops because they lack basic skills such as reading and computer literacy that would allow them to user that services successfully, end quote. at best, low income individuals on snap or lacking job skills that will are lacking job skills that will help them get on public assistance will be denied access to job training programs. but at worst, low income individuals who rely on snap to put food on their table will see part or all of their benefit cut. yes, mr. speaker, just when you think it couldn t get worse for poor people in the country this new legislation could make hunger worse. mr. speaker, this is a bad bill that does nothing to help the american economy or the unemployed or the untrained in this country. we should be focusing on jobs, not partisan legislation. this is an area where we should be able to come together as my colleague mr. polis said. another attack on poor people, we should be working to end hunger now not pass bills that made hunger worse. i ll conclude as i began, by saying that this is one of those opportunities that i think the american people believe that we could come together, unfortunately, this has become a partisan ploy, another partisan press release this bill is going nowhere. i regret that very much because unemployed people need help. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from north carolina. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. i am used to hyperbole on this floor. i m used to hyperbole from my colleague from massachusetts but i really think this one was a little over the top. this bill does not kill the employment program with snap and only 6.8% of the recipients of food stamps even participate in that program. so to say that this bill is going to create additional hunger in this country is really over the top, a little bit. the best way we can help people who are hungry in this country is to help them get a good-paying job. and that s what we need to be doing. with that, i yield two minutes to my colleague from ohio. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. i d like to thank the gentlewoman from north carolina for yielding as well as her sponsorship of this bill. job creation and getting americans back to work is the number one priority facing this country and in talking to people talking to ict, people who are unemployed, underemployed, they tell me they need skills to get back to work. we need work force development programs that work. we need to train people for jobs that are here today and jobs that are going to be here tomorrow. one step we can take is to reform our work force development program. mr. stivers: our system currently isn t flexible, it has too much red tape. we need to make sure it works for people who are looking for jobs and connects people who are looking for jobs with employers that have open positions. we need a nimble system that can respond to our changing economy and we have to streamline our current system. today we ve at least 47 duplicative or ineffective programs. we need a simpler, more comprehensive system, a system that employers and job seekers can navigate and successfully complete. the skills act will address these issues and set up a work force development program that will train people looking for jobs to get them back to work. that s why i look forward to voting in favor of the skills act, i want to thank you and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from colorado. mr. polis: thank you, mr. speaker. i d like to yield three minutes to the gentleman from new jersey a member of the committee on education and the work force, r. hall. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. hall: i rise in opposition to the bill and the under to he rule and the underlying bill. i watched when i came to congress as congress mr. holt: as they produced the work force investment act. i was impressed. this was the kind of thing congress should be doing. it was the kind of thing that made me look forward to the prospect of maybe going to congress someday. i remember david groder, then the dean of washington journal itself, wrote a column saying this is exactly the kind of thing that congress should be doing. and they were doing it in a bipartisan way. and here we are today, 15 years later, with an ideological, partisan dead end. now, let me make it clear. work force investment is what congress needs to do. the government plays an important role in training and fostering a strong and capable work force. the so-called skills act does not invest in the work force, rather it seeks to combine and reduce vital programs that workers need. as a member of the committee on education of the work force, i along with others sought to help to develop an update, efficient, fair program that would help eager workers get the right training and get the right jobs. we had some good ideas to contribute. some of them have been tested in my home state of new jersey. we had some strong evidence that some of the programs that representative foxx s version had canceled or sought to cancel should be improved and retained. we had good legislative language for the majority party to consider. and we were rebuffed. our efforts were in vein. american workers in vain. american workers are now caught in the middle of this partisan ideological effort. individuals with disabilities, the disadvantaged, high-risk youth, veterans cannot afford to be abandoned by the majority party s proposal. it was interesting that the author of this bill said, well, only 6.8% of the snap participants use the work force training. oh, so three million people we can forget about? is that the implication of that? no. i think the implication should be we should expand it to even ore. we need to work together to provide our nation s job seekers with the resources and the training they need to obtain and maintain quality employment. the underlying partisan, consolidated and then cut it bill will keep people out of work. not put them back to work. i urge the defeat of the rule so that we can have something more bipartisan and i urge defeat of the bill. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from north carolina. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. i am reminded of a line from the cantorberry tales, the gentleman doht protest too much doth protest too much. we were told that this is a partisan bill. my colleague was one of the members of the committee that walked out of the committee meeting when there was the opportunity for the democrats to offer amendments. they did not do it. however, some amendments were offered before the rules committee and we have all of the amendments that were submitted by the democrats and not withdrawn are going to be considered today. the democrat substitute amendment was made in order and i appreciate mr. polis acknowledging that. and we ve given them extended debate time. so it s not exactly as though we are shutting them out of this process. with that, mr. speaker, i would like to yield three minutes to my distinguished colleague from north carolina, congresswoman ellmers. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from north carolina is recognized for three minutes. mrs. ellmers: thank you, mr. speaker, and thank you to my distinguished colleague from north carolina, whose passion and longstanding experience in this area have brought this great piece of legislation for us to be able to vote on today. and i would just like to rise and say that i am in support of the rule and the underlying bill to the skills act. you know, here in congress we speak frequently we frequently hear from our constituents back home that we need to work with the president on many issues. and this is a perfect example of a piece of legislation that we are working with president obama on. this skills act directly addresses what the president recently called a maze of confusing training programs. this is our chance to come together and create meaningful, commonsense reform that will help struggling americans pull themselves up out of unemployment and empower them to better provide for their families. it would also create a single work force investment fund. it basically streamlines numerous, ineffective, redundant programs and it allows for every american to better themselves. i can only think of who this bill actually helps. i can think of the single mother who is working every day and wants to help herself to better help her family and have the flexibility to go back to school, to a good community college, to our tech nal technycal schools. this bill kits technical schools. this bill cuts the red tape that our good community colleges and technical schools now face. and we can help them. there are so many people who need our help. this idea is not republican and it is not democrat. it is common sense. in fact, this bill is largely the same bill that came out of the education and work force committee last congress and most of the democratic provisions have been retained. i am also hearing from constituents back home, for instance, dr. larry keen, president of fateville technical community college, recently told my office, i am in favor of this skills act and the purposes for which it is created. anything that contributes to the simplification of a very complex system is of value. again, i rise today in support of this. i agree with dr. keen and i am here to say that i am calling on my colleagues to step away from this partisan attack and help us pass this bill. additionally i hope the senate will do the same. thank you, mr. speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from colorado. mr. polis: thank you, mr. speaker. i have to take a moment to correct the gentlelady from north carolina, my colleague, dr. foxx, who quoted the lady doth protest too much, saying it was from cantorberry tales. it is actually from shakespeare s ham let and i m sure the gentlelady upon further reflection will concur. i would reflect that this bill, like hamlet, is indeed a tragedy. mr. speaker, i d like to yield two minutes to the gentleman from rhode island, mr. langevin. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from rhode island is recognized for two minutes. without objection. mr. langevin: i thank the . ntleman for yielding mr. speaker, i rise today in opposition to the rule and the underlying bill, h.r. 803, the skills act. mr. speaker, this is the time to be investing in the work force development programs, not slashing them. i especially want to point out that unemployment in rhode island remains unacceptably high, yet the skills gap is an employment obstacle that we can actually overcome with the right resources. workers need proper training to succeed in a global economy. the work force investment act programs have helped to do just that. so it saddens me that the bill before us today cuts so many vital programs just when we need them the most. it freezes investments in job training, it cuts or consolidates 35 critical programs and limits access to services for youth, minorities, older workers, people with disabilities and veterans. the vulnerable populations that this law was designed to serve. now this bill could also imperil the efforts of organizations making positive strides also in my home state. a prime example of this, the genesis adult education center in providence which receives 20% of its total budget from w.i.a. resources, helps some of the most disadvantaged people in our state through job training, child care and support services. onto the skills act, the genesis center could face a reduction of funding and would be forced to serve fewer rhode islanders. now, the as the job core centers nationwide, enrollment of new students has been suspended and this bill does nothing to address this problem. for almost three months the job course center in rhode island has been unable to enroll new students in job training classes. we should be considering legislation that addresses this challenge and invests in job falls farnd this bill short on both counts. i urge my colleagues to oppose this rule and reject this bill so that we can come together in a bipartisan manner that properly addresses our work force issues. thank you and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from north carolina. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. i d like to yield now two minutes to the distinguished ntleman from virginia, mr. hurt. mr. hurt: i thank the gentlelady for yielding and her leadership on this very, very important issue. as i travel across virginia s fifth district, it is clear that years of failed policies like the president s health care law, higher taxes and stimulus spending have impacted the people that i represent. main streets all across our rural district have seen our small businesses struggle. and families across our district have felt the pain as neighbors, friends and family members have lost their jobs and tried to find work. as our economy struggles, ensuring our unemployed and underemployed have access to the skills training they need to improve their careers is as important as ever. however, the federal government s work force training programs, while well intended, are cluttered with bureaucracy, waste and inefficiency. they re not helping those they were intended to help. americans will not benefit from these programs until we ensure that they are both efficient and effective. at a time when the national debt is skyrocketing, a 2011 study from the g.a.o. found that taxpayers are spending $18 billion on 47 duplicative job training programs across nine federal agencies. our top priority in the house of representatives over the last two years has been getting americans out of the unemployment lines and into good-paying jobs and today we are standing up to make those critical reforms. by adopting the skills act, congress will put words into action and take a critical step toward getting our communities back to work. this legislation will eliminate red tape that prevents workers from accessing job training and it will ensure that support is tailored tailored to the specific needs of individual workers. a strong work force is critical to the future of this great nation. i remain committed to looking for ways to get virginia s fifth district back to work. i urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this rule and the underlying legislation. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from colorado. mr. polis: thank you, mr. speaker. i d like to yield two minutes to the gentlewoman from california, mrs. capps. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from california is recognized for two minutes. mrs. capps: thank you, mr. speaker. i thank my colleague from colorado for yielding. i rise today in opposition to the rule and to the underlying bill. at a time when more and more people are starting their own businesses, we should be doing everything we can to encourage entrepreneurship. unfortunately current rules make it difficult for work force w.i.b. s tooards or provide entrepreneurial training services or to count the successes of those programs in their and their outcome measures. the very thing we ought to be doing through these work force investment boards. as a result, very few w.i.b. s even offer these programs. depriving aspiring entrepreneurs of valuable resources to help them thrive. that s why in the last congress i introduced legislation to fix the guidelines for self-employment training. our goal would make it easier for the work force investment board to offer these programs in the local community, to expand access to training for aspiring entrepreneurs. i would like to thank mr. tierney, mr. hinojosa, mr. miller for including my legislation in their amendment that will be considered tomorrow. job training and re-employment issues always have been and always should be bipartisan. so it s very sad that this rule and the underlying bill have come to the floor under a strictly partisan process. and that they will actually harm the very program that they re designed to support. so i urge my colleagues to vote no and yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from north carolina. ms. foxx: thank you very much, mr. speaker. i would now like to yield three minutes to the distinguished woman from indiana and a member of the education and work force committee, mrs. brooks. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady is recognized for three minutes. mr. brooks: i d first like to thank mrs. brooks: i d first like to thank the leadership of congresswoman fox. i stand here today not just as a member of congress but as a former community college administrator. as a senior vice president and general counsel for indiana s largest community college, public college system, i led statewide work force education and training efforts aimed at putting thousands of hoosiers back to work. i also served on indiana s state work force board which administers the funds set forth in the skills act. my experience in the work force development arena taught me a very important lesson. that americans of all ages and backgrounds have the ability to be anything they want to be but they need a flexible support system that prioritizes people and not bureaucracy. this is bureaucracy. and this is what our current system looks like. that s why congress must pass the skills act. we have a chance to empower millions of individuals to lead a more fulfilling life by finding meaningful work and we must take that chance now. this is the time to choose people over paperwork and workers over waste. my own home district is home to several global manufacturing and life science leaders and i recently sat down with employees from a company headquartered in scienceville, indiana, and one by one employees told me we have to make better, smarter investment decisions in work force development and education for our nation to succeed and for our companies to succeed. how can we be a nation that spends over $18 billion a year on job training programs, over 47 job training programs, yet have almost 3.6 million jobs going unfilled? so we have jobs that are unfilled because we have a system that doesn t work. this isn t good enough for morning. we can do better. and the skills act can take us on that path. the skills act can and will put people back to work. it is leaner, it provides a road map for kess that can fuel a 21st century work force. it removes roadblocks that prevents workers from receiving in demand training and it gives employers more flex to believe the provide funding for in demand programs. it ensures that more of every dollar we spend goes to training people, rather than to the bureaucracy administering the 47 different programs today. house republicans are ready to show we can put skilled american workers over government bureaucracy by passing the skills act. i support passage of this rule and the underlying bill and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from colorado. mr. polis: i would like to inquire of the screalt from north carolina if she has remaining speakers. ms. foxx spks we do have addition ms. foxx: we do have additional speakers. mr. polis: i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from north carolina. ms. foxx: i yield three minutes o the gentleman, mr. metser. mr. messer: i rise today in support of the rule to h.r. 803, the skills act this critically important legislation introduced by dr. foxx will reform and strengthen our nation s work force investment system. back where i come from, in indiana s sixth congressional district, the number one issue is jobs. though there are 12 million americans looking for work, most folks would be surprised to know that 3.6 million jobs are unfilled simply because prospective employers prospective employees lack the necessary knowledge and training needed for that job. the skills act works to address this problem. folks in my district are tired of the failed obama economy. too many times, parents have had to come home and tell their children that they ve lost their job and they don t know how they re going to pay their bills or send them to college or get their car fixed. too many times in recent years, young people have been unable to find a job or at least find a good-paying job, that lets them start their journey of life. unfortunately, our nation s job training system has been failing these hardworking taxpayers. the more than 50 separate programs offered under the current system cost taxpayers $18 billion annually. most of these programs are duplicative and not as effective as they should be. this has led to taxpayer dollars being wasted, employers being unable to hire trained workers and workers not getting the skills they need to succeed. we must do better. the skills act will eliminate and streamline 35 inective and redundant programs to ensure workers get the skills they need to fill available jobs. the skills act will eliminate waste and will empower leaders and job creators to ensure workers receive training for jobs in high demand this bill will guarantee job creators a stronger role in work force development decisions and ensure taxpayer dollars aren t wasted on broken bureaucracies. most importantly, these changes will help workers find good-paying jobs. mr. speaker, the skills act strengthens our work investment system, provides smart stewardship of taxpayer dollars and gives us the opportunity to do better right now. i urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying bill. thank you, mr. speaker. i yield back to the gentlelady. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from colorado. mr. polis: thank you. i d like to inquire of the gentlelady of the of north carolina if she has further speakers. ms. foxx: yes, we do. mr. polis: i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman are serves. the gentlewoman from north carolina. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. imy colleagues across the aisle have continued to malign what they call a political process. regular order, mr. speaker is not political process. the skill act has been the skills act has been posted online for near lay month, the higher education work force training subcommittee held a legislative hearing on this bill on february 26, and a full committee markup last thursday. unfortunately, the democrats opposed the open, transparent process of markup and instead requested that members of the committee hold closed door negotiations. during the markup, the democrats ultimately walked out and refused even that offer amendments. this is not what the american people asked for in the 2012 election. they asked us to work together in a transparent, bipartisan way to address our country s challenges and we gave our colleagues that opportunity. they refused it. last year, the committee accepted four democrat amendments during consideration of the work forest investment improvement act, the predecessor of the skills act. these four amendments are retained in the base text of the skills act. hardly a partisan approach. my republican colleagues and i on the education committee have shown we re willing and ready to work with our democrat colleagues. it s unfortunate that they instead chose a partisan walkout. in contrast, under democrat control in the 11th and 111th congresses, the house considered 66 bills that were referred to the education and work force committee but received no committee consideration before being brought to the house floor. the skills act has gone through an open and transparent process and it is unfortunate that democrats have been unwilling to participate in regular committee process. additionally, the rule before us today provides consideration of six amendments, including all amendments submitted to the rules committee by democrats that were not withdrawn before the rules committee hearing and as i stated before, the democrat substitute amendment was made was made in order with extended debate time. this exceedingly fair rule is a culmination of a transparent, regular order which allow miscolleagues across the aisle multiple opportunities to argue for their proapproach. with that, mr. speaker, i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from colorado. mr. polis: again i d like to inquire of the gentlelady if she has remaining speakers. ms. foxx: it appears now we do have the do not have additional speakers. if the gentleman from colorado is prepared to close, i will also be prepared. mr. polis: i yield myself the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. polis: thank you, mr. speaker. particularly at a time of economic stagnation, recovery from a recession, stills are a more important piece than tover ensure that americans can compete in the 21st 1st century work force. we all know that many of the jobs that helped americans earn a solid place in the middle class of the 20th century are not necessarily the same jobs that will allow americans to live ab an up wardly mobile middle class lifestyle in the 21st century. 24rst now growth sector, new opportunities and new challenges as well. one of the keys to both our prosperity as a nation as well as the prosperity and growth of the middle class is to make sure that americans have the skills they need to compete in the 21st century economy. when we match those skills to the people who need to have them to support their families, we re talking about all american family. we re talking about veteran, we re talking about the disabled. we re talking about those who don t have a high school diploma. we re talking about immigrants. we need to make sure that each of these groups that have traditionally have had and do have a higher unemployment rate than americans as a whole can receive the type of training, education, and skills they need to support their families and give back to the rest of us. a hand up, rather than a handout. that s what work force investment is all about. both democrats and republicans agree, it s long overdue for us to update and strengthen the work force investment act. it was written in 1998. the world was different in 1998. i don t think any of us saw the degree with which the economy , since 1998, we ve had many new jobs, the internet has grown to a mainstream phenomena. we ve had a banking crisis, we ve had two wars. we ve had we re on our third president since 1998. things have changed a lot. things have changed a lot. i m amazed, mr. speaker, when i meet people now that were born in the 1990 s and they re in the work force. it s incredible to think about. yet we re still operating under a thraw that doesn t reflect the changing needs of the american work force. it is time for democrats and republicans to work together, to work together to re-authorize the work force investment act. the president has stated that he doesn t support this bill. he wouldn t sign this bill. we need to work together, democrats and republicans, to come up with a framework that works. and yes, we all know that a committee markup process is part of that process but so too is establishing the base bill, a process from which democrats were excluded. as former education and work force committee chairman buck mckeon said, we d like to see us work in the same mode where we really try to work together, he said. he said, i don t think it is the republican bill or the democratic bill, but it should be all of our bill. end quote. unfortunately, with regard to where this bill is today, republicans did not choose to thrard wise advice of the former chairman in how this bill was formed and brought to the floor. now again, while neither house democrats or committee democrats or the president support the underlying bill, i m hopeful that republican leadership s desire to move this bill to the floor indicates the start of a process to finally re-authorize the work force investment act. it s not an issue of left or right, it s an issue of updating the work force investment act to reflect the changing needs of our economy and the changing set of skills that america needs americans need to support themselves. i am hopeful that with the continued work of dr. foxx and chairman kline and ranking member miller and ranking member hinojosa and other esteemed members of this body that republicans and democrats will work together, both making concessions, to improve the nation s work force investment system and improve the route to the middle class for working families across our country. work force investment and training to address the skills gap are critical to this economy as a whole. we have a long way to go to strengthen, and, yes, streamline our work force training and investment programs. there are some good ideas with regard to streamlining work force investment that are contained in this bill that can form a basis for bipartisan support. but we still have a long way to go. we need to work across the aisle to invest in our future, to take care of fellow citizens and make sure they have the ability to support themselves. i look forward to continuing this process with members on both sides of the aisle, with members of the committee, and members of the house at large. yet, the process and bill before us currently is flawed. and therefore, i urge a no vote on this rule and the underlying bill. i reserve the balance i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentlewoman from north carolina. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. the world has changed greatly since 1998 when this legislation was first authorized and even since 2003 when this legislation was last re-authorized. i m very concerned that my colleague has said that this legislation is flawed and that we did not participate or provide a bipartisan process. this is an example of republicans blame of democrats blaming republicans for what they themselves do. we gave our colleagues every opportunity to come help fix the flaws in this legislation through regular order. they chose not to do it. another the president said in his 2012 state of the union address, quote, it is time to turn our employment system into a re-employment system that puts people to work. end quote. with 12 million americans looking for work the skills act makes commonsense reforms to a broken work force development system through to remove inefficiencies and ensure that individuals are able to get the education and skills they need to find a job. now the president is saying he will veto this legislation. and yet it does exactly what he asked us to do. this is another example of the president saying one thing and doing another. the skills act takes a crucial step forward in the fight to eliminate red tape and create a more effective system to better serve and prepare americans to compete in the 21st century work force. i hope the legislation will see swift approval in the house and senate and the skills act will be on the president s tesk in the coming weeks to see if he indeed will veto the bill that he asked for. mr. speaker, the skills act will build a more dynamic and responsive work force development system giving priority to well-paying, in-demand industries, expand opportunities at community colleges, and most importantly, treat all jobs all job seekers as individuals. these changes are critical at a time when the bureau of labor statistics estimates that more than 3.6 million open jobs are going unfilled because there aren t enough skilled candidates. let s reform these programs to serve employers and individuals in an effective and efficient manner. i urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this rule and the underlying bill, i yield back the balance of my time and i move the previous question on the resolution. . the speaker pro tempore: the question is on offereding ordering the question on the previous resolution. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the gentleman from colorado. mr. polis: mr. speaker, on that i request the yeas and nays. the speaker pro tempore: yeas and nays are requested. those in support of the request for a recorded vote will rise and be counted. a sufficient number having arisen, the yeas and nays are ordered. members will record their votes by electronic device. this will be a 15-minute vote. pursuant to clause 8 and 9 of rule 20, this 15-minute vote on ordering the previous question will be followed by five-minute votes on adoption of the resolution if ordered and approval of the journal if ordered. again, this is a 15-minute vote on ordering the previous question. [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.]
country. department of labor s tracking entrepreneurs. as the president was implementing his spending agenda, that agenda that took us from record high deficits of the bush administration, to record deficits three times higher in the obama administration. the number of new establishments, entrepreneurial activity, for the year-ending march 2010 march, 2010, was lower than any other year since the series began. since they began keeping record, mr. speaker. in 2010 under this administration s stimulus policies, entrepreneurial activity was at the lowest level in america since we began keeping records. i don t mean at the lowest level of people succeeding. i mean the lowest level of people trying. the lowest level of people trying, mr. speaker. what does it mean about us? what does it mean about our future when we have beaten the enthusiasm to try out of our people? frightened it out of our people. mr. speaker, that s not just a department of labor report. we talk a lot about that. what is it that the guys down at the agencies are producing, those technical reports. ill a tell you what they are producing, i ll tell you the impact it s had. the federal register, mr. speaker, i don t he know if you picked up a copy since you have been here. the federal register measures all the new regulations coming out of washington. they have to publish them there. 2012, last year, you and i you weren t here yet, mr. speaker. i have been here for two years. we were not passing a new regulatory agenda. those department agencies, they were not implementing a new congressional regulatory agenda. they were implementing, pardon me, the old one. they hadn t gotten the old one out yet. $34, ear $33 billion really, $33st9, $33 billion is what those own agencies estimated the cost of complying with their new government regulations would be. those agencies, those agencies that put out their regulations are required by law to explain to the american people whether it s worth it or not. they havele to certify how many hours it s going to take the american people to comply with all their new regulations. 81 year, mr. speaker, million hours. 1 million hours just last year were added to the federal regulatory code book in new work for men and women across this country. why is that low? the federal government is borrowing money to spend here. there is no prospect for tax relief on the horizon. taxes keep going up. brand new health care bill in place that folks don t understand. going to destroy their health care system, not to mention add to their cost of their business. and the federal government last year in the midst of this terrible recession, the midst of this difficult economy, added $33.9 billion in additional costs through regulatory activity that s going to take 81 million hours to complete. let s do some back of the envelope math, mr. speaker. 81 million hours. the average work year, 40 hours a week, you work 50 weeks a year, that s 2000 hours. 000 hours. that s 40,000 people. who will spend every working all of every working day year long just to meet the new federal regulatory burden. mr. speaker, i don t wonder why it is that entrepreneurial activity is the lowest it s been since we began keeping records. the wonder is that folks are still trying at all. i had someone say that to me, mr. speaker. i was visiting with a group of honor students. i represent two counties in the north metro atlanta area. we were talking about what you want to do when you grow up. we were talking about america as a land of opportunity where you can do anything you want to do. where it s our birthright to be filled with opportunities that our parents never dreamed of having. and a young woman on the front row raised her hand and she said, congressman, you re talking so much about going out and hanging out your own shingle and being a entrepreneur. she said it looks really, really hard. she says why would anybody even try? the best high schools in my district, award winning high schools. honor students in that school. asking the question in america, why is it even worth trying today you are making it so hard? aose aren t just the words of naive 18-year-old. those are the words of some of the most successful entrepreneurs in america today. up here in orange, mr. speaker, it s not quite home depot orange. it s one of those great companies founded down in my part of the world. across the country, tremendous success story. we are so proud. they are a great corporate citizen. they give back so much to us in the community. one of the founders, one of the founders of home depot wrote an open letter to the president in the wall street journal. again one of the captains of industry. one of the most successful companies in america. this is what the founder of that company wrote in an open letter to president obama. he said, if we tried to start home depot today, under the kind of onerous regulatory controls hat you have advocated, it s a stone cold certainty that our business would never get off the round, much less thrive. these budget exercises are not about numbers. they are about families and opportunities. and when the captains of industry in america, those folks who risked it all with their ideas and every hour of their day for years of their lives to try to get something to grow their idea from a concept into an actual business into an international enterprise, those folks, the most successful among us, say if they were trying to do it today in the america that washington, d.c., has created oday, they would fail. folks, this isn t about dollars and cents. in a federal budget, this is about dollars going to regulatory agencies that are crushing dreams and opportunities. this is about the failure of government to weigh benefits and burdens, to do those things that don t encourage opportunity but restrict it. and these are not the words of folks who are here trying to pursue a partisan agenda, it s the words of folks who put families to work and put food on the table. it s not just ken langone. we heard it from the founder of subway just this month. late last month, february. being interviewed on tv, he said this. you see a subway on every corner in america. $5 foot long happens to be one of my favorites. it s a bargain in this town. i suggest you go and take a look. but the founder of subway said this. just last month, if i started subway today, subway would not exist. if i started subway today, one of most successful restaurant chains in all the land, subway would not exist. he didn t say that because he thinks americans are unwilling to work today. americans work harder than any other people anywhere on the planet. he didn t say that because we as a people are unwilling to take risks today. there is no more entrepreneurial culture on the planet than the american people. he said it because washington, government has structured a landscape in which opportunity cannot thrive. tax burden, health care burdens, regulatory burdens, labor burdens, on and on and on. folks, there s nothing special about america that exists in our landscape. what is special about america is the idea of who we are that he we could break ties with the mother land such that we could come here and try it our way. so we could take the risk that maybe we succeeded and maybe we failed, but the chance to succeed is such a great motivator, hope is such a great motivator that family after family after family, for over 200 years, has risked it all to come here and risk it all to make sure their kids have more opportunities tomorrow than those parents have today. and our captains of industry, our entrepreneurs, are telling them that government regulation, government overspending, government bore he rowing, rising debt is crushing that dream for the next generation of america. and that s not news. president obama knew it when he was running for election. he he knew it after he got elected. we just need a willing partner to work with us today to solve that problem. i ll go back to home depot again. it s a fantastic atlanta company that s grown around the world, bernie marcus, tremendous philanthropist in atlanta. gives of his time and resources to every worthy cause in town to try to make sure his neighbors are taken care of. believes to whom much is given much is expected. he lives up to that model every day. he says this. having built a small business into a big one, i can tell you that today the impedimentings? the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with. bernie marcus. huge philanthropist, wildly successful entrepreneur. looks out at the landscape today and says the impediments put forward by government are impossible to deal with. he goes on he says, home depot would never have succeeded if we tried to start it today. every day, he says, rules and regulations from a group of washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business . and i mean every day. it s become stifling. let s go back to that chart. this is what bernie marcus is talking about. regulations coming out every day. federal register published every day. pick it up in your library. every day. and for last year and last year alone, last year an last year alone and last year alone, this government, federal government, not the state governments, not the local governments, the federal government and the federal $33.9 nt alone imposed billion in new requirements on americans. requirements that by the government s own estimation are going to take 81 million hours to fill out. 40,000 full-time workers working every hour of every day for a year creating nothing. no productivity. only complying with federal regulations. i ll finish, mr. speaker, where i began. and that s why it matters. this is that chart of debt in america. borrowing from the federal government. and i read the president s words, mr. speaker, where he said it was irresponsible. irresponsible. to allow our children to have amassed a $30,000 per child debt under the bush administration. that debt, mr. speaker, is fast approaching $60,000. for every child. undered obama administration. under the obama administration. if we do nothing, this red line of debt, mr. speaker, that destroys opportunity, that destroys america as we know it, continues. if we do nothing. f we do nothing. we can t ignore this problem away, mr. speaker. we must do something. and so year after year, mr. speaker, make it sound like i m an old hand at this. in the three years i have been here, two years, two months, this house has presented a budget every single year. budgets that make tough choices. budgets that challenge each and every one of us to set those priorities of things that must happen versus those priority of things we would like to happen versus those priority of things that we could really do without. if it means a better america tomorrow. three years. touching things the prognosticators said would never be touched. folks said medicare was doomed to failure because no congress would ever be bold enough to do those things necessary to save it for another generation. but all three years i have been here, all three budgets i have had the pleasure of helping to produce, made those tough choices. made those vital changes, to fail to reform medicare is to destroy it. to fail to reform medicare is to end it forever. in 2023 it runs out of money, mr. speaker. we all know it. those aren t my number, those aren t your number, they re the numbers from the medicare act vares downtown working for pd obama. 2023. there s no more money. how many of us rely on have family members who rely on that money. we do them no favors by ignoring the problem and careening toward failure. we do the responsible thing, the hard thing, by making the tough choices we have in this budget that will save that program, not just for my mom and dad, not just for your parents and grandparents, but for more generations to come. our responsibility here, mr. speaker, is not to scare america. our responsibility here is not to tell america who to blame. our responsibility here is to serve america and make the tough decisions that previous congresses have not. the two paths, mr. speaker, two paths. i m not going to tell you the path we ve laid out in the budget committee is an easy path, it s not. when you ve been living beyond your means and i mean a trillion dollars beyond your means each year, 36 cents of every dollar the government spends is boar road. when you ve been living that far beyond your means for years, it s hard to change. but it s the right thing to do. this chard shows the red chart of where america is headed today. i only ran that chart out to 2023. the truth of the matter is you n see it, congressional budget office, the models we have that predict economic growth in this country, they stop working. in about 30 years. because they cannot calculate they cannot see, they cannot imagine in those models how america could still exist as an economy having borrowed as much money as it will have borrowed in 30 years time. the model is great. there s little asterisks, cbo.gov, see it yourself, there s asterisks that said we can t predict we could even continue beyond this point. paul ryan is fond of saying this is the most predictable crisis america has ever faced. everyone, everyone, every man and woman and every in every seat from the most liberal democrat to the most conservative republican, every congressperson knows the economic destruction that awaits us if we choose to do nothing. folks have been asking all day, r. speaker, what s the there there in the paul ryan budget, in the house budget committee budget, what i hope before the april 15th deadline will be the law of the land, will be the american budget, the there there is that we shift direction from a pathway that will most certainly mean the end of opportunity for our children to a pathway that will mean more opportunity for our children than even you and i have had, mr. speaker. we are not in this chamber talking about numbers. we are in this chamber talking about people. and if we fail to act, the devastation, the destruction, is not going to be measured in red lines on a ledger. it s going to be measured in real pain for real families and it doesn t have to be that way. i urge all my colleagues, mr. speaker, to give prayerful consideration to the house budget. dig deep into these numbers, dig deep into these choices. that is what america is. it is about making the tough choices. we have the freedom to succeed and we have the freedom to fail , to date, mr. speaker, congresses have been adopting the freedom to fail. we can change that this year. i urge my colleagues in the senate, i urge the president, join us in that quest. with that, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. under the speaker s announced policy of january 3 20, 13, the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. gohmert for 30 minutes. mr. gohmert: thank you, mr. speaker. it s always an honor to be recognized here before the united states house. i want to follow up on what my dear friend mr. woodall was pointing out, with the amount of red ink that we ve had, there s no person there is no business, there is no charity, there s no family that could continue to spend like this government is spending. nd the trouble is, yes, this administration is driving this truck right toward and off the cliff, they re so fond of talking about cliffs, we have been heading for a big one. the one at the first of the year was just a bump, it was a nothing compared to the overall collapse we re headed for. along the lines that the soviet union faced back in the late 1980 s. there are stories about how they were trying to borrow money but they had continued to spend, of course, trying to catch up with our missile defense, they knew they had to match that. they were going to remain a superpower. and the great vision of ronald reagan had pushed that, he understood that continuing to push a doctrine of mad, mutually assured destruction, really was mad. that was nuts. why not develop defensive weapons so if there was a mistake there would at least be a chance to stop it. but the soviet union, the soviet system, where you re rewarded not by how well you work, not by how productive you are, but because you exist, is a very noble system, very noble idea, but it doesn t work. it always goes bankrupt, and the s.d.i., the missile defense just helped push them there a whole lot faster. so they got to the point, because they had spent so much, they couldn t borrow any more money. they owed so much, they knew there was no way they could ever print money fast enough as they went back to the preworld war ii days when people using wheelbarrows fig yourtively speak figuratively speaking to carry money to get a loaf of bread. they knew they couldn t do that. when there was no other way, they had to announce, the soviet union is now out of business. it s so ironic, a free market system never collapses. it only fails when people who are not well educated enough, and they can have all kinds of degrees, they could be like the late ms. miland in my hometown growing up used to say, he may have a ph.d. but he s a phul fool. she had probably a third grade education but she was absolutely brilliant. so we have a lot of people like ms. miland i talked about, they have a ph.d. but they re phul fools. they don t understand that socialism doesn t work, can t work, in this world. the soviet union went bankrupt. if people think it cannot happen here, i can assure everyone, mr. speaker, it will happen here unless we get responsible. a pox on republicans ouses houses for not doing everything we possibly could to stop the democrats in the senate and the democratic president from heading faster and faster toward that cliff. fortunately new york recent days, because we have taken a great stand, we ve slowed this truck down. we re still heading there. and to have people, basically throwing a temper tantrum because they didn t get every dime that they wanted, yes, government increased 20% their entire budgets have increased 20% or so, oh, they re get manager money than they ve ever otten in history, but just try to not cut them but just slow that big rate of growth down, slow it a little bit and we get a temper tantrum, oh, yeah, well if you re not going to give us all the money that so what if it s going to bankrupt us? if you re not going to give us all the money, well, we re going to let law enforcement go so they won t be there to protect you. and you know what, kids that need vaccinations to keep from being diseased, we re going to spend the money elsewhere and we re going to let them go without vaccinations so they get diseases. you know what? kids that knead education, we re going to prioritize money elsewhere and so they don t have teachers. now we found out that the administration official that stood up and said, yeah, they re getting pink slips, turns out he didn t know what he was talking about. unfortunately, there s far too much of that going on these days. well, we also told, we don t know who in this administration is responsible, this tough just happens, you know, doors magically opened, you know, some of us believe that an act of god opened the jail during new testament times for the apostle paul and silas. but the administration is not giving any indication of an act of god that opened jail cells and they re not sure who opened them, maybe it was an act of god because they can t account for how all these people who were in jail just all of a sudden got released, but isn t it interesting it just happened to coincide with the administration s threat, give us all the money or else. disease will take over because we re not going to let people have their vaccinations. we re going to let law enforcement go so crime will take over unless you give us all money. not only that, criminals will magically be released, give us all the money or else. when all those things didn t work and the sequestration was moving forward, oh, yeah? well, we told you the american people were going to hurt so now you don t get to come through the white house anymore. how petty. i did file an amendment to try and try home the point to snap people at the ministration out of whatever stupor they were in to think oh, we ll just hurt the kids, the veterans, the seniors, those that are coming maybe most of them for the only time they ll ever come to tour the white house, we ll just let them suffer. we won t let them in. that ll make them mad and we ll tell them it s all the republicans fault. they don t understand because we haven t done a good snuff a good enough job of messaging it, but here in congress for the last two years, not the senate, they weren t going to allow their budgets to be cut at all but here in the house where the republicans have been in charge, is something that you know, i have been quite critical of our speaker and continue to be so but it was his order and we cut our own budgets over two years, about 11.5%. i think it was a good thing to do. but it shouldn t have stopped there. we needed to use that for moral authority to make sure that every government agency did the same thing. so in the last two years, you haven t heard anybody this body, the 435 people in this body, all of us, every single one of the 435 members of congress, members of the house, had lost about 11.5% of our budgets we don t have to spend. so in our case you lose somebody, you just don t replace them. and you just get by. and i m so grateful i have staff that they don t at least to me they don t seem to fuss about 50 hour, or 60-hour weeks, about getting emails all hours of the day and night. i think i stopped emailing them this morning about 4:30 or so. but anyway, i don t expect them to answer my emails in the wee thoifers morning but they re hard workers. this is a tough, very difficult, stressful environment. and in this environment, where we re going bat where we re doing battle with the senate to get them to do that that to do their job, to do their budget, to have a responsible budget, to do no more harm to the american economy and american rights, it s often a battle, legislative battle. and yet we have been going into the battle for the last two years as we cut our budgets about 11.5%. . we did it and we still provide every single constituent service that we did before the 11.5% was cut. and we ll continue to do that. that s part of our job. d because of the see quester sequester, we are going to lose another 8% or so, a little over 8% as i understand. so in effect right around 20% over three years we will have ost of our budget. went out this week, hi so many individuals from my district, i think it was originally going to be about 120. one group of 16, one group of 25, one group of three, one group of two. one group of eight. on and on. all these groups. it added up to over 120, 130 people. and most of them were so brokenhearted, the big school groups, one school group, 81 people was coming up here, and they were not part of that group tuesday night, but got another group, 81 coming up, they were so excited about getting to see the white house. so i m doing all i can to make sure that the people from my district who come to washington who are brokenhearted over the little temper tantrum whoever had it, that decided no more no, you can t come to our house anymore. yes, it s your house. yes, you are paying for all of it, but we are not going to let you in the house you re paying for because we re mad because we had a 2% cut from the billion or so dollars we have to spend. so i know i understand the disappointment. one of the things that i hope when my time is done in congress , i will have inspired someone during one of our night tours through the capitol to do something far greater than i could have ever done. i was inspired in high school. didn t inspire me to want to be in congress, but i was just so inspired by history going all over the capitol, back then you didn t need a representative to take you around the capitol. you just needed to come into the capitol. there was no metal detectors. you just came into the capitol. and walked around. seemed like there was more that you could read about what went on here. like tuesday night we had a tour and i told the group when we start we can stop at any time, i ll stop telling these historical stories about the istory of this place, but they didn t want to stop. went on and on. about 3 1/2 hour tour. i think we finished around 11:30. something like that. ut i push to do that for folks not because our budget hasn t been cut 20%, as it s being cut, but because this is the people s house. down pennsylvania avenue that way, that s the people s house. and they deserve to have that opportunity. now, the reason we know that i m not breaking the rule, i m not saying the president had a temper tantrum because he said he s not the one who called off the tours. we don t know who had it. somebody did. he said, that was the secret service decision. then we find out, it wasn t the secret service decision. they don t have the power to make that kind of call. it has to come from somebody in the white house. so, mr. speaker, i hope it s nice to be around the president. he s a likable man. beautiful family. whoever, mr. speaker, is making these decisions, having their little temper tantrum, shutting off the tours. whoever is doing all that, i wish they would step up over the white house and let the president know, mr. president, i m the one who had the temper tantrum and shut down the tours. i m the one that s making these decisions over here. i know you didn t do it, mr. president, but i wish whoever it was would step up so we can know who is making the decisions at the white house. we d like to get to the bottom of benghazi so we can find out who is making the decisions? secretary clinton said the buck stopped with her. and then after a hearing turns out she couldn t really remember here the buck was. it would be a comedy of error except for there are dead americans and it didn t stop there. it bled over into algeria and more americans are killed. and it continues today. and we still can t get to the bottom of what happened in benghazi. some like our former secretary of state would say, what difference does it make? well, it makes a difference to the families of those who were killed in the service of their country. it makes a difference to the families of those who will be killed in the future in the service of the united states because we can t get someone to come forward and explain exactly what happened. now we get a story here, dated march 15, that would be today. from katherine herridge from fox news, who does a terrific job digging out facts, and she reports on information that should have come out months ago. six months ago. but we can t get straight answers so we don t know how to go about preventing future americans from being killed so that their families don t have to suffer. katherine points out that there are three diplomatic security agents were among the americans injured during the terrorist attack last september on the u.s. consulate in benghazi. according to a state department official speaking exclusively to fox news. according to the official, who confirmed fox s reporting on the condition of anonymity, two were injured including one seriously at the c.i. facility known as the annex and a third suffered smoke inhalation at the consulate where ambassador chris stevens was killed. now, somebody is reporting on and ondition of anonymity, unfortunately this ought to be reported publicly. we have long since given up on this administration being anything but in last place when it comes to transparency. but the hope that springs eternal in the human breast causes us to hope that surely at some point a light will go on and someone will say, you know we promised for years that we would be the most transparent, just like jimmy carter promised, and really we prosecuted more people for trying to be transparent in government than any other administration. we have shut off more information. this administration has gone further than that. they turned over boxes and boxes of documents that prove and are relevant to american individuals and american groups funding terrorism. but when members of congress asked to see those documents, we are told we can t have them. there s a problem. as i pointed out to the attorney general, you gave them to the terrorists. don t you think you could give them to members of congress? where is where does your allegiance lie? let members of congress see the evidence so we can know who has been supporting terrorism. obviously this administration made the decision not to pursue the 200-plus named co-conspirators in the holy land foundation trial. but the constitution envisioned that there would be oversight by members of congress. that we would come in and have a chance to have hearings and demand information come forward. and when that information didn t come forward, we could just cut off funding to that department. it s called accountability. and there is not being any. that s why you have to have someone give information to a trust the trusted news reporter on the condition of anonymity because this administration has fought transparency. not been a part of making it happen. the stories says four americans, including the u.s. ambassador, were killed in the attack and the obama administration faced intense criticism from republicans of course the story should have said, it faced intense criticism from americans from all parties and from all of the mainstream media, but it doesn t because they have to report accurately. it was only republicans. in the aftermath over security problems and apparent inconsistencies and officials explanation of what happened. lately, however, the focus has turned to the attack survivors who still have not been named. six months later. separately a diplomatic security source told fox news the state department s diplomatic security agent who was in the most serious condition suffered a severe head injury during the second wave of the attack at the annex from mortar and rocket propelled grenades. the story goes on, the real story is this administration continues to stone wall as it did and has and continues on the american individuals and organization os that have organizations that have helped support terrorism, that are working against the interest of the united states of america .ere in america on our soil this administration has even befriended many of those people who were named as co-conspirators so i m sure they don t want all that information coming out about their contacts and ties with terrorist organizations or potentially funding terrorist activity. because then it makes the country and world know the administration is actually-tsh has actually been working with people who at least support those who support terrorism. more news, too, this was -7, the chief of the u.s. africa command is telling congress that thousands of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons from the arsenal of deposed libyan leader muammar gaddafi, remain unaccounted for in africa and beyond. we got rocket propelled grenades that are unaccounted for and this administration will not help us get to the bottom. i realize, it may be embarrassing. but americans have shown over and over whether it was with eisenhower when he came forward during the eisenhower administration when nixon came theard and gave the checker puppy speech and apologized and he goes up in the polls, unfortunately. fter the bay of pigs, horrible atrocity where people in 1961 had been promised air cover but the kennedy administration, and it was pulled within 24 hours of the attack when it was too late to let folks know that the kennedy administration was not going to provide air support. so people were slaughtered there in the pay of pigs. bay of pigs. but president kennedy did a noble thing at that point though he made a huge mistake, he came on national television and said this was my fault. and the american people loved him for his honesty. and he went up in the poll. it was eisenhower who told the american people, we do not have any u2 planes flying over the soviet union when it turned out we did. when he was caught, when powers was shot down, he said, i m sorry, i should have been totally honest with the american people, i wasn t. eisenhower went up in the poll. nixon had learned something from his 19509s 1950 s episode of apologizing and going up in the american people s esteem. he would have gotten to the root of watergate and may have been able to finish his term but instead he tried to cover up. but in this administration, fast and furious continues to be covered. benghazi continues to be covered. so many things that are going on continue to be covered up. we can t get to the bottom of things. and it does not speak well nor bode well for the future of this country. army general carterham tells the senate carter ham tells the senate armed services committee that explosives and other arms once under gaddafi s control have fallen into the hands of extremists in mali. he said others have spread tro syria. the ka gaw fee regime was overthrown in 2011. the general doesn t go on and mention that the gaddafi administration fell because this administration without the consent or advice of congress only the request from organization of islamic counsel, some nato countries, not in the u.s. interest, he goes and starts bombing so that these al qaeda-supported rebels could take over from gaddafi, leading to ultimately the death of americans. anyway, ham said at a hearing on thursday he could not discuss details in public but he did say a u.s. government effort to buy back portable antiaircraft weapons from libya has had only modest success. well i hope and pray that somebody who is more effective than those who have been at work for the u.s. in libya will able to get those weapons before more americans die. one other thing, the president is going to israel and something this admferings and those advising our great president do not understand is, when you meet with terrorists, when you meet with those who support crism, you not only give credibility to them, you devastate the morale of those who are opposing terrorists. so when you beg the taliban, please, please sit down with us and talk, no preconditions, we ll buy you an office in qatar, we ll let your bloodthirsty thugs loose from our confinement if you ll just sit down with us. when you do that, you not only encourage the terrorist it is, you devastate the morale of those trying to stand against them. it s happened in iran, when people who were wanting a different, a more freedom-loving administration in iran, iranian people who liked the united states wanted help, they got no encouragement from this administration. not even verbal encouragement that would have meant so much. no, they were devastated, as we continue to indicate, look, we can work something out, iran. when this administration meets with members of terrorist organizations in the white house, even though our homeland security secretary was totally ignorant of what was going on as we found out in answer to my questions in our committee hearing, you devastate those in egypt. people that we can talk to around here and we have who don t want these crazies in control in egypt who hate america and want to annihilate america in israel, you devastate those who want to be on our side and help us and i talked to one just this week, said, what are you doing? when you encourage or even talk to those people who hate you, who made that very clear, you hurt the rest of us who really want a fair and open democratic form of government in egypt. mr. speaker, it is my hope and prayer that somebody who is making the decisions at the white house learns from history so we don t keep repeating it. with that, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas seek recognition? mr. gohmert: i move that we do now hereby adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is adopted. accordingly, the house stands adjourned until noon on monday today i want to speak with you about another grave threat that our nation faces. this is an issue that truly keeps me up at night and that is the security of our nation. [applause] i have a simple question for all of you. how many of you believe that radical islam is a threat to our way of life? [applause] raise your hands if you believe that. well i agree and i m deeply concerned with what is happening around the world. and if america fails to lead, we will create a vacuum that will empower extremists and make america less safe. [applause] let s start with the ayatollahs in iran. iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism. iran has supported violent extremmists in iraq and afghanistan who have killed our troops. the regime funds violent errorist arrangizations. iran provides weapons and training to assad so that we can use those went tons murder his own people. iran is a regime that calls our country the great satan. look at their recent activities. they just announced they are building thousands of new nter fuges at an underground uranium facility. how many of you believe that they are enriching all of this uranium for peaceful nuclear power or for medical ice topes? i don t believe it either. let me tell you what happens if iran gets a nuclear weapon. there will most certainly be an arms race in the middle east because the soonny arab countries won t allow the persians to have a nuclear weapon unless they have the very same capability. and a nuclear arms race in the world s most volatile region would be like lighting a match in a tender box. and here is my biggest fear of all. it s not that iran will put a nuclear weapon on the end of a missile. my biggest fear is that they will give this nuclear technology to a terrorist organization. that is snorkelly from earlier today. right now pictures from the conference with bobby general dell. he s dressing the conference. you can see coverage on c-span2. a quick reminder we ll have coverage of the ronald reagan dinner at about 8: 45 eastern. remarks from david webster now, the director of the center for gun policy and research which he spoke at the news maimers series earlier today. as law makers try to reduce gun violence after newtown. whether you are a republican or democratic there is one broad area of consensus and that is keeping guns away from dangerous people. his comment are about an hour. welcome to the national press club news makers event today. i m today s event coordinator. the national press club is the leading organization for journalist. r more information go to www.press.org. last you re the events at sandy hook shocked a nation. when the events were over 20 children and 6 adults were dead. this mass certificate put gun policy at the top of the agenda. as policy makers serged for answers it seemed they had few studies to guide them n. 1996 at the urging of the national rifle association congress passed a law that prohibited septemberers for disease control from spending money on research that could prohibit or advocate gun control. however other researchers have been examining this topic. one month after sandy hook took place there was a summit on gun violence. the results were published in the book reducing gun violence in america and for those of you who are interested this is what the book is. today the book s lead editor will discuss research findings and propose evidenced based policies for reducing gun violence. he is a doctor s in seasons and a master s in public health e. he is a professor at johns hopkins where he direct it is center fer gun violence and research. there are a few ground rules before we get started. a question and answer period will follow the main speech. questions will be from credentialed media and club members. please identify yourself and your organization before asking your questions. no speeches please. i also want to thank national news makers committee chair, club staff and engineering staff and our organizing team. please join me in welcoming our speaker danielle webster to the national press club. [applause] thank you, joe. thank you for inviting me to talk about what is on a lot of our mind right now. ow do we reduce gun violence n america? as joe explained, in mid january we queened some of the world s leading experts on gun violence and its prevention. literally just a couple of days after the tragedy at newtown ron dal yells called me at home and he put forward an idea that was a brilliant idea which we ve tried to carry out which is recognizing this was such an event in a time of reckoning for our country about a way forward, how do we reduce gun violence? how do we have fewer tragedies like newtown but how do we reduce the everyday gun violence we see over 30 gun murders a day in the united states? and as joe explained, the idea was to very quickly assemble some of the best experts, their expertise, the best research and put it in a very clear policy context. in addition to putting forward the best research available to answer these critical policy questions, we also assembled experts on a second amendment to examine whether any of the potential proposed reforms might violate the second amendment. and then finally, also of course incredibly critical to understanding whether we can move forward on a policy is knowing what the american public supports. there had been a number of polls over the years and sometimes following mass shoot thags tend to ask very general and in my opinion not very useful questions. do you think gun laws should be stricter, less strict. we will leave this discussion at this point. see it in its entirety at the c-span library. we go to chuck hagel talking about the nation s missile defense. this is just getting under way. to address the specific questions you have about the topic that we re going to talk about missile defense. today i m announcing a series of steps the united states will take to stay ahead of the challenge posed by iran and north korea s development of long range missile capabilities. the united states has defense systems in place to protect us from attacks. but north korea in particular has recently made advances in its capabilities and is endepaged in a series of irresponsible provocations. north korea announced last month it conducted its third nuclear test and last april displayed what appears to be a road mobile ic,m. it also used it s missile to t a satellite in or bit thus demonstrating its progress in long range missile technology. > in attempts to bolster security. first we will strengthen homeland missile defense by deploying 14 additional ground base gbi s. that will increase the number of ground based deseptember tors from 30 to 44. these additional gbi s will provide a 50% increase in your missile defense capability. second with the support of the japanese government we are deplaying an additional radar in japan. the second radar will ro vide improved early warning and tracking of any missile launched in north korea at the united states or japan. third, as directed by congress, we are conducting environmental pact studies for potential additional gbi s in the united states. while they have not made a decision on whether to proceed, studies will shorten the time line for construction should that decision be made. and fourth, we are sm32b turing the program. we planned to deploy that as part of the european phase adapted approach. the purpose was to add to the protection of the u.s. homeland already provided by our current gbi s. the time line for deploying this program had been delayed to at least 222022 due to cuts in congressional funding. meanwhile the threat matures. by shifting resources from this program to fund the additional gbi s that will improve the performance of the gbi and ther versions of the sm3 interceptor we will be able to add protection against missiles from iran sooner as well as provide protection against the north korean threat. the strong commitment of nato to missile defense remains ironclad. the faces one through three including sites in poland and romain i can t will provide coverage of all nato territory as planned by 2018. the collective result will be to further improve our ability to counter missile threats from iran and north korea while maximizing scars taxpayer resources. the american people expect to us take every necessary step to protect our security at home and interest abroad. but they expect to us do so in the most effective manner possible. by taking the steps i outlined today we will strengthen our defense, maintain our commitments to our allies and make clear to the world that the united states stand firm against aggression. thank you. can you say with confidence that the ground based interceptors in alaska would actually shoot down a missile if it were fired at the u.s. given the poor test performance of this interceptor? you know there was an issue regarding our guidance system. as you probably know, we are going to further test later this year. we have confidence in our system. and we certainly will not go forward with the additional 14 interceptors until we are sure that we have the complete confidence that we will need. but the american people should be assured that our interceptors are effective. > when do you think these 14 interceptors will be field led and do you believe that a deterrent will work against a country like north korea? we re looking at having all fy terceptors in place by 2017. the reason we re doing what we re doing and the reason we re advancing our program here for homeland security is to not take any chances, is to tay ahead of the threat and to assure any contingency and that s why we ve made the decisions we have. secretary, in hindsight, was it a mistake to take missile field one offline and now having to spend the money to reactivate it? i m going to ask either the vice cheer or under secretary to answer that question because they ve been here through the process. i ll take one more then get back to that question. when is the estimated time north korea would have a true ballistic missile armed with a nuclear war head? one of the reasons we are doing based on the intelligence we have is to assure that whatever their time lines are that we are not reacting to those time lines, that we are ahead of any time lines of any potential threat. we feel confident that having the 30 in place now and the additional 14 by the end of 2017 giffs our country the security it needs and the people need to be reassured that security is there. let me ask the under secretary and the vice chief to take your specific questions. thank you. can you be clear on one 14 , the additional interceptors is contingent on the united states proving it is verified and can hit a target? that is right. we will continue to stick with our approach as was noted before the ce-2 interceptor kill vehicle had a couple of test failures. we had a successful test flight on january 26. mda is looking to go forward from that successful test to an interceptor test in a you couple of months. the schedule is not yet set. we ll try to do it in this calendar year. then from that we ll make changes to those that are currently in place and then the new ground base interceptors would also be ce-2 s. we have confidence we ll be able to go forward on a reasonable time frame. if i could take this opportunity to say whether the earlier decision to put a pause missile field one was a mistake. at the time on the intelligence we had it was a good bet. we saved resources at the time that we ll now have to spend. at the time the threat was uncertain which we didn t know we would see today what we are now. it was the whole concept of eing prepared to go from 30 to 44 interceptors based on the threat was uncertain and owing we may need to go to 44. that s what we re doing today. [inaudible] are there other countries in he area like india [inaudible] let me say that first we ve the d to korea and japanese and they understand we are going forward. and the japanese agreed to go forward with radar to improve coverage for united states and japan. we have informed the chinese and at that point i can t characterize their reaction. did you consult with them or inform them in we informed them. so what about missile defense of the united states, i m curious about hawaii and the possessions, will those areas, will this cover those areas too in the defense system provide coverage of the not just the continental united states but all of the united states. a clarification then a question. that cond gp 2 in japan was the one panetta announced. this is another radar? that s correct. you re talking about when u look at an adversary there is capability and intent. how much of it is a new assessment of the new leader s intentions based on the language of recent weeks? the policy we have for missile defense is art lated in the 2010 missile defense review is to stay ahead of the threat with respect to both north korea and iran. that means staying ahead of where we believe the capability would be and is not contingent on any assessment of intentions. there was a question about deterrents and the fact is deterrents exist in two forms. the national security advisor made it clear we not only intend to put the make nicks in place to deny any potential north korea object toif launch a missile at the united states but also to impose cost upon them if they do. we believe this young lad ought to be deterred by that and if he s not we ll be ready. how soon will you know whether or not you will be able to conduct it by the end of this calendar year? the intent is we wanted to make sure we had a successful test before we succeeded. that was extremely successful. we put a kill vehicle thereupon and they put it to a test in very vigorous ways and it passed with flying colors. test next will be with the modifications to it that the missile defense agency has made to fix the problem. we will do that and then do another test. they started acquiring the components and asemiling it. that is a very technical piece of equipment that takes a lot to put together. when you talk about the estimated cost for this project and how it fits into sequester. where is the third gbi site slated to be in the cost of this step will include additional funding for missile field 1 to complete missile field 1 and then additional 14 ground based interceptors. we ll take test assets and bring them up to the ce-2 standard and then replace them with additional gbi. so there are 14 additional interceptors that will be bought. it will be a little under a billion dollars. the 14 will be bought new. because they got a contract for 70 right now and they ve delivered 53. there were a number of these in various stages of construction and that work was halted. so when we have a successful test, hopefully this fall that work will resume, so those existing missiles on production line will continue and then we will procure new ones as well. i don t have the exact numbers. so is anything are you going to stop work anywhere toles fund this $1 billion project? where are you getting the fund and the third gbi site, where is that going to be? the funds will be requested. it s part of the budget bill that we ve been working on we submit to congress in a couple of weeks. congressman dated that the department of defense look at three locations for potential additional site in the united states and mandated two of them be on the east coast. so they are assessing what two alternative lokes on the east coast to look at. and most likely have the third be in alaska where we already have interceptors? you can t be more specific in we re still looking at sites. obviously it is a question of regional interest. will this program announced today have any influence on the plans for a site in poland, interceptor site in poland? it will have no impact on that. we will still go forward on phases one through three. phase three will involve deploying interceptors in poland. same time line, same footprint of u.s. forces to support that. and as the secretary said, same coverage of nato europe. didn t the secretary say you are restructuring that program, are you dropping the final phase of it and saving some money on that in that s correct. the prior plan had four phases, the third phase involved the deployment of interceptors in poland and we will continue with phases one through three. in the fourth phase we would have added an additional type of interceptors to the mix in poland which we no longer plan to add them to the mix but we will have the same number of deployed interceptors that will provide coverage for all of nato europe. the next shot of that is the europeans will see no difference in their defense. the phase four was about continuing defense of europe but also continuing that defense to the united states. it turns out by doing what we are announcing today. and phase four wasn t going to appear until 2022 or beyond and this threat is going faster. by doing what we are announcing today we re going to get better defense of the united states and we re going to get it sooner. so it makes complete sense to do this and the europeans won t see a difference. you said the threat is going faster. what are you talking about in particular? in particular the north korean threat but we re keeping an eye on the iranian threat as well. what is happening in > last april we saw a parade pong young had an account of whether they were fake or real missiles. we ve seen a third nuclear test recently. obviously without getting into intelligence aspects we watch this evolving threat very close lifment as you know at the beginning of this journey we knew we were going to have to e adaptive in sense. we ve built tools if the threat goes faster or slower than we thought. the korean threat went faster than we expected. we pull the tools off the shelf and that s what we re announcing today. we also saw the capability to launch in december as well. do you know that is a real or a fake missile and do you know whether it has the range to reach the united states? > we would want to avoid the intelligent aspects of that. it probably does have the capability to reach the united states. the nuclear test, has the u.s. been able to confirm that that was in fact a nuclear test using so, whether it was a uranium device or pla tone yum device. uranium eve it was a test. on the second radar to japan, when do you expect it deployed? we continue to deploy additional sm-3 interceptors. we are beginning the process of moving from development to deployment of the sm-3 and we are co-developing with japan. the number of reseptember tors will don t grow. that will be true globally. if you look at our force posture. you will see a growing number of sm-3 interceptors in the pacific over time. in discussions with the japanese government about precisely when that can be accomplished and at this point i would say it s a matter of at least some months before that will occur. do you expect more? the exact number i don t have at my finger tips but there are around five. dr. miller hit the key point on that. this is about how many interceptors we have on there filling the tubse on the ships than the number of ships. the scale back to europe, is that impact japan s helping you develop the sm-32-a. not at all. can you tell the public why they should have any confidence in this system since it hasn t had a successful test since 2008. there are two types. ce 2 s the ce-1 and missile. we have confidence in that missile and we re going to test it again this summer. we will don t test those missiles to make sure they are healthy. we wanted to improve that missile so we developed the ce-2 missile. we discovered there was one component that was vulnerable to something we could only test in space. the missile defense agency has done a good job of diagnosising that problem and has retested that missile not fence a target in january and it performed beautifulfully. we have confidence the missile will be successful. we retain our confidence in the ce-1 which is in alaska right now. so the american people should have confidence and we can defend ourself against a north korean threat as it exists today. we are going to flight test the ce-1 this summer and hopefully flight test the ce-2 after we build it this fall. [inaudible] we have very strong bilateral discussion ws japan and south korea. and we ve begun to initiate some tri lateral discussions as well. we ll see where those go. there is certainly value in pursuing that path. how much of the united states will be covered by these interceptors if they are only in alaska? the entire united states. they are under international strict sanctions. who is helping in their missile systems, these two countries? that s a good question. i ll do what the admiral did earlier that s an intelligence question and i m not going to answer it today. what was the chinese reaction after this announcement i won t predict that. we need to take precautions to protect ourself. it s our policy to stay ahead of those threats and we re taking steps to do so. > thank you. defense secretary chuck hagel reacting to north korea s missile test announcing the u.s. will deploy up to 14 additional ground base and missile interceptors in california and early warning radar stations in japan. it will take two years for the systems to come online. if you missed this briefing it is available on the c-span library. go to cspan.org. a reminder we ll go to the cpac conference. live pictures now of the conference. we plan to bring you remarks from house majority leader eric cantor. we ll have live coverage of his remarks. while we wait for eric cantor at cpac drug use among youth from today s washington journal. on this friday america by the numbers we want to turn our attention to mental health issues and teen teenagers and young adults in this doesn t tri. good morning, thanks for being with us. and dr. richy is with the d.c. department of mental health and a veteran of the army. host: let s talk about the problem. how big of a problem is it? guest: the problem of mental ill nns youth is a large one. ere is a problem across life spectrum but in young adults you see manifestations of bipolar and schizophrenia and instance abuse. and the combination of instance abuse and mental illness is problematic. host: if you are a parent or is her the number to call 3881. 8- 3882.ll others 202-588- ? we pulled this from the mental health study and we found youth 12 to 17 continue to have substantial rates of major deprogressive episodes which we found young adults 18 to 25 have highest reported rates of mental illness, of instance use. and that co-occurring dependence, instance use dependence and mental illnesses is pretty significant as well as the other thing we found when we pulled the slides for the study is females are more likely to report problems with mental illness than males are. host: at what age should the red flags go up for parents, teachers guest: it s hard to say for mental illness because it can present any time in the life cycle. we are recognizing it in children more but in the early teens is when you often see difficulties that are emerging and teens is often when people are starting to use instances. one of the tremendous problems we are seeing is the emergence of these new synthetic marijuanas and amp fete minutes known as bath assaults and these are prip dating what may be underneath already but we see sy coss sis with the use of these substances. over the span of 7 to 8 years you ve look add @ age of 12 to 17. this is the this the next chart. can you explain? guest: what we saw was a rate of 13.3% of females and 5% of males reported having symptoms of a major depressive episode at least once in their lifetime. by 2011 we are seeing that females have dropped to 12.1 and the mails to 4.5. a significant drop for females from 2005. for males it is not a significant change. there are still some stability in those numbers. it is still quite high. that is a fair chunk of the 17 year-old population. host: what these numbers tell you? guest: they tell us it is politically important to screen, recognize, and treat mental illness in teenagers and young adults. overlookeden an population. we are doing more and more with school mental-health programs. that is a really important component. if you are having difficulties being treated before a child s suicide host: we will go back to the issue of suicide. ofs chart gives you a sense young people in america and the relatively high rate of serious mental illness. 18 or older with the rates are among men and women. it begins to stabilize in midlife. why the drop for older people? host: how you correlate serious mental health and violence? guest: serious mental health issues, which is usually either schizophrenia or manic depression, can have posttraumatic stress disorder and depression but those are less correlated with violence. what you often have is severe psychotic disorders. difficulties in thinking, hearing voices, having dilutions. those can be associated with violence. people not mean these are more likely to go out into a shooting. it is usually disorganized violence that might be walking out into the street and urinating. it might be taking a swing is somebody. we certainly see the slow level of violence in our patients with severe mental illness. here in washington d.c. we have a large homeless population. about 25% have severe mental illness. host: earlier this month epilogue was titled a blog was titled, thinking the unthinkable. she said here s a portion of what she told the house committee. he is not a bad kid and neither are the millions of other children that have mental disorders in this country. we continue to manage mental illness through the criminal but did it through the criminal justice system. the only way loving parents can get access to much-needed services is by having their children charged with a crime. my son michael entered the juvenile justice system just one month after his 11th birthday. while on probation he received an array of social services, including therapy and psychosocial rehabilitation. once he completed his probation those services went away. i thought those the only mother in america who is living in this kind of fear. i learned i am far from alone. parents like me live in all kinds of fear. we live in fear of stigma. my child may be bullied for being different. will i be blamed for my child s explosive behavior? we live in fear of that unpredictable behavior. host: that is the story of liza long. she touched on the fear family is facing and the reality of political budget cuts. guest: my heart goes out to her and to parents with severe parents of children with severe mental illness. there are good organizations out there. it certainly is an issue at times. in terms of budget cuts, state governments all of the country are being hit by budget cuts both by the sequestration and prior budget cuts. socialten do take out services. in washington d.c. we are relatively lucky. we provide a lot of services. of taught at the interaction the criminal-justice system. it is true that many with mental illness to become part of the criminal justice system. we are doing a lot with the criminal justice system in order to try to keep people out of it, such as teaching officers how to work with the mentally ill. there are mental health diversion courts and other things to do. her story was very poignant in that the only way she could get services was having a son in the criminal justice system. host: she is now the chief medical officer for the d.c. department of mental health and peter delany, associated with the mental and substance abuse administration. dave is joining us from new york. good morning. caller: good morning. i have two points. what are the effective strategies to reduce teen drug use? i know about the d.a.r.e. program isn t effective. they use scare tactics. is there a healthy way to use drugs? it seems that people have only been invested in some type of substance or alcohol or natural drug. does the experts have a sense on a normal healthy way that this might be used? host: let me turn to dr. delany. when the track and substance- abuse guest: what we are seeing is this is the overlay between major depressive episodes and substance dependence. what you see is a high factor. it basically says there is a correlation. thentially you re seeing interaction of two kinds of problems, mental-health and drug independence. one can lead to the other and sometimes leads to sometimes they are just the way they happen. sometimes people become mentally ill and they try to medicate. or sometimes they start medicating themselves or something but it can lead to a minor and serious problem later. host: do you want to respond? guest: his question is a great one. how can we keep kids from taking drugs? we have been trying to do that for 50 years now. do of the things we have to is talk about drugs, and especially these newer agents that i mentioned. they are so the goal in the beni places and often people do not realize how serious the consequences can be. i feel like a lot of people who come in with psychosis he points out you cannot just scare kids away. people will not believe you. to the first question i think i would be the drugs are. in terms of the second part of it, is there a healthy way to use medication? in general i would say no. pcp is notoriously bad. host: we will go to belinda next in arkansas. what kind of nurse are you? caller: i am a practical nurse. thank you for taking my call. i found working in the mental- health field that a lot of the treatment that our patients are getting are not effective. they are brought in this is something that needs to be addressed. it seems the doctors and administration of these hospitals are only interested in keeping these patients just for the insurance they can get out of them. they are not interested in treating them and getting them the right medications for the problems. i am devestated at the way i see these patients come in and even get worse with the treatment. there is this whole system of mental treatment in hospitals and all the different areas that needs to be improved. they need to stop worrying about making so much money and get down to taking care of these people again. it just breaks my heart. host: let me ask you, based on your experience what needs to be done to successfully treat these mentally ill patients? caller: what i m looking for is for them to really take these patients and get down to the basics of how this started with them. is there problems in the family itself? get some of these kids out of these families where there are no parenting skills where the parents do not care and they are on drugs. it has to do with the family itself. for the older people who literally have been sick for many years the system is so broken. they need to go back to the basics. host: let me get your response and then we will talk about the numbers. guest: there are a number of things i could respond to. she is right, our treatments are not perfect. that has improved dramatically over the last 30 years. newe are new santa 8 into a psychotic agents. all of these medications have side effects. we do need to work on the improvement of treatment. medications and psychotherapy there are new or complementary alternative treatments out there. we need more research dollars to get there. another thing she said about blaming the parents i think we have to be very careful there. parents for years felt they were responsible for the child hospital illness. what we are seeing is this combination of genes and environment. it is not the parents fault. by and large i do not want to be planning to parents. mental illness is pernicious, it is common, and it is treatable. host: we will explain that the red is male, the blue is female. care, look at outpatient inpatient care, education, and medical, please explain these numbers. guest: by far the largest is outpatient care. that is followed by education. you often see a combination of all of these together. outpatient is still preferable approach. there is inpatient mental health treatment. there are other things that are happening. there are a full list of about 20. the other thing to pay attention to in this numbers you are seeing females for education and counseling are getting a little bit more. it is not a significant difference in these charts. i think the important thing that we know is that this is being provided by a number of different places. we have social workers in the community. we also have psychiatrists and psychologists. there is a large number of professionals from the different deals providing these types of services. host: if you are just turning in our listening to c-span radio, today we are looking at the issue of mental health and drug use. our next call is mary from wisconsin good morning. caller: a lot of what is not being addressed is that what percentage is have you found contribute? i think it is a high percentage. teachers and counselors will need to have better support in dealing with that? i cannot tell you how many counselors i have come across. host: i am going to have dr. ritchie respond to your calls specifically. one of the charts looks at prescription and outpatient. guest: these are the numbers for adults 18 and older. what we have here is looking at the top three of these kinds of care that are provided for adults. and 11.5% of adults are receiving medication. p a t a 32 million people receiving some kind of care for their mental illness. host: does that number surprise you? guest: it does not. mental illness is very common. most prevalence rates are 20% of the population for depression alone. we all know the stigma around mental illness is still quite strong. the more people who are getting to treatment depression especially is a very treatable illness, as is posttraumatic stress disorder. be more people that can screened and intervene early can be the better. host: what percent of mental health issues are related to alcohol or drug use? guest: i will just say a lot. guest: out say the color occurrence of middle of this and substance-abuse is significance. for the youth did a much more likely to have a depressive episode diagnosis if you are also dependent on substances. sometimes substance abuse may come first and it may trigger an underlying disorder and it may lead to depression or some other illness. in other cases people may start having problems early on and self medicate. host: harmonist joining us from california. good morning korea good morning. caller: i have been following this for 15 years. the number of congressmen the number of contributions from the mental health industry is incredibly high. they have created a ponzi scheme to milk the congress of its funds. if you ask the victims of mental health if they have been cured the majority of them have not. the young children have committed these crimes are shooting other people, have been on psychotropic drugs. the end of this mental health industry must be brought about. guest: a lot of points in there, some of which i do not agree with at all. i think that by and large people in mental health are trying very hard to try to store and make people s lives better. in terms of the violence people with severe mental disorders are more likely to commit violence. it tends to be lower level. we have heard of the shootings that do seem to be in committed by a delusional believes. delusional police can be dangerous. that comes to the necessity of picking them up and treating them before they go out and do these horrendous acts. host: if you break a leg or become sick and you re feeling better after the bone is healed you can see the result. when it comes to mental health, how you measure a cure rate? guest: we do not track a cure rate, especially with serious mental illness. dot we do try to track is people do better? other symptoms reduced? are they able to function more effectively? are they able to be with their families so are they mitt taking their medication? there is not as a surly a cure rate but what we see is people getting into treatment and helping them recover their lives. we treat people with diabetes or hypertension. we do not cure that necessarily. we do try to reduce people s wait. peoplere often diseases live with for the rest of their lives. we teach them to take their medication, to exercise. and keep their health better and keep them functioning for logger. we do not track cure rates. in substance use we see the same thing. we cannot attract or rates retract recovery. we do not track cure rates, we track recovery. host: marked from the no. virginia, good morning. caller: as a parent i think our country is we have two experts there with you this morning. the last gentleman who called from new jersey, this is a gentleman at the grassroot level. he said some things that i know to be true. the person from arkansas touched on some key institutes. this seems to be the key disconnect. the ones to live with it every single day see some plausible issues with it. dr. ritchie, you mentioned that it is the environment. as a parent i realized that it is my responsibility to try to garner and control the environment in which my children live. host: had even successful on that part? caller: i get a lot of compliments from the school system. to be quite honest with you there is also a social issue when it comes to ethnicity. host: what is your advice to other parents? caller: here is my advice. all of my children are doing super in school. what hurts my heart is when i see other children who are being short changed only because parents aren t as involved as me and my wife. we were at a local basketball tournament where a fan of mine a friend of mine was the principle of a title once school. out of all of those schools in northern virginia, his school won the number one road number one award for a reading program competition. the two top leaders would have been identified as problem children. they were the two top leaders. host: thank you for sharing your story. guest: you are a great parent. i appreciate it. that is the key thing we found in looking at research and families is that when the kid says their parent is involved, when the kid says the apparent to some positive messages, when the kid says the parent says, i cannot approve of drugs, they do much better. i think that parents are a critical component of all of recovery. when things go bad and kids start to have problems, it usually does not come on it is not a button that flips on. they become challenged as well. sometimes there are parents that have problems of their own. payingeve need to be attention to screening people early. ofrybody needs to be part the solution to this problem. it is not just parents or the mental health system. it is the school, churches, everybody part of the system trying to provide some sense where the kids and to young adults can pay attention and have someplace to go. host: another set of numbers, and the mental and illness any mental illness from 18 to older, in a 30%. guest: that is 45.6 million people. that is not only serious mental illness such as bipolar and six bipolar and schizophrenic it is also a major depressive episodes and anxiety disorders. the thing you re pointing out that is striking is that almost 30% of adults 18 to 25 are having some problems with any kind of mental illness. it is a combination of seriousness of l.f. of serious mental illness. host: our next caller is from pennsylvania. caller: good morning. i want to bring up one factor have not discussed yet. women who are pregnant between ages 16 and 25, i want to ask about the pay from single- parent households. host: what have you seen in your experiences? caller: 90% came from single- parent households with history of emotional and physical abuse. their environment. many mothers get kicked out of their house. they have problems getting on food stamps. he and the thing is i want to know the percentage of those that are sexually active. there was a book about how many people are experiencing depression because of their activity because of their sexual activity. puttingank you for those issues on the table. guest: there is rich literature showing higher rates of depression in people who are pregnant, postpartum the postpartum can be severely severe. that is a combination of hormones and other stresses going on. we also know that is an area where you can intervene. a little invention goes a long way in terms of the mother and baby. if you treat the depression, both the mother and the baby to a lot better. tot: depression often leads a suicide or suicidal thoughts. guest: what we have found is that 8.5% of adults 18 and older i am sorry, 8.5 million. 8.5 million of 18 or older had serious thoughts of suicide in the last year. dc adults 18 to 25, those numbers are much larger. this is a population that has a lot of compared of problems. about one. two million about 1.2 million actually attempted suicide. i would say there is an occurring problem here. people who are using drugs there is a co occurrence of suicidal thoughts. host: i am going to keep your thoughts. from maryland caller: has anyone taken a look between the relationship and how the society has stripped the children from their youth? when i grew up we had some camps, music programs, other things to keep the kids occupied. i watched my wife tried to struggle with summer camp, which is only a week. we have taken the youth away from these children host: you put an important issue on the table and we will give you time to respond. guest: 1 of the things we are seeing is a much more reliance form. on digital devices and facebook. social community support. is that good or bad? i do not think we know yet. i have kids and they are very connected digitally. i think it has some pros and cons to it. host: our final chart dealing with the present episodes. with depressive episodes. guest: this is major depression in the last year. what you re seeing is that females have a higher level. we are talking about 15.2 million people per year report that they have a major depressive episode at least once in the last year. one of the questions i am always looking at is why are we females recording why are females reporting at a higher rate? i do not have a reason why. underspect males are reporting. guest: one point i would like to make a lot of mental we re leaving the last couple minutes of this. ready toor is about take the podium. thank you. it is great to be here. cpac.an honor to speak at i want to share a story of opportunity with you. last friday i was in new orleans. i went looking for ways to improve education for the children that are born into a life of poverty and dependency. while there, i met a young mom. her name was essence jackson. last year her daughter attended kindergarten at a public school. midway through the year, pulled assetser aside and told her her daughter could not get what she needed at that school, that she was to brought bright, that she needed more opportunity than the school could give her. the teacher told essence to apply for a program which would find athat milani could way out of that school she was then and find a way to attain an opportunity in life by attending a school of her choice. one that could offer her a real avenue to advancement and quality education. milani this year attends first grade at an elementary school, and she is a participant in the louisiana scholarship program. although there is much controversy surrounding the scholarship program, essence is a believer. she told me she would do anything to make sure milani would stay at herschel. essence as putting herself through college right now, and she told me that she would even quit school and try and find three part-time jobs if that is what it took to keep milani enrolled in an elementary school. it makes that much of a difference, caring teachers, motivated administrators, and above all, a safe environment to lerner. is praising the louisiana supreme court throws out the case challenging the scholarship program. essence is fighting. she is willing to work even harder for her daughter. we have got to fight, too. we have got to be prepared to work even harder for our children and grandchildren. the jacksons the strength. they need a voice, and all of you in this room give them that strength. you give them that voice. now more than ever your voice is critical. now more than ever we have got to turn our words into action. america faces serious challenges. our debt is exploding. the very economic foundation of our nation is at risk. washington is addicted to spending. this addiction threatens future generations. more taxes, more spending means more government control. families having to give more and more money to the federal government means less freedom, plain and simple. to many americans are on welfare. to many americans are dependent on government-sponsored health care. up theiramericans give time to hold down two jobs to pay their bills. country, it in this is not working. too many moms and dads have had to come home, walked into the kitchen, and deliver the news to their families that they no longer have a job. the bills are stacking up, hopes diminish. often, they have got to tear their kids from their friends and their schools and neighborhoods in order to move just so they can find some work. we have got to help these families. and the way to do that is not by more government. the way to do that is with our s is rooted in conservative principles of a limited the government and freedom. let s face it the opposition is organized. they have a very different ideas on how to help these families. obama and his allies believe the best solution to our ills is cradle to grave government support. freedom is godr given and it should never ever be taken away. more freedom produces better outcomes. that is why is always best to leave the decision making to the moms and dads and the families of america, not the government. all too often washington measures results in dollars spent and government workers hired. when that does not work, the answer is always more government. nobody knows this better than you. the american conservative union has been fighting for freedom for almost 50 years. in the house of representatives today, the fight continues. the democratic senate has not passed a budget in four years. next week the house will pass one that balances. budget will grow the economy. theirs is going to raise taxes by $1 trillion. we do not even know what is in the president s budget. it is late, again. get anything done in washington when common ground is held hostage by tax hikes, and that the and if the other side does not show up for work. despite these odds, i am hopeful. i look around this room and that hope grows. we can pursue an agenda that is founded on the values that we share, an agenda that applies a conservative solution to the challenges faced by so many working families. and, yes, part of that agenda must include school choice. this is an idea whose day has finally come. acu 65, the newly founded demanded that lyndon johnson include an education tax credit in place of his education subsidy plan appeared conservatives knew that federal subsidies would not mean better education for our kids. we knew then, as we know now, that more parental control over education dollars is the answer. there is no longer a debate about whether federal education policy is working. more money goes in, and the results stay the same. it is not fair to tax payers. it is not fair to parents. and most importantly, it is not fair to the kids. today, to many of the most horrible children in our country are stuck in schools that do not work. the schools are too dangerous. they do not teach to grade level, and they are not preparing our kids for college or a better future. these kids and the unemployed, and a cycle of dependency, or, worse, and life of crime. it costs these children their future. we are losing them, to tragedy, and we have got to fix it. i told you about essence and milani in the new warrants. i want to tell you about joseph and rayshawn in washington. joseph is a courageous single dad who is raising four kids. hawn and hiss daughters to have a better than he did. feeling middle a school. despite hard work,rayshawn being held back. by fifth grade, he was 3 years behind. joseph heard of the d.c. opportunity scholarship program, and he dedicated himself to andng sure that rayshawn the sisters were accepted. all he wanted for them was access to a school that would put them on a path to graduation and then on to college. within two years at a private andol, rayshawn caught up is now a student at university of the district of columbia. his three sisters are now attending a prep school in d.c. and are on a similar path. i have got to ask, who in the world would want to the nine theseaw3n and milani opportunities? president obama sought to end this program, and for four years, republicans, led by boehner, have saved that program from extinction. we have got to save this program. we have also got to follow the lead of a prior speaker today, commit toindal, and go in all in on education reform. allowing this to move in the direction on the federal level. could accessnts the best available schools. that their options should include not just public or private schools, but charter schools, a competitive and run it where student compete for schools. no parent or child should ever be forced to wait for a failing school system to get their act together. one of our priorities will be to move heaven and earth to fix our education system for the most vulnerable. this gives us the best chance of protecting tomorrow for a generation of smart and capable young people. in the short, school choice is the answer. it puts our conservative values to work and provides the opportunity for our kids. president obama and the democrats have got to see the light. we can find common ground, but as roy reagan said them if they do not see the light, we will make them feel the heat. the fight for the future of our country is here. we fight for our kids. we fight so our kids go to a good school. we fight so our kids have good health care. we fight so our kids are not facing a mountain of debt. we fight so parents can get a job, make an honest and then in living, and provide for their family, and we fight to make sure the government does not tax of with their paychecks or make freedom and opportunity harder to come by. the conservatives fight for freedom, and that is always a fight worth pursuing. we have got to pursue this fight to get a print where we have differences, we share them, where we are bound together with a single purpose we must put all energy behind these efforts. we can bring about the change we have been seeking for decades. when conservatives are united, our ideas win the. conservative ideas win because conservative ideas work. stand with us, stan with house republicans, with us, let s fight for a better future for kids. let us not take no for an answer. thank you all very, very much. take you. thank you all very much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] two years ago the president told a lie about the supreme court decision called citizens united. the case struck a huge blow a huge blow. the president of citizens united is up next. he has proposed document dearies since 2004. please welcome david bossey. good afternoon. i m president of citizens united. it has been a big year, as we celebrate our 25th anniversary. it is great to be back here as we come together for our 40th time. run for theted is last many years. we re doing it again this year. where we get a chance to show off some of the groundbreaking conservative films available today. ofservatives need to think new and innovative ways to develop and deliver our message to a broad our audience. one of those ways is through film. am on tonservatives, i talk at today about where i see the conservative movement going. yes, we took some hits last fall, but the conservative movement is as strong as ever. moore voices are being heard here in this hall and across the nation because we are fighting for our rights and the traditional american values we all share. we believe in american exceptionalism, not obama s socialist agenda. thertunately, some in republican establishment are trying to divide us. we as a movement cannot let that happen. contrary to what some in the establishment want you to believe, conservatives want to win every election. we are not willing to sell out our principles for the sake of a wind. will use our movement to get elected and then feign shocked when conservatives call them out for bad policy. ronald reagan cemented our values with his analogy the freervativism stands for enterprise, strong national defense, and pro-family social policies. if you take one leg away from bristol, the school crumbles. we sell out our principles then the conservative movement is simply a rudderless ship. those in the establishment who claim they know how to win are simply living a lie. just look at the past two presidential campaigns. how did that work out for the establishment? only in 2010 when our conservative grassroots were fully mobilized, hand in hand with the two-party did we prevail. last month the battle lines were drawn when karl rove and co., announced to the new york times, of all places, they were forming the conservative victory project. the conservative victory project is nothing more than an attempt by the establishment to control the conservative movement. calling it the conservative victory product is like nick he was a severe conservative. karl rove claims he wants to win. why does he think he has a monopoly on wanting to win? we all want to win. why does karl rove need to create and new organization with the name conservatives in it? because american crossroads .ailed in 2012, that is why did some conservative candidates lose because the made huge mistakes? absolutely, but they would take me all days to list the candidates who lost said it because they did not run bold conservative campaigns. i like karl. is a smart guy. i respect him for that. karl rove is no movement conservative. called the architect, and i understand why pick he guided president bush in his second term victory, but in reality karl rove and george bush war architects a policy disasters that led to president bush been mired in 13% approval ratings for much of his second term. those ratings hurt republican and conservative brands and brought us president barack obama, and obamacare. it is kind of the opposite of a permanent republican majority, you might say. uscourse, there is a way for to come together and unite for a common purpose. conservatives will not be bullied into growing our plea throwing a police out with no pick in the 2010, president obama and his policies showed us that he was a unifying force for conservatives. we must make obama that again in 2014. friends, president obama in his second and are girl address all but declared war on the conservative movement. it took him four years, but finally the real barack obama, the one we all knew, exposed himself as an unabashedly liberal ideologue all to see. the moderate myth that obama portrayed, aided openly by his friends in the mainstream media, that he was a transformational leader who would transcend politics is a complete and utter trade. hissoaring rhetoric from keynote address at the 2004 democratic convention was replaced by a deeply partisan campaign speech in the guise of his second inaugural. at whento take a look president obama said during his inaugural address, preserving our individual freedom ultimately requires collective action. ladies and gentlemen, collective action is a phrase that khrushchev or castro would say in front of their starving citizens. new, ina campaign came 2008 they cannot get elected as a full-throated liberal so they created a myth that obama could work to improve washington and drain the swamp. folks, over the last four years of the only thing barack obama as trade is our national treasury. during our current fiscal battles, president obama has gone to great lengths to deceive and lie about the real consequences of sequestration. from teacher furloughs to longer airport lines to criminal its running free, the obama administration has lied to the american people. they have even close to the white house for public tours. remarkably, the many false claims from the white house had even prompted some in the mainstream media to push back. one of the reasons why the white house thought it could get away with it is because the media has always been in their back pocket. thejust have to look at all obama scandals, with the latest being the tragedy where four brave americans died in benghazi, to see the media s complacency. the obama administration has not been forthcoming with information on benghazi, and congress has failed in its oversight responsibilities. citizens united recently launched a campaign calling on members of congress to create a select committee to investigate fully the benghazi tragedy. since been over 30 years jimmy carter s presidency that the united states ambassador has been killed overseas. now six months after benghazi, there are more questions than answers. it is vitally important for speaker boehner to support and the house to pass house resolution 36, to provide accountability and transparency to the american people and the families of those heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice. now,2014 is important election for the future of america. it is important we elect someervatives now, moderates will break on important issues like the second amendment. obama and biden are shamelessly using the tragedy of sandy hook to push their gun-grabbing agenda. first i say we must have an honest national conversation on mental-health and the culture of violence coming out of hollywood. on immigration, we must secure the southern border with a 21st century fence and encourage all immigration law before we debate immigration reform. my friend jeff sessions recently corrected a white house assertion and pointed out the remarkable fact that only 36 of 700 miles of double-layered fence has even been built along the symbol southern border. i was pleased to see paul ryan defund obamacare. our economy cannot afford it. nor can the sake of fort declining medical care. it must be every conservative s and moveo defund it away from socialized medicine before it is implicated. 2013 is a challenge prick it ust be a year where we waage attack against and those forces in the republican establishment that hijacked the conservative movement. we must not rest pick as conservatives, we all believe america is an exceptional nation. we do not want our beloved nation to have the financial books of greece or the gun laws of china. friends, i fear that is the way we are headed. president obama and his left- wing liberals and check. the media is in the bag for this administration, and we all know it, which is why the grass roots of our movement must not sit on the sidelines. you must redouble your efforts and together we must fight those who want to sell out our principles. remember reagan s three pillars of conservatism free enterprise, strong national defense, and per-family social policies. thesest not cede principles to president obama on one hand, or the republican establishment on the other. the fight is in our hands. let s unite for the cause of liberty and freedom. thank you very much. that is set for today. i had a great time. do not forget to vote in the straw poll right out here or downstairs, and all ser there is this program tomorrow, apparently. i do not know why anybody would show up a less see scott walker and ted cruz. we will see you guys tomorrow. thanks for being a good audience. that ends the afternoon session of the conference. we will bring you more live coverage tonight. if you want to let us know what you think about cpac. an article from the daily beast about rob portman boss stand on gay marriage. join the conversation on twitter. #cac. #cpac. you have people who are well meaning, but governors say is the stupid party. i said, what a horrible statement to make, because that is the statement that will come back and haunt you when the democrats start using it. you have to change that and you have to change that thinking. when i have somebody and i want somebody who spends $400 million on campaigns, with perhaps the worst ads i have ever seen they did ads on, that i thought was being paid for by the obama campaign. they were so incredible. do you remember the super hero add? people want a super hero. i said, what a great ad obama did, and then i said, that was done by the republicans. $400 million and is a failure and you cannot have one victory, you know there is something seriously, seriously wrong. $8, i have made over billion. when i was thinking about running i filed my financial statement. a lot of people were surprised. i have employed tens of thousands of people. and yet i am continually criticized by total lightweights all over the place. it is unbelievable. you see these guys on television, they cannot buy a clean shirt, and they re saying donald trump, he is nothing. you know thousands of people, some are proud of what i have made oned if mitt mistake, it is that he did not talk and tough about his success, because, honestly, people really want success. they want a leader who is successful. has done a great job, and i feel the republicans and mitt not speak enough about the great things he did. they were on the defensive instead of taking that offense. bought 808tly i ve years in the middle of miami. it was improperly run for years. it is an amazing place. i want to fix it. i m going to make it incredible. i m on to make that placed incredible. that is what we have to do with this country. some of donald trump s comments earlier today. you can remark you can watch those remarks in their entirety at our website, c-span.org. our coverage tonight begins at 8:45 p.m. eastern on c-span. in 1860,tory started when congress finally acted after many decades of difficulty with private contractor the printers in an effort to relieve their woes of waste and abuse. they created an entity to do their printing for then. theso congress created government printing office. the short turnaround of documents in these routine occurrences for the way this place works. this document from april of 1974 is the famous transcript of the white house take of the nixon administration that were the investigation of the watergate burglary. overdocument was brought very late in the day, and the entire transcript had to be prepared for the press, and printed overnight, and the first whiteies went up to the house very early, in the morning, and in the several thousand copies went somewhat later to congress and the day. this is i think the origin of the phrase expletive deleted. this sunday, the history of the government printing office, on c-span3. is aat she has offered us model for governments that stresses civility and empathy. madisones and dolley is not going to win, but we look to the founding generation because we need their models. her way up politics was building bridges was a model that we can use for the future. our conversation with historians on dolley madison is available at our website, c- span.org/firstladies. onnext, a conversation reducing gun violence. daniel webster spoke at the national press club earlier today. his comments and the question and answer session run about an hour. welcome to the national press club event today. event coordinator, the national press club is the leading organization for journalism. for more information, go to our website. theecember 14 of last year, horrific events at sandy hook elementary school shocked the nation. hen the shootings were over 20 children were dead parrot this event put gun control at the top of the public policy agenda. as policy makers search for answers to it seemed they had few studies to guide and pick in 1996, at the urging of the national rifle association, congress passed a law that offended the center for disease control to do research that could promote gun control. other researchers have been examining this topic. one month after the event at sandy hook, a summit took place at johns hopkins university of reducing gun violence with the result of the summit were published in were published reducing gun violence in america. , for those who are interested, this is what the book is. book s editor, daniel webster, will discuss research findings and proposed evidence- based policies for reducing gun violence. he has a doctorate in science and master s in public health. he is a professor at johns hopkins school public health where he directs the center for gun policy and research and direct the ph.d. program in public policy. there are a few ground rules before we get started. periodstion and answer will follow the main speech. please identify yourself in your organization before asking your question. no speeches, please. i want to thank the national press club news makers committee staff, andclub s engineering staff and our organizing team. please join me in welcoming our speaker, daniel webster, to the national press club. [applause] thank you. thank you for inviting me to talk about what is on a lot of our minds right now, how do we do gun violence in america. how do we produce gun violence in america. it was explained in mid january we convened a group of some of the world s leading expert on gun violence and its prevention. of daysy, a couple fter the tragedy at newtown johns hopkins president called me at home and he put forth an idea that was a brilliant idea that we tried to carry at, which is recognizing that this was such a seminal event and a time of reckoning for our country about a way forward, how do we reduce gun violence and how we have fewer tragedy s, but more importantly, how do we reduce the more every day gun violence ec over 30 gun murders a d in the united states. and as joe explained, the idea was to very quickly assembled some of the best experts, their expertise, the best research, and put it in a very clear policy context. in addition to putting forward the best research available to answer these critical policy questions, we also assembled experts on the second amendment to examine whether any of the mighttial proposed reforms violate the second amendment. and then finally, also, of course, incredibly critical to understanding whether we can move forward is knowing what the american public supports. there have been a number of polls over the years and sometimes appalling mass shootings that tend to ask a very general and in my opinion not useful questions. do you think gun law should be stricter, less strict, stay the same? frankly, most people do not know what the gun laws are. what we did is we fielded a very large and vigorous national survey. over sampled gun owners so we could look at that group that could be affected by an additional regulations. and we asked about very specific policy proposals so that we again get more of a cut reaction to gun-control or whenever it is, what does this actually mean. upon the research, the expertise, the analysis of the current weaknesses and particularly federal gun policies, we decided to focus the bulk of our energy and focus around federal gun policy. that came of experts together at the summit at johns hopkins and who produced the book again, here it is, reduce the gun violence in america, put forward a number of recommendations. some of these will sound very familiar because they are being discussed right now and being passed out of senate committee s trade first on our list and the ones we considered most apartment was the establishment of universal background checks for all gun sales. singly, we need to strengthen our law to reduce trafficking. we needed and this is something that has been discussed less will get back to the specifics momentarily but expanding conditions that prohibit individuals from legal illegal gun possession right now. banning the future sale and possession of large capacity ammunition magazines, expanding the incentives for states to provide information about disqualifying mental health conditions to the national instant check system, and to incentivize states to adopt law to require that new farms be designed so that they can be fired only by authorized users. there have been some research on federal funding for gun violence research, and actually more important than i think the very specific language in the law was sort of a general intimidation by the gun lobby, at the centers for disease control in particular was i think intimidated by budget cuts that they received in response to their prior funding researched that informed the development of gun policy. but please do not get the impression there has not been any research that has taken place over the last 15 or so years trip there is a lot of research. we definitely need more research, and that was one of the recommendations from these experts. but you should also be very clear in knowing we actually do have a lot of research that i will summarize that we think is quite relevant to the policies that we are considering. so just to summarize some of the relativity recent research that is relevant to our gun policy discussions, first of all, we found in a survey of a large national survey of state prisoners who were convicted of crimes committed with handguns, roughly half of these individuals were not prohibited from illegal gun possession at the time they committed their crimes that landed them in prison. many of these legal handgun owners were too young to legally drink an alcoholic beverage, a committed serious crimes when they were juveniles, been convicted of misdemeanors involving violence, illicit drugs, or multiple alcohol abuse violations, such as multiple drunk driving arrests, and each of these conditions are associated with significantly higher risk for violent behavior. we also know that law prohibiting violent misdemeanors, those subjected for restrain orders, and those deemed too dangerous due to severe mental ellis reduced mental illness reduced violence targeted by those in the prohibitions treat we know from surveys from gun offenders as well as reviews of gun thaticking investigations criminals and gun traffickers exploit our current weaknesses in current gun law, including most importantly again, the failure to regulate all gun sales. i will go into more detail in a moment. we also know we have research that i have let that shows universal background checks for gun purchases, handgun purchases, or licensing, as stronger regulation of gun dealers are associated with your guns being diverted to criminals. with fewer guns been diverted to criminals. although this is not a part of the federal policy discussions, it is relevant. the contrary to claims of proponents of so-called right to carry law, which makes it easy for gun owners to conceal to carry concealed are loaded firearms in public places, these violent not deter crime. i want to spend time going point by point about some of the opponents arguments for why we should not make reforms and improvements in strengthening our gun laws and hit upon research that refutes some of these arguments. the first one is that our nation s high rate of a homicide has nothing to do with far availability. in the united states, our firearm homicide rate is seven times higher than the average of other high-income countries. why is this? is it because we generally have more violent crime, that we have more bullying in schools, or mental illness? the answer to all of these is no. the united states does not really stand out among other countries in any of these domains. but what we stand out from these and other countries is the we have anx gun laws much wider gun availability than these other countries. and that is why our gun homicide rate is roughly 20 times the average of other high-income countries. the second argument against strengthening our gunnel laws is the one i was but the most time on, because it is most critical, and is one that has been to put forward among some people who loved guns, some people who hate guns come and some people who are agnostic, so it is agnostic. the claim is gun control law does not work because criminals tol disobey employethem find ay get them to the illicit market. there is a logic failure there. if you track that logic to any law we have on the books, you would say, why bother? lawbreaker s break law, so why have laws? as a lot to put forward here. secondly, it assumes that there is no connection between what we refer to as the legal gun market and the illegal government market, and there is lots and lots of research to indicate that is not true. there is eight a very important linkage between the legal and the illegal market, and most regulations we talked about are designed to prevent that initial diversion from legal to, a legal markets. who is going to obey those law we are not just focused on the and the user, but we are focusing on people of bullying those laws who own and sell guns. they will be deterred from making an illegal transaction that will allow a gun trafficker to get a gun. another point, importantly. there is this notion that does not wind up with reality, that is a piece of cake for criminals to get guns. detailedto a lot of alice on this, but one fact i think stands out that refutes this and is a simple fact, if you look at data from the national crime victimization survey, which criminologists have been using to study violent crime, you will find that those who report they were a victim of the robbery, when asked whether the robert used a weapon in that said, yes, the rubber used a gun. 29%. anybody who knows anything about crime and robbery will tell you that people commit robberies, they do not just occasionally do it and went up one day and go rob someone pick these are people who have a pattern of criminal behavior one would think by this logic that it is a piece of cake for criminals to get guns. a gun is a good tool if you are in the business of robbing people. why is it that only 29% use guns? i think it is because it is not quite as easy for such an individual to get a gun, and that is a good thing and should give us hope we can address this problem, which i think we definitely can. it is also this notion that most criminals are getting their guns to theft. this does not line up with data, the data from this large nationally represented sample of state prison inmates. we found less than 10% reported they got their guns directly through a theft. weretuality, nearly 80% acquiring their guns to some through some private seller that lot now a sense from any type of background check or record- keeping. controlea that why pass law, because they always get them on the illicit market, does not acknowledge the fact that the reason it is too easy to get guns on the illicit market is because we lack the very control we are talking about. review some ofly the research relevant to this. first conducted a study of 53 cities throughout the united states, and there are 28 different states, and looked at their regulations on gun sales, laws, as well as some of the enforcement aspects, particularly relevant to oversight of licensed gun dealers, and we found that regulating private handgun sales was associated with very significantly lower levels of diversions of guns to criminals, particularly within state lines. we also found that states that had systems to licensed handgun purchasers through going directly through law enforcement had the strongest relationship between best diversion of guns to criminals, and we also found that having strong regulations and oversight of gun dealers again also deterred these initial versions of guns to criminals. we subsequently did a study where we looked at all 50 states, and we were interested in guns traveling from one state to another to a different state into the hands of criminals. and how that the phenomenon is assisted with state gun law. found what many of you probably failure, which is that to have the universal background checks, failure to have permitting processes of handgun lawsrs, failure to have a ever part the record gunner owners to report a loss, these are the things that averted the guns to criminals excuse me across state lines. and where were those guns going to put they were going to the states that had the strongest laws, that gun might lead you to believe that the states that enact these law s, why botherf? some truth to that, because the effectiveness of the laws are the minister by the lack of strong federal law, but there are indicators of reduced gun availability to criminals in those states with the most comprehensive laws. give you an example, rather than look at studies with lots of coefficients and regressions and things like that them some basic information about the street price of guns. the street price of guns, the most expensive the best inexpensive type of gun in the new york city might be four or five times or more times higher than the same gun in a state with relatively lax, georgia, something like that. so this is meaningful. is the street price that relative scarcity of that product, not unique to guns or almost any product. when you see stark differences and raises in pricing, it ypically has something to so the last example i will give under this general point and to bring this home something that is recent and concrete. that ri enacted a law regulated private handgun sales. missouri repealed this law at the end of august in 2007. the study we just did, we found that, basically, following the repeal of that law the diversion of guns to criminals doubled, the share of guns that came from thin the state boundaries of missouri went you want quite dramatically. most importantly, the rate of gun homicides went up 25%. ou might ask, maybe this was a general phenom none. this was around the time that the economy was tanking and that could cause the gun violence to rapidly increase. guess what, nationly the rate was going down 10%. if you look at the states around missouri, in the middle part of the country, in that group of the country were having decreases of homicide rates of 5%. let me go to another claim. we don t need to pass new laws, we need to enforce the ones we have. the flaw in this logic is that the federal gun laws are frankly, they are written by the gun lobby in many cases to make it difficult to hold firearm sellers accountable, whether they are licensed dealers or private sellers. we can go back to the lack of background but there is not a specific statute targeting .llegal gun trafficking federal prosecutors have been ham strung in trying to hold people accountable who are transferring guns to criminals. congress is also making it difficult by passages of three different laws that i will allude to briefly. the protection act of 1996, it raised the standard of evidence to hold gun owners accountable and reducing the penalties for those violations. protect protection of the arms act, which gave protection to the gun owners and it reduces the guns to criminals. of the the enactment amendments that you might be familiar with, they restrict the use and crime to trace data that might identify the problem gun dealers amok other things. as well as, saying the a.t.f. could not require gun dealers to do a physical inventory when they do their inspections, among other things. research i published recently, when we look at the city of lwaukee it is dominated by a ominent gun dealer, one that just lost his license. the enactment of the amendments led to a diversion from the gun dealer into the hands of criminals. where as if you look at other gun dealers no change occurred in response. it brings home the general argument against them, which is good gun dealers don t need special protection and bad dealers don t deserve them. it is played out in that case in milwaukee. i will wrap up with a few other things. proposed universal background checks would allow the federal government to create a registry to gun owners. many of you know it is written into federal law that you cannot create a registry of gun owners. we ve been doing background checks since the braddy act in 1994 and there has been no registry and that sort of is a distraction. another claim is, the only guy that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. this was put forward by the n.r.a. as a response to what we should do following newtown. but as a general approach that the gun lobbyists had to gun violence. let s make it easier for the good guys to have loaded firearms in as many places as possible so these type of horrific crimes would be deterred. there s been quite a lot of research on this topic. some of it was quite bad and was discredited. the most rigorous research has ound that by and large has had no impact on crime. crime did not go up significantly. there is some evidence it might have had a slight increase in aggravated assaults. perhaps having more people having access to loaded firearms than previously being the case. i want to end my comments then open it up for questions. briefly mentioning some findings from the survey we did national survey of adults to find out that their opinions about a specific south gun policies. again, set of gun policies. and how gun owners feel about the regulations and how this breaks down across political party. getting again to the most important issue of universal background checks. 84% 85% of gun owners are fine with the idea of all gun sales having a background check. if you look at the 14 states where that currently is the law and look at how gun owners feel about it or do they feel it is an incredible inconvenience to them, no. 89% support it in those states. generally it is not that hard to do. you go to a licensed gun dealer and there is a new report out showing that 90% of the population lives within 10 miles of a license dealers. typically these checks are done in a matter of minutes. it is not a huge burden that we re placing on gun dealers excuse me, gun owners. the pattern of results that i want to underscore here. we typically and frankly the media, focuses mostly on what we disagree on. there s a lot of disagreement over assault weapons. there s a lot of disagreement over concealed carrying the right to carry. there s very, very broad agreement between political party between gun owners and nongun owners on a host of important measures that matter the most. that is measures to keep guns from dangerous people. go you know, i m going to through every single poll here .ut that is the clear picture regardless of your political party, regardless if you own a gun, you re fine of restricting a variety of high-risk group either due to criminal baggeds, domestic violence, mental illness, there is broad agreement that we need to keep guns from those individuals. common sense measures, such as universal background checks and even this is not on the federal agenda but a more form alliancing process through a law enforcement agency that we found to be particularly important. some things are moving forward, for example, in maryland on that front. i think we re going to stop there so we have enough time for questions and answers, discussions. please state your name, your affiliation, and as i said before, no speeches, please ask a question. i m from mexico. what do you propose to prevent the massacres that we ve seen recently on these shooters. it seems like after the recent shooting in connecticut, there has been a series of shootings all over the country. the essence of the question was what can be done to prevent the mass shootings that we ve seen all too often that are continuing to occur after the newtown tragedy. i must admit that may be one of the most important challenges of preventing these kinds of acts. a lot of the measures that we re discussing, i think sort of going to be most effective in the most rational kind of actor. in many times, individuals involved are not particularly rational actors. i still think that two points. one is those measures are important. many victims affected, obviously, many families with they proposees and a psychic cost for so many people, even if indirectly affected. i know i was profoundly affected by the news coming from newtown, for example. i know i wasn t alone. obviously, president obama was as well. but but we have these everyday shootings that we can t lose sight of. our gun policy discussions have centered around in some ways, very unusual types of uses of guns and violence. sometimes the most challenging things to address. i think we can move forward with respect to limiting the capacity of ammunition. research has shown, in essence the greater ammunition capacity available to the shooters in these events the more people injured and killed. i think that is a logical response to it. it is not going to change vernight, ok, for a host of of course for a host of reasons. i think we need to raise our standards. let s talk about the tucson shooting for example. the shooter was legal to possess handguns in his state of arizona. most people put aside that gun control is irrelevant. e was a legal gun owner. had he be a resident of the state of new jersey, i m almost certain that he could not get a gun certainly legally and probably not illegally. new jersey has very rigorous background check system. it is not unusual for local authorities to really investigate an application and find out is there something of concern in this individual s background. of course, as the news came, there s a lot to be concerned about him in terms of his behavior at the community college, in terms of his experience of getting kicked out of the military because of drug abruce. there s a whole host of things that would have been red flags and prohibited him in a more rigorous background check system. yes? i had two questions. the ould you have as national public survey back in 2013 what is the name of the survey and who did it? i don t know if we have the name of the survey but it was conducted at my colleague at john hopkins, the lead author is dr. colleen berry. she s an associated professor at john hopkins. we will get you the details of that. it was published in the journal of medicine about one month ago. maybe more than one month ago. i m losing track. was an extensive set of policies. one some of them are on the table and others that we think are relative but haven t been discussed. we focus on different categories of laws. one is focusing on the aspect of assault weapons, large capacity magazines. we saw strong support for those types of restrictions but as i alluded to before, great differences between gun owners and nongun ownerses. another set of policies we asked about pertain to who should legally be able to possess firearms. we asked about important categories, such as what is the minimum legal age for possessing a handgun. in 44 of the states right now you can legally possess a hand gun actually as many as you would like if you re 18 years old. but those individuals can t legally consume alcohol. you look at offending rates where they peek for homicide offending as well as other violent crimes they peek in the 18-24 age group. that s why we asked that question. we asked about drug users, mental health, all of these flagging people at higher risk. the pattern is more for restrictions on those groups. then we asked a series of with regulating sales, these this has to do with universal background checks, licensing, processing, those type of things. there were some differences but not huge differences between gun wners and not. again, i think i alluded to this, we oversampled gun ons. we wanted to make sure we could say with some degree of confidence how they feel about these policies. hen we look at a subset on how n.r.a. members feel about it. 74% of n.r.a. members in our survey supported background hecks for all gun sales. [inaudible] what is your hope, what could be the outcome in congress? i read the paper here there are many different predictions but they are saying no way a ban could get approved. that s a condition, sure. sorry the question is, what is my own feeling about the likelihood of which gun policies will be able to advance through congress, in particularly the assaults weapon ban that just came out of the senate committee yesterday. i would acknowledge i m not a political scientist but i pay attention to these kinds of things. i think you re probably right that it is going to be a very uphill battle and probably quite unlikely that an assault weapon ban will get through this congress. i have a more optimistic view on two measures that i think are important. one is to strengthen the current laws against illegal straw purchases and gun trafficking. urrently, the laws are really, really weak and make it there s little incentive for the a.t.f. and u.s. attorneys to go after that very important problem, simply because it is so difficult to make something stick and when you do the penalties are weak. i thinks there political support and consensus and enough bipartisan that it will get through. i think the most important again coming back to universal background checks, background checks for all gun sales, except between family members. i think that is most interesting. i think there is a reasonable chance that it will. i think that if it doesn t, i the it is going to hurt components of it because the support is so widespread, 90% or more in varies polls. it is hard to imagine how you defend this gaping hole in our gun policy. so i m somewhat hopeful but also recognize that the committee that needs to go through in the house that the chairman of that committee is not signal of his willingness to put that on the agenda. but, again, perhaps he may feel political heat to change his mind. if i might add, i don t know if people saw yesterday in the senate judiciary committee, there was an assault weapons ban that was proposed and it got out of committee but the republicans don t like it in the senate someone can filibuster it and it won t come up. any other questions? my question is about the the data. alysis and there s a study called man state and war from 1958. he says that you can analyze the causes of war, international conflict by looking at human nature but the nature of the way the states behave and the international system. wondering, the m you ethodology that when looking at the data at the rate of from all the sides and then you look at the methodology that is used on the gun rights side. this publication looks at case studies of individuals that would be a rape victim or able to protect themselves. the mom that is able to defend their kids in the house. how do you engage with publications and research projects that use this kind of case study, personal story methodology, especially when these stories a gun is used to prevent a crime or the ones that are under reported because nothing happened. thank you for your question. your question, i think assumes that individual case studies is a better way to study phenomenon than analysis of data. i don t agree with that and suspect most scientists do not. i think if we can do more fine-level research to get more comparative research at that individual level, we would add vance science in this area. e three studies i alluded to in identifying high-risk groups who were previously allowed to possess guns then laws were enacted to make those guns less available to them. when the analysis looks at the individual level and saw reductions in the group that were prohibited firearms. the second thing i want to respond as it relates to the case studies of individual using guns to defend themselves. i would never claim that individuals don t use guns to defend themselves. that does occur. please don t inif you are anything about what i said that citizens don t use guns to defend themselves, i that i do. relevantnow if that is right now. it is a frustration of mine that any regulation you put forward going to keep is so-called law abiding gun owners from being able to defend themselves. by and large most of these gun regulations don t do that. that is my response. i would like to ask a question. sure. in our talks, you mentioned the statistics how many homicides and suicides. i would like to briefly state those statistics and the total number of gun deaths. if you had a magic wand and all the new laws and regulations recommended by the summit were passed, how much do you think that would reduce gun violence in america? all of the recommendations? oh, boy. first of all, let me get to the first question, because that is he easy one. out 31,000 homicides and 60% are suicides i think many people assume incorrectly gun availability is irrelevant to suicide risks and there s other da that suggests otherwise. most of our discussions focus on the severely mentally ill, we seem to focus solely on those individuals to risk to others. really the greatest risk is to themselves. restricting gunnle availabilities for individuals because of severe mental illness might pose a threat to themselves or others could have a meaningful affect on suicide rates. only very small most of the rest are homicides, as you might have guessed and only a small proportion is unintentional or what people refer to as accidental deaths. now the difficult question, if all the recommendation were enacted. i don t think i m going to i m not going to respond with a percent decline. i don t think it will be overnight and that is one thing that is worth mentioning. there are certain things that could be down in the short term and should be done. there are policing strategies, for example that research has hown that focuses on illegal carrying of guns in hot spots significantly reduces gun violence. we have other strategies that are more offender focused that increase the risk of gun possession and use for those individuals. we see significant declines associated with those strategies. so i think that should be part of the conversation. the restrecting supply so you reduce diversion to criminals i think would have an immediate impact but those effects will grow over time so there would be fewer guns available in the llegal market. what is your research show or whatever research you know bout the background checks [indecember certainible] [inaudible] the question is what research is there relevant to purchase to licensing systems as opposed in maryland. the laws vare a little bit from state to state. typically they involve going to a law enforcement agency, there s fingerprinting and photographing of the applicants. my research has shown they are e most single, most powerful deterrent from legal to lyle market. what i suspect legal to illegal market. it is a notable deterrent to a purchaser. currently in maryland, if someone is a felon and they want someone to purchase a gun for them, i don t know if their risks are enormously great. like most states, there are some dealers that are overrepresented when you look at the pool of guns recovered from criminals. criminals know that so they can steer their purchaser to a friendly gun store. go in, pick out their guns, put it and it is not a big deal to recruit somebody to do that. the penalties are weak and not enforced. if you think about the scenario where you are trying to recruit a straw purchaser and say you need to be fingerprinted, you need to go to a law-enforcement agency, they will do a background check, imitating, fewer people say yes to a request to buy a gun illegally. how theted to know public feels about if they have to get a gun, they have to go through that, if they are not a criminal. licensing through a law-enforcement agency, and i do not have the data, but by regulation is over 70% of gun owners were ok with that. if followup question. when you have strop purchases, it would be nice to track who is doing that. in that regard, with some type of federal database that tracks gun ownership be helpful, or would that be a waste of time and money? are going to set politics aside because this is probably a thing that worries certain gun owners and certain gun organizations the most. how effective would a registry system work? i think it depends on the commitment of law enforcement to use it. in california, they probably have done the most to utilize their registry in a variety of important ways to disarm the people who may be initially, when they purchased the gun, they were illegal gun possessors, but frankly every single day legal gun possessors become illegal gun possession because they get convicted by crimes, they get restraining orders for domestic violence, or mental illness breakdowns or a variety of things happen. in california. in maryland, this is done occasionally in times where they had used the registry and linked it up to a database and said we have literally hundreds of thousands in a particular area who presumably have handguns, yet they are prohibited. so they can utilize the registry to disarm these individuals. again, if you have a commitment to use it, and it is this general idea that i think is widely accepted regardless of political party or gun ownership, is we do not want dangerous people to have guns, particularly if all law says they are not supposed to have guns. generally, the measures put in place to prevent that will lead to greater safety. you mentioned about 60% of people who committed gun crimes, it was legally available to them. the you have any data about the people who are licensed to carry concealed in their state, and the requirement there what is the rate of gun crime who are the certified guys? i myself have not analyzed that data, but there has been some analysts to look at that, and that group who get permits to carry loaded firearms have relatively low rates of committing violent crime. i think it probably has a lot to do with the general democrat demographics of the group to get those permits. they happen to be like me, middle aged guys, mary, who live in the suburbs. commonlyho is most getting permits. that said, there is clearly quite a number of events of individuals who have permits to carry concealed guns. when you look at their background, and this has done through the courts, the viole nce policy center, investigative reporting, documenting people with scary pasts who were able to carry loaded concealed guns pretty much wherever they wanted to. the general issue of the right to carry it is always couched as a lot-abiding gun owners should be able to do what they want with their guns to defend themselves. but it paints a picture that is not accurate. while most gun owners are truly law abiding, there is a subset of illegal gun possessors that if you look at their past, a gun is scary, that is why we think it is important to revisit the prohibitions, and they do not have to be lifetime prohibitions. if you look at criminal careers and the age distribution of offenders. if we have prohibitions in place for 10 years for some of these non-felony crimes, you could really have a protection due to the most critical period where people might do irresponsible things with guns. any am not affiliated with project, but am with the george washington university. my question is about -and a- i appreciate about your proof your report is it the final gun violence as a public health problem. how do you feel it is being defined by the administration now? it is creating political partisanship, and how can we turn around the way the problem is defined? right. gun violence cannot legally be categorized as a crime problem, a public health problem, a moral problem. is all the above, frankly. it is most useful to tackle a complex problem for four from multiple angles and perspectives. focus veryc health ash on prevention, and opposed to let s lock people up after the fact. the administration is embracing that general idea. one type of thing that originated from public health and from our center, from the founding director, the idea of personalized guns that we made a lot of progress in reducing injury in a number of ways in other areas. motor vehicle traffic fatalities is one classical example where again you had a whole list of things that were done to drive down our mortality rates, pretty profoundly. changed law, we try to change social norms around drinking and driving, seat belts, but also made cars to be more crash where the, so if people did not follow the right rules, they would not die. applying the same idea to a lethal weapon like a firearm, there are many preventable deaths that occur when a gun gets into the hands of the depressed teenager, a young child, or is stolen by a criminal, that if those guns could not actually operate when they were in on authorized hands, we would have fewer deaths and injuries from guns. wek it is very useful absolutely need to think of this problem as a crime problem, but even people in criminology now across the board whether we re talking about guns or other types of crime really are starting to embrace a much more expensive way to approach these problems. oriented towards prevention. you need the laws in place, but you need other things complimenting them. complementing them. please join me in thanking dr. webster. i found it in forming that somebody who has studied this and has done a rigorous research and to get those results, and i hope that those results and this study and research becomes part of the policy discussion. thank you all. this event is over. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] here is a look at our primetime program. at 8:00, chuck hagel briefing reporters earlier today on the north korean nuclear threat. on c-span2, or from today s hearing, looking at losses by j.p. morgan chase, and on c-span 3, a hearing on medicaid medicare payment policies. we will have more cpac coverage tonight, live starting at approximately 8:45 p.m. eastern on c-span. among the events recover to become a hearing looking at derivatives losses by jpmorgan chase. we will have the first panel from that hearing coming up next. first, a portion of the opening ofatement from the co-ceo jpmorgan corporate and investment bank. members of the subcommittee, high and co-ceo of the corporate and investment banking at jpmorgan. i lead a task force that conducted a review of the circumstances surrounding the 2012 losses in jpmorgan s investment office. i appreciate the opportunity to discuss their work, to describe what we found as well as the steps jpmorgan has taken in response. some of what we found was frankly very disappointing and does not reflect our institution at its best. that said, we have addressed the issues head on and are determined to become a better company because of this experience. we have fully cooperated with the subcommittee during the course of its inquiry. it is noted in my written statement we respect the key role the subcommittee has played in highlighting the importance of effective risk management and oversight of our nation s financial institutions. we appreciate the courtesies extended to us by your staff. as you know, earlier this year our task force issued a report which was the culmination of an extensive review. the work included interviews of many current and former jpmorgan employees and the examination of millions of documents and tens of thousands of audio files. the work was overseen by an independent review committee of our board of directors. we have also been cooperating with the ongoing inquiries by governmental authorities, here and in the united kingdom. because our findings are already public and are set forth in our written testimony, i will not discuss them in detail now. instead i would like to summarize our key conclusions and then describes steps we have taken to address the problems we found. in short, the losses were the result of a number of accidental missions, some involving personnel and some involving governments. those responsible in our view include to varying degrees the traders who designed and implemented the flawed trades, the managers who failed to properly ensure the strategy was sound, the risk managers who failed to serve as europe s robust check on trading activity, and the senior management of the firm who failed to ensure the cio was subject to the same oversight as other parts of the firm. in light of what we found, the firm has taken wide-ranging remedial actions. both within cio to route the firm, to prevent incidents similar to this from occurring in the future. these are described in detail in the task force report, but i would like to highlight for the subcommittee some of the more significant steps we have taken. first, the firm has terminated the employment or accepted the resignations of the responsible cio personnel and pursued compensation. second, jpmorgan has appointed a new cio leadership team which has refocused cio on its mandate. third, the firm has increased resources for the key risk and finance control functions within cio. fourth, cio has implemented new or restructured minutes carrying a broad and granular set of parameters. and, fifth, the firm has adopted a variety of governance measures to improve its oversight and control improvecio. firm s remedial efforts have not been limited to cio. firm has conducted a comprehensive self-assessment of its entire risk organization and as a result it is implementing a series of improvements across the entire firm. where there is room to improve, we can and will do so. with respect to the trading itself, we have learned many hard lessons. in particular, that any future poke pop portfolio hedging will be subject to appropriate monitoring requirements with documentation linking the hedge to the risk is designed to offset. in conclusion, i want to assure you that this experience has caused substantial and healthy introspection at senior management levels and our firm and recognition of the need for continued improvement. thank you, and i look forward to taking your questions. started in 1860, when congress finally acted after many decades of difficulty with private contract printers in an effort to relieve towoes of waste and abuse. they created an entity to do their printing for them. ing cameongress print the government printing office it. theing of documents is a common occurrence for where this place works print this document from april of 1974 is the famous trent strips of the white house tapes in the nixon administration that were the investigation of the watergate burglary. was brought over very late in the day, and the entire transcript had to be prepared to for the press and pretend overnight, and the first 50 copies went up to the white the following morning. and then the several thousand copies to the congress went somewhat later in the day. this i think is the origin of phrase expletive expletive deleted. history thiserican weekend on c-span3. the fact is we re all getting older together, and we are not the same our fertility rates have dropped, and we re beginning to have an inverted pyramid that makes our challenges as it relates to entitlements and social security even greater. slow-growing developing countries have had for decades low fertility rates. japan and europe particulate and russia, and now china is starting to feel the impact of its one-child policy. we re better off than the rest of the world, but our rate has dropped to below break even, the lowest drop in the last three years in recorded history, and unlike most of the world, we have a tried and true way to deal with this demographic time bomb. demography does not have to be destiny if you change course creek in the path that we could take, it is to allow that we could allow for a strategic reform of our immigration law so we can bring young aspirational people that will rebuild the demographic. to make our entitlement system secure and jump-start our economy in a way that will create an uplifting of our hopes and dreams, but also directly impact, immediately impact economic growth. economic growth and immigration policy. jeb bush on immigration wars, saturday at endicott 15 eastern, on c-span2. fromxt the first panel today us hearing looking at derivatives says. executives took responsibility for banking processes from that two losses. the subcommittee is chaired by carl levin of michigan. this is about an hour and 40 minutes. let me first began buying extending a special welcome to the new ranking member of the subcommittee, a deer and longtime friend, senator mccain. this is not the first time we have worked side by side, and he has been a longtime member and former lee ranking member, and was ranking member on the senate armed services committee, and has brought a great energy and bipartisan spirit to our work together. and we want to just welcome him as our nubile ranking member here. here.come senator johnson unlike senator mccain, he has been a member of this committee. senator johnson has joined us. we welcome him. in april of 2012, americans were confronted with a story of wall street access and the derivative disaster now known as jpmorgan trades.ale largest u.s. banks are now deep into derivatives. the derivatives behind the jpmorgan shale trades were part of the so called synthetic credit portfolio, sometimes called the scp, that made outsized bets on whether a particular financial instruments or entities were credit or the or would default during specified time periods. the bets were made by traders in the london office of the u.s. banking giant jpmorgan chase. their trades, meaning their bets, grew so large that they credit27 trillion dollar derivatives market, single- handedly affecting global prices and finally attracted a media storm and at finding out who was behind them. that is when the media and masked jpmorgan s for investment cio, before then had been known for making conservative investments. complainedamie dimon that the reports were a tempest in a teapot, but a month later the bank and that the truth, that their derivative bets had gone south, producing not only losses that eventually exceeded $6 billion, but also exposing a litany of risk management problems in what had been considered one of america s safest banks? jpmorgan chase is the largest financial holding company and the united states. it is the largest derivatives dealer in the world and the largest single participant in world credit travis markets. it is consistently portrayed itself as a risk management expert with a fortress balance sheet. this interest taxpayers have nothing to fear from its extensive dealing and risky derivatives. the portrayal of the bank was shattered when whale trade losses shocked the investing public, but because of the financial risk had been largely unknown to bank regulators. the subcommittee meets today after nine months of digging into facts behind the whale trades. the subcommittee collected nearly 90,000 boxes at the documents, conducted over 50 interviews and has issued a bipartisan report. while the bank and its regulators have cooperated with our investigation, four key former jpmorgan employee is directly involved in the derivatives trading declined to cooperate because they reside overseas. they remain beyond the subcommittee subpoena of party. our findings opened a window into the hidden world of high it states high-stakes derivatives trading pit it exposes the culture of jpmorgan losses,d, that hid disregarded risk limits and manipulated models, that dodge oversight, and misinform the public. our investigation brought home one fact u.s. financial system may have significant vulnerabilities of trouble to major bank involvement with high a risk derivatives trading. the four largest u.s. banks control 90% of the u.s. derivatives markets and their profitability is invested in part in their derivatives holdings. nowhere more so than at jpmorgan. howwhale trades derivatives trade can become a runaway train, barreling through every risk limit. the whale trades demonstrate hundred the valuation practices are easily manipulated, to hi de losses, congress controls are manipulated to circumvent limits, enabling traders to unload prescript firing a few traders and their bosses will not be enough to stanch wall street s in satiable ask appetite for risky derivatives bets or stop the excesses appeared more controls are needed. among the most troubling ac instances of that history is jpmorgan traders, who worked required to book their holdings every business day, used internal profit-loss reports to hide more than $500 million in losses in just three months. eventually, those miss reported values forced jpmorgan to restate its earnings for the first quarter of 2012. to this day, jpmorgan maintains values did not by late bank policies. if derivatives bookings could be the rules need to be revamped. the remaining how much profits are bound up with their derivatives, duras values that cannot be trusted are serious threat to our economic stability. the trades demonstrate how easily a wall street bank can manipulate and avoid risk controls. the financial industry assures us that it can prudently manage high-risk activity because they are measured, monitored, and limited. rather than ratchet back the rest, jpmorgan personnel challenged and reengineered the risk controls to silence the alarms. it is difficult to imagine how the american people can trust major wall street banks to print lead manage derivatives risk when bank personnel can readily game or ignore the risk controls that are meant to prevent financial disaster and taxpayer bailout. the whale trades provide another example of a major wall street bank s misstatements and concealment. in fact, in january of 2012, the in accurately occ that the portfolio was decreasing in size when it was not picked most troubling of all, when the media spotlight hit, senior bank executives mischaracterized to investors and the public the nature of the whale trades and the extent of risk management and regulatory oversight, gambling apparently that the portfolio s bad bet would recover before anyone took a closer look. we took a closer look, and is not prepared a massive derivatives portfolio riddle with risk, a runaway train of trading, blowing through risk limits, hidden losses, bank executives downplaying the bad debts, regulators who failed to act. together these facts are a reminder of what occurred in the recent financial crisis. we cannot rely on a major bank to resist risky bets, honestly report derivatives losses, or disclose bad news without a strong regulator looking over its shoulder, backed by law that require transparency, buffers against losses and consequences for misconduct. that is the big picture. here are a few of the detailed findings. first among jpmorgan s chief investment officer rapidly amassed a huge portfolio of synthetic critic derivatives come in part using federally insured depositor funds and a series of risky short-term trades, disclosing the extent of the portfolio only after intense media exposure. in just a few months during 2011, as shown on chart 1, and i think we can get chart one up over here, the chief investment office s scented vick credit portfolio true from a note net national size from $4 billion to $51 billion and untroubled in the first quarter $157 billion thrift that exponential mick cora occurred with virtually no regulatory oversight. second, what s the whale trades were exposed to jpmorgan claimed to regulators and the public that the trades were designed to hedge credit risk, but internal bank documents failed to identify the assets being hedged, how they lowered risk, or what the supposed credit derivatives hedges were treated differently from other hedges in the chief investment officer. if these trading s were hedges gone astray, it remains a mystery why the bank determine the nature, size, or effectiveness of the so-called hedges and how if at all the reduced risk. the chief investment officer internally concealed how massive losses in the first months of 2012 by overstating the value of its synthetic credit derivatives. it got away with overstating those values in the face of the speech with counterparties and in the face of two internal bank to reduce trade as late as january 2012, the cio had found its credit derivatives by using the midpoint in the daily range above what was asked in the marketplace. that is the typical way to die yet during this period. in general, the traders stop this and started using prices at the extreme edges of the daily price range to hide escalating losses. in rec and phone conversation, one trader described these as idiotic. at one point traders used a spreadsheet to track just how large their deception had grown by recording the valuation differences between easing midpoint and more favorable prices pick in just five days in march, according to the trader and spreadsheet, the hidden losses exceeded $400 million. the difference extent eventually exceeded $600 million. counterparties to the derivatives trades began disputing the c i zero possible values involving hundreds of millions of dollars in march and april. despite the obvious value manipulation, on may 10, the same day jpmorgan announced the whale trades had lost $2 billion from the bank s controller concluded a special review and signed off on the cio s derivative pricing practices as consistent with industry practice. jpmorgan leadership has continued to argue that the values assigned by its traders the synthetic credit portfolio more indefensible under accounting rules. yet in july 2012, the bank reluctantly restated its first quarter earnings. it did so only after an internal investigation listened to phone conversations routinely recorded by the bank in which its traders marked its own valuation practices. now, their mismakred values were not wrong because the traders intended to understate losses. they were wrong because they changed the their pricing practices after losses began piling up, stopped using the midpoint practices excuse me stopped using the midpoint price is that they had used up until january, and they began using aggressive prices that consistently made the bank s reports look better. until jpmorgan and others stopped their personnel from playing those kinds of games and the derivative values will remain at an imprecise, malleable, and untruss the set of figures that call into question the derivative profits and losses reported by our largest financial institutions. when the cio s synthetic credit portfolio breached five key risk limits, rather than reduce the risky trading activities, jpmorgan either increased the limits, changed the risk model of calculated risk, or turned a blind eye to the breach as great as early as january 2012, the rapid growth of the synthetic credit portfolio preached one common measure of risk, called value at risk of war var, causing a bridge at the cio and the entire bank. that breach was reported to top bank officials, including jamie dimon who approved a temporary limit increase, the bridge was ended. cio employees pushed through approval of a new var model overnight, throughout the cio s reported risk, by 50%. regulators were told about that remarkable reduction in the cio s reported risk, but raised no objection to the new model at the time. the credit derivatives portfolio breached other risk limits as well. in one case, it exceeded established limits on one measure known as credit spread through months running. when regulators asked about the breach, managers responded it was a sensible limit and allow the breach to continue. when another risk measure, called comprehensive risk measure, projected the synthetic risk credit portfolio could lose $6.3 billion in the year, a senior cia risk manager dismissed the results as garbage. it was not garbage rate that projection was 100 percent accurate, and the derivatives traders thought they knew better, pushing to reengineer risk controls to artificially lower risk results, flatly contradict jpmorgan s claimed to prudent risk management. fifth, at the same time the portfolio was losing money in breaching risk limits and a jpmorgan dodged the oversight of the occ. omitted see eye of data from its report to the occ. failed to disclose the size, risk, and losses of the synthetic credit portfolio. it delayed or tinkered with occ requests for information by giving the regulator inaccurate or unresponsive information in tradeshen the whale first became public, the bank offered such blanket reassurances that suchocc consider the matter closed pit it was only when the losses exploded that the occ took another look. the failure of regulators that act sooner cannot be excused by the bank s behavior. the occ also fell down on the job. if failed to investigate multiple sustained risk limit breeches. it tolerated incomplete and missing reports from jpmorgan. it failed to question the bank of us knew about it at risk model, that dramatically lowered the cio risk rating. it accepted jpmorgan s protests that the media reports about the portfolio were over but. it was not until may of 2012, after a new comptroller of the currency, took the reins at the occ, that the occ officials instituted their first intensive inquiry into the synthetic credit portfolio. again, with the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis so painfully fresh, it is deeply worrisome that a major bank should seek to cloak its risky trading activities from regulators and doubly worrisome that it was able to succeed so easily for so long. and finally, when the whale trades went public, jpmorgan misinformed regulators and the public about the synthetic credit portfolio. jpmorgan s first public response to the april news reports about the whale trades was when it s spokesperson, using prepared talking points come approved by senior executives, told reporters on april 10 that the whale trades were risk-reducing hedges that were known to regulators. a more detailed description came on a conference call on april 13 to return the call com. the chief financial officer made a series of inaccurate statements about the whale trades, shown in chart 2. said the trades have been put on by bank risk managers and were fully transparent to regulators. he said that trades were made on a long-term basis tree he said the trades were is essentially a hedge prick he said the bank believed the trades were consistent with the full court rule that prohibits hike-risk proprietary trading by banks. those public statements on april 13 were not true. as late as may 10, jamie dimon scribe the synthetic credit trades as hedges made to offset risk, despite information showing the portfolio was not a hedge. the bank also neglected to tell investors the bad news, that the derivatives portfolio had broken through multiple risk limits, losses at piled up, and the head of the portfolio had put banishment of the portfolio into crisis mode. it was recently reported that the eight biggest u.s. banks had hit a five-year low in the percentage of deposits used to make loans treat their collective average month deposit ratio it has fallen to 84% in 2012, down from 87% a year 1% in 2007.d 10 o apparently, jpmorgan was too busy getting under is to issue the loans needed to speed economic recovery. based on its investigation of the jpmorgan whale trades, our report makes the following recommendations first, when it comes to high- risk derivatives, federal regulators need to know what major banks are up to. we should require those banks to identify internal investment portfolios that include derivatives over a specified one, record reporting performance, and conduct regular reviews to detect derivatives trading pit next, when banks claim they are trading derivatives to hedge risk, we need to require them to identify the assets being hedged, and how the derivatives trade reduces the risk associated with those assets and how the bank tested the effectiveness of its hedging strategy in reducing rest premixed, we need to strengthen how derivatives are valued to stop inflated values. a regulator should encourage banks to use independent pricing services to stop the games, require disclosure valuations with parties, and require justification when, as occurred at jpmorgan, a derivative values deviate from midpoint prices. next, when the alarms go off, banks and their regulators should investigate breaches and take action to reduce risky activity. next, regulators should require disclosure of any new implemented risk model or metric which would implement a material and materially lower reported brisk. risk. next, three years ago congress enacted a provision of the dodd- frank act and also known as the risk.er rule, to end financial regulators should finalize a long-delayed regulations. next, at major banks ham, regulators need to make sure that banks can was banned losses by having charges for tour of the trading pit is way past time to finalize the rules intimating stronger capital banks standards. there ritas trading producing the retail trades damaged a single bank. but the whale trades have exposed problems that reach far desk. one london trading the american people have already suffered one the devastating and they cannot, afford another. when wall street plays with fire, american families get burned. the task of federal regulators and of this congress is to take away the matches. the whale trades demonstrated that this task is far from complete. senator mccain? thank you, and let me begin by saying what an honor it is to serve on this subcommittee, which has a long history of bipartisanship and a celebrated legacy of uncovering waste, fraud and abuse, and outright corruption appeared before i move forward, i want to express my gratitude to you and the members of your staff for your unyielding and dedicated efforts to this investigation. i would like to recognize the work of my predecessor on the subcommittee, nutter coburn, for his contributions prior to my arrival. this investigation into the so- called whale trades at jpmorgan has revealed strides failures and an institution that touts itself as an expert in risk management and prides itself on its fortress balance sheet. investigation has shed light on a complex and volatile world of synthetic credit derivatives. in a matter of months, jpmorgan was able to increase its exposure to risk while dodging oversight by federal regulators. the trades of lacoste the bank billions of dollars and its shareholders value. these losses come to light up the can cause of admirable risk- management strategies at jpmorgan, or because of the effective oversight by diligent regulators. instead, these losses came to light because they were so damaging that they shook the market and so damning date caught the attention of the press. following the revelation that these huge trades were coming from jpmorgan s london office, the bank s losses continued to grow. by the end of the year, the total losses stood at a staggering $6.2 billion. this case represents another shameful demonstration of a bank engaged in while bleak risky behavior. the london whale incident matters to the federal government because the traders at jpmorgan were making risky bets using excess deposits, portions of which were federally insured pit these access excess deposits should have been produced to provide loans to mainstream businesses. instead, jpmorgan use them to bet on catastrophic restrict through an intensive bipartisan investigation, this subcommittee has uncovered a wealth of new information. internal emails, memos and and interviews revealed that these trades were not conducted by a group of rogue traders, but that their superiors were aware of their activities. traders at jpmorgan s chief investment office, the cio, adopted a risky strategy with money they were supposed to use to hedge or counter risk. however, even the head of the cio could only provide a guessteimate as to what the portfolio was supposed to hedge. portfolio had the morphed into something that created new and potentially larger risk creek in the words of the primary federal regulator, it would require a make-believe voodoo magic to make the portfolio actually look like a hedge. top officials at j.p. morgan allow these excess of losses to occur by permitting the see of it to continually breached all of the bank s own risk limits, when the risk limits the trend to impede their risky behavior. he decided to manipulate the models. disturbingly, the bank s primary regulator failed to take action even after red flags were warned that jpmorgan was breaching its risk limits. these regulators fell asleep at the switch and fail to use the tools at the disposal to curb it jpmorgan s appetite for risk. however, jpmorgan actively competed the oversight. the cio refused to release key investment data and even claimed the regulator was trying to destroy the bank s businesses. after these losses weren t covered by the press, jpmorgan chose to conceal its errors and in doing so top officials at the bank misinformed investigators, regulators, and the public. and april to 2012 earnings call, the chief officer falsely told investors and the public that the bank had been fully transparent to regulators. the deception did not end there. during the same earnings call, dimon tried to downplay the losses by infamously characterizing them as a complete tempest in a teapot. the truth of the matter is that $6 billion, some of which is federally insured, is an inexcusable amount of money to be gambled away on risky bets. this investigation potentially reveals systemic problems in our nation s financial system. the size of the potential losses and the accompanying deception echo the misguided and dishonest actions that the banks took during the financial crisis four years ago. that me be clear. jpmorgan completely disregarded risk limits and stonewalled federal regulators. it is unsettling that a group of traders made reckless decisions with federally insured money and that all of this was done with the full awareness of top officials at j.p. morgan. this bank appears to have annotated and embraced the idea that it was too big to fail. in fact, with regard as to how it managed the derivatives that are the subject of today s hearing. it seems to have developed a business model based on that notion, the notion they are too big to fail. it is our duty to the american public to remind the financial industry that high-stakes gambling with federal insurance will not be tolerated. into a dozen 12 the trades resulting in a $6 billion loss. what if it was 60 billion or 100 billion? does jpmorgan operate under the assumption that the taxpayer will bail them out again? what place does taxpayers for moralng disregard hazard have the proper operation of a truly free market. i look forward to hearing from martinez today as we examine what went wrong at jpmorgan. thank you. senator johnson. a comet or statement what is interesting is what senator mccain pointed out, that jpmorgan appears to have developed its business model around the fact they are too big to fail. i have always said that the fact that we have institutions that are too big to fail shows how regulation has already failed us. we have regulation and place that should have prevented that years ago. i am looking forward to hear the testimony to highlight regulators in general are incapable of preventing all these things, and i look forward to the recommendations in terms of how we get regulation up to speed so we can prevent this in the future. thank you. first will call on our panel of witnesses appeared before we do that, but me make a comment about the procedures here today. we anticipate a long hearing, and so we will first call the first panel come from witnesses with the most firsthand knowledge of the whale trades that are the essential concern of the hearing. after taking their testimony, there will be a short break, and we will return than and braun the panel by adding two senior executives of the bank, one responsible for public disclosures about the trades, and the other who led the management post-mortem review. then when that panel, that extended panel concludes, there will be a short break, and we will hear from the final panel which representatives from the officer of the comptroller of the currency. panelwill call our first of witnesses. ina drew, ashley bacon, and peter weiland. we appreciate all of you being with us today. we look forward to your testimony. pursuant to will 6 of this its up to become all witnesses to testify are required to be sworn, so i would ask each of you to please stand, raise your right hand. the testimonyhat you are about to give to the subcommittee will be the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth? be using a timing system today. the rede minute before light comes on, you will see the light changed from green to yellow. it will give you an opportunity to conclude your remarks, and in your written to testify, it will be included in the record. we appreciate you limiting york s testimony to no more than five minutes. if you have a prepared statement, which will have to go first, followed by mr. bacon. we will then turned to questions. please proceed. you can keep your microphones on, if you would. good morning, chairman levin, ranking member mccain, and members of the subcommittee. ina drew. thank you for the opportunity to meet and discuss with you my perspective on the losses incurred last year in jpmorgan chase s synthetic credit portfolio, one of many portfolios managed by the company s chief investment office (cio) when i was the head of that office. about myike to talk career. i spent over 30 years at jpmorgan and its predecessor institutions in the field of asset liability management did i joined after receiving a degree from johns hopkins university and a master s from columbia university. for the course of my career, i had the privilege of working for a truly great ceo s, such as walter shipley, and jamie dimon. helped build what i believed to be a world-class asset liability management organization. i am very proud of the many successes we had in protecting the bank s balance sheet. offsetting risk, and investing prevent the. i had a wonderful mentor who helped me grow at about might leadership skills, and to them i am grateful. this was my life plus work. life s work. many financial crisis, i always try to do my best and what was right for the firm and a thoughtful, diligent manner. i love the work and the institution and gave it my all. balancing life home life, charitable and educational board work, and many other demands. night, may 11, two dozen top, i walked into the office of mr. dimon, whom i had a close relationship. i told him it was my decision to resign from jpmorgan. it was a devastating and very difficult decision for me. of three the end decades of hard work at an institution i loved. we talked about this decision at how important i believed it was to let the company move forward with new leadership. i accepted responsibility for the events that happened on my watch. my overwhelming sadness and concern was extended to the 400 people who worked for me. many for more than 20 years. it also went to my colleagues throughout the firm who are now leading the company going forward. there were many people from the front office, risk, finance, and quantitative research, who worked on and analyzed the synthetic credit portfolio. toelied on the experts supervise trading and elevate concerns to me. of theely, my oversight synthetic credit book was undermined. there were two critical fax that have come to mind recently. first among company s new var was flawed and understated the risks reported to me. second, some members of the london team failed to cover their positions properly. dane minimize reported and projected losses and hid from the important information regarding the true risks of the book. throughout these events, i did what i tried to do all times during my career, faced difficult issues with dignity and integrity. i had many months to think about what happened. i do not have all the answers. but what i can tell you is that i always tried to do my best bet, i tried at all times to approach these issues presented to me fairly, thoughtfully, and transparently. clearly, mistakes were made. the fact that these mistakes happen on my watch has been the most disappointing and painful part of my professional career. i think you for the opportunity to appear today, and i will be happy to answer questions you may have. thank you very much, ms. drew. now we will call on mr. bacon. been a good morning. good morning. my name is ash the bacon, the acting chief risk officer of jpmorgan. i have been there at 20 years. i appreciate the opportunity to come before you today as part of your inquiry into the sea isle synthetic credit portfolio and tell you what i observed after being asked in late april to independently the assets the cio trades hit at me express the entire 4 s commitment the importance of active risk- management. turning to the cio before real issue, at the request of management, i was brought in from outside of the chief investment officer in late april of 2012, along with other individuals from the investment bank, to lead a team of professionals and conducting an assessment of the synthetic credit portfolio. the purpose of that review is to understand that the system losses being experienced and to help chart a course for. the team worked long hours and after initial reports were asked to take over responsibility from the day-to-day management of the synthetic credit portfolio. we held that responsibility until a new team took over. the firm also requested that my colleague, michael lead a task force to investigate these trades. later in the day, i believe he will speak in detail about that effort and the steps identified by the task force in response. i have discussed a few key steps we ve takened a a firm as to approve the risk management and risk management within c.i.o. first, the firm appointed a new c.i.o. manager. the firm took steps to ensure risks independence and staffing levels. e new c.i.o. chief officer actual reporting practices, not reporting to his reporting line. e reports to me. second, the firm overhauled the service committee. the committee meets on a weekly basis from within and outside the c.i.o. has been reinstituted as the risk committee to reflect its broader responsibilities. third, c.i.o. implemented numerous or new risk parameters. what remained of the portfolio was transfered to the firm s transfer bank. lastly, jpmorgan chase conducted a comprehensive self-assessment of the risk organization and as are zult we re implementing a series of improvements. in addition to working to improve monitoring the firm is reaffirming and we re revising our market limits across all lines of business. we ve introduced granularity levels and will cooperate to do so. we provide for more rapid escalation and more effective review. we established a committee to results of the committees. we constantly look for ways to improve. the steps i described portray our beliefs that our port fort yo should be overseen to address risk issues effectively. thank you for the opportunity to appear for you today. i welcome any question you have. thank you very much. mr. weiland. thank you chairman. y name is peter weiland. i m here today to help explain some of the facts surrounding the of events in question to the best of my knowledge and ecollection. thank you very much. let me start with you. if you look at exhibit number 81, which is in front of you. what we ll have 12-minute ounds if that is ok. we ll probably have more than a round or two after this first panel and we ll switch after 12 minutes. me, then senator mccain and senator johnson and any others that will show up. this is a presentation, which you gave to your board of directors on march 20, 2012. it is about the c.i.o. on page one you provide a chart listing nine investment portfolios at the c.i.o. and you indicated if they had longer or shorter investment horizons. where is the s.e.p. on that chart? it is on the right side on the bottom where it is noted that the portfolio was being reduced, reducing capital and positions. so it is under it is at the shorter end of the event horizon, is that correct? that the time it was correct. it was in the process of being reduced. i m not asking if it was being reduced at that time. i m asking if it is at the shorter event horizon, is that correct? > that is correct. so in 2012, the synthetic credit portfolio was being actively traded. is that correct? yes. and if the portfolio grew is it to $157 billion, correct by the time of your presentation on march 20, 2012, most of the positions would have been purchased during the first quarter? that is correct. so these were not investments that were made on a long-term basis? is that correct? senator, your horizon is the shorter investment horizon and they were bought and sold regularly and frequently, is that not correct? that is correct. however, the position in the book, which was a short-high yield position was a long-term position that had been held for many years and the intention was to be held longer. but when this portfolio grew n the first quarter from $51 billion to $157 billion most of those positions were purchased in that quarter, is that correct? they had. is that correct? that s correct. these trades were out of london but when they were losses at $6.2 billion in losses that took place over 2012, that affected jpmorgan chase s balance sheet, is that correct? yes, certainly it did. did the london traders have to get approval of the c.i.o. risk managers like you to be put on position? let me ask mr. weiland that question. did the london traders get the approval risk managers like you to be put on these positions? not for individual trades. the traders in london worked within a set of delegated limits. so they did not get approval from you for the positions they were putting on? not for individual trades as long as they were working within their limits. is that what you call positions? what? the individual trades, they had to get your approval? not one by one, no. 2012, the ry 30, c.i.o. met with the o.c.c. at their standard quarterly meeting to discuss the upcoming plans. the c.i.o. chief finance officer represented the bank at the meeting with the o.c.c. take a look at exhibit number 58 . exhibit 58 is the o.c.c. summary f that january 30 meeting. in interviews the o.c.c. examiner who attended the meeting and wrote the summary d the others that attended confirmed that the notes were accurate. out 2/3 down the page, the o.c. reports what it was told by jpmorgan chase. the .t.m. book that s mark to market book consists of the synthetic credit portfolio is decreasing in size in 2012. it is expected that the r.w.a. will decrease from $70 billion to $40 billion. do you see that, by the way, the note 2/3 down the page on exhibit 58 where it says m.t.m. book is decreasing in 2012. do you see that? ok, mrs. drew it was increasing in size in the first quarter of 2012 is that correct? you can see on the chart exhibit one. yes, that is correct. so again, this meeting took place january 31 and the o.c.c. was told that the book was decreasing in size, in fact, it was increasing in size. also in the first quarter 2012, the c.i.o. stopped sending standard data to the o.c.c. that might have alerted the agency to the portfolio s growth. january tohs from april they did not send to the o.c.c. the executive management report. in february and march, it did not send to the o.c.c. its evaluation control group reports with verified profit loss data for the synthetic credit portfolio. is that through, those reports were not sent during those months, is that true? i do not know, snort. i have no knowledge of reports not being sent to any regulators. i consider that is the wrong thing to do. so you don t know if they were sent? i do not. who is in charge of get ending those reports that were missing in january and march. who is in charge of that? i understand it is risk and finance. give us names. who is in charge of that? i don t have a specific person but within the risk and the finances any and all contact would be made with the o.c.c. mr. weiland, do you know the answer to those questions? i don t. do you know why those reports were not sent? no, i do not know. who is in charge of sending them? i don t know the people responsible to sending the reports to the regulators. my understanding that is part of the finance function. ok. maybe we can find out later from ur next witnesses. so we can find out why the reports were not sent during those critical months. ? ke a look at this, would you this is an e-mail dated march 2, 2012, it was sent to you by one of the quantitive an any facts at the bank. it is talking about c.i.o., c.r.m. results. the o.c.c. requires all national banks to use this risk measure to calculate how much money could be lost in a year in the worst case scenario. it wasn t a requirement in 2012 but it was about to become a requirement in anticipation of that, when this e-mail was written jpmorgan chase already began requiring its offices to start calculating its risk measurements. that was in part, because the o.c.c. and now does require banks to use their c.r.m. results to calculate their capital requirements, so how much money has to come from shareholders and to retain earnings. you received this e-mail, again, exhibit 47, notifying you at the bottom of the first page c.r.m. numbers increased significantly at the c.i.o. as responded these results i understand them that the synthetic credit portfolio could ose $600 billion in one year. you forwarded the e-mail to london and you called the result garbage. you wrote, we got c.r.m. numbers and they look like garbage as far as i can tell. you and your colleagues complained about the c.r.m. analysis to the head of quantitive research to the whole bank, if you look at exhibit 49, which includes an e-mail dated march 7. on the bottom of the page to all three of you and others, explain that the c.r.i. s portfolio got bigger in january and february, which is why the risk of losing so much money also shot up. here s what he wrote, which is at the bottom of the that page on exhibit 49. based on our models, we believe the $3 billion increase in our w.a., which is references to the c.r.m. is explained by an increase in short protection, long risk in our portfolio between january and february. pete weiland in your office confirmed this. mr. weiland, since the portfolio increased in size by about $33 billion in january and february, the s.c.p. wasn t decreasing as the c.i.o. told the o.c.c. on january 30, it was increasing. do you agree with that, it was increasing? yes, they were purchasing long positions. the portfolio was also increasing, is that correct? yes. the bank s quantitive experts said the risk administrationment or c.r.m. number shot up to $6 billion because its portfolio shot up in size. i understand that you had questions about that explanation at the time. do you believe that the analysts had it write, especially since the portfolio did lose $6.2 billion in a year? do you acknowledge they got it right? yes, i acknowledge it now with all the information we have today that was correct. all right. do you think it was a coincidence that the c.r.m. predicted a $6 billion loss in a scenario.e worst case do you thinks that is a coincidence? i don t know the details that generated the numbers at the time but it is agrees with the way things unfolded. senator mccain? mr. chairman, if it is ok, senator johnson has to go so i yield to him. thanks, mr. chairman and senator mccain. mr. bacon it seems you were brought in to assess what happened here. i would like to ask you a question. did the management of jpmorgan chase, was there an attitude that jpmorgan chase was too big to fail and they could drive up the risk portfolio? i don t believe that played a part at all. i think this was a set of mistakes, much regretted and not at all facing on the realliance of too big to fail. do you think the dodd-frank act ended too big to fail or has a chance of ending too big to fail? i think the work that is going on should end up in that place. i think it is to the benefit of jpmorgan chase and the system generally if we do end up in that place. do you think it has ended too big to fail or it has potential of ending it? i think it has potential. i think the work is ongoing but i m not the individual looking at that process. do you have a fair amount of contact with bank regulators in your position? a fair amount. do you believe that bank regulators are up to the task of understanding the complexity of these transactions and understanding the limits? i think the answer is generally yes. when something like this occurs and we don t understand it ourselves, i think it makes it incredibly difficult for them to understand the details and the context. ok. my time is short but i would like to sum up by saying, i think the fact of having this hearing is that we have not ended too big to fail. we re still concerned about activities of banks that could pose a risk and danger. i think the goal of congress should be get the american taxpayer off the hook for what happens to the banks. i think the only people that should worry or carry at all if jpmorgan chase lost $5 billion or $6 billion is jpmorgan chase management and jpmorgan chase shareholders and not members of congress. i hope these types of hearings and these investigations can get o the bottom of it so we can too big to fail. thank you. senator mccain. thank you, mr. chairman. mr. weiland you said you didn t know who was responsible for the reports that were supposed to be made to the o.c.c.? that is correct. do you know the office that was responsible for sending these reports? my understanding is that the financial function, part of the c.f.o. function is responsible primary responsibility to send the reports to the regulators. but you don t know who that individual might have been? jpmorgan chase is so big you don t know who would have a serious responsible to make required reports to the o.c.c., is that correct? that is correct. well, do you know who but you don t know the individual who should have been responsible? you don t know who that is? i don t know. > your former boss jamie dimon criticized the performance of the o.c.c. saying we made a mistake, we knew we were sloppy, we knew we were stupid. we knew there was bad judgment. do you share your former boss assessment of this? now that i understand what transpired during that time, including deception and risk-control issues, yes, i do agree. you maintained that the f.c.p. existed to hedge risk but in a sub committee interview you only provided an estimate of asked when the portfolio was designed to hedge. do you stand by that statement as well? certainly that was not the best world i could have chosen. i would say that in $2.5 trillion balance sheet macro hedges, which are fluid when the balance sheet changes, do change. in response to senator levin i said the positions do go up and down, they have to. that is the dynamic process. poor choice of words but i would not know the exact amount per se of each individual hedge versus the balance sheet. any hedges were limited to the balance sheet and its components. mr. weiland, you indicated in a sub committee that it was not your job to enforce the risk limits even though you were the senior risk officer. whose job was it then to enforce the risk limits? i saw the way it was written in the report. it is not my rec collection that i said those words. certainly it was my job to enforce the risk limits with partnership with the other senior management of the business. we didn t i did not make an unilateral decisions about how to respond to the exess es but it is certainly part of my job. mr. bacon, as early as march 30, you were notified that the chief officer in london lost confidence in his team. they needed help with their synthetic book and they were in crisis mode. but he said that he was surprised about the losses. doesn t this e-mail indicate otherwise and suggest they should have acted sooner? i recall the e-mail you re referring to. what i took it to be referring to at the time and i still stand by this. they had lost faith in their ability to manage their r.w.a. number. the technicals around the texting techniques and the trades to the books was something they were not handling well at all and they were asking for modeling expertise to be inserted in their group and i arranged for that to happen. in january 2012, the c.i.o. s chief financial officer assured the o.c.c. that you plan on educing the portfolio s risk own to $40 billion, yet it tripled in size instead. tell us what happened? how does that transpire? you assured the o.c.c. that you portfolio cing the but in actualalty tripled in size. was the o.c.c. misled? i don t think so, senator. i wasn t in the meeting when he met with the o.c.c. however, the plan as signed off by all senior management, including myself, was to reduce the r.w.a. over the course of the total 2012. we asked for and received permission to have a slightly higher capital number for the first quarter before then embarking on a rapid reduction from the second quarter forward. things went terribly wrong as we all know and large purchases that were made at the end of march were not brought to my attention on time. was it your responsible to fully disclose the true nature of the s.c.p. and its increasing size to the o.c.c. and did you? be s it my responsible to fully transparent but it was not my responsibility to discuss information directly with the o.c.c. no, sir. mr. weiland, you were warned in early 2012 that risk measures predicted massive losses. after the bank lost over $6 billion, you stand by your statement that the risk measures were garbage and not sensible in you re referring to two different risk measures. the results of testing, which i called garbage, is not an appropriate word and not typical my response to these things, which i take seriously. that was part of a process that we were working on to develop a model for the new c.r.m. regulatory capital requirements and that was a very first reaction to a number that you know, it was two to three times that we ve seen previously. my first reaction was, it doesn t look right. clearly as rediscussed earlier, t turned out to be predictive. ith respect to the c.s.o. 1, which is thing second reference you made. in fact, when that limit was the breached, it is true methodology we were using was not appropriate. the decision was made to make a change. the change was not made, so there was a mistake there not making the change immediately. and there was a missed have nity there to also interpreted that as a sign of something we didn t see at the time. back to you later in a later e-mail you said we re working on a new set of limits for synthetic credit and the will be replaced by something more sensible and granular. mr. bacon, there are firm-wide risk limits at jpmorgan chase. is that true? yes. were those breaches ignored? no, the breaches were not ignored. specifically the one i think you re referring to is the one in january at the firm wide level. so it was not ignored. .t caused action and escalation it was a situation where we relied upon the explanation that turned out to be wrong about the new model. an implementation that was agreed upon at the time by the . view, which all of it failed let me tell you what is hard to explain to my constituents when their tax dollars are ensuring their deposits they re going to ask, how could we balloon up to a $6 billion and basically it was not only ignoring the facts, but sort of endorsing the behavior. it seemed that the traders seem to have more responsibility and authority than the higher up executives. i have to go to a town hall meeting, ok. you tell me what i am supposed .o tell my constituents this kind of gambling went on and there is also extreme difficulty in getting their home loan mortgages consummated and obtained. tell me, mr. bacon, what should i say? , we should bel clear that the whole thing is regrettable and unacceptable. we need to demonstrate how this cannot happen in other places and how we weather the financial crisis well everywhere else and how we can make the .ntire firm a safer place this failed because of multiple things that were not caught. trading oversight and management oversight on the ground in london failed completely and second line of defense and finance after that also failed with the limits and the escalation and the risk committees, this failed. it would have been easy to catch this in many ways and regrettably it did not happen. i believe we have taken corrective actions on all these counts. do you believe that jp morgan to fail?g i think there is further work to be done to document that. i think that is something that needs to be demonstrated to everyone s satisfaction. thank you. mr. weiland, you indicated that it was your job to have coronation between senior management. is that correct? yes. may bee risk limits complicated, but the bottom line is that they sound alarms when it looks like an investment or folio is putting a lot of money at risk. a look at exhibit 1 this chart is, also up in front of you. the risk limit breaches. the limit was breached starting in january. it was changed. a new model was put into place. we will have a lot of conversation about that later on. the breach that occurred was the breach.d cs-01 that lasted longer. you can see that long red block theire. the cs01 stands for what? of a moving value credit spreads. credit spreads of one basis point of cs01. cocorerect. this exhibit lists the 2011 to from september april 30, 2012. page after page after page after page after page of breaches. were changed because of the model. ,f you look at the breaches and the last quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012, you see a huge jump. in the synthetic .redit portfolio due of 2011 tost quarter the first quarter of 2012, the number of breaches jumped six to 170. breaches.lone, 160 almost as many in that one month of april as the three previous months combined. sixbreaches compared to the breaches in the previous quarter. would you agree that when he had that kind of a huge jump in risk limit breaches that is a worrisome pattern? do you agree? are large jump is a worrisome pattern. by april, the action of halting trading had occurred. riskreaches and the metrics can change even without making trades or trading positions. the markets move. the team was tried to figure out what was the best way forward to escape from the position we were in at that time. you stopped the trading after what day in april? march 28.llection is it is in the report somewhere. late march. yes. when more than one risk limit does thatd at a time, send a stronger signal that the portfolio is overly risky? it may. it depends. if an types of measures certainly does. sometimes individual positions can trigger several limits because of the way the portfolio is organized. was a synthetic credit portfolio a low risk portfolio? no. you have these multiple breaches that are going on at huge numbers in the first quarter. .t took you until march did you see this many breaches in a portfolio question mark > portfolio? no. there are a couple of different circumstances. we missed an opportunity to understand some changes early. given that the plan was to change the limits, it continued to preach because we were working on the changes. that we weretood having active discussions on how to deal with it. continuing to have the breaches as long as everyone understands those are happening, i thought it was a good thing, which would help keep focus on the portfolio. understanding that breaches would be a good thing? let s take a look at the limit. it sounds alarm to the value of derivatives. the portfolio drops had that amount. point. firsttic credit portfolio to breach its limit on january 6. it kept reaching for more than three months. ,hen on april 19, mr. weiland the occ sent you an e-mail to take a look at exhibit 65. it askeds about that risk limit that has been in recession for 71 days. the synthetics credit portfolio is breached. is that correct? correct. it was over 10 times the limit. in that exhibit that we discussed earlier is the list of the breaches. it indicates on april 19 at the limit was $5 million, but the that 1 basis ps $59 million. is that correct? yes. you responded to the occ by saying, we are working on a new set of limits for synthetic credit and the current one be replaced. the 1000%noring breach for 71 days because the limit was not sensible. if the risk limit was outdated or not sensible, why did it take that long to update it? bank policy requires and occ requires that risk limits the updated every year. why was this limit not updated? not been updated since 2009. it has been the same since 2009. the policy is that this needs to be updated every year. it sits three years and you have a rule saying that you update it every year. 71 days goes by with it looking like that. how do you explain that? n> we were in the middle of a evaluation. for three years? no. at the time, there were a lot of changes going on. we were very focused on getting the regulatory capital models up to speed and working properly and adjusting the business to deal with those of stop those things took priority. hours.nother mistake of it was all in good faith. it was with what we knew at the time to be the case. in that limited not take first priority at the time. for three years for every year, you should have been looking at the risk limits. .ow this tied hits you breach. 10 times the limit. .t is outdated anyway despite the occ regulation, were you aware of that breach? yes. why did you not fix it? my understanding was that it was in the process of being reviewed. i was told that it was not a useful limit and that it was going to be replaced with a more useful limit that was being worked on in the risk group inside and outside. if you look at exhibit 54, when that chief risk officer wrote to you about this breach in an e-mail from february 2012, he said, we have a global credit. it was set up at the initiation of the credit book. we have been preaching for most of the year. .his is how you responded you said, i have no memory of this limit. i think you just told us that you were aware of the breach of that limit. you told and he did not have memory of it. that is correct. my understanding is that i do not know that there was a global one. he was referring in the e-mail to a global one. i probably misunderstood. that is why i followed and said it needs to be based tasked with all the other limits. it is a review that i was assured was ongoing. that it had been started and was making progress. did you know the limits are supposed to be reviewed every year? yes. were you aware that it had not been reviewed every year? i do not recall. are you where it was 1000% over the limit? no. senator mccain. very quickly and we will take a break and add to the panel. there is a second risk limit on this chart. value atwn as the risk. it sets a dollar limit on how much money is at risk being lost over the course of a day and ordinary market conditions. toathematical model is used evaluate how much value and investment per folio is putting at risk. if it exist what is established for the portfolio, it goes onto the risk managers. the portfolio reached the limits for several days, starting on january 16 and breach them again for four days. ceo jamie dimon personally approved a temporary increase, as a matter of fact come until the cio rushed through approval of a new model, which you referred to. when it was activated on january 27, it resulted in an overnight drop. 50%. the breach and did without them getting rid of a single disc investment. gettingd without them rid of a single risky investment. that is how much money was at risk at a loss. even though the portfolio had the same risky credit derivatives come its value of .isk was suddenly cut in half now it to $66 million. how did you know the new model would be more accurate? was theor, the model change in a review that have been going on for seven months by the independent risk modeling group. my understanding was that it had gone through many changes until arrived in its final form as a correct measure, one i relied on heavily to manage the position. did you test the model against the data? do you know whether it was done? i do not. did they not also say when they approved it that the cio had to automate the data entry? is that true? if they did, that would have been an order that would have gone to risk. that they not aware said you had to automate the data entry when they approved this model, right? at the time, i was not. i m aware of it now. the task force report of the bank said that that testing you said there was no back estimate that was done. is that correct? i said i did not know. take a look at this exhibit. page 104. -ere is what the - this is what the review group said. group requiredor yoewv only limited cuts to the model. there was no back testing. analyzed thently and i results that were submitted. half.s it in suddenly there is no breach. when it wasd approved, it was approved with the requirement that there only be limited back testing and the new model instead of back testing to see if it was working. it insufficiently answered the results that were submitted. and is full of operational errors. there are multiple requests to deal with operational errors. mr. bacon, what do you think of this model that drops the cio y 50% overnight? it is something that would require a lot of explanation. like that testing? > back testing? yes. what it did provide is insufficient data. limited back testing was not analyzed. that is not the way to do it. it does not analyze? i do not know. that is what the report says. i am sure that is right. onthe new model depended analyzing a daily stream of new trading data instead of constructing and audit data database that would feed the data into the model. they were stuck with having to manually enter the trading that every night using spreadsheets which had calculation and formula errors. the new value at risk model for the cio billion dollar portfolio, including the synthetic credit portfolio, was being run manually using spreadsheets with operational flaws. mr. weiland, did you know that he was doing nightly data entry and sometimes staying up to get it done? were you aware of that? i was not aware of the details of manual working. i do not know there were spreadsheets involved. i know he often stayed late at night. mr. bacon, the occ told us that the operational problems, the spreadsheets, the lack of an wereated spreadsheets, shocking and absolutely unexceptionable. do you agree? i do. ms. drew, why did the bank model of proof approve this , why did- i m sorry they approve this knowing there were problems and allow it to operate in a shoddy fashion? it is disappointing. i have no idea. the risk model group is an independent growtup. ,hey are well trained, educated phd s. i m disappointed it was not reviewed properly. did he work for your group? he did. in london. thesebothers me that limits were breached frequently. no one was told to stop trading because of a risk limit breach. no one investigated. the point of breaches? would investigate that? yes, senator. the bank reaction has been executives ande add a bunch of new ones. now it has gone to 230 risk limits for the synthetic credit per folio. it misses the point. it was not that the portfolio had too few risk limits. it was that personal did not enforce the ones that they had. i do not see how piling on another risk limits solve anything. do you want to comment? yes. i very much agree with you. one of the changes is an alteration to policies and procedures whereby automatically if there is a breach for three days, it goes to the cfo, myself, everyone. of the question of whether it is necessary to have more limits although this egregious mistake was caught by a small number of limits, if you followed up on them, there are other mistakes you could make that may not have been caught by a small set of limits, which is why be want to be safer than that. thank you. senator mccain, m.d. have anything to add? do you have anything to add? no, i do not. we will take a five-minute minute break if anyone needs to use the restroom. we will be back in five minutes. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] here is a look at the primetime programming across the c-span network. at 8 p.m., defense secretary chuck hagel. he briefed reporters on the north korean nuclear threat. on c-span 2, more from today s hearing and the trading losses by jpmorgan chase. on c-span 3, a hearing on medicare payment policies. we ll have more cpap coverage later tonight. former governor jeb bush is scheduled to address a gathering. it will start at approximately 8:45 p.m. friday or on c-span. we have been at the top friends all day. attendees heard from a new hampshire republican senator. she touched on iran s nuclear program. here is a brief look. today i want to speak with you about another grave threat that our nation faces. this is an issue that keeps me up at night. that is the security of our nation. [applause] i have a simple question for all of you. how many of you believe that radical islam is a threat to our way of life? [cheers and applause] if you believe that. well, i agree. i m deeply concerned with what is happening around the world. , wemerica fails to lead will create a vacuum that will empower extremists and make america less safe. [applause] let s start with the ayatollahs in iran. iran is the largest date sponsor terrorism state sponsor of terrorism. they have supported by linda extremist in iraq and afghanistan violent extremists in iraq and afghanistan who have killed our troops. provides weapons and so they can use their weapons to murder his own people. iran is the regime that calls our country the great satan. look at the recent activity. they have announced they are building thousands of new centrifuges at its under down uranium facility. how many of you believe that they are enriching all of this uranium for peaceful nuclear power or medical isotopes? i do not believe it either. let me tell you what happens if iran gets a nuclear weapon. there will most certainly be an arms race in the middle east. the sunni arab countries will persians toe shia have a nuclear weapon unless they have the very same capability. a nuclear arms race in the world s most volatile region would be like lighting a match in a timber box. here is my biggest fear of all it is not that iran will put a nuclear weapon on the end of a missile. my biggest fear is that they will give this nuclear technology to a terrorist organization. the public is not paying as much attention as you are i am and those of us part of the political community. what i call the political community is probably about 10 million people. it is the people that watch c- span and meet the press and fox and cnn. msnbc they care about all it takes a lot. we had about 130 million voters. they think a lot of what goes on is background noise. people are forming an opinion of romney and obama and so on. reach many oft those people. great ratings and has a loyal audience, but look at the other shows. three million people per night. that is not the electorate. this is a big country. the conservative media only reaches a tiny chunk of them. more with political commentator fred barnes sunday night at 8 p.m. on c-span s q& a. earlier today president obama traveled to the midwest to talk about energy strategy. he urged congress to set aside $2 billion over the next decade to support advanced vehicle technology research. he talked about the initiative wearing his state of the union speech. argonne national laboratory. [applause] hello, everybody. hello, illinois. hello. it is good to be home. let me begin by saying thank you for that great introduction and the leadership she is showing with her team on so many different and amazing breakthroughs. thank you to dr. isaac for getting me a great tour of your facilities. it is not every day i get to walk into a thermal test chamber. [laughter] i told my girls that i would go into a thermal test chamber and they are pretty excited. i told him i would come out looking like the hulk. [laughter] they did not believe that. i want to say thank you to my ,riends and your friends senator dick durbin. [applause] an outstanding member of congress who can explain some of the things going on is here. [applause] congressman bobby rush. [applause] glad he is here. we have a number of state and local officials with us, and i could not come to without without someone who has served our country so well for these past four years, dr. steven chu. [applause] i m here today to talk about what should be our top priority as a nation. that is reigniting the engine of american economic growth. classng, thriving middle and an economy built on innovation. in my state of the union address, our most important task was to drive that economic growth. i meant it. we should be asking ourselves the questions how to make america a land for good jobs? how do we equip people with skills and training to do those jobs? how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living? please upgrade to sit down. i m sorry. everyone is standing. maybe it was one of the effects of the sequester. he had to get rid of chairs. [laughter] i chose argonne national lab because few areas hold more promise for creating good jobs and growing our economy than how we use american energy. after years of talking about it, we are poised to take control of our energy future. we produce more oil that we have in 15 years. we import less oil than we had in 20 years. we have doubled the amount of renewable energy that we generate from wind and solar. tens of thousands of good jobs to show for it. we are producing more natural gas than we have before that hundreds of thousands of good jobs to show for it. we have supported the first new nuclear power plant in america since the 1970s. we are sending less carbon pollution in the environment and we have in nearly 20 years. we are making progress across the board. it is possible in part because of labs like this and outstanding scientists like many of you entrepreneurs, innovators all of you are working together to take your discoveries and turn it into a business. think about this. a few years ago, the american auto industry was flatlining. thanks to discoveries made right here at argonne, some of the most high tech, fuel-efficient, pretty spiffy cars in the world are once again designed come engineered, and built here in the united states. that is why we have to keep investing in scientific research. we have to maintain our edge. the work you are doing today will end up in a product we make and sell tomorrow. you re helping to secure our energy future stop if we do it well, that will help us avoid some of the perils of climate change. it will leave a healthier planet for our kids. to do it, we have to make sure we re making the right noises in washington. the other day, dr. isaac and directors of two other national laboratories wrote about the effects of the so-called sequester, across the board budget cuts. it will have an effect on scientific research. one of the reasons i was opposed to the cuts is because they do not distinguish between vital investment and wasteful programs. they do not trim the fat, but cut into muscle. done is research being here that gives a great place for researchers to come, but also to create all kinds of stuff that create good jobs. dr. isaac said these cuts will force him to stop any new projects down the line. he says, the sudden halt will freeze american science in place while the rest of the world faceraces forward. it will costs millions of dollars in mr. future opportunities. because of the sequester, we are looking at two years where we do not start new research. every month you have to replace your smartphone because something new has come up, imagine what that means when are pumping upny their research and we are sitting there doing nothing. we cannot afford to miss these opportunities while the rest of the world races forward. we have to seize opportunities. i want the job breakthroughs in energy or nanotechnology or bioengineering to be right here in the united states of america and creating american jobs and maintaining our technological lead. [applause] i want to be clear these cuts will harm in not help our economy. they are not the smart way to cut deficits. that is why i m reaching out to democrats and republicans to come together around a balanced approach smart, phased-in approach to deficit reduction. smart spending cuts and new revenue that will not hurt the middle class or slow economic growth. if we do that, we can move beyond governing from crisis to crisis and keep the focus on policies that create jobs and grow the economy. we can move forward to fixing the broken immigration system and educating our kids and keeping them safe from gun violence. are more important than getting the energy future right. and other labs around the country, scientists are working to get us where we need to be. feel firstmericans when it comes to energy prices issues are prices they pay at the pump. we went through another spike in gas prices. people were not happy about it. the problem is that it happens every year. it happened last year and the year before that. it is a serious blow to family budgets. it is coming right out of your pocket. every time it happens, politicians dust off their plans for two dollar gas, but nothing happens. that may go through the same cycle again. over the past four years, we have not just talked about it. we have started to do something about it. we work with companies to put in place the toughest fuel economy standards in history. at theat means is that middle of the next decade, cars will go twice as far on a gallon of gas. that we set is what is driving engineers and scientists working in labs. we have set achievable, but ambitious goals. in the middle of next decade, we expect you will feel up fuel up and spend half as much. average family will save money at the pump. that is worth applauding. that is good news. [applause] show report issued today that america is becoming a global leader in advanced vehicles. you walk into any dealership today and you ll see twice as many hybrids to choose from as they were five years ago. seven times as many cars that can go 40 miles a gallon or more of stock or more. general motors sold more hybrid bugles than ever before. ford is selling some of the most fuel efficient cars. we are helping businesses succeed and we are creating good, middle-class jobs in america. , bute are making progress the only way to break this cycle of spiking gas race prices is to shift our cars entirely off oil. ont is why i called congress to set up an energy security trust to fund research and the new technologies that will help us reach that goal. i would like to take credit for this idea because it is a good idea, but i cannot. basically my proposal builds up a proposal that was put forward by a nonpartisan coalition that includes retired generals and admirals and ceos. they came together around a simple idea much of our energy is drawn from lands and waters that we own together. but they proposed is to take some oil and gas revenue from public lands and put it toward research that will benefit the public. we can support american ingenuity without adding a dime to the deficit. we can support scientists that are designing new engines that are more energy efficient and developing cheaper batteries that can go farther on a single charge. support scientist and engineers that are devising new ways to fuel cars with advanced biofuels and natural gas. drivers can one day go coast geocodes without using a drop of oil. cost tast to coast without using a drop of oil. it is not just about saving money. it is also about saving the environment. our nationalout security. for military officials like general paul kelly, as is about national security. for business leaders, like the ceo of fedex, it was about economic security. when gas prices go up, it is harder to expand operations and create new jobs. these leaders say we need to fix this. this is not a democratic or republican idea. it is just a smart idea. we should be taking their advice. let s set up an energy security trust that helps us free our families and businesses from painful spikes in gas once and for all. we can do it. [applause] in the meantime, we will keep moving on the all of the above strategy that we have been working on for the last couple of years where we are producing more oil and gas at home, it also producing biofuels. we are producing more solar power and wind power. we are working to make sure that here in america we are building cars and homes and businesses that waste less energy. we can do this. the nature of america s miraculous rise has been our oure, our spirit, willingness to reach for new horizons, our willingness to take risks, our willingness to innovate. we are not satisfied with how things have been. we will try something that we might imagine now, but will achieve. that is the nature of america. that is what argonne national lab is about. that is what this facility is about. [applause] two decades ago, scientists at where isled by mike he? [applause] started work on a rechargeable battery for cars. some folks at the time puppy idea was not worth it. he said if you have the technology, the car would cost a lot and would not go far enough. but mike and his team knew better. they knew you could do better. and america, our federal government made it a priority. we funded those efforts. mike went to work. when others gave up, the team kept on at it. when development and eestnet, the team found a solution. when development hit a snag, the team found a solution. they created a lithium battery that costs less and lasts longer. what was an idea two decades ago is now rolling office emily lyons in cutting edge fuel efficient cars is now blt lines inassem cutting edge comedy fuel efficient cars. or 20 years from now, we will be offering solutions to our problems that we cannot even copy hand even comprehend. as long as the pipeline for research is maintained, as long as we recognize that we do together as a country and the private sector in its own will not invest in this research because it is too expensive. we cannot afford it. we have got to support it. we will all benefit from it. kids will benefit from it and our grandkids will benefit from it. that is who we are. that has been the american story. you do not stand still. we look forward. we turn new ideas into new industries. we change the way we can live our lives. that is how we sent a man to the moon. that is how we invented the internet. when someone tells us we can do , we say, we can. willonfident that we succeed as long as we do not lose that spirit of innovation and recognize we can only do it together. i will work as hard as i can every single day to make sure we do. congratulations, argonne. he put up. god bless you keep it up. god bless you. god bless america. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] on the next washington journal chairman of the american conservative union talks about the future and the challenges of the conservative movement. , bob edgar from common cause. thejohn carter discusses impact of the federal spending cuts on national parks across the country. washington journal is live at 7 a.m. eastern on c-span. wethe simple fact is that all getting older together. fertility rates have dropped. we re having this inverted aramid pyramid. slow-growing, developing countries have lower fertility rates. japan, russia, and china is feeling the impacts of the one child policy. we are better off in the rest of the developed world. , weke most of the world have a tried and true way to deal with this demographic time bomb. it does not have to be destiny if you change course. the path we can take is to allow for a strategic reform of our immigration laws so we can bring young, aspirational people that will rebuild the demographic pyramid and make our system secure and jumpstart our economy in a way that will create an uplifting of our hopes and dreams, but also impact economic road. u.s. economic growth and immigration policy. former governor jeb bush on immigration wars. tv on c-y on book span 2. elizabeth monroe refused to conditiotinue the tradition of visiting we will explore her relationship with teens monroe and close relationship with the successor. we will see the important role she played
. . . megyn: getting a lot of feedback to the debate we had with other working moms. weigh in now. follow me at megyn kelly. up next. shep: thank you. good evening from rome. news begins anew, tensions in the korean peninsula, north korea said they scrapped the old agreement that ended the korean war but it really didn t as they conduct new war games. we ll separate the rhetoric from the real and. blader runner wants his passport back. and speaking out a big way in airport security. he says most of his former co-workers know that the tsa job is a joke and that it is only a matter of time until terrorists attack them. all ahead unless breaking news changes everything on studio b . it is 3:00 on the east coast and 8:00 p.m. at rome where we re hours away from the papal conclave. secretive selection process that will decide on the leader of the one billion catholics. from all over the globe they are set to celebrate mass. from there they will head over to the sistine chapel and decide for a replacement for the retiring pope benedict xvi. no newspapers and no internet, no nothing they won t be able to tweet updates on the status until the puff of white smoke appears in the sky and then we ll have a new pope. we have team fox coverage this afternoon. let s begin with amy kellogg live outside the basilica tonight. reporter: the vatican today gave us a taste of the splendor and ceremony that will accompany this conclave. you know, shep, it s not just the cardinals who will be shut down from texting and tweeting. the vatican says if we have any trouble at all to disseven with whether the smoke is white or black they will not be sending any clarification. we ll have to figure it out ourselves. the cardinals had their final done degree gas station before the conclave begins. they spoke about the vatican bank, an issue that has vexed the vatican as international institutions demand more transparency but housekeeping matters will be put aside and all about the die vine guidance in the process of choosing a new pope. they will make it to the sistine chapel and will be accompanied by cantors who will sing the litany of saints and invocation to the holy spirit. each will take an oath in latin after which the order extra ommus that two additional officiating cardinals and then the voting begins. the pontiff cal investments has come here and he will be in the room of tears and of course accept. it s caused room of tears and then on to the balcony to give the first blessing to the waiting world. shep, the vatican even says we shouldn t expect all this to happen tomorrow. we think we will see smoke tomorrow but it will probably be black. that said, of course, anything is possible once the conclave begins. shep: amy kellogg, thank you so much. the founder and editor in chief of a website and junior fellow with the catholic association and knows the ins and outs. great to be with you. what is to expect tomorrow? we re starting out with mass. this is what the faith is all about and symbolizes what they are doing is submitting themselves to the will of the holy spirit. this they believe they are operating under the will and guidance of the holy spirit. shep: if we cut to the chase, they have been politicing in there, haven t they. come on. 115 of them that many of them haven t met. shep: to say there is no politicking going on, is it true? they are absolutely barred from politicking but they are discussing what are the problems facing the church and what are the real issues are facing these men as they consider who is going to be leading the church for the next however long. shep: it seems as least if you read all the local press, front runners have emerged and not at least the cardinal from milan? people are talking about cardinal dolan and o malley so it s absolutely impossible to predict but whoever is going to be chosen is going to be embraced by the 1.2 billion catholics around the world. shep: and where do they begin? there are a lot of challenges the church is facing. pope benedict did an excellent job of tacking the most difficult charges including the sex abuse challenge. i think we can be assured that they will continue to going forward. shep: finally, the thing i ve been reading the most is rome versus the reformers. it s the headline everywhere with exhaustive how one side wants to move forward and romans want to keep things how they have been. do you have a sense how that is shaping up? if there are tensions, we ll never know. this is big part of why these things are kept secret so it doesn t turn into a political event. it s a spiritual event. shep: thank you, ashley. the standoff with nuclear arms, north korea has taken no breaks, it s taken a dangerous turn. state media reports that the they have cancelled the 60 year armistice that ended the korean war. apparently there are a lot of factors in play here. north korea has repeatedly threatened all out war against the united states specifically and others. even vowed to louwlg an attack on united states specifically washington, d.c., not it can do that. and they also did another test of nuclear weapons. we have come up here new video of anti-korean protest in south korea. 3,000 u.s. troops joined 10,000 from south korea for joint military drills. it s part of the field exercises which is not unusual and to prepare for different scenarios in any possible conflict with the north. the our chief correspondent, jonathan hunt is live this afternoon. it s coming from all sides? most threaten, not surprisingly coming from the leadership in north korea. as the u.s. gets underway with the large exercises with the long time ally south korea, officials are making clear they will stand by south korea and stand by japan which is regularly threatened by north korea. in the words of tomorrow donalon the u.s. will not tolerate a nuclear armed north korea. in remarks prepared to give to the asia society the united states refuses to acknowledge bad north korea behavior. they won t accept empty promises or yielding to threats to get the assistance it needs and the respect it claims it wants. north korea will have to change course. south korea s new president also weighing in today, south korea is most in the direct line of fire if north korea does anything. the south korean president has put the military there on high alert and says if there was any nuclear attack, the north korean regime would, quote, disappear from the face of the earth, shep. shep: do we know what is behind this sudden burst of north korean anger? not definitively because nobody could get in the mind of kim jong un but number one, the military exercises with the south korean military and also on top of that the new and pretty punishing economic measures adopted by the united nations security council here last week which really speak to put a lot of pressure on north korea and stop them pursuing any sort of nuclear program. so it s in response to those two things. what worries a lot of experts this may be a case of kim jong un still trying to prove himself new leader. we know he can be irrational so its dangerous time. shep: back home in new york, another big day on wall street. markets in positive territory yet again. gerri willis is in next. plus emergency crews rush into rescue three people after the ground opens up beneath them. the latest sinkhole scare. coming up on this edition from studio b live from rome as is we await the papal conclave. 00. we asked total strangers to watch it for us. thank you so much. i appreciate it. i ll be right back. they didn t take a dime. how much in fees does your bank take to watch your money? if your bank takes more money than a stranger, you need an ally. ally bank. your money needs an ally. . shep: what a day on wall street. it s happening again, our 401ks are smiling ear to ear. they hit an all time high. 7th straight session we ve seen a gain. it quickly turned around and spent most of the afternoon in the united states up around 30 points or so. dow reached a record high last tuesday, it s still up 30. it kept climbing from there and you can see the index has more than made up for its losses when the economy nankd 2007. gerri willis is with us. what is driving it today? there is not a lot of u.s. economic news, it s the rest of the world. italy downgraded by fitch so their debt downgraded, fitch is an important american firm and china s growth is down. that has ramifications for everybody. the rest of the world not doing so hot. we look like the prettiest horse in the glue factory. shep: and billion hedge fund manager apparently considering to move to puerto rico? this is john paulson. he made his money back in 2007 by betting against the mortgage market. now, he is trying to protect his money from taxes. puerto rico offers new residents no local or federal taxes on capital gains. so he is going to move to puerto rico and pay nothing on his $9.5 billion in gains and make a heck of a return on his investment. paulson is notable for his bet which is one of the few that made that bet against the mortgage market way back in 2007. shep: the weather is nice in puerto rico if nothing else. gerri, thank you so much. we have sinkhole problems. have you heard about this? eastern pennsylvania and they forced a family to evacuate their home after it swallowed parts of the driveway and their house. it s about 30 feet wide and 12 feet deep. a sewer line burst where it opened up and fire crews had to rescue a woman and daughter and granddaughter and declared the home inhabitable. it was two week ago that a naturally occurring sinkhole killed a man in his bedroom. afghan president hamid karzai with friends like this he is accusing the united states of working with the taliban to destabilize his country. it may just be politics in afghanistan with the u.s. defense secretary there, the accusations take on extra weight. we ll get into that next. as we report live from rome on the eve of the conclave to elect a new pope. 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 arges, and expenses. d#: 1-800-345-2550 you can request a ospectus by calling schwab tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 at 800-435-4000. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 please read the prospectus carefully before investing. at a hertz expressrent kiosk, you can rent a car without a reservation. and without a line. now that s a fast car. it s just another way you ll be traveling at the speed of hertz. the day building a play set begins with a surprise twinge of back pain. and a choice. take up to 4 advil in a day or 2 aleve for all day relief. 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[ male announcer ] that s handy. vo:wiplus wireless speaker,rhead bold is the proud sponsor of singing in the shower. . shep: two u.s. troops are dead after an afghan police officer grabbed a machine gun in the back of a pickup truck and opened fire in a group of special forces, it comes one day after hamid karzai accuses the u.s. secretly working with taliban to stage suicide bombings. it happened in the warback province west of kabul. the government also wounded a number of other troops and killed several afghan police officers. insider attacks have been a major problem for the pentagon. earlier today our new defense secretary chuck hagel wrapped up his first trip to afghanistan since he took the position and he said hamid karzai is dead wrong when he claims that the u.s. troops have helped stage two suicide attacks in to scare afghans to get u.s. troops to stay. this just flies in the face of reality. things are really deteriorating? it really does. defense secretary hagel s first trip as defense secretary to the war zone really marred by both of violence you mentioned. there were two other suicide bombings this past weekend. one of them killed eight children beyond this morning s attack you mentioned that killed two u.s. soldiers. the bottom line you have the violence on top of that these comments by president karzai, down right bizarre and drew a angry response from jay carney. america with the taliban are not their enemy and they are not fighting the taliban. in the name of the taliban they are abusing our people. the taliban are in daily talks with the americans but detonating bombs in kabul and they are not. that is categorically false. nobody believes it. our men and women for going on 12 years have sacrificed enormously on behalf of afghanistan. reporter: that is what is tough on the administration and parts of coalition and the fact there has been over 3,000 casualties among the constitutional led by the u.s. during this war over the last 12 years so the comments from karzai is tough. shep: certainly not helpful and how in the world are we going to have negotiations after we pull out of there. reporter: you are exactly right. that is why the administration is pushing karzai but they only have so much leverage but they need him to figure out what a post 2014 afghanistan looks like. take a listen to general james maddis that was asked by mccain how many troops should be on the ground after the u.s. is officially supposed to be leaving. what about the residual force? post 2014 force, that decision has not been made. it s still under consideration. i have made my recommendation? which is? that recommendation is for 13,600 u.s. forces. reporter: i asked jay carney about that specific number and he would not commit whether the president is going to back general mattis recommendation in moving after these unfortunate comments. will the u.s. commit to that kind of force or pull out together as we saw in iraq. there are critics of the administration if we don t leave some forces behind, any security gains that have been made will be completely lost. shep: you wonder how many people will be lost and left behind. robert pelton returned from a five week trip with united states special forces unit. robert knows karzai s bodyguards and author of a book the world s most dangerous places. i don t know what to do. we ve been making these predictions. everybody has been making them on your friend hamid karzai. what do you do? first you have to realize there are two sets of negotiations going on with the taliban. the u.s. has gone around karzai and set up an office from qatar. karzai is trying to set up a deal with pakistan to give him more influence with the taliban. that is why he spoke out. the suicide bombings in kabul are done by a group that is not part of the conversations. so the group has been running into kabul for about three years. shep: you pay a lot of attention to this stuff. if you were giving advice to anybody on the matter, john mccain staying how many will stay behind, would it help for them to be there at all? first of all you have to scrape off the long tail support system we built. we have thousands and thousands of troops that don t need to be there but we have a core group of special operations that are using extraordinary intelligence and lots of assets to go after al-qaeda, taliban perpetrators. those people need to stay because they literally pour into the country as soon as the americans pull out of a region and hand it over to the afghans it gets infested by fundamental units. so those people need to stay there. on the other hand karzai is not going to be around 2014. he has a maximum term limit. so we should hedge our bets until then. shep: one of the questions all along our goal has been to train the afghan forces to take care of themselves. are we anywhere near that? no. i was with those forces in combat. i can tell you the commandos do a good job, afghan forces do good and afghan army and afghan police give it up. it s not going to work. shep: robert, thanks as always. now to the olympic blade runner, oscar pistorius, he is fighting to get his pass portal back. his lawyers said he should be allowed to leave south africa. i don t know if you have been keeping up but headlines he may be suicidal. new maps redefining who lives in a good zone and could force thousands of homeowners to pay big buck foz are flood insurance insurance those homeowners will most likely never need. that is coming up on the top of the news live tonight from rome on studio b. what s next? he s going to apply testosterone to his underarm. axiron, the only underarm treatment for low t, can restore testosterone levels back to normal in most men. axiron is not for use in women or anyone younger than 18. axiron can transfer to others through direct contact. women, especially those who are or who may become pregnant, and children should avoid contact where axiron is applied as unexpected signs of puberty in children or changes in body hair or increased acne in women may occur. report these signs and symptoms to your doctor if they occur. tell your doctor about all medical conditions and medications. do not use if you have prostate or breast cancer. serious side effects could include increased risk of prostate cancer; worsening prostate symptoms; decreased sperm count; ankle, feet, or body swelling; enlarged or painful breasts; problems breathing while sleeping; and blood clots in the legs. common side effects include skin redness or irritation where applied, increased red blood cell count, headache, diarrhea, vomiting, and increase in psa. see your doctor, and for a 30-day free trial, go to axiron.com. . shep: i m shepard smith. it s studio b. time for the top of the news, live tonight from rome. oscar pistorius is that is according to the his family. that word has been on websites all over the world for the last 24 hours. they are shooting down the friend s claim that he is broken man on the verge of killing himself as he sits charged with murder. his attorneys are appealing the tevys of his bail. they say he should be allowed to travel while he awaits for travel. like all murder suspects, back on valentine s day, they say pistorius crushed his girlfriend s skull with bat. they say he thought she was an intruder but they say it was murder. lawyers say almost under house arrest. he got probation and correctional officers visiting him four times a month and his lawyers would like him to get out of that. he can t have colonel and to other banned substances. and he can t be allowed to leave south africa. his lawyers are saying he should be allowed to leave because he is too high profile and allowed to try to make some money but the prosecutors say they will object to that with every other change in bail that the defense is seeking. shep: and reports are saying that he having serious money troubles? that is one of the reasons he want wants to get back to the house where the shooting happened so he can pay for the up coming trial. you have to remember he lost those very lucrative deals with nike and sold off investments like his racehorses. his family does not deny his legal bills are massive but they are saying, look, he is not suicidal. he is very strong releasing a statement, quoting here, we are acutely aware of the fact this is only the beginning of a long road to prove that as we believe oscar never intended to harm reeva steenkamp and we realize the law must run the course and we respect the process. they understand it s expensive process. next hearing is set for early june. this case likely won t go to trial until sometime at the end of the year. shep: trace, thanks very much. a fox urgent now. you know the ban on sodas and other drinks in new york city? bang, a judge just tossed it that was set to take affect tomorrow banning sales. it s been a hallmark of the new york city mayor s health campaign which has targeted transfat and salt. i just got word from what the judge said. let s bring the lawyers. arthur and mercedes. i got word from the judge. this is state supreme court justice in manhattan who has just ruled that the new regulation is arbitrary and capricious preeshs. what say you? let s say there are two different kinds of judges in new york. one type is selected and appointed by the mayor. take a guess, shep. this was not one selected by the mayor. shep: i m guessing it wasn t that. he was elected by the people of new york county. he said it s too arbitrary. look at the smoking ban. there is no smoking in a restaurant, amen. no smoking, also smoking when i smoke it affects other people not just me. soda it s only affecting me. here the rules were you can buy the drinks in the big supermarket but you can t by them in a movie theater. it s going to cost the customers more and make the guys that are selling this stuff lose money. judge is like, it s too all over the place. what is next? shep: everybody in new york has changed the way serving things. changed prices and men guidelines. mercedes this is ready to go. our company cafeteria, wendy s is preparing for it? shame on the judge for playing politics over people. the mayor s heart was in the right place. it s protecting all of us in making poor choices. in you want 32 ounces you will have to buy a couple glasses of soda. shep: it s stupid. i could get a 50 ounce diet coke. blue sugar is worse than the white sugar. but you are in great shape. you make right choices. that is why obesity is an all time high. all you have to do is walk around and see. i think the mayor would have been much more successful if he limited it to schools, where juveniles are where they don t have the choices or the education to make the right choices. but here to say everybody in new york city excuse me? shep: it s not over. it s not over. shep: bloomberg doesn t hear from a judge and say no. he has the research and say this is a health concern. lots of people are affected by this. they need to control their diet. they need to be healthier. that is why bloomberg can can.. shep: new construction requirement in federal flood maps. have you heard about this? now force something of the victims of sandy making tough choices. some residents in the northeast must now decide whether to spend thousands of dollars raising their homes above the flood level provisions or face new insurance premiums. rick is live in new jersey. call the mississippi gulf coast and tell me what happened after katrina. this is what happens after storms like this. god afternoon, well to the south s world. reporter: some people, closer you live to the water the more you will have to pay in insurance premiums. folks, via case home, they made the tough choices. house standing this morning, if they fixed it up, their insurance would have gone through the roof. if they raised it on stilts. this is what happened. they tore the place home. and they will bring a new home up on pylons. we were hear with the homeowner while she watched her place being flattened but she is keeping things in perspective. we re not the worst here. there are so many people that had their primary home and can t live in them and living out of hotels. this is sad for me, but i know we re not the worst off. there is a lot of other people that are worse off than we are. reporter: they are dipping into their 401-k to pay for the new house. shep: it s possible they won t get any insurance at all what happened on the mississippi coast f it was the water that took the house away, you would get nothing and salesmen then you would have to raise your house up? people are facing difficult choices. we met another family, they live down in pine beach new jersey. house that was built by her grandfather back in the 1940s they got four feet of water. they had no flood insurance because they weren t in flood shown. they got $30,000 in emergency funds and they spent it. now new maps put their house in a flood zone and they may have to start all over again. smart thing for us to do would have been to wait and not spend any money on the house until we realize how high up it has to go because it s wasting money because if the house can t be raised you have to tear it down. reporter: all these maps haven t been finished yet so a lot of people still don t foe know if they should spend their insurance money if it will be waste of time down the road. shep: experts have been telling us for years the security functions we have set up at the airlifts are basically worth less. people have wondered about this for the entire time. now we re hearing the same thing some of thousands standing around. one of the tsa agents right in the middle of it. security at the airports, this is blockbuster and it s just ahead on studio b as we report from rome. hey. they re coming. yeah. british. later. sorry. ok.four words. scarecrow in the wind. a baboon. monkey? 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[ doctor ] enbrel, the number one biologic medicine prescribed by rheumatologists. . shep: live look at the big board on the corner of wall street in manhattan en route on seventh straight record high, 14,424. we ll keep tabs on this program and turn things over to neil cavuto and fresh business perspective at the top of the hour. we are about 13 hours away from the start of the papal conclave. actually all of the cardinals will come together for prayer in the morning and then rome time and have a vote for the first vote for pope will be tomorrow afternoon sometime around 4:00 local time here. just about 11:00 a.m. on the east coast, 8:00 a.m. on the west coast of the united states. united states have started daylight savings time. that will be tomorrow afternoon we ll have live coverage from rome for you. very confusing i don t even know what time it is. airport security, they don t either it s not a question whether terrorists will get through. it s when they will get through. that is from a former transportation security administration screener who claims the whole metal detector take off junior shoes and patted is just a show, to make you feel better and it does absolutely nothing to keep us safer. that is what the screener says. former screener worked at newark liberty international airport and spoke with the new york post. he says goofing off and long bathroom breaks are the norm and men screeners pay more attention to the women passengers but they always find your shampoo. the former screener went on to say, quote, a small number of screeners are dluih zealots who believe they are keeping america safe by taking your two inch pocketknife and four ounce bottle of shep: with us analyst, judge andrew napolitano which must be shocked by this revelation? shep, we don t know who this anonymous former worker is but is articulated ago lot of what people feel. that intrusiveness is embarrassing and just as important as those doesn t keep us safe. now we have it from the inside that much of what they do is for show. i don t know where it goes from here except this person whoever he or she is saying what many people who fly through newark international airport and other american airports have believed for a long time. much of this is no good and irritating and just to make us think that the government is doing something to keep us safe when it is not doing anything realistic at all. shep: we can go back to the early days of the war on on terror they told us what to do is to put this duct tape all around your windows and put your hands up in the air like this and let s take a pick your private parts and you ll be fine. give me the bottle of shampoo. it s preposterous. every airline official we ve had on this newscast says the same thing. judge, they have 87,000 employees, it s big business. you are right. it s an enormous bureaucracy, president george w. bush did not want to create a department of homeland security and did not want them unionized. some of them are privatized they do wear the uniforms of tsa agents but private employees whose corporations have a contract with the federal government. this guy or gal who complains of new york post is not one of them but hated his work and hated his employer. shep: don t you wonder what the meeting was like when they were all sitting around, all tsa bigwigs, i think we can tell them they can bring knives. who is making the decisions? i don t know how they decide these things. it s absurd you can bring a baseball bat but not a bottle of water or shampoo. they have studies or some kind polls and statistics but what they lack is common sense. they don t talk to you. they don t interact with you. they get in your face and make your experience uncomfortable and don t keep us safe. that is what he is saying. i think you will hear more people as they leave tsa supporting what this person has said. this is caused quite a stir over here today, my friend. shep: i m not surprised. the goal is always get through there without somebody doing to you something which if done in public would be a felony. i just want to make sure to take the belt off so i don t get all whole business. i don t have a need for that. technology is moving closer to giving paraplegics a way out of their wheelchairs. why the folks behind this exoskeleton project say the technology could be available by next year. when we continue tonight from rome ahead of the papal conclave. that. it s a natural source of fiber and five essential vitamins. it s the smart choice for me. stay fit on the inside with sunsweet s amazing juices. i m up next, but now i m sging the heartburn blues. hold on, prilosec isn t for fast relief. cue up alka-seltzer. it stops heartburn fast. oh what a relief it is! hi victor! mom? i know you got to go in a minute but this is a real quick me, that s perfect for two! campbell s chunky beef with country vegetables, poured over rice! [ male announcer ] campbell s chunky soup. it fills you up right. poured over rice! humans. we are beautifully imperfect creatures living in an imperfect world. that s why liberty mutual insurance has your back, offering exclusive products like optional better car replacement, where if your car is totaled, we give you the money to buy one a model year newer. call. and ask an insurance expert about all our benefits today, like our 24/7 support and service, because at liberty mutual insurance, we believe our customers do their best out there in the world, so we do everything we can to be there for them when they need us. plus, you could save hundreds when you switch, up to $423. call. today. liberty mutual insurance responsibility. what s your policy? . shep: new technology now that is helping a paraplegic walk again and it could hit the shelves by next year. according to folks behind the exoskeleton project it s moving closer to fda pravl and the only device while sitting in a car or essentially walking again. john, roberts great news from atlanta. reporter: good afternoon but i have seen a lot of devices but few as remark aj. this is michael gore he was in a wheelchair for more than a decade after an industrial accident. he had no use of his legs and he can t even feel them. watch as he puts his feet down and stands up. this powered exoskeleton is a robot he wears around his weight he can sit and stand up and even climb stairs. he only gets to use eight couple times a month it has given a whole new perspective. independence, freedom, joy again. it s a different outlook on life from being normal to being paralyzed. you are paralyzed but almost mobile again. reporter: really amazing. this is one of three such devices. this one is derived from aircraft and sbril robotic technology. its scaled down version of that. the company that is developing this, blue sky envisions they will have much more sophisticated device that is controlled by your thoughts. i wanted this to change lives. i want this device to be accessible to the populations that need it most, can be taken and fit into a user s life and enable them to enjoy the freedom that they previously experienced before their experience. reporter: right now this uses smart phone technology, same thing that flips around your screen in your phone, when you lean forward that is when it starts to walk. one potential draw back the device in the clinical setting will likely be subject to obamacare device tax which is going to increase costs. when they get in the home the price may be prohibitive. just the parts alone runs to about $60-65,000. they don t know if insurance will cover any of that cost. shep: we ll see. looks like a life changer. new study out, how we feel about studies around here. this one says even mummies had heart disease. they scanned the more than 130 mummies from ancient populations and they found, drol drum roll, they had vase car conditions in their arteries and they were all surprised to find some of the problems were hunter gatherers that would likely be low risk considering a active lifestyle. many of them used fire to keep warm which likely contributed to the inhalation of a lot of smoke. shep: so who is going to be next n ex pope. making a wager on the event. it s gotten a lot more difficult. we ll have details on that live from rome before we turn it over to cavut. 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breakthroughs and failures, the final day of talks on the protection of endangered animals. we begin with pricking news out of iraq, where breaking news out of iraq, where there are reports of several explosions during rush hour. to green zone is home several embassies and government ministries as well. our correspondent is live with more information, osama mohammed. just a while ago, four main, big explosions hit the compound where our al jazeera compound is located. there are different ministries, such as the ministry of foreign affairs, the main provincial council building, and the justice department and the building for justice. there were explosions. there were we heard that the we heard the sirens and the armored vehicles. we contacted our police sources. they have been saying that at least two were killed and other another dozen injured. askhat s what i wanted to you, any of the numbers you re getting, the latest numbers on the casualties here and what is the situation right now? are you hearing from police or your sources that it is still going on? hearing the helicopters hovering over the skies of the perimeter. the security forces have imposed some sort of security some sort of curfew in that area where our office and the ministries are. this is the situation that remains. you are saying that the area there is quite packed with ministries. it is very close to the al jazeera office as well. , it is really close to al jazeera. we were surprisingly we got all of these glowing all of this billowing smoke coming into the office. the main explosions happened after a calm day. thank you very much. that is osama mohammed reporting from the iraqi capital of baghdad. catholics around the world are welcoming the appointment of a new pontiff. pope francis began his first day as leader of the catholic church in private prayer at the basilica in rome. the man formerly known as jorge mario bergoglio is the first pope to be selected from outside europe in 1000 years. .e began his day in prayer what is on his to do list over the next couple of days? , accordingheduled to the archbishop of new york to pay a visit to america s the archbishop of new york, to pay a visit to pope benedict. his next public appearance will be on sunday. we are when the pope told this might change on sunday. the vatican expects a lot of people in st. peter s square. it may be on about any on which he made his first appearance yesterday after he was elected. theuesday, it should be official inauguration of the pope. that is usually a mass attended by many world leaders. he receives the ring with which he will seal everything. it is the ring that each pope gets once he is elected. and it gets destroyed after the ors demised or he cut he resigns. the vatican is happy to have a new pope and for the holiest week in the catholic faith have a new pope before the holiest week in the catholic faith. is he the right person for this? there is certainly a lot of hope. there are a lot of people who will tell you that he was elected and it indicates the church is going to seriously tackle all these issues of the sex scandal, but also the very much needed reforms. he is an outsider when it comes to the vatican. the central government of the vatican has always been quite opec. opaque he is considered a man of the poor. he used to take the public bus to go to work. there is a lot of hope pinned on him. thank you very much. israel has a new coalition government. hardy has reached an agreement with yesh atid. let s get more. times ofr of the israel website, good to have you with us. a deal was reached in the 13th our. reports of a lot of wrangling taking place. what do you make of this? has beenink netanyahu weakened? the tale emerged pretty much when the white smoke was billowing out of the vatican chimney. it coincided with the new pope. it took much longer than finding a new pope. netanyahu is weakened. he will be running a four-party coalition. he is somewhere near the center of that coalition. yeshs made a deal with atid, a central party. there is another party further to the left and another party further to the right. it is not the coalition he really wanted. he has some quite strong rivals within his cabinet who will be looking to make life difficult for him, i think. the ultra-orthodox parties have been left out. they have been a key ally of netting yahoo s parties netanyahu s party. they were unthreatening allies for neptune yahoo. these other parties refused to sit in government with him unless there were dramatic reforms. those other parties have prevailed. there is a domestic agenda now for this government, which may seem new legislation making new legislation for requirements to serve in the army. we may see reform to the education system. that is where there is common ground. where there are differences are on things like negotiations with the palestinians, the pro- settlement forces, the elements to the left that will want to move forward, accelerate any possibility of progress with the palestinians. let s look at the international issues for just a second. ?here does this coalition stand what will happen with peace talks with the palestinians? as well as putting a halt to illegal settlements in occupied territory? netanyahu is somebody who believes in the settlement enterprise and who would argue that there is a israeli legitimacy in the settlements. there are parties and players who will want to expand settlements quite dramatically. you also have people like the former foreign minister, who led negotiations with palestinians a few years ago, who wants to make progress. you will have conflicting forces pulling in different directions. remember, president obama is coming here next week here that will be relevant. what will he say acco i suspect what will he say? i suspect he will want to freeze, but i don t know if that is possible. i don t think people should think the political fighting is over. i think it is just beginning. much.nk you very the united states has an point has appointed a new six monthsto libya after the last one was killed in libya. the former ambassador chris stevens and three other americans were killed in an attack on the u.s. consulate last september. digit should and police were directly responsible for hundreds of deaths during the country revolution egyptian police were directly responsible for hundreds of deaths during the country s revolution. they used snipers to shoot into the crowds. the killings were authorized by former president hosey mubarak. .early 900 hosni mubarak nearly 900 protesters were killed. doctors hospital at hospitals near tahrir square said they were treated for wounds to their faces and che sts. we have with us a retired egyptian police colonel, part of the group that is trying to promote good relations between the police and the public in egypt. what could be the fallout from this report on the police force in egypt? it to record states that police were directly responsible for hundreds of deaths during the revolution. it directly states that police were directly responsible for hundreds of deaths during the revolution. they have been accused of killing protesters during the revolution. to report was not announced the public. had it in hand to be able to read what it includes. we are sure that people have been murdered during the revolution. there are two views about this, whether it is the police or other groups, have hamas or hezbollah. this is a very important point. the police have an obligation to prove who killed these innocent people during the if it is them, they have to submit. or if it is someone else, any terrorist group or islamist who did this crime, they should go to court. what have we witnessed do you think this report could lead to convictions of senior officers as well as the former president and his interior minister? duringe already noticed the last 25 months, a lot of police officers have been accused of killing protesters. 99% of these cases have turned out to be proven innocent towards the police officers. itself, raises a lot of questions about the justice system in egypt. .> this is what the court said they are proved to be innocent. there are other things that have not been investigated yet. who was able to enter into the prisons? i would like to keep the focus on this particular report that has been released by the associated press and their findings. tell me what you think the fallout will be from this report on the police and the police force in egypt, especially considering the strained relations currently between egyptian s and the police? the people have the impression that the police forces are accused of killing them. perception is reality. the police force has an obligation to prove their innocence. second, to get the people accused of doing these crimes and put them in court. otherwise people will still have this perception in their minds. they areficers feel innocent. they are blamed for things they did not do. they are they have huge confusion. this adds to the confusion. having said that, this report coming to the media now having been announced to the public, people will accuse the police force more than they have. there will be more confusion. it opens a gate for more instability in the country. thank you very much. a retired egyptian police colonel speaking to us from cairo. at head on ash ahead on al jazeera, curiel , kenya sal jazeera prime minister says he won the election. we are back in a moment. hello again. good to be back. we ve seen quite a bit of snow across many locations in europe. these clouds making their way in and down toward the south. i want to take you towards spain. this is what it looked like on wednesday from many locations. 42 provinces were affected by the very heavy snow that passed through the area. 13 of the roads were closed in the region. a lot of school campuses were closed as well. things are looking much better as we go into the next couple of days. this is the forecast map. a lot of clearing out happening across the iberian peninsula. we will focus more towards the east. where you see these highlighted areas, belarus, ukraine, that s where the heaviest rain and snow is going to be be over the next couple of days here that has mixed in all the way towards russia. temperatures will get just above freezing overnight. across the mediterranean, we are looking at a storm system. we expect to see not a lot of rain on the coastal regions. it s going to be quite windy. for tripoli the top stories on al jazeera, iraqi police say at least 12 people have been killed in a series of blasts and a gun fight baghdad. the explosions hit during rush hour in a heavily fortified area which is home to several ministries and foreign embassies. pope francis has become his first day as leader of the roman catholic church by leading pairs at the basilica in rome. he is the first ever latin america pontiff leading prayers at the basilica in rome. he is the first ever latin america and pontiff. latin american pontiff. benjamin netanyahu s new coalition. , kim jong- s leader un, has overseen a live fire military drill near this disputed border. the area is described as a hotspot. the exercise was held just days after north korea threatened to wipe out a south korean island. it is official. china has a new president. xi jinping has been formally approved to take over from hu jintao. he was named chief of the communist arty in november. his new title gives him power over chinese the chinese army. he will tackle corruption at every level of the government and has pledged to put a stop to extravagant displays of wealth by high- ranking officials in his party. he also calls for a closer partnership between china and the united states. the official announcement that came on thursday that xi jinping is the president of china is the culmination of its consolidation of power. he began back in november when he became the president of the party, the head of the military, and now the state. with that power comes challenges. but the ones that have been identified by xi jinping is the corruption in the government and the widening wealth gap in his country, mainly borne out of the fact that china has a rapid economic growth, particularly in the last 10 years. his predecessor, hu jintao, the country went from the seventh largest economy in the world to second, within just his term. xi jinping will have to focus on shrinking the wealth gap as soon as he gets into office. also, he is taking his first foreign trip to russia. this is largely symbolic. it is to counterbalance america s pivot towards asia. america is really spreading its economic influence and its military. this is china s symbolic show that they are also spreading their base of power all the way to russia. kenya s outgoing prime minister, raila odinga, is refusing to accept defeat in last week s elections. he announced on thursday he would appeal the result in kenya s highest court. this is the man who believes he should have been in elected kenya s next president. according to official figures, he lost the vote by more than 800,000 ballots here but at a gathering of his parties newly elected his part by more than 800,000 ballots. but at a gathering of his party s newly elected officials, he said we must defend the [indiscernible] goading the s supporters believe he lost to systematic fraud odinga s supporters believe he lost to systematic fraud. rest firstguments with the voter registers. there was a widespread collapse in the biometric voter identification system. he believes that the systems were manipulated to direct to deprive him of votes and to insulate his rivals to inflate his rival s. the electoral commission insists neither problem compromised the results. it would not comment while the port case is pending. the elections observer group has delivered its verdict on the polls. it had 7000 observers spread across the country, 1000 of them crosschecking the vote count. while it says the technical failures did cause problems, they found no evidence of fraud. it does not render the election incredible because of the technology failure. but there is space for doubt, and that is a problem in an environment where the perception of integrity is as important as the reality. kenyans are suffering from a kind of political fatigue. they are glad the elections are over. there is a broad understanding. understanding that they need to resolve their differences in the court, not in the streets. the inquiry in south africa is expected here evidence from the commissioner who was in charge of security at the time. at least 78 workers were injured by police gunfire at the time. the shooting in marikana sparked weeks of protests across the country. police in pakistan say they have arrested several children who were recruited by gangs to carry out bomb attacks in the south. they say separatist fighters hated boys as young as 10 to plant explosives in the city of quite a quetta. the boys were paid around $50 each. iran has stepped up its support for the syrian army. weapons continue to flow to ayria through iraqi, iran, violation of the arms embargo. iran denies that. the international criminal court says both sides are guilty of torture. the un has stopped patrols in some parts of the golan heights, on the border between syria and israel. funny one filipino peacekeepers were abducted there last week, later 21 filipino peacekeepers were abducted there last week, later released. it is the same area where they agreed to a cease-fire 35 years ago. world leaders have been meeting in bangkok at a conference aimed at protecting endangered wildlife. they want to put a stop to illegal shark trading and curb .rade of ivory and rhino horns it is a positive ruling for the shark and rhinoceros species. it s the end of a decade- long journey and it is also the beginning. the challenge will be to implement these rules. one of the most important things about the ruling is that it is binding. of course, countries cannot implement this tomorrow. they have 18 months to put rules in place. what these rules and processes will do is ensure that sharks can continue to be traded, but only those sharks and rays that are sustainably and legally caught. there is a long history of regulating trade and ensuring trade is sustainable. countries will work through scientific and management authorities, within their ministries, to develop what we call non-detriment findings, findings which establish whether a shark species or rays species can be traded sustainably. the date conversation is how do we move forward, how do we bring the big conversation is how do we move forward, how do we get more funding. the eu has committed 1.2 million to help countries ensure that their shark and ray trade is sustainable. doctors without borders is closing its facilities in morocco in protest. the european commission has put forward new rules to help stranded air passengers. airlines are now required to reroute customers within a 12 hour time frame or make alternative arrangements to get them to their destinations. it is the biggest overhaul since new laws to protect european travelers were introduced to the commission eight years ago. ireland is considering a controversial new plan to sell off large parts of its forests. it is part of a plan to reduce its debt. it is a decision with historical resonance. ireland was the forest did during its colonial past was deforested during its colonial past. you can see forest of spruce and conifer, carefully managed and grown to