best practices within the ihs system itself and shared those and incense vized the ability to move that kind of activity that is providing high-quality care for individuals in that system, in certain areas, and making certain that we re able to extend that across the country in the ihs. okay. we look forward to working with you on that. i think best practices is a good place to start. obviously, those have not been employed in a lot of facilities in our state. in 2009, cms issued a final rule that required all outpatient therapeutic services to be provided under direct supervision every year since then. the rule has been delayed. either administratively or legislatively in small and rural hospitals. i shared this with you as well. in my statement we have a lot of critical access hospitals, rural areas, big geography to cover, and sometimes difficult to get providers out to these areas. so, the question is, if confirmed, will you work to charge of some of these issues in a way that removes that power from washington, d.c., where i think too many of the problems have been happening. thank you, mr. chairman. look forward to it. senator casey. thank you, mr. chairman. dr. price, good to be with you again. thank you. i want to ask you a couple questions that center principally on children and individuals with disabilities. first with regard to children, i think if we re doing the right thing, as not only as government but as a society, if we re really about the business of justice, and if we re really about the business of growing the economy, we should invest a lot and spend a lot making sure every child has health care. the good news, despite a lot of years of not getting to that point, not moving in the right direction, the good news is, we made a lot of progress. the urban institute in an april 2016 report, i won t ask i won t ask the report to be made part of the record, but i ll read a line from this urban institute report. uninsurance among children 1997 to 2015 dated april 2016, says as follows on page 3, it said that the decline in children s uninsurance rate occurred at a relatively steady pace and includes a significant drop following implementation of the affordable care act s key coverage provisions from 7.1% in 2013 to 4.8% in 2015, unquote. so, that s a significant drought. 7.1 to 4.8 is millions of kids have health insurance today that would not have it absent the affordable care act, including the medicaid provisions as well. that 4.8% uninsured rate is at an all-time low. that means we re at a 98% insured rate across the country able to commit to us today, that that that the number of uninsured children will not increase under your during your time as secretary for ywer to be confirmed and the number of uninsured would not increase? our goal it is to decrease the number of uninsured population under age 18 and over age 18. i hope you maintain that because i think that s going to be critically important. the reason i ask that question is not just to validate that as a critically important goal for the nation, but it s your answer seems to be contrary or in conflict with what you have advocated for as a member of the house of representatives, not only in your individual capacity but as chairman of the budget committee. looking at now for reference a an op-ed by gene spurling. with regard to with regard to your policies, the effect of what your policies would be, and now apparently contrary to what was said during the kaernlgs it s now the policy of the trump administration to block grant medicaid? with respect to both you and to mr. spurling, it s because you all are looking at this in a silo. we don t look at it in a silo. we believe it is possible to imagine, in fact, put in place, a system that allows for greater coverage for individuals. as a matter of fact, coverage that actually equals care. right now many of those individuals the aca actually increased coverage in this country. it s one of the things that it actually did. the problem is, is that a lot of folks have coverage but they don t have care. so, they ve got the insurance card. they go to the doctor. the doctor says, this is what we believe you need and they say, i m sorry a cut of $1 trillion, a combined cut of $1 trillion that would adversely impact the children s health insurance program and the medicaid program is totally unacceptable i think to most americans, democrat, republican or otherwise. you re looking at that in a silo. you aren t looking at that in what reform and improvement would be. we re look at the rebuttal in not just what gene spurling said but a whole line of public policy, advocates and experts. and i think the burden for you, sir, is to make sure you fulfill your commitment to make sure no children will lose health insurance coverage while you are secretary. look forward to working with you. senator hiller. thank you, mr. chairman. dr. price, thank you for being here today. thanks for your patience in working with us throughout this confirmation process. if you can put your mike on. it is on. i ll lean a little forward. mr. chairman, as you can imagine, i committed to ensuring that all have access to quality and affordable health care insurance. i have a letter from nevada legislature, directly from our majority leader of the state senate and our speaker of the assembly. and they re good questions. five questions. obviously, they want to get the same answers that all of us want here. we have a nevada 88,000 nevadans who have health insurance through the exchange. 77,000 nevadans eligible for federal tax credits. 217,000 nevadans that receive health care coverage under expansion. basic questions. mr. chairman, if i may, can i submit these questions to the record, on the record, and also if i may ask dr. price if he would respond to this particular letter, to these legislators. again, i think they re very good question. without objection. also if i may add f you could cc the governor also. i think the governor would also like answers to these questions. i think you re in a great position to answer these particular questions. thank you, sir. thank you. if i may, can i get your opinion on the cadillac tax? i think the cadillac tax is is one that has made it such that individuals who are gaining their coverage through their employer there may be a better way to make if so that individuals gaining their coverage through their employer are able to gain access to the kind of coverage they desire. the cadillac tax would affect about 1.3 million nevadans. school teachers, union members, senior citizens. and there s some disagreement as to whether or not these individuals are wealthy or not. there are some on this committee that believe the $1.1 trillion tax increase in obamacare does not affect the middle class. do you agree with that? i think it does affect middle class. i do, too. do you believe school teachers are wealthy? everybody has their own metric of what wealthy is and some people use things to determine what wealth that aren t the greenbacks i would argue most school teachers don t think they re wealthy. do you think most union members are wealthy? i doubt they think they re wealthy. yeah, i would agree with that. do you think most senior citizens are wealthy? most senior citizens are on a fixed income. they would argue they re not wealthy. that s my argument on this particular tax. in fact, obamacare as a whole is it s another middle class tax increase of $1.1 trillion. my i guess my question and question for you is, is that if i can get your commitment to work with this committee, work with myself to end and the treasury secretary to repeal the cadillac tax? well, we ll certainly work to make certain those who gain their coverage through their employer have the access to the highest quality care and coverage possible in a way that makes the most sense for individuals from a financial standpoint as well. does the cadillac tax make the most sense? as i mentioned, i think there are other options that may work better. do you believe it is an increase, health insurance increase, to middle class america? i do. okay. i want to go to medicaid expansion for just a minute. nevada was one of 36 states that chose to expand eligibility for medicaid. we went from iveng the enrollment went from 350,000 to over 600,000. and i guess the concern, and i think it s part of the letter that i gave to the chairman, is whether or not that will have an impact. what we re going to do to see that those individuals aren t impacted. probably the biggest question we have for you here today is what are we going to do about those that are part of the medicaid expansion and how that s going to impact them? yeah, again, as i mentioned to a question on the other side, i believe this is a policy question that needs to be worked out through both the house and the senate. we look forward to working with you and others, if i m able to be confirmed, and making certain that individuals who are currently covered through medicaid expansion either retain that coverage or in some way have coverage through a different vehicle. but every single individual ought to be able to have access to coverage. dr. price, thank you. thank you for being here. thank you. senator warner. thank you, mr. chairman. good to see you again, dr. price. thank you. let me start on something we discussed in my office. one. issues i ve been working on since i ve been governor, working very closely with your friend senator isaacson is the issue of how we as americans address the end of life and those issues. i think we both shared personal stories on that subject. senator isaacson and i have legislation that is called the care planning act that does not remove anyone s choices. it simply allows families to have those discussions with their health care provider and religious/faith leader if needed or desired in a way to prepare for that stage of life. this year cms took a step by introducing a payment into the fee schedule to provide initial reimbursement for providers to have these conversations with others. this is mentioned in a multidisciplinary case team. it also ran a pilot program that allowed hospice-type benefits to be given to individuals who were still receiving some level of curative services called the medicare choice medicare care choices. i believe it s very important that we don t go backwards on these issues. i think we talked about, maybe the only industrial nation in the world that hasn t had this kind of adult conversation about this part of life. again, not about limiting anyone s choices, but would you if you re confirmed, would you continue to work with senator isaacson and i on this very important issue? i look forward to doing so. and not be part of any effort to roll back those efforts that cms have already taken? i think it s important to take a look at the broad array of issues. one issue is liability. i can t remember if we discussed that in your office. the whole issue of liability surrounding these conversations is real. we need to talk about it openly, honestly and work together to try to find a solution to just that. i would concur with that. but i also think this is something that more families need to take advantage of. on friday, january 20th, the president president trump issued an executive order th that that says federal agencies, especially hhs, should do everything they can to, quote, eliminate any fiscal burden of any state on any state or any cost fee, tax penalty or regulatory burden on individuals and providers. dr. price, if you re confirmed in this position, will you use this will you use this executive order in any way to try to cut back on implementation or following the individual mandate before there is a replacement plan in place? well, i think that if i m if i m confirmed, then i m humble enough to appreciate and understand that i don t have all the answers and that the people at the department have incredible knowledge and an expertise. and that my first action within the department itself, as it relates to this, is to gain that insight, gain that information, so that whatever decisions we can make with you and with governors and others can be the most informed and intelligent decision possible. i m not sure you answered my question. i just what i would not want to see happen, as we take i understand your concerns with the cadillac tax. i know there are concerns about you and others have raised about the individual mandate. there are some that are concerned about the income tax surcharges. it s just remarkable to me, and this is one of the reasons i think so many of us are anxious to see your replacement plan, that the president has said we want insurance for everybody. he wants to keep prohibitions on pre-existing condition, keep people on policies until 26. it seems like there s at the same time a rush to eliminate all of the things that pay for the ability to have for americans to have those kind of services. and i would just want your assurance that you wouldn t use this executive order prior to a legal replacement to eliminate the individual mandate, which i would believe helps shore up the cost coverage and the shifting of costs that are required in an insurance system. yeah, i a replacement, a reform, an improvement of the program, i believe, is imperative to be instituted simultaneously or at a time in you will not use this executive order as a reason to, in effect, bypass the law prior to replacement in place? our commitment is to carry out the law of the land. in these last couple minutes i want to go on. i know you ve been in the past a strong critic of the center for medicare and medicaid and innovation of cmmi. i believe in your testimony last week, you saw great promise in it. to me f we re going to move towards a system that emphasizes quality of care rather than simply quantity of care, we ve got to have this kind of experimentation. there s one such program, the diabetes prevention program. that last year cms certified it saved money on a per beneficiary basis. i know my time is rung out. i think they can probably be answered yes or no. do you support cmm delivery system reform demonstrations that have the potential to reduce spending without harming the quality of care? the second clause is the most important one. i suspect making certain we deliver money that we deliver care in a cost effective manner but we absolutely must not do things that harms the quality of care being provided to patients. if part of that quality of care, and i d agree with you, would mean bundled and episodic payment models that actually move us toward quality over volume, would you support those efforts? for certain patient populations, bundled payments make a lot of sense. if these experiments are successful, would you allow the expansion of these across the whole system? i think that what we ought to do is allow for all sorts of innovation, not just in this area. there are things i m certain that haven t been thought up yet, that would actually improve quality and delivery of health care in our country. we ought to be incentivizing that kind of innovation. i would simply say, mr. chairman, cmmi is an area i would like to have seen more but it s a model and tool we ought to not discard. thank you. thank you, senator. senator scott. thank you, chairman. dr. price, good see you again. launched the nation s first statewide pay for success project with nurse/family partnership with the use of medicaid funds. 20% of the babies born in south carolina are born to first-time, low income mothers. we also have a much higher than average infant mortality rate. nurse/family partnership is an evidence-based and has already shown real results. both in the health of the mother and the babies. but also in other aspects of the mother s life, such as high school graduation rates for teen moms and unemployment rates. what are your thoughts on incorporating a pay for success model to achieve success metrics? it sounds like a great program that is actually has the right metric. that is the quality of care and the improvement of lives. and as you state, if it s having that kind of success, it probably ought to be put out there again as a best practice for other states to look at and try to model. yes, sir. thank you. i believe you were the director of the orthopedic clinic at grady memorial hospital in atlanta. i was. you mentioned something that i think is very important. i think grady hospital had the highest level of uninsured georgians. you talked about having coverage but really not access. can you elaborate on how your experience at grady may help inform you and direct you as it relates to the uninsured population? it was an incredible privilege to work at grady the number of years i did. we saw patients from all walks of life and many, many uninsured individuals. they come with the same kinds of concerns, the same kinds of challenges that every other individual has. and one of the big they have an additional concern and that is, is somebody going to be caring for me? is somebody going to be ainl able to help me. that s why it was so fulfilling to have the privilege of working at grady and assisting people at a time when they were not only challenged from a health care standpoint, but challenged from the concern of whether or not people would be there to help them. yes, sir. i know you re aware of the title i of every student succeeds act. head start to have access to resources. it seems to me that would be imperative for the secretary of hhs and secretary of education to look ats tos synergiz to help the underprivileged student? can i get your commitment to work with the secretary of education where it makes sense to help serve those students? we have head start under you and other programs under esa. it would be wonderful for us to take the taxpayer in one hand, the child in the other hand and look for ways to make sure that they both win. yeah, i you ve identified an area that is a pet peeve of many of ours. that is, that we don t seem to collaborate across jurisdictional lines. not just in congress, but certainly in the administrative side. look forward to doing just that. having as a meertd tric, how ar kids doing? are they actually getting the kind of service and education that they need? are they improving? are we just being custodians? are we just parking kids in a spot or are we actually assisting in improving their lives and able to demonstrate that? if we re not asking the right questions f we re not looking at the right metrics, we won t get the right answers to expand what s actually working or modify it and move it in a better direction. thank you. i think that s one of the more important parts of your opportunity in this position, is looking at those kids, and you know as well as anyone as a doctor, those ages, before you ever get into pre-k, kindergarten, the development of the child in those first three or four years are powerful opportunities for us to direct one s potential so that they maximize it. sometimes we re missing those opportunities. we think somehow the education system will help that child catch up, but there are things that have to happen before they ever get in the education system. so, i thank you for your willingness to work in that direction. my last question has to deal with the employ-sponsored health care system we re so accustomed to in this country that provides so many with their own insurance. in my home state we have 2.5 million people covered by their employer coverage. if confirmed as hhs secretary, how would you support american employers in their effort to provide effective family health coverage in a consistent and affordable matter? said differently, there s been some conversation about looking for ways to decouple having health insurance through your employer. i think the employer system has been absolutely remarkable success in allowing individuals to gain coverage they might otherwise not gain. i think preserving the employer system is is imperative. that being said, i think there may be ways in which individual employers i ve heard employers say, if you give me the opportunity to provide my employees so they can select the coverage they want, that makes more sense to them. if that works from a voluntary standpoint for employers and for employees, then it may be something to look at. that would be more like the hra approach, where exactly. employer funds an account and the employee chooses the health insurance, not necessarily under the umbrella of the employer specifically? exactly. and gains the same tax benefit. thank you, chairman. thank you. senator mccaskill. at risk of being way, way away from you, and you being someone i ve worked with and respected greatly i want to correct something in your opening statement. the first nominee of president trump that this senate considered was confirmed by a vote of 98-1. i would not consider that a partisan vote. the second nominee of president trump was confirmed by a vote of 88-11. once again, i would not consider that a partisan vote. so, i really do think we are all trying to look at each nominee individually. and i have had a chance to review congressman price s questioning of secretary sabelius. it was no bean bag. it was tough stuff. i think all of this looks different depending on where we re sitting. i wanted to make that point. as to passing obamacare without one democratic vote, we re about to repeal obamacare without one democratic vote. this will be a partisan exercise under reconciliation. it will not be a bipartisan effort. what we have after the repeal is trumpcare. whatever is left after the dust settles is trumpcare. now, i know the president likes to pay close attention to what he puts his name on and i have a feeling, congressman, that even though you keep saying today that congress will decide, you re not really believing, are you, that your new boss is not going to weigh in on what we what he wants congress to pass? we re not going to have a plan from him? we look forward to working with you and other members my question is, will we have a plan from the president? will he have a plan? if i have the privilege to being confirmed, i look forward to working with the president and bringing a plan to you. great. so, the plan will come from president trump, and you will have the most important role in shaping that plan as his secretary of health and human services, correct? i hope i have input, yes, ma am. yes. so whatever trumpcare ends up being, you will have a role in it. i think it s really important to get that on the record. now, when we repeal obamacare, we re going to do a tax cut. does anybody in america who makes less than $200,000, are any of them going to benefit from that tax cut? that s a hypothetical and you all are no, it s not a hypothetical. when we repeal obamacare, there are taxes in obamacare. and when it is repealed,there is no question that taxes are going to be repealed i promise you, the taxes are going to be repealed. when those taxes are repealed, will anyone in america who makes less than $200,000 benefit from the repeal of those taxes? i look forward to working with you on the plan and hopefully that will be the case. no, no, no, no. i m asking, the taxes in there now, does anybody who makes less than $200,000 now, pay those taxes now? it depends on how you define the taxes. many individuals are paying more than they did prior to no, i m talking about taxes. the cadillac tax has not been implemented, so that doesn t affect anybody. i m trying to get at the very simple question, that i don t think you want to answer. in fact, when obamacare is repealed, no one in america who makes less than $200,000 is going to enjoy the benefit of that. as i say, if confirmed, i look forward to working with you on that. that s not an answer. in my office, ending medicare, your plan and you have worked on for year, and converting medicare to private insurance markets with government subsidies, correct? not correct. well, we talked yesterday, and we kind of went through this in my office. by the end of our conversation, you admitted to me, and i m going to quote you, that your plan for medicare in terms of people getting either tax credits or subsidies or whatever however you re going to pay for the medicare recipients would be them having choices on a private market. you said, yes, it was pretty similar to obamacare, with the exception of the mandate. didn t you say that to me yesterday? that s a fairly significant exception. well, but these people are old. they don t need to be mandated to get insurance. it s not like a 27-year-old who doesn t think he s going to get sick. you don t need a mandate for people who are elderly. they have to have health insurance. so, the mandate is not as relevant, but didn t you admit to me that obamacare and private markets is very similar to what you were envisioning? didn t you use the phrase, similar? it is pretty similar. what i did say is the mandate is significant. the mandate is significant, i get, in obamacare. but we don t need a mandate for seniors, would you agree with that? you don t need to tell seniors they need health insurance? i hope we don t need a mandate for anybody so they can purchase the kind of coverage they want and not the kind the government forces them to buy. finally, you want to block grant medicaid for state flexibility and efficiency, correct? i believe that medicaid is a system that is now not responding necessarily to the needs of the recipients. consequently, it s incumbent upon all of us as policymakers to look for a better way to solve that challenge. are you in favor of block granting medicaid? i m in favor of a system more responsive. are you in favor of block granting medicaid? it s a simple question, congressman. for the most powerful job in health care in the country. i don t know why you re unwilling to answer block granting medicaid. it s not that complicated. i m in favor of making certain medicaid is a system that responds to patients, not the government. i don t understand why you won t answer that. and i don t have time. i know i m over. i will probably i don t know if we re going to get another round, mr. chairman. should i ask my last question or are we going to get another chance? i m going to allow additional questions. i hope that not everybody will take the opportunity. i will digssappoint you, i m sorry. let me just on that point say that obamacare raised taxes on millions of americans families across income levels. nonpartisan joint committee on taxation in may of 2010 analyses identified significant widespread tax increases on taxpayers earning under $200,000 contained in the aca. and, for example, for 2017, 13.8 million taxpayers with incomes below $200,000 will be hit with more than $3.7 billion, with a b, in obamacare tax from an increase in the income floor for the medical expense deductions. obamacare has led to middle class tax hikes. without question, it s led to fewer insurance options, higher deductibles and higher premiums. so, i think those are facts that can t be denied. i ll look forward to looking at those facts because somewhere in this mix we have alternative facts. well, just i think these are right, i can tell you that. well, i think mine are right. mr. chairman, point of privilege to respond? yes, sir. on this point, no alternative facts. the republicans in last year s reconciliation bill cut taxes for one group of people. they cut taxes for the most fortunate in the country. that s a matter of public record. it s not an alternative factor or universe. people making $200,000 and up got their taxes cut. that was in the reconciliation bill of the republicans last year. well, let s see who s next here. i don t agree with that, but we ll see who s next. senator grassley oh, cassidy. i didn t see you. senator cassidy and then senator grassley. thank you, mr. chairman. dr. price, how are you? i m well, senator. let s talk a little about medicaid because we re getting this rosy scenario of obamacare and of the republican attempt to replace it. it does seem a little odd. first, i want to note for the record that president trump has said in various ways that he doesn t want people to lose coverage. he would like to cover as many people as under obamacare. wishes to take care of those with pre-existing conditions and to do it without mandates and lower costs. those will be your marching orders, fair statement? absolutely. now, let s go to you and i, we talked at a previous meeting. we both worked in public hospitals for the uninsured. and for the poorly insured, folks like medicaid. now, let s just talk about medicaid. why would we see patients on medicaid at a hospital for the uninsured? if they wanted to see an orthopedic orthopedist in private practice, does medicaid pay a provider well enough to pay costs of seeing an orthopedic patient? oftentimes it does not. as you well know, as i mentioned before, one out of three physicians who ought to be able to see medicaid patients in this nation, do not take any medicaid patients. there s a reason for that. whether it s reimbursement or whether it s hassle factor or regulations or the like. but that s a system that isn t working for those patients. and we auought to be honest abo that, look at that and answer the question why and then address that. now, i ll note that when the house version of the aca passed, robert pear in the new york times wrote an article about a michigan physician, an oncologist, who had so many medicaid patients from michigan medicaid that she was going bankrupt. she had to discharge patients from her practice. now, the ranking members said we can t have alternative facts. agree with that. we also know new england journal of medicine article speak being medicaid expansion in oregon about how when they expanded medicaid in oregon, outcomes did not improve. so, i suppose that kind of informs you as you say we need to make medicaid better for patients. absolutely. we need to look at the right metrics. just gaining coverage for individuals is an admirable goal. but it is it ought not be the only goal. providing for people on the ground, for real people and real lives. whether or not we re affecting them in a positive way or negative way. if we re affecting them in a negative way, again, we need to be honest with ourselves and say, how can we improve that? now, a lot of times there s this kind of conflation of per beneficiary payments to states per medicaid enrollee and block grants, which to me is a conflation. i ll note that bill clinton on the left and phil graham and rick santorum on right proposed per beneficiary payments some time ago. it s actually how would you agree with this, how the federal employee self-benefit program pays for these federal employ s employees, they pay per beneficiary payment to an insurer, fair statement? correct. wouldn t it be great if medicare worked as as well as federal employee health insurance in terms of outcome? when you talk about the medicaid population, it s not a monolithic population. there are four different demographic groups within it seniors and disabled and then healthy moms and kids, by and large. we treat each one of those folks exactly the same from the medicaid rules. so, when you re pressed on whether, by golly, you believe in block grants, i don t hear any nuance in that queshgs are you speak being a per beneficiary payment? are you speak being each of those four, one of those four? how do you dice that? new york is an older state demographically. utah is a young statement. fair statement? absolutely. those are the things i think we tend not to look at, because they re more difficult to measure. they re more difficult to look at. but when we re talking about people s lives, when we re talking about people s health care, it s imperative we do the extra work that needs to be done to determine whether or not, yes, indeed, the public policy we re putting forward will help you, not harm you. let me ask because there s also some criticism about health savings accounts. i love them because they activate the patient. i think we re familiar with the healthy indiana plan where on a waiver they gave folks of lower income health savings accounts and had better outcomes, decreased e usage. any comment on that? just when people do engage in their health care, they tend to demand more, they tend to demand better services. and individuals that have greater opportunity for choices of who they see, where they re treated, when they re treated and the like, have greater opportunity to gain better health care. going back to not one to have alternative facts f we contrast the experience in healthy indiana with the experience in oregon where national economic bureau of research published in new england journal of medicine found no different outcome from those fulfilled in medicaid expansion program in oregon, contrast with good outcomes, in that which in indiana engaged patient to become activated in their own care, er usage fell but outcomes improved. i think in our world of standard facts, i kind of like your position. thanks for bringing a nuanced, informed view to the health care reform debate, dr. price. thanks, senator. senator grassley. two statements before i ask a couple questions. one is, it s kind of a welcome relief to have somebody of your profession in this very important role, particularly knowing the importance of the doctor/patient relationship, because in my dealing with cms and hhs over a long period of time, i think that the bureaucracy has been short of a lot of that hands-on information that people ought to have. and secondly, when you were in my office, we discussed the necessity of your responding to congressional inquiries. and you very definitely said you would. i tongue in cheek said maybe you ought to say maybe because a lot of times they don t do it, but since you said you would, i will hold you to that and appreciate anything you can do to help us do our oversight. as a result of oversight, i got a legislation passed a few years ago called a physician s payment sunshine act. and the only reason i bring this up is because it took senator wyden and me last december working hard to stop the house of representatives from gutting that legislation in the cures act that passed. i want to make very clear that the legislation i m talking about doesn t prohibit anything. it only has reporting requirements because it makes it very, very well, it brings about the principle of transparency, brings accountability. and i ve got some studies here that we did, and some newspaper reports on them, particularly one about a psychiatrist at emory university that was not reporting everything that they should report and even the president of the emory university came to my office and said, thank you for making us aware of this stuff. i want to put those in the record. since you re administering this legislation and since senator blumenthal and i will think about expanding this legislation to include nurse paractitioner assistant and even under the obamacare administration, after we got it passed, it was three years getting regulations, to get it carried out. so, effectively, it s only been working for 2, maybe 2 1/2 years. so i would like to if you re confirmed, would you and the department of human health and human services work with me to ensure that this transparency initiative is not weakened? we look forward to working with you, sir. i think transparency in this area and so many others is vital. again, not just not just in outcomes or in pricing but so many areas so patients are able to understand what s going on in the health care system. thank you. last one deals with vaccine safety. you re a physician. i believe you would agree that immunization is very important for modern medicine and that we ve been able get rid of smallpox way back in 77, worldwide polio, i think, in 1991. at least in the western hems and all that. so, as a physician, would you recommend that families follow the recommended vaccine schedule that has been established by experts and is constantly reviewed? i think that science and health care has identified a very important aspect of public health, and that s the role of vaccinations. thank you very much. i yield back my time. thank you, senator. senator stabenau. thank you. a series of stories from public forehe forum that was held by my colleagues, that that be included in the record. without objection. thank you very much. welcome, congressman price, and senator. and appreciate our private discussion as well as the discussion this morning. let s start out with lots of questions and see if we can move through some things quickly. you said this morning that you would not abandon people with pre-existing conditions is that basically what you re talking about is high-risk pools, is that one of the strategies that you re thinking about? i ve heard that talked about this morning. i think high-risk pools can be incredibly helpful in making certain individuals that have pre-existing illness are able to be cared for in the highest manner possible. i think there are other methods as well. we ve talked about other pooling mechanisms, the destruction of the small group market has made it such that folks can t find coverage affordable for them. one way to solve that challenge is to allow individuals in the small group market to pool together. i think we talked about this in your office. with the old blue heel model being the template for individuals who aren t economically aligned are able to pool together their resources solely for the purpose of purchasing coverage. for about 35 years we have tried high-risk pools. 35 states had them before the affordable care act. frankly, it didn t produce great results. in 20110.2% of people with pre-existing conditions, 0.2%, were actually in a high-risk pool. and the premiums were 150 to 200% higher than standard rates for healthy individuals. and they had lifetime and annual limits on coverage and cost states money. so, that was the reality before we passed the affordable care act. so, let me also ask you, when president trump said last weekend that insurance was going to be much better, do you think that insurance without protections for those pre-existing conditions or without maternity coverage or without mental health coverage or insurance that would reinstate caps on cancer treatments is better? well, i don t know that that s what he was referring to. he said it would be better. if we, in fact, took away if we went to high-risk tools instead of covering people with pre-existing conditions or if we stopped the other coverage we have now, i m just wondering if you define that as better. you d have to give me a specific well, let me what may be better for you may not be better for me or anyone else. that s the important thing i m trying to get across. is patients need to be at the center of this, not government. should government be deciding these things or should patients be deciding these things? prior to the affordable care act, about 70% of the private plans that a woman could purchase in the marketplace did not cover basic maternity care. do you think that that s better, not to cover basic maternity care? i presume that she wouldn t purchase that coverage if she needed it then. she would have to pay more, just as in general for many women, just being a woman with a pre-existing condition. that is the reason why we have a basic set of services covered under health care. it s just a different way of looking at this. this is something where, sure, if a woman wanted to pay a premium, wanted to pay more, she could find maternity care. we said in the affordable care act, that s pretty basic. for over half the population who are women, maternity care ought to be covered. let me go to another one. do you believe mental health services should be a guaranteed benefit in all health insurance plans? i ve been a supporter of mental health inclusion, yes. so, mental health should be a defined benefit under health insurance plans? i think mental health illnesses ought to be treated on the same model as other physical ill pss. %-p lot of discussion, and i have to say also with the nominee for office management and budget also talking today about medicare and social security, i personally believe people on medicare should be very worried right now in terms of what overall we re hearing. but i did want my time is up. i did want just to indicate a message from my mom who s 98 years old who said she doesn t want more choices. she just wants to be able to see her doctor and get the medical care that she needs. is not at all supportive of the idea of medicare in some way being changed into premium support into a voucher. so, i m conveying to you somebody who s getting great care right now and she s not interested in more choices. she just wants to keep her care. thank you. chairman, i would just convey to medicare population in this nation that they don t have reason to be concerned. we look forward to assisting them and gaining the care and coverage they need. thank you. senator cantwell. thank you, mr. chairman. congressman price, sorry we haven t had a chance to talk. i apologize. no, i think both have tried and it s been a myriad of consequences. weather. i wanted to ask you broadly, i know a lot of my colleagues have been asking you about medicaid, but what do you think is the rise in medicaid cost? what is it due to? i think it s multifactorial. we have a system that has many, many controls that are providing greater costs to the provision of the care, that is that s being provided. i think that oftentimes we re not identifying the best practices in the medicaid system, so that patients move through the system in a way that s much more economical and much more efficient and effective. not just from a cost standpoint, but from a patient standpoint. there are so many things that could be done for especially the sickest of the sick in the medicaid population, where we could put greater resources and greater individual attention to individual patients. as you know, in a bell curve of patients in any population, there are those that are the outliers on the high side, where they where the resources spent to be able to provide their care is significant. and if you focus on those individuals, then you oftentimes specifically, then you oftentimes can provide a higher level of care and a higher level of quality of care for those folks and a more responsive care for those folks at a lower cost and move them down into the mainstream of the bell curve. okay. well, you brought up a couple of interesting points. and i want to follow up on that. specifically, if i started that conversation, i would start with two big fa nphenomenons. if you re living 10 or 15 years longer than in the past, they re going to consume more health care. second, the baby boomer population reaching retirement age. those two things are ballooning the cost of health care in general, and, specifically, for the medicaid population. and i want to make sure i understand where you are, because i feel like the administration is creating a war on medicaid. you re saying that you want to cap and control the cost. and what we ve already established in the affordable care act are those things that are best practice incentives and ways to give the medicaid population leverage in getting affordable health care. i want to understand if you are for these things. for example, we provided resources in the affordable care act for to rebalance off of for medicaid patients off of nursing home carrion to community-based care. why? because it s more affordable. do you support that rebalancing effort? i would respectfully, senator, take issue with your description of war on medicaid. we want to make sure medicaid population is able to receive the highest possible care. i ve cared for thousands of medicaid patients. the last thing we want is to decrease the quality of care they have access to. clearly, the system isn t working right now. moving towards home-based care is something that is that is if it s right for the patient, it s a wonderful thing to be able to do. we ought to incentivize that. there are so many things we could do in medicaid that what provide greater quality of care that we don t incentivize right now. we did incentivize it in the affordable care act in your state and about other 20 states actually did it. they took the money from the affordable care act, in fact, georgia received $57 million in transition to make sure medicaid beneficiaries got care in community-based care. it s been able to shift 10% of their long-term costs, basically, to that community-based care. so, huge savings. it s working. so, are you for repealing that part of the affordable care act? what i m for is making certain, again, the medicaid population has access to the highest care possible. we ll do everything to improve that. so many in the medicaid population don t have access to the highest quality care. i would hope you would look at this model, and also look at the basic health plan model which is, again, what i think you re proposing and what the administration is refusing to refute, when the president said, i m going to protect these things and my colleague, senator sanders brought this up and said, are you going to protect this and the white house chief of staff is now saying, no, no, we re basically going to cap medicaid spending. it s a problem. what we want to do is we want to give them leverage in the marketplace. that s what the basic health plan does. that s what the community-based care plan does. it gives them the ability to get more affordable care at better outcomes and is saving us money. so, if you could give us a response. i see my time is expired. look at those two programs and tell me whether you support those delivery system reforms in the affordable care act. be happy to. thank you. thank you, senator. that would end our first round. i d like to not go through a full second round. but we ve got some additional senators here who would like to ask some more, so i guess we ll start with senator wyden. thank you, mr. chairman. congressman, i have several ideas on we re going to break away from the hearing momentarily to assess what we ve just heard. an important hearing before the senate finance committee. the confirmation process for dr. tom price. the congressman who has been nominated to become the next secretary of health and human services. it s already three hours, jake, they ve been hearing the testimony. the confirmation process going forward. a lot of democrats are deeply concerned about this nomination. they are. and they ve been really trying to press for specifics in terms of what exactly will be the bill, the legislation that replaces obamacare after republicans repeal it. even just basic opinions. kellyanne conway, president trump s top adviser, has said publicly that they are going to take medicaid and make it a block grant program, meaning the money instead of going from the federal government to individuals will go to states. states will decide how to mete out that money. and congressman price wouldn t even offer an opinion. senator claire mccaskill, democrat of missouri, was just asking, are you in favor of block granting medicaid, and he
by the kremlin, an important point as well in the way donald trump painted his relationship with intelligence agencies in this country vis-a-vis how it could be taken overseas. right now is the start of the 1:00 p.m. hour here in the east. imagine the role of this man right now. this is a live picture in front of the senate foreign relations committee, and that is the ceo of exxonmobil, a multinational company so large, while it s said they can t change the weather, they can forecast it. they have their own weather bureau, a sprawling organization of 70,000 employees. rex tillerson is the nominee to be our next secretary of state, a job offer that came to him. it s been said in the public domain in part because of his relationship with russia, because of his relationship with vladimir putin. imagine all of this in light of the news conference we just witnessed, in light of what donald trump said and didn t say about russia and putin, in light of what donald trump said about u.s. intelligence agencies, here is a part of what we just witnessed this last hour. the democratic national committee was totally open to be hacked. they did a very poor job. they could have had hacking defense. president putin and russia put out a statement today that this fake news indeed fake news. they said it totally never happened. now somebody would say oh, of course he s going to say that. i respected the fact that he said that. if he did have something they would have released it and glad to release it. if putin likes donald trump, guess what, folks? that s called an asset, not a liability. do you honestly believe that hillary would be tougher on putin than me? i think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out. i think it s a disgrace. and i say that and i say that, and that s something that nazi germany would have done and did do. i have no deals. i have no loans, and i have no dealings. we could make deals in russia very easily if. we wanted to. i just don t want to because i think that would be a conflict. kristen welker was inside the room. she is now outside trump tower, on what can be a perilous stretch of fifth avenue in new york. andrea mitchell in the equally perilous confines of the u.s. senate in washington, standing by to talk to us. kristen, i m still going through the quotes on, what, 15 to 20 topics from that news conference. what couldn t we see from our vantage point, watching on television that perhaps would assist our understanding of what a high wire act and high tension event this was? reporter: well two things, brian. one, of course, this is the first news conference he s had in 168 days. so you had reporters, we re always trying to get our questions in. but the number of questions, the range of questions i think was so expansive because there was souclost time to make up for, and i think that that contributed to some of the tension that you saw unfold there, and then of course you had these developments overnight, this reporting on russia that the president-elect dismissed outright, and that caused him to again attack his intelligence communities right off of the top. and i guess i would make one more point, brian, there are a lot of questions that went unanswered on his intelligence community. does he trust them? does he trust his intelligence officials? i tried to pin him down on that at the very end of the news conference and he sort of dodged exchange that he had with cnn s jim acosta, when he attacked cnn for their reporting, and jim said, let me at least get a question in, and he wouldn t allow it. that s really extraordinary, brian. i ve been to a number of news conferences and you ve been to a number of presidential news conferences and never really seen that type of tension before. again i would just underscore, this is the first news conference he s had since july so there s a lot of questions we didn t get to, like isis, like israel and the middle east, so it all set the stage for fireworks. kristen welker thanks and thanks to the mta for parking a bus behind you during our conversation. andrea mitchell is one of the people who has us beat in terms of our combined attendance at presidential news conference. andrea, i just can t ask you in enough ways to sum up, if this isn t a president-elect at war with the intelligence community, such a vital arm of government when you re a president, the intelligence community which is both vendor and client, to overseas countries, to private organizations, i don t want to see what war is, but try to sum up what the impact, the concussion this is going to cause in washington. well, concussion s a great word because there are concussion bombs. this is a concussion bomb. brian, he compared the intelligence community pretty directly on twitter and at his news conference used the same analogy to nazi germany. you re talking about men and women, thousands and thousands of them here and overseas who are often covert, and even those who are not have to make considerable sacrifices in their lives, not for great amounts of money. many of them have died. their stars are on the wall at langley. they ve been expanded in the last 15 years since 9/11, big expansion perhaps too much bureaucracy, that could be addressed. lot of critics internally and externally think that that is the real focus that he should be looking at once he gets into office but to raise that question, to talk about these leaks i think a lot of people, including myself last night on thir with you, questioned why there was that addendum of what most likely is unverified information that was attached to the classified intelligence brief. so those are the kinds of questions that you can ask but to compare them to nazi, germany, that is really escalating this war. this was the first grudging acknowledgment that russia was behind the hacking but again in the next sentence he compared it to the office of personnel management hacking 22 million people by china. well that did happen two years ago, there was a lot of attention. i was on the air a lot on nightly news and msnbc on the today show, we covered that story. the difference between what russia did and what china does, what north korea does, what we do, our country to, you know, foreign countries, allies and adversaries alike, i ve covered stories of us hacking the french and the japanese over commercial contracts, and whether airbus and boeing get contracts. all these kinds of things happen every day. the difference here in the russian hacking which was the consensus agreement of 17 agencies, it was weaponized. it was drnted. drnted under order by our own exclusive reporting by vladimir putin and confirmed by the report that was released to wikileaks, whether wikileaks was winning or not winning, wikileaks distributed it and distributed this harmful information, a lot of which could have had an impact on voting and donald trump kept refers to wikileaks during the campaign. he did it again today, in fact. look at the horrible things that john podesta said from wikileaks about hillary clinton, his characterization, not mine. the point is he keeps pointing to wikileaks the conveyor of stolen information hacked by russia and leaked during the campaign and this is the offense which may even be a criminal offense in some regards. we don t know what s been investigated. there have been hints of an investigation. so it s just amazing, and he s going to have to rely, i heard chuck todd say he has to rely on the same intelligence agencies and their career people. doesn t matter who is at the head. it s a big superliner to turn around. you re going to have to rely on the analysis of those men and women. it takes a long time to train them. you re not going to have them all, you know, leaving immediately. if north korea is close to launching an icbm that can hold a nuclear weapon and reach the continental united states, he has to not only persuade the american people but our allies about the veracity of that intelligence and what he is doing now arguably is destroying the credibility of american intelligence at home and abroad. that s a serious and important point you make there at the end. the only place you re going to learn abou the moves north korea is makings the very same intelligence agencies that were in for such a drubbing today. in our studio here we have ali velshi, we have katy tur, we also have standing by a guy who has been so patient with us, steve clemmons, editor at large for the atlantic. steve, where to begin? what was your lead story from that event? i think the lead story is two things, is that as you were showing earlier the rex tillerson exchange with the members of the senate foreign relations committee, many people say the intelligence was seemingly soft on some of the issues. i was struck by how hard he was in comparison to donald trump, so the taking of crimea was a taking. he criticized the obama administration for not putting in enough defensive weapons and not putting in enough support. it was a sort of hard edged assessment, and that it was highly unlikely, he said, that the united states would become friends with russia, and that just stands out as an obvious contrast with the tilt and tone of donald trump even with the kinds of things saying maybe we won t be friends with vladimir putin and others, but donald trump continues to sort of largely publicly hug that vladimir putin and hold that out, so i ve got a divide with a press conference going on at the same time as the senate hearing between the likely secretary of state, potential secretary of state and the president-elect, and that stood out. the other thing that s gotten almost no attention was that he nominated and talked about david shulke, veterans affairs obama appointee. he will be the first obama appointee if confirmed in the trump cabinet. that may not compare to all the other news out there but that is interesting. indeed. he s an d., and you re right, he will be a holdover from adstration t administration. also a very tough job to fill among all the cabinet agencies, but steve, imagine this. what you re talking about, the way donald trump treated and handled all things russian, from putin to russia in general, this was all in the context of a news conference that was designed in part to quash and criticize what they saw as scurrilous reporting tying donald trump to russia. i think what david ignatius said before is that the hostility really between the intelligence agencies and donald trump didn t get much help from this exchange. there s an opportunity with this call that donald trump has made for the first 90 days he ll get a report from the dni, the director of national intelligence, and the cia that strengthens our hand in the hacking arena, but broadly when you look at it, donald trump thus far goes to extraordinary lengths not to put russia on the spot, and that has put him at odds with a lot, not just the intelligence community, but a lot of national, republican national security stalwarts, and if there was going to be a break between the legislative department and the executive over something big, it s over these issue, and his dedication to kind of continuing really this crisis, not between democrats and republicans, but between republicans and republicans is i don t know what to call it. it s impressive, donald trump s willingness to continue to kind of run on that edge where his own credibility is going to be held in doubt by many of the top intelligence people in the country, but also the lindsey grahams, john mccains, marco rubios and many other that will matter to him on a whole variety of key executive decisions in the world. steve, finally, as someone to whom the printed word is so important, fake news. someone spent months making fake news a thing, an entity, fairly vibrant entity and now it s a bucket into which stories one doesn t like can be thrown. reminds me of the old days the founding of the republic. bill sapphire wrote a clever his oshlg torqual novel called scandal mongers. he talked about the early pamphleteeres who invented stories that defamed leading figures and they d fight the pages out there. i m reminded of that era in american history we ve come back into that as well. it s important we in journalism maintain critical distance and objectivity in what we do and find a way to present that as the alternative to this raif of fake news that seems to be proliferating on both sides, if there is, are two wils it s there. this era may test us all. steve thank you very much. always a pleasure to hear from you and talk to you. we re going to whipsaw a bit into the hearing room that had our attention yesterday. senator jeff sessions of alabama nominated to become the nation s top law enforcement official, the next attorney general. we re going to hear some extraordinary remarks here, congressman lewis from georgia, is about to speak in opposition of senator sessions, and senator booker from new jersey. the importance of this, a senator speaking in opposition to a fellow sitting senator. there are only 100 people in that community. it is a very, very small world indeed, but this is part of the opposition lined up against senator sessions to be attorney general. we ll listen in, in the hearing room. like caucus. welcome to the committee, congressman richmond. finally we will hear from mr. william smith. mr. smith worked for senator sessions as the first african-american general counsel on the senate judiciary committee. he has known senator sessions for 20 years and we know him because that service as a staffperson here as well. welcome to all of you, and we ll start with senator booker. thank you, airmangrassley. i want to thank senator leahy as well, as well as the distinguished members of this committee. i know it is exceptional for a senator to testify against another senator nominated for a cabinet position and i appreciate the opportunity you ve given me today. i ve worked closely with many of you on this panel on both sides of the dais, on matters related to criminal squlus reform and you know just how deeply motivated i am by the many issues our next attorney general will heavily influence, especially the crisis of mass incarceration. i know that some of my many colleagues are unhappy that i am breaking with senate protradition to testify on the nomination of one of my colleagues, but i believe like perhaps all of my colleagues in the senate that, in the choice between standing with senate norms or standing up for what my conscience tells me is best for our country, i will always choose conscience and country. senator sessions and i have consistently disagreed on the issues, he and i have always exercised a collegiality and a mutual respect between us. perhaps the best example of this is the legislation we cosponsored to award the congressional gold medal to those foot soldiers who marched at selma, one of the foot soldiers is sitting next to me now. this was a blessing and an honor to me, because in 2015, a retired judge who was white told me that it was those brave marchers on the edmund pettis bridge who inspired him as a young lawyer in the 1960s to seek justice for all in new jersey and begin representing black families looking to integrate white neighborhoods, black families who were turned away and denied housing. one of the families was mine. i am literally sitting here because of people, marchers in alabama, and volunteer lawyers in new jersey, who saw it as their affirmative duty to pursue justice, to fight discrimination, to stand up for those who are marginalized. but the march for justice in our country still continues. it is still urgent. i know also though of the urgency for law and order. i imagine that no sitting senator has lived in the last 20 years in higher crime neighborhoods than i have. i have seen unimaginable violence on american streets. i know the tremendous courage of law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line every single day to fight crime in america. i want an attorney general who is committed to supporting law enforcement and securing law and order, but that is not enough. america was founded heralding not law and order, but justice for all, and critical to that is equal justice under the law. law and order without justice is unobtainable. they are inextricably tied together. if there is no justice, there is no peace. the alabama state troopers on the edmund pettis bridge were seeking law and order. the marchers were seeking justice, and ultimately a greater peace. one of the victories of the modern civil rights movement was the 1957 civil rights act, which in effect made be the attorney general not only the chief law enforcement officer of the united states, but also vested in that office the responsibility to pursue civil rights and equal protection for all of america. senator sessions has not demonstrated a commitment to a central requisite of the job, to aggressively pursue the congressional mandate of civil rights, equal rights, and justice for all of our citizens. in fact, at numerous times in his career he s demonstrated a hostility towards these convictions, and has worked to frustrate attempts to advance these ideals. if confirmed senator sessions will be required to pursue justice for women but his record indicates that he won t. he will be expected to defend the ecall rights of gay, lesbian and transgender americans but his record indicates that he won t. he will be expected to defend voting rights butis recd indicates he won t. he will be expected to defend the rights of immigrants and affirm their human dignity but the record indicates that he won t. his record indicates thated aattorney general he would object to the growing national bipartisan movement towards criminal justice reform. his record indicates we cannot count on him to support state and national efforts towards bringing justice to the justice system, and people on both sides of the aisle who readily admit that the justice system as it stands now, is biased against the poor, against drug addict n addiction, against mentally ill and against people of color. his record indicates that at a time that even the fbi director is speaking out against explicit racial bias in policing and the urgent need to address it, the last two attorney generals have taken steps to fix our broken criminal justice system as a time when the justice department he would lead has uncovered systemic abuses in police departments all over the united states, including ferguson, including newark, senator sessions would not continue to lead this urgently needed change. the next attorney general must bring hope and heal iing to thi country and this demands a more courageous empathy than senator sessions record demonstrates. it demands an understanding that patriotism is love of country and love of country demands that we love all of our citizens, even the most marginalized, the most disadvantaged, the most degraded, and the most unfortunate. challenges of race in america cannot be addressed if we refuse to confront them. persistent biases cannot be defended unless we combat them. the arc of the moral universe does not just naturally curve towards justice. we must bend it. if someone to be attorney general, they must be willing to continue the hallowed tradition in our country of fighting for justice for all, for equal justice, for civil rights. america needs an attorney general who is resolute and determined to bend the arc. senator sessions record does not speak to that desire, intention or will. with all at stake in our nation now, with the need for healing and love i pray my colleagues will join me in opposing his nomination. mr. chairman i d like to submit my testimony to the record and thank you for your opportunity to testify and finally i d like to acknowledge which was not done that sitting behind me are proud members of the united states congress and the congressional black caucus. thank you, sir. and you shouldn t have had to recognize them. i should have done that, i m sorry. thank you, sir. because i knew they were here. mr. huntley? . good afternoon. you got to push the button. i see, thank you. i ll start over briefly. you might pull the mike a little closer, get as close as you can. good afternoon. that s much better. my name is willie huntley and i m an attorney located in mobile, alabama. i m a solo practitioner and i have been practicing law for over 30 years. i m a graduate of auburn university, where i attended college on a football scholarship. i graduated from auburn in 1980, and i attended cumberland law school after that. i finished cumberland law school in 1984. after i finished law school i started a federal clerkship with a federal judge in montgomery, alabama. after i completed that process, i began a tour with the,ed aan assistant district attorney in macon county, alabama. i was there from 1985 to 1987. then my life changed. i got a phone call one day and my secretary comes in the office, and she says, jeff sessions is on the phone. and i m sitting there wondering why is jeff sessions calling me? i was wellware of the allegations that had happened in his bid to become a federal judge, which made me wonder why he was calling me. i answered the phone and i find out that jeff sessions wants me to become an assistant united states attorney in the southern district of alabama. this presented an ideal situation, so i decided to take advantage of that and the first time i actually met him was at a dinner in montgomery. that dinner was supposed to last probably an hour, hour and a half. we ended up meeting for about three hours. during that time period, we discussed a number of topics, football, religion, politics, family, we talked about all those things, and during the course of that meeting with him, i got the feeling more and more and more that the allegations that had been spread through the press weren t true. i also was contemplating whether i should make this move, because i thought if i go to mobile, i don t know anybody there. i have no family there, and what if this man turns out to be exactly how he s been portrayed? fortunately, it didn t turn out like that. i was at the u.s. attorney s office from 1987 to 1991. he assigned me the general criminal trial cases. he also assigned me to civil rights cases, and i would supervise all the civil rights cases that came through the office. during this time period, i can recall where we successfully prosecuted a police officer that was charged with excessive use force. unfortunately, i made a decision to leave the.s. attorney s office in 1991. that decision wasn t based on anything that had happened to me during my time period in the u.s. attorney s office. during that time period, jeff gave me advice, counsel. he provided a great deal of support in everything that i did. one thing in particular that he did was my second child was born, and there was a knock on the door that morning and through the door walks jeff sessions. after i left the u.s. attorney s office, jeff became the attorney general of alabama. he asked me to join his staff at this time, but i declined to join his staff. however, he made me a special assistant attorney general and he put me in charge of handling defense cases for the state of alabama. also during this time period, jeff became charged with violating the state of alabama ethics act. it involved a company by the name of tyco. jeff sessions could have hired any lawyer he wanted to, to represent him in that matter. jeff decided to hire me in that particular case. we had that case and during the course of it, it was probably the longest hearing that had ever been held before the state ethics commission. at that point, jeff was fully exonerated of all the charges involving the state ethics act. one of the things that i can say about jeff is that he has always been the same person that i have known. he s always been available for me, and always been there when i needed him. at no point in the time that i ve known jeff has he demonstrated any racial insensitivity, and i see my time is rapidly winding down and i would just like to say that, in my, jeff sessions will enforce and follow the laws of the united states even-handedly, equally and with justice for all. jeff sessions will adhere to the justice department motto quid pro domina sequitor it means for the lady justice, jeff will protect and defend the rights of all people. thank you for this opportunity. thank you. now we ll hear from congressman john lewis. chairman grassley, senator leahy, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. millions of americans are encouraged by our country s efforts to create a more inclusive democracy during the last 50 years, what some of us call the beloved community, a community at peace with itself. they are not a minority, a clear majority of americans say they want this to be a fair, just and open nation. they are afraid that this country is headed in the wrong direction. they are concerned leaders reject decades of progress and want to return to the dark past and the power of the law will use to deny the freedoms protected by the constitution. the bill of rights and its msnbcs, these are the voices i represent today. we can pretend that the law is blind. we can pretend that it is even-handed but if we are honest ourselves we know we are called upon daily by the people we represent to help them deal with unfairness and how the law is written and enforced. those two are committed to equal justice, in our society, wonder whether senator sessions calls nor law and order will mean today what it went in alabama when i was coming up back then. the rule of use we use it violate the human and civil rights are the poor, the d dispossessed, people of color. i was born in rural alabama, not very far from where senator sessions was raised. there was no way to escape or deny the chokehold of discrimination and racial hate that surrounded us. i saw the signs that said white waiting, colored waiting. i saw the signs that said white men, colored men, white women, colored women. i tasted the bitter fruits of segregation and racial discrimination. segregation was the law of the land, the order of society in the deep south. any black person who did not cross the street when a white person was walking down the same sidewalk who did not move to the back of the bus, who drank from a whitewater fountain, who looked at a white person directly in their eyes could be arrested and taken to jail. the forces of law and order in alabama were so strong that to take a stand against this injustice we had to be willing to sacrifice our lives for our cause, often the only way we could demonstrate that a law on the books violated a higher law, was by challenging that law. by putting our bodies on the line and showing the world the unholy price we had to pay for dignity and respect. it took massive well-organized nonviolent dissent for the voting rights act to become law. it required criticism of in this great nation and its laws to move toward a greater sense of equality in america. we had to sit in. we had to stand in. we had to march. and that s why more than 50 years ago a group of unarmed citizen citizens, plaqblack and white, gather on march 7, 1965, in a peaceful nonviolent fashion to walk from selma to montgomery, alabama, to dramatize to the nation and to the world that we wanted to register to vote, wanting to become participants in a democratic process. we were beaten. tear gas, left bloody, some of us unconscious. some of us had concussions. some of u almost died on that bridge. but the congress responded, president lyndon johnson responded, and the congress passed the voting rights act and it was signed into law on august 6, 1965. we have come a distance. we ve made progress, but we re not there yet. there are forces that want to take us back to another place. we don t want to go back. we want to go forward. as the late a. randolph the dean for the march on washington in 1963 often said, maybe our forefathers and our foremothers all came to this great land in different ships. well we re all in the same boat now. it doesn t matter how senator sessions may smile, how friendly he may be, how he may speak to you. but we need someone who is going to stand up, speak up and speak out for the people that need help, for people who have been discriminated fence and gainst, doesn t matter black, white, latino american, native american, asian-american, whether they are straight or gay, muslim, christian or jews. we all live in the same house, the american house. we need someone as attorney general who is going to look out for all of us and not just for some of us. i ran out of time. thank you for giving me a chance to testify. thank you, congressman lewis. now i go to mr. sorroyer. chairman, senators of the committee it s an honor for me to be here and i thank you for your time. my namis jesse sorroyer jr. i ve been in law enforcement since 1976 to 2016. i ve served in local police departments for 11 years, served in the united states marshal service for 8 1/2 years, served in the attorney general s office for 20 1/2 years. i first met jeff sessions when he was u.s. trt he were to in the southern district of alabama. jeff was prosecuted at that time by the name of henry hayes. jeff prosecuted that person for the abduction and murder of a black teenager. following jeff s election as attorney general i had the privilege to serve with him and his administration as his chief investigator. the beginning of jeff s tenure as attorney general presented senator sessions with challenges that included budget crisis, and one-third reduction of staff. things that jeff did when we came with the budget crisis and the reduction of staff, there were several people in the office that had to seek other jobs elsewhere. there was a black investigator in the office that came and had less than a year left before he was eligible to retire. jeff sessions allowed that to take place. he didn t have to do that. he did not have to do that at all, because of the situation that we were in. jeff sessions retained me. he did not have to do that. but he did. following the election, you know, we were charged with the responsibilities of a lot of crimes and the expectations of the attorney general was charged with the responsibilities of working various cases which included white collar crimes, public disruption, voter fraud and criminal investigations. as i reflect on our work there was never a time when any of these cases was investigated with any political agenda or motive. the utmost respect and zeg sbeg rit w integrity was exercised for all individuals involved. jeff sessions decisions as attorney general earned him a reputation and respect among his colleagues in appreciation for his willingness to do what was right. when jeff sessions got to the u.s. senate, as attorney general, he had argued to uphold the conviction and sentence of klaansman henry hayes for the murder of michael donnell. when jeff sessions became u.s. senator, he helped me with an appointment for u.s. state marshal for the district of alabama. he didn t have to do that but he did. i have known jeff sessions for 20 years. he s a good and decent man. he believes in law and order for all the people, all the people in alabama, because of his colleagues and all surrounded him, the things that he s done for the law enforcement community and citizens of alabama is great. it s without any questions as to whether or not he would be fit to serve this country as the united states attorney general. now, i did not learn these things from a political press conference or any website where i read about it. i know jeff sessions as the man, the man that i know is a decent and honest and respectful man that will put all of his life into public service. he s done that. when we talk about the criminal justice system, you know, we enforce the laws, and we do it because we have a love for the laws. jeff sessi loves the people that do the enforcement side of it. he respects the citizens, deserves a good and honest person that s going to give all he has to make sure that everyone is treated equally and fairly under the law. but his decency as a man, and his honesty as a man speak for itself. he is the type of individual that i support for the united states attorney general s office, because of my reputation and his history with me as a person, and the things that i ve seen over the years in jeff sessions. it s hard being a public servant. i was in law and been in law enforcement for 40 years. it s a tough job. we don t violate the laws. we don t get out there and do things that would cause ourselves to be brought into the system, and i m not saying everybody is the same. but i believe that he ll take hold of the justice system, justice department and he ll be fair, he will be honest and he ll do the same thing for every person with honesty and respect for all of us. my time is up. and thank you for listening. thank you, mr. sorroyer. now congressman richmond. congressman richmond? wait just a minute, congressman. human beings who are innocent let me thank thechairman and ranking member for allowing me to testify. i would ask to you hold. you won t lose any time. stop torturing people! proceed, congressman. let me thank the chairman and ranking member for allowing me to testify. the senate s duty to provide advice and consent to presidential nominees is a fundamental component of american democracy. i know you do not take this responsibility lightly. before i jump into my substantive testimony i want to address two timely issues. first i want to express my concerns about being made to testify at the very end of the witness panels. to have a senator, a house member and a living civil rights legend testify at the end of all of this is the equivalent of being made to go to the back of the bus. it say petty strategy and the record should reflect my c consternation at the process that brought us here. my record on equality speaks for itself and i don t mind being last but to have a living legend like john lewis handled in such a fashion is beyond the pale and the message sent by this process is duly noted by me and the 49 members of the congressional black caucus and the 78 million americans we represent and the over 17 african-americans that we represent. further on the issue of senator sessions record of prosecuting the marion three, stemming from a complaint filed by african-americans, i say the following. history is replete with efforts by those empowered to legitimize their acts of suppression and intimidation of black voters by recruiting other blacks to assist in bringing trumped up charges against law-abiding citizens who are engaged in perfectly legitimate voter education and empowerment activities. those tactics were effectively used gns former congressmen robert smalls, and hundreds if not thousands of black office holders and landholders in our post-reconstruction era, and they were used several years ago against mr. and mrs. alfred turner who was discussed by this committee yesterday. the declaration of independence set forth the idea of universal equality that rests at the heart of our democracy, but it is the 14th amendment of our constitution and its equal protection clause that has helped bring us closer to fulfilling that foundational principle and bringing us closer to a more perfect union. all cabinet officials have a responsibility to protect the interest of all of the american people, but there s no office for which the duty to apply the law equally is greater than that of the attorney general. in my capacity as chairman of the congressional black caucus, i urge you to reject senator sessions nomination. throughout our nation s history, attorney generals have used the resources of the federal government to vindicate the right of the most vulnerable in society. after the civil war, the first attorney general to lead the doj prosecuted the kkk for its widespread use of violence aimed at suppressing the black vote. this facilitated massive black voting turnout in 187 for the first time in our nation s history, former slaves were aforred the opportunity to participate in the democratic process. simply put, senator sessions has advanced an agenda that will do great harm to african-american citizens and communities. for this reason the cbc believes senator sessions should be disqualified. he has demonstrated a total disregard for the equal application of justice and protection of the law as it applies to african-americans and false short on so many issues. jeff sessions supports a system of mass incarceration that is disproporgtately targeted of acap american sit stenographcit devastated african-american communities. he opposed common sense bipartisan criminal justice reform, and jeff sessions cannot be relied upon to enforce the voting rights act. in his decade s long career in public life, senator sessions has proven himself unfit to serve in the role as attorney general. and i would not have the opportunity to testify today if it were not for men like john lewis who was beaten within an inch of his life in his pursuit for the right to vote for african-americans. it s a shame he must sit here and he will litigate this 50 years later. we sit here as the prodigy of men and women who were bought, sold, enslaved, raped, tortured, beaten and lynched. black people were bought as chattel and considered three-fifths of a human being. we ve been able to endure and largely overcome that history thanks in part to brave men and women, both democrat and republican, who sat where you sit and cast often difficult votes for free tom and equality. these senators fought opinion and even their own party to do what was right? i come before you today asking you to do the same. now you all must face a choice. be cougeous or complicit. if you vote for session session you take possession of everything he may do or not do in office. he has no track record of fighting for justice for minorities despite the characterization you ve heard from others today. he and his supporters have told you he is a champion for civil rights and equality. characterization and revisionist histories are not the same things as facts. he is on the record on numerous issues. i have provided just a few examples today. let s think about this logically. if he were in fact a champion for civil rights, wouldn t the civil rights community support his nomination instead of speaking with one voice in near unanimous opposition? in closing, each and every senator who casts a vote to confirm senator sessions will be permanently marked as a coconspirator in an effort to move this country backwards towards a darker period in our shared history. so i ask you all, where do you stand? it is clear from senator sessions record where he stands, where you stand with him and allow history to judge you for doing so. i implore you all to weigh these questions properly as you prepare to cast what will be one of the most consequential votes in your time as a united states senator. res ipsa loquitor, a legal term which means the thing speaks for itself. senator sessions record speaks for itself and i would urge you not to confirm senator sessions as attorney general of the united states, and thank you, mr. chairman, for allowing me to go over. thank you, congressman richmond. now i call on mr. smith. chairman grassley, members of the committee, i ask my written statement be made part of the record. it will be and that s true of senator booker and anybody else that didn t get their entire statement put in the record, it will be in the record, yes. it s an honor for me to support senator sessions to be the next attorney general of the united states of america. he will do an outstanding job. the american people had an opportunity to witness yesterday through his testimony a brilliant legal mind, a man of the highest character, and great integrity. let me briefly address this legal mind. as a staffer your job is to be more prepared than the member. senator sessions made this difficult. when he didn t speak on the topic i would hand him another note on another topic. timely he decided to speak and he did as he did in his testimony yesterday, he crushed it. senator sessions was not ignoring my notes. he was systematically thinking about how to put all the notes together in one speech. a number of my colleagues i told them blank sheet of paper and told him to make me look good, and that s what he did. senator sessions spent yesterday proving to the american people that he understands the law, will disperburse it equally and made a bunch of staffers look good. lot has been said about senator session character. we ve seen people who have never met senator sessions claim to know him, know his heart. we ve seen members of this body and members of the house of representatives just now who has worked with senator sessions and praised him for his work and now turn to attack him. this should not be. the reason we did not see a lot of this yesterday, during the hearing, is because the members of this committee know senator sessions. you know he s a strong conservative but you also know he s fair and honest. if you disagree because of his political views let s have a conversation about that but let s do it on the facts, not on 30 years of old innuendos and allegations that have been disproven. there s something very consistent about praising senator sessions for for aiding african-american communities and working on crack and powder cocaine legislation and then criticizing him because it takes a different political view on another matter like immigration. enforcing immigration laws is want out of the mainstream. on the panel that testified before this one, through personal attack after personal attack after personal attack, i doubt any one of those individuals attacking senator sessions outside of yesterday has spent 30 minutes in the same room with him. that s 30 minutes in the same room, not 30 minutes talking to him. i doubt any of them have spent 30 minutes or ten minutes talking to senator sessions. this process should not be about this process should be about facts, not about political aspirations. every allegation and witness from 30 years ago has been discredited. members in the media should move on. senator sessions testified yesterday that he would enforce the laws whether he agreed with them or not. that s the role of the attorney general. not to embrace every point of view in the shifting political winds. if you come before jeff sessions, you will get equal justice and you will respect the outcome even if you lose. how do i know this? i know it because i know jeff sessions. i m not testifying as someone who just met him yesterday. i know his family. i ve dined at his house. we ve eaten johnny rockets burgers together. i ve traveled across the state of alabama with jeff sessions. i ve watched him order a heath blizzard at dairy queen, quote, heavy on the heath. i ve watched him prepare for hearings. i debated him on legislative matters. i ve written speeches for him. i ve made speeches on his behalf. i ve been in every political situation with him. senator sessions is unquestionably qualified for the job, for which he s been nominated. he s a good christian sxhan a good family man. he s a man who s dedicated his life to public service. in the course of that he s absolutely fault for disenfranchised. not only did he fight for citizen reform, he accomplished it. he fought for civil rights. he prosecuted members of the klu klux klan. and he fought for all americans, regardless of the color of their skin or beliefs. this is the way it should be. after 20 years of knowing senator sessions, i have not seen the slightest evidence of racism because it does not exist. i know a racist when i see one, and i ve seen more than one. but jeff sessions is not one. senator sessions has served with distinction throughout his career as united states attorney, as attorney general for alabama, and as a member of this body. the legal profession is better for his service. this body is better for his service. and this country at the end of his term will be better for his service. and every season, jeff sessions has been measured, courteo and kind. he has treated me and everyone respectfully and fairly. not showing favoritism at any point. this is the kind of attorney general our nation needs. a mraud his selection. i look forward to his swift confirmation. thank you, war eagle. the record will stay open until tuesday. i thank all of you for your testimony and the hearing is adjourned. there you heard it from chairman grassley after an emotional series of speakers. and it was the congressman from louisiana who asked the very basic question, and that was, why this panel was going dead last in the hearings. our justice correspondent, pete williams, has been riding this news day and yesterday along with us. pete, we ve been whip-sawed between the donald trump news conference, the rex tillerson confirmation hearings, remembering all the while that this, the confirmation of jeff sessions for attorney general goes on. how are we to fit in what we just saw against the overall records so far with the sessions hearing? well, this is day two of these hearings. they all follow the same pattern. you get the nominee on the first day and then people for and against the nominee the second day. you ve just heard a little bit of that. this morning we had speaking in favor of senator sessions, former attorney general, former deputy attorney general, member of the commission on human rights, the president of the fraternal order of police, opposing him we had the president of the naacp, advocates for rape victims, of former dreamer, someone who came here illegally under age and became an army veteran and u.s. citizen. this afternoon this somewhat unusual panel, all african-americans, all given the opportunity basically to speak without the members asking them any questions. whereas, there were questions of the panel this morning. the committee chairman, charles grassley, said this is something he and the ranking democrat dianne feinstein worked out in order to give, in essence, a platform to those folks who wanted to talk about senator sessions this afternoon, but were not in the sort of pro and con interest group area. but passionate statement from cory booker, who became the first u.s. senator. we checked with senate historian s office on this. he is the first u.s. senator to ever testimony against the nomination of a fellow senator. but what he said this morning is that he had to choose between his conscience and his country and the senate norms. basically, the message from the civil rights community here has been that senator sessions both in his time as the federal prosecutor, a state attorney general and a senator, has not shown the commitment to aggressively pursuing civil rights that they want to see in an attorney general. he has said yesterday, he spent a lot of time saying he would enforce laws, even though he disagrees with, but what you just heard from this panel of civil rights people is that they want to see an attorney general nominee, somebody who doesn t merely show a tolerance for those laws but somebody who would aggressively enforce them. nonetheless, i don t think that this passionate testimony this afternoon is going to change the outcome. it does appear that senator sessions, it comesown to a matter of simple arithmetic. the republicans have et votes. they need to get him confirmed. we have not seen any signs that opponents of senator sessions have peeled away a sufficient number to deny him the confirmation. as for timing, brian, my guess is the democrats will do what they can do in these situations. normally they could go first of all, the committee can t consider the nomination until there s a president to nominate him. so, this is all doing their homework in advance. they can t vote on the nomination until donald trump is inaugurated and formally sends it up to the senate. then the democrats have the option of asking for ten extra days. they may well do that. if that s the schedule, we may see a vote on senator sessions maybe early the first full week in february. pete williams, our justice correspondent, thanks. our viewers might have noticed our other guest standing by to talk to us. that s the former chairman of the republican party, michael steele. michael, where do you stand on the sessions nomination? i m in support of it, number one. i find i found the hearing process to be largely pretty good. i think jeff sessions has handled this very well. he articulated his failure in the past to really appreciate
aisle, are rightly concerned about how he may respond when tested by russia, iran, north korea, and other transnational threats such as cyber. considering some of these hotspots in the world in detail, i would like to start with iran, which remains a top concern for this committee. their behavior with respect to forces across the region has not improved and iran s unsafe actions have continued. i believe the joint plan of action is the most effective way to prevent iran from resuming their nuclear weapons program. general mattis, while you raise concerns about the jcpoa when it was being negotiated, you stated during a center for strategic and international studies forum in april 2016 that in your words, there is no going back absent a real violation. i agree with that assessment. i look forward to hearing your thoughts about how we can build upon the jcpoa to address other iranian threats including its malign influence in the region and ballistic missile programs. violent extremist groups remain a persistent and likely generational problem. our actions have made significant gains in recapturing areas once held by isil including operations directed as mosul and raqqah. however, isil continues to find new ways to terrorize innocent civilians and recruit new members. in the long term successful military action against isil, al qaeda, and other violent groups must be complemented by nonmilitary efforts by the international community to address the circumstances that led to the rise of such groups, again, echoing comments that my colleagues mentioned about the complementarity of the state department and the congress. this decision requires strong leadership to ensure that individual success of the service member and the clothive success of their unit and their service. and i expect you to provide that leadership. i remain concerned that too often our service members and their families fall victim to financial problems. this is an issue of importance. soldiers, sailors, airmen or marine hearing from a spouse back home about unscrupulous financial organizations is unacceptable. i and the chairman have made it a strong priority in this committee. defense budgets should be based on our long term military strategy. however, defense spending is subject to the budget control act as the chairman has pointed out. and the defense investments that have been made to modernize platforms and equipment are in jeopardy. in addition, we must be aware that simply adding funding to government agencies creates other problems and is not an effective long term solution. one of your first tasks in the new administration will be to submit a fiscal 2018 budget that addresses these issues and goes to the point the chairman made of repealing the budget control act. general mattis, if confirmed, you will manage the department of defense grappling with many extraordinarily difficult challenges and it requires strong civilian leadership. congress must provide exceptions to the statutory requirement that currently prohibits individuals from being appointed if they re within seven years of their military service. earlier this week this committee held a hearing that was illuminating and constructive. i hope you will share the actions you will take on civilian control of the military if confirmed. when he assumes office, president trump will become commander in chief of our around forces. i continue to hope that the gravity of the office of the president and the magnitude of the challenges our country embraces will encourage him to be more thoughtful in his comments. however president-elect trump has made a number of statements addressing north korea s icbm capability, our trade relations with china and expansion of u.s. nuclear weapons. most troubling is the president-elect s continuing praise of vladimir putin and his seeming indifference to his efforts to influence the american election. many people believe you will be the source that cools the coffin. i look forward to hearing how you will manage the relationship between the nsc and the president. again, thank you, mr. chairman, i look forward to hearing from our nominee. thank you, general mattis. there are standard questions we are required to ask. i would go through those very quickly and point out, in order to exercise its legislative and oversight responsibilities important to this committee able to receive testimony, briefings, and other communications of information. have you adhered to applicable laws and regulations governing conflicts of interest? i have. will you ensure that your staff complies with deadlines established for requested communication including questions for the record and hearings? i will. will you cooperate in providing witnesses and briefers in response to congressional requests? yes. will those witnesses be protected from reprisal for their testimony or briefings? yes. do you agree if confirmed to appear and testify upon request of this committee? i do. do you agree to provide documents including copies of electronic forms and communications in a timely manner when requested by a duly constituted committee or to consult with the committee in providing such documents? yes, sir. have you assumed any duties russia is raising grave concerns on several fronts, and china is shedding trust along its periphery. increasingly we see islands of stability in our hemisphere. democracies here, in europe, and in asia under attack by nonstate actors and nations that mitchly see their security in the insecurity of others. our armed forces in this world must remain the best-led, the best-equipped, and the most lethal in the world. these demanding times require us to put together a strong national security team here in washington. if confirmed, i will lead the department of defense and be a forthright member of that team. i recognize that i will need to be the strongest possible advocate for military and civilian personnel and their families. i will foster an atmosphere of harmony and trust at the department with our interagency counterparts and the awesome determination to defend herself. working with you, i will endeavor to keep our unique all-volunteer force second to none. we open the door to all patriots who are eligible and meet the standards, provide them with the training, equipment, and leadership essential to their success, and ensure all service members are treated with dignity and respect. i recognize my potential civilian role differs in essence from my former role in uniform. civilian control of the military is a fundamental tenet of the american military tradition. both the commander in chief and the secretary of defense must impose an objective strategic calculus in the national security decisionmaking process and effectively direct its actions. civilian leaders bear these responsibilities because the esprit decor of our military and its obedience to civilian leadership reduces the inclination and power of the military to oppose a policy if it is ultimately ordered to implement. if the senate consents and if the full congress passes an exemplifies to the seven-year requirement, i will provide strong civilian leadership of military plans and decisions in the department of defense. i recognize under the constitution it is the congress that raises, sustains, and supports our armed forces through annual authorizations and appropriations. for many years i have watched you in action and testified before you. i look forward to collaborating closely for the defense of our nation. i am mindful of the extraordinary privilege it is to be nominated for this position. i will hold service members, civilians, and their families foremost in my thoughts and work to give the department the best chance for victory if you confirm me. finally, on a personal note, i have worked at the pentagon twice in my career. a few people may know i m not the first person in my family to do so. when in the wartime spring of 1942, my mother was 20 years old and working in military intelligence. she was part of the first wave of government employees to move into the still-unfinished pentagon. she had come to america as an infant and lives today on the banks of the columbia river in the pacific northwest. little could she imagine in her youth that more than 90 years after she immigrated to this country and 75 years after she first walked through the doors of the war department, one of her sons would be sitting here before you today. thank you. may i take your questions. general, i neglected, would you like to introduce members of your family who are here with us today? thank you, senator. they re safely west of the rockies as well right now. [ laughter ] very quickly, our uniformed military leaders have said that have testified before this committee that the budget control act has put the men and women serving in uniform at greater risk. do you agree with that? i do, sir. i believe that we are in serious trouble in afghanistan, as the taliban is able to attack regions; is that a fair statement? they have made advances and eroded some of our successes, mr. chairman. and the afa is sustaining unsustainable losses? i need to review the casualty figures and recruitment, sir, but i believe that s correct. do you believe that we have a strategy that will allow us to regain control of raqqah? i believe we do, sir. however, i believe that strategy needs to be reviewed and perhaps energized on a more aggressive timeline. it seems to me that some of the actions, we re taking 50 troops here, 200 there, smacks of mission creep. is there do you think that there is some aspects of that? chairman, i m not current on this issue. if confirmed i will get current very quickly. i just returned from a trip to the baltics, georgia and ukraine. they are incredibly worried about our commitment to them. and one of the major priorities that the baltic countries have is a permanent u.s. military presence, not a base, but a permanent military presence in the baltics. do you agree with that? chairman, once the new national security team is confirmed, i want to sit down with them and come up with a coherent, integrated strategy that uses diplomacy i understand. i m specifically speaking of the baltics. i do, sir. on a trip that i took with senator graham and senator klobuchar, we went close to the front lines, with the president of ukraine, where we took part in various ceremonies and meetings with these brave ukrainians, 10,000 of whom have been slaughtered by vladimir putin in his invasion of crimea and ukraine. and i know you can appreciate the fact that there was a ceremony where the president of ukraine gave their highest award to the mother of a young man who had just been killed by a russian sniper a couple of days before. it s always very moving, and it brings home graphically what the russians have done in ukraine and crimea. crimea, in blatant violation of the budapest agreement for which they recognized crimea as part of ukraine in return for ukraine giving up its nuclear inventory, what do you think we ought to do about russia, general mattis? do you think we ought to maybe have sanctions against russia? or basically sit by, as we have for the last couple of years, and watched their aggression, by the way, including their precision guided weapons against hospitals in aleppo, the list goes on and on of the atrocities that have been committed by vladimir putin while we again try a reset. i ve watched three presidents commit themselves to new relationship with vladimir putin. all three have been an abysmal failure. should we ignore the lessons of history in our relationship with vladimir putin? and what should we be doing? chairman, history is not a straitjacket. but i ve never found a better guide for the way ahead than studying the history. since yalta, we have a long list of times we ve tried to engage positively with russia. we have a relatively short list of successes in that regard. and i think right now the most important thing is to recognize the reality of what we deal with, with mr. putin, and we recognize that he is trying to break the north atlantic alliance, and that we take the steps, the integrated steps, diplomatic, economic, military, and the alliance steps, working with our allies, to defend ourselves where we must. you are a distinguished student of history. and as we are all aware, that following world war ii, a world order was established which has held for basically the last 70 years. do you believe that that world order is now under more strain than it s ever been? i think it s under the biggest attack since world war ii, sir. and that s from russia, from terrorist groups, and with what china is doing in the south china sea. and that would argue for us making sure we re adequately prepared to meet these challenges? i think deterrence is critical right now, sir, absolutely. and that requires the strongest military. do you think we have a strong enough military today in order to achieve that goal? no, sir. i thank you. senator reed. thank you very much, mr. chairman. thank you, general, for your testimony, and again for your service. as i mentioned in my opening statement, your comments at csis indicated misgivings about jcpoa, in your words, there s no going back. short of a clear and present violation, that was enough to stimulate the europeans action that we have to essential stly y the course. is that still your view? it s an arms agreement, senator, it s not a friendship treaty. when america gives its word we have to live up to it and work with our allies. as i pointed out and as you have recognized and pointed out much more eloquently, challenges arising from the non-nuclear aspects of iranian conduct. proxy support, interference with shipping. in fact there was an incident this week of provocation. how do you apply appropriate pressure to the iranians to contain their behavior in these areas without jeopardizing the solidarity of the european and world community and the durability of the jcpoa? chairman, once the new national security team is confirmed, we ll work together. but i think to publicly display what iran is up to with their surrogates and proxies, their terrorist units that they support, to recognize the ballistic missile threat, to deal with the maritime threat, and to publicly make clear to everyone what they re doing in the cyber realm, all helps to constrain iran. thank you. now, if you are to become the secretary of defense, you will be a critical component of the intelligence community. you produced intelligence through the defense intelligence agency. you can consume intelligence because it is the basis of almost every recommendation or decision you would make. and we are in a very unique situation where we have a president-elect disparaging the intelligence community, questioning its conclusions, and questioning its motivations, suggesting perhaps that there would be some actions taken, perhaps bordering on retribution, for analysis that is being done, we premiusume, i certainly presume, based on tradecraft and allegiance to the facts and the best judgment they can make. do you believe if you observe behavior such as that, disrupting the intelligence community, disparaging it, undermining it, ignoring it again, i could go on. do you feel you have an obligation to the country and the committee to inform the committee of those actions? senator, i can tell new my many years of involvement in the military, i had a close relationship with the intelligence community. i could evaluate their effectiveness at times on a daily basis. and i have very, very high degree of confidence in our intelligence community. and if you see that community being undercut, not debated about their conclusions, but undercut or somehow ignored or selectively being listened to or ignored, again, do you feel you have an obligation to make us aware of this so we can exercise our responsibilities? i ll be completely transparent with this committee, sir. but i would not have taken this job if i didn t believe the president-elect would also be open to my input on this or any other matter. you have talked about the situation with respect to russia. one aspect of that is operations in syria. there has been some discussion, on and off during the campaign, of cooperating with the russians in syria. do you think there s a possibility of that, a likelihood of that, or would that be a good approach? senator, russia, to quote the chairman s opening statement, has chosen to be a strategic competitor. they re an adversary in key areas. and while we should always engage and look for areas of cooperation and even in the worst years of the cold war, president reagan, secretary schultz, were able to work with russia, the soviet union at that time, and reduce the nuclear weapons. so i m all for engagement. but we also have to recognize reality and what russia is up to. and there s a decreasing number of areas where we can engage cooperatively and an increasing number of areas where we re going to have to confront russia. thank you. senator inhofe? thank you, mr. chairman. i won t take all my time because every question i was going to ask, the chairman was going to ask, and i like the answers. i also am honored to have known you for 30 years. that s not normally the case. i m so excited that you re willing to do this. the two things that we re concerned with are readiness and what s happened that i m concerned with, is readiness and u.s. influence. a year ago you stated that our influence in the middle east is at its lowest point in four decades. and i agree with that. we also had confirmation testimony last november by a general who said continuous combat operations and reduced overall budgets have driven readiness to historically low levels. i look and i see senator cohen and senator nunn, i spent time with both of them, i admire them so much. but this isn t like it used to be. right now we have 1/3 of the army brigade combat teams ready to fight in all types warfare. the current air force is the smallest and oldest in air force history yet only half its fighter squadrons are ready to fight in intense combat. general mattis, your marines, the aircraft, their combat, marine aviators, are at historical lows right now in terms of flight time. navy, we have requirements for 308 ships and we only have 274. so this is not like it used to be. i would only say this, i really believe that we ll have to re-look at the priorities we have in this country. i enjoy quoting president reagan when he first came in, he said, quote, starting by considering what must be done to maintain peace and review all the possible threats against our security, then a strategy for strengthening peace and defending against those threats which must be agreed upon. and finally, our defense establishment must be evaluated to see what is necessary to project against any and all of the potential threats. the cost of achieving these ends is totaled up, and the result is the budget for national defense. do you think he was right at that time? yes, sir, i do. i ll look forward to that. thank you for being willing to do this. mr. chairman? thank you. thank you, general mattis, for also being willing to do this. you and i have had a chance to work together in the past. we also have had a chance to visit. i would like to first briefly talk about the overseas contingency operating fund and the joke that is being the cruel joke that is being played on the american public that we have not been able to come together in an honest way and confront the needs of our military and confront the needs of our domestic national security in a bipartisan compromise to allow us to quit putting base military funding in a fund that doesn t have to be paid for. and it s gotten worse every year. you know, it s such a hypocrisy. it is one of the reasons everybody in america is so disgusted with us, that we can t be honest with the american people about the needs of our country and come together in a bipartisan way to meet them in a way that is responsible in terms of the way that we budget and spend money. tell me how you intend on addressing this important issue going forward. senator, the need for our country to maintain a safe and secure nuclear deterrent, a decisive conventional force, while maintaining an irregular capability, is completely understood. and i know it is by this committee. but how do you then translate that into budgetary discipline and managerial integrity of the budget? and as you know, we will bring forward from defense what we think we need for overseas contingencies, for the base budget, this sort of thing. i believe my desire would be to say everything is in the base budget except for something that legitimately pops up that couldn t be anticipated. but at the same time, we are not in a position there to dictate that. and the bottom line, we will come to you with what is necessary and then support this committee and the congress in justifying it and making certain we have your confidence we re spending every dollar for what we should be spending it on, something we cannot do right now, i m aware of. but that s my goal in this effort. and i don t have a solution for what the chairman described as a self-inflicted wound of the budget control act. i don t know how to get around this in a way that puts the congress back into its oversight role rather than salami slices of cuts where you don t actually exercise your judgment. right. i m much more comfortable with you doing that than some arithmetic. i think i m with you, i share 100% of your frustration and your goal. i can t tell you i know how to get there other than giving you my best military advice. thank you. i also want to briefly touch on women serving in every military occupational specialty. and you and i had a chance to visit about this at length. i m particularly proud of the work that has been done on this in my state. since 1999, the leader course has been impressively maintaining completely gender-neutral standards determining who and who does not graduate with that prestigious tab. it is a rigorous physical requirement. despite those rigorous physical demands, over the course of the graduation rates, since 1999, the graduation rates for women and men have both been at about 50%. so understanding that none of us want any standards diminished, and that we ve got to maintain the highest physical standards for the specialties in which men and women are going to serve, can you address for this committee how committed you are going forward to having both men and women serve alongside each other when they are capable of doing the work for our country? yes, senator, i can. i think you hit on the point that no standards are changed. the standards are the standards. and when people meet the standards, then that s the end of the discussion on that. i would also add that what we re talking about here is somewhere north of 15% of our force is made up of women. and the reason we re able to maintain an all-volunteer force with very, very high recruiting standards is because we go to males and females. and that same application of that human capital has got to show where they can best serve, that s where they go. thank you, mr. chairman. general mattis, let s talk about israel for a few moments. would you agree that the united states shares common values and strategic interests with israel? israel is a fellow democracy and i think israel s security is very, very important to the united states. are there any other democracies in the middle east? no, sir. would you agree that the threat of iran s regional belligerence and nuclear ambitions are a shared threat both to the united states and to israel? i agree, and i would add also to our arab partners in the region. and i think you said we re going to have to live with what the administration has done with regard to the energy agreement with iran. are you confident that we can monitor the situation with regard to possible violations? do we have that capability? i ll have to the in and look at the classified data. if you confirm me, senator, i believe we can have it. i just can t respond authoritatively right now if we ve got those processes in place. in your opinion, what do the united states failure last month to veto the u.n. resolution with regard to israel do to our bilateral relationship with israel? sir, i would have to get back and look at that. i say that because i ve read what s in the newspaper, and what s going on in both tel aviv and washington and new york. but i do not have a very authoritative view of that right now. i think we have got to restore a better relationship with israel and with our arab allies. i think there s a sense on their part that we re indifferent to the situation they face, the security situation that they face. and we certainly don t need to send the signal that we re indifferent to their situation, do we? the greatest generation came home from world war ii recognizing, whether we like it or not, we re part of this world, sir. we re going to have to remember that lesson. and i realize this was a foreign policy question, but you re going to be part of the national security and foreign policy team. and let me say that one of my greatest concerns with regard to our failure to veto this resolution and therefore to let it be adopted by the u.n. security council is that people will argue that this establishes international law, and somehow this congress and this new administration are going to have to send the signal that we do not recognize that with regard to the israeli presence in certain sections of jerusalem, that we do not recognize that resolution as international law, and we are in a tough position there. if you would like to comment on that, i would be glad to hear your thoughts, sir. sir, i think ultimately we re going to have to promote peace between the palestinian and the israeli authorities there. and that s going to take time to build that kind of trust. and we should be a partner in trying to build that resolution between those people. wh when one speaks of israel maintaining its qualitative military edge over neighbors in the region, what does that mean to you, general? sir, it has to do with the technology of the military equipment provided. i would only add that we also have improving relations between israel and some of those neighbors and where we can work in terms of partnership with both israel and the arab neighbors. we can strengthen everyone s security and stability in the middle east. do you believe their qualitative military edge needs to be revitalized? i m not aware that it s not vital now, that it s not fully formed right now. and with regard to the thucydides trap, of course secretary cohen has insulted every member of this committee by suggesting we don t understand that, but with regard to that, as i understand it, this occurs when a rising power tries to meet with the power of an already existing and established power. do you think that is a risk when it comes to our relationship with china, particularly in the asian-pacific region? sir, i believe that we re going to have to manage that competition between us and china. there is another piece of wisdom from antiquity that says fear, honor, and interest always seem to be the root causes of why a nation chooses to go to hostilities. and i would just say that what we ve got to do is engage diplomatically, engage in terms of alliances, engage economically, and maintain a very strong military so our diplomats are always engaging from a position of strength when we deal with a rising power. thank you very much. good luck to you, sir. thanks. thank you, mr. chairman. and welcome, general mattis, and thank you for your willingness to continue to serve this country. i have read that in 2005, as commander of the marine corps combat development command, that you asked researchers to, quote, unleash us from the tether of fuel and explore ways to improve the efficiency of military vehicles in order to reduce the strain that energy puts on supply lines, because you, not only when you commanded the first marine division during the 2003 invasion, but you had also seen what happens when our troops outran their fuel supplies. so can you speak to why you think this is important? and will you as secretary of defense continue to support the military s effort to pursue alternative and more efficient sources of energy to reduce our reliance on conventional fuel supplies? yes, senator, we will take advantage of every advance in terms of extending our legs, extending our energy efforts. and certainly there s a lot of progress that s been made. i ve been living in silicon valley for the last several years, so you can understand my interest in what they re doing out there in the private sector. well, thank you. i think our military is way ahead of much of the rest of government and much of the private sector. and those are lessons that can be shared that will benefit the private sector as well. chairman mccain talked about the threat that russia poses, and listening to your responses it sounded like you also believe that russia poses a threat to the united states and to the i think you said the trans-atlantic alliance. today, for the first time since the fall of communism, american troops arrived in poland as part of the european reassurance initiative. how important is it for us to continue these initiatives to reassure our european allies that we will continue to support them? and how concerned are you that some of president-elect trump s statements with respect to continuing to support nato, to support our allies in europe, has undermined our ability to continue this initiative, and will you support the eri continuing as secretary of defense? senator, i do support eri. nato, from my perspective, having served once as a nato supreme allied commander, is the most successful military alliance probably in modern world history, maybe ever. and it was put together, as you know, by the greatest generation coming home from a war to defend europe against soviet incursion by their military, yet the first time it went to war is when this town and new york city were attacked. it s the first time nato went into combat. so my view is that nations with allies thrive and nations without allies don t. and so i would see us maintain the strongest possible relationship with nato. thank you. and are you concerned about some of the statements that president-elect trump has made with respect to our historic european allies and to nato and have you had a chance to have discussions with him, and how confident are you that he recognizes what you ve just said about the importance of those relationships? senator, i have had discussions with him on this issue. he has shown himself open even to the point of asking more questions, going deeper into the issue about why i feel so strongly. he understands where i stand. and i ll work with the other members of the team, the national security team, once the senate confirms them, to carry these views forward. thank you. you talked about, i think senator inhofe raised the issue of readiness of our troops. when we met we also talked about the national guard and the importance of the guard as being part of the one force that we depend on. readiness is obviously a concern for the national guard as well. in new hampshire, for example, our national guard has experienced at 32% decline in force structure since 2007, much more than many states that are smaller than we are. and they ve had trouble with training rotations, resources, equipment, other aspects of readiness. can you commit to us that you, in addition to trying to address readiness with our active duty forces, that you will also look at the guard and reserve and try and ensure that they also have access to what they need to be ready for deployment? senator, i share the chairman s view that we have shrunk our military capability. and one of the things that that forces on us is the awareness, it s not just a strategic reserve anymore in the national guard, it s also an operational reserve. that means they have to be ready to go on very short notice. that s just a reality, when we ve shrunk our military to the point we have yet not reduced our strategic obligations. so we are going to have to keep the national guard and the reserves of all the armed forces at the top of their game. we can t deploy them without having them at a high state of readiness, mostly in equipment and training. there s some things obviously they don t do because they re not on duty 365 days a year. but as an operational reserve and strategic reserve, they ll be critical. thank you, general. thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, general mattis, for your past service to this country, and thank you again for your willingness to step forward and serve us once again. i was happy to see your responses to the advanced policy questions affirming the importance of nuclear weapons, which you describe as fundamental to our nation s security, and your statement that, quote, we must continue with the current nuclear modernization plans for all three legs of the triad, end quote. when we talked in my office about the triad last week, you brought up i believe a very important point that bears repeating, relating to the icbm force. there is a broad recognition that the legs of the triad have different strengths. the bombers are visible, and therefore they have what i call signaling value. the submarines are highly survivable. and the icbms are the most responsive leg and they can be launched at a moment s notice. you mentioned the targeting challenge of our icbm force, and what that targeting challenge poses for our adversaries. could you explain that further? ma am, in my review of the triad that you brought up here, senator, i looked at each one of those legs, is it necessary. and i haven t had access to all the classified data, but i had a fair amount of background on this. and some of the aspects of why we have a triad have not changed. so in looking at each leg of it, with the icbm force, it s clear that they are so buried out in the central u.s. that any enemy that wants to take us on is going to have to commit two, three, four weapons to make certain they take each one out. in other words, the icbm force provides a cost composing strategy on an adversary. and again, what we re trying to do is set such a stance with our triad that these weapons must never be used ever again. and so the deterrent value of the icbm force is that an enemy would have to basically use three or four times as many weapons to take out each individual one. so that s the targeting challenge the enemy faces against the icbm force. thank you. and in your answers to this committee s advance questions about whether we are deterring hostile activity in cyber space, you say no, and you continue on to state, quote, to be deterred, our adversaries must know they will suffer consequences from cyber attacks that outweigh any gains they hope to achieve. if they choose to act as adversaries, we will treat them as such, end quote. i completely agree and believe that more costs must be imposed on those who are responsible for cyber attacks. so this gets to the issue we ve discussed in great detail on this committee, which is the lack of an overall policy to respond to cyber attacks. when we discussed this in our recent meeting, you made a point that i believe is also very important, which is that the lack of a policy is potentially destabilizing, because adversaries, unaware of our boundaries, may take a provocative action that forces the united states to act militarily. i believe you characterized it as, quote, stumbling into a conflict. essentially we don t want to find out what constitutes an act of war in cyber space the hard way. can you elaborate on that point for us? senator, i believe a lot of crises and even wars have started from missed calculations. so while it s important we make clear what we stand for, i think in an area such as you re bringing up, cyber, it s also important that our adversaries know what we absolutely will not tolerate. and by making that clear, you re less apt to have somebody stumble into a situation where now we re forced to take action. that said, putting together a policy like this is not something the department of defense can do alone. we certainly have a key role, a fundamental role. but at the same time, from our treasury department, to our commerce department, to our homeland security, we need to get a lot of people in a room to put this policy together. i realize it s a new domain. but that doesn t give us an excuse not to address it on an urgent basis. thank you, sir. i look forward to working with you on that. this committee has been focused on cyber. we are looking for a policy. and i look forward to developing one with you. and i invite you to come to nebraska and visit, i would love to be there when you re there. thank you. senator gillenbrand. thank you. do you plan on rolling back the participation of women based on your previous statements? senator, i ve never come into a job with a preformed agenda of changing anything. i come in assuming people before me deserve respect for the job they did and the decisions they made. i ask specifically because in previous speeches, one from the marines memorial club in san francisco in 2015, you were asked specifically about whether we should open infantry positions and special forces combat jobs to women. and you said you did not think it was a good idea. you said when you mix, you know that when you mix arrows, when you mix affection for one another, that could be manifested sexually, i don t care if you go anywhere in history, you will not find where this has worked, never has it worked. then in a previous speech on april 23rd, 2014, you said the idea of putting women in there is not setting them up for success. could we find a woman who could run fast enough? of course we could. could we find a few who could do the pullups? of course we could, that s not the point, that s not the point at all, it s whether or not you want to mix arrows. and so in both of these question and answer sessions, you said you do not think you could do it. have you changed your view on this issue? senator, i was not in a position to go back into government when i made those statements. there are many policies that have been enacted over many years, including the years since i ve been on active duty. i m coming in with the understanding that i lead the department of defense, and if someone brings me a problem, then i ll look at it. but i m not coming in looking for problems. i m looking for ways to get the department so it s at the most lethal stance. and in that regard, it s all about military readiness. i m looking for military readiness and what we can do in that regard. do you plan to oppose women serving in these combat roles? i have no plan to oppose women in any aspect of our military. in 2003 i had hundreds of marines who happened to be women serving in my 23,000-person marine division. and this is ten years before i retired. and i put them right into the front lines alongside everyone else. so you no longer believe that eros is a problem when men and women are serving together? i believe if we are going to execute policies like this, we had better train our leaders so they can handle all things that come from a policy that decided this town. that s our responsibility, to train our young leaders. we re going to break away momentarily from the senate armed services committee hearing to go to the senate intelligence committee hearing. mike pompeo, the congressman, is getting ready to testify. there he is, he s been nominated to become the cia director. let s listen in briefly. and your kindness. i sure know that i have. thank you so much, great to be here this morning. senator roberts, thank you too for your warm introduction. i m especially grateful for your guidance over the years, not simply because you re the dean of the kansas congressional delegation, but due to the insights you ve shared with me in your role as the former chairman of this committee, semper fi, sir. i may have to leave early. i finally got a client. senator, i completely understand, thank you very much for being here, sir. chairman burr, vice chairman, senators, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today as the nominee of the director of the central intelligence agency. i want to thank the staff of this committee too for your kindness and attention through the nomination process. i would like to thank president-elect trump for nominating me. it s an honor to be selected as the next steward of the world s premier intelligence agency. i look forward to working with senator coats, the nominee for the director of national intelligence, and supporting him in his critical role should we both be confirmed. i also want to thank director brennan and director clapper for their many, many years of selfless service to our nation. i m grateful of course to the people of the fourth district of kansas who have entrusted me for the past six years and change to represent them in the united states house of representatives. it has been a true honor. and finally, i want to thank my patient and patriotic wife susan and my son nicholas, each of whom i love dearly. the two of you have been so selfless in allowing me to return to public service, first as a member of congress and now keeping america safe. i can t tell you how much it means to me for you to be here today. having been a member on the house select committee on intelligence, i understand that my job will be to change roles from the central of policy making to information provider. the director must stay clearly on the side of collecting intelligence and providing objective analysis to policymakers including to this committee. i spent the majority of my life outside of politics. first as an army officer, then as a litigator, then running a manufacturing business in kansas. returning to duty is something that is in my bones. today i would like to briefly sketch some of the challenges i see facing the united states, address trends and intelligence, and describe what i see as the central intelligence agency role in addressing each of those. this is the most complicated threat environment the united states has seen in recent memory. isis remains a resilient movement that still controls major urban centers throughout the middle east. we must ensure that they and those they inspire cannot expand their reach or slaughter more innocent people. the conflict in syria is one of the most humanitarian catastrophes in the 21st century. it has led to the rise of second-tier yse sectarianism. iran. the world s largest state sponsor of terror has become an even more emboldened and disrupt player in the middle east. russia has reasserted itself, threatening europe, invading ukraine, and doing nothing to aid in the destruction and defeat of isis. as china expands its military and economic reach, its activities in the south and east china seas and in cyber space are pushing new bound rharies a creating real tension. north korea too has dangerously accelerated its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. we all rely on intelligence from around the globe to avoid strategic and tactical surprise. intelligence helps make the other elements of national power effective, including economic and legal measures against weapons proliferators, terrorist financiers and other criminals. foreign governments and liaison services are vital partners in preventing attacks and providing crucial intelligence. it s important that we all thank and appreciate the foreign partners who stand with us in helping make sure we all have the intelligence we need to keep america safe. if confirmed, i intend to advocate for a strong and vibrant intelligence community and for cia s sevcentrality. the intelligence community finds itself a potential victim of long term negative budgetary trends which can weaken the fabric of our intelligence
about mexico, here is president trump announcing the cancellation of his meeting with the mexican president in philadelphia today. the president of mexico and myself have agreed to cancel our planned meeting scheduled for next week. unless mexico is going to treat the united states fairly, with respect, such a meeting would be fruitless and i want to go a different route. we have no choice. so david, was this sort of a mutual agreement, a mutual cancellation, or do you think that the mexican president pulled the plug? i think that the mexican president pulled the plug, and he did that because donald trump frankly put him in a corner. he kept in a tweet sort of pushing mexico saying you know you have to pay for the wall. i think nieto has to worry about his own political audience, mexicans were outraged, angry at him for months, if we talk this way to china, chinese are not going to stand for china backing down. this is very different from a business deal where you re bluffing. foreign leaders have to stand up for themselves just for their own political survival. they just started. it s a dangerous pattern. mark, i want to talk about the time line here because the mexican president said he was still planning to come to washington despite pressure at home to cancel the trip. and early this morning it came out on twitter, donald trump said if mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting. and then a few hours later the mexican president tweeted this, this morning we have informed the white house that i will not attend the meeting scheduled for next tuesday with the president of the united states. so president trump has not even been in office for a week and already kicked off a major diplomatic spat, what is your reaction? well, a couple of things. he certainly was not rolling out the welcome mat in the tweet. as david said, the president of mexico was pushed into a corner. if you just go back a few months, you know that donald trump made an unprecedented visit to mexico, the mexico at that time. and they had a joint news conference and there were questions about whether or not the wall was discussed or not. but the president of mexico is under an incredible amount of pressure at home, and to look like he is bending at the knee and kissing the ring of donald trump is not going to look well for him. but had he publicly declared they were not going to pay for the wall, had they gone to the magazine and said they were not going to pay for it. i think donald trump dodged one by not having the mexican president come to the united states. it s not going to be donald trump and the mexican president who were going to be able to figure out the trade deal. it will be those who work underneath him who really do the dirty details. michelle, the mexican foreign minister is in washington, responding to president trump tonight. watch. we simply cannot accept the concept of a neighbor paying for your own wall. that is something that does not happen. in communities, between between citizens, and something that would be totally unacceptable between nations. this is something that we would not do, we would never do. and because this is about this is about our dignity. and our pride. it sounds pretty final, michelle, is that the final word on the thing i mean, it does sound that way. i think the trump administration seems determined to find a way to make mexico pay. we re talking about tariffs and a trade war that would ultimately affect the consumers. or an aide that the u.s. provides to mexico. this relationship is important to both countries. we are neighbors, obviously. trade is a big deal. it s a big number. but so are things like counterterrorism, stopping the flow across the board, mexico does that as well so mexico has a few cards to play here. and did anyone not see this coming? i mean, before the election there was all this talk about the wall. you know, hyper-heated words like calling mexicans rapists. president pena nieto referred to donald trump as hitler in the same sentence. i think this was bound to come to a head. maybe once this has gotten past and everybody sees exactly what is in these executive orders and finds out a lot more detail about what is being proposed then the relationship can move on from there. but it looks like it s going to be rocky for sometime, to say the least. david. the odd thing is, there are not tides of people coming over the border. there is not a great threat, there is a debate over whether we even need the wall. and the mexican immigrant specialists say the wall won t stop the problem anyway. so the narrative is not really supported by facts. most people are coming in via airplanes and over-staying their visas. thank you, appreciate it. and one man who maybe has the toughest job in washington, that is sean spicer who speaks for donald trump. we ll talk about that. sometimes you just know when you hit a home run. that s how i feel about blue-emu pain relief spray. odorless and fast-acting. it soothes all my muscle aches and pains. and it s convenient for those hard to reach places. and if you re like me, you ll love blue-emu super strength cream. it s made with real emu oil, it s non greasy, it s a deep penetrating formula that works itself down into your joints. take it from me. it works fast and you won t stink. blue-emu, it works for me it ll work for you. president trump is no fan of the news media, regularly calling reporters dishonest. his chief strategist blasting the press in no uncertain terms. all that would seem to put white house press secretary in a difficult position. cnn s chief correspondent dana bash has more. don, steve bannon says that the media should keep their mouth shut, referring to the media as the opposition party. every day, his press secretary is speaking to the country but focusing on the audience of one, his boss, the president. sean spicer is now one of the most visible people in the world. thanks no coming out to our first official briefing. reporter: white house spokesperson is always one of the hardest jobs in washington, but speaking for president trump takes hard to a whole new level. what evidence do you have of widespread voter fraud in this election if that is the case? the president does believe that, stated it before. spicer spent two decades in washington working up to this. the naval officer who was still an active reservist, was a press secretary and on the committee. you re not draining the swamp with him. spicer was at the rnc, they did battle but also did good, making bets for charity. he is a good egg, someone who i think is really a decent and good person. you envy somebody in that role. why? well, i mean, you know, there are a few of us in this business. that i would really like to do that, i would like to be white house press secretary. spicer s friends tell cnn that being the press secretary is his dream come true, yet the first full day was like a nightmare. there is a lot of talk to hold donald trump accountable. i m here to tell you that it goes two ways. a quickly arranged meeting, a direct meeting from the president. this is the first time in our nation s history that floor covering was used to protect the grass on the mall. after getting pounded, spicer came back looking for a do-over. there are certain things we may not fully understand when we come out but our intention is never to lie to you. at the rnc during the primaries, spicer publicly criticized trump. as far as painting mexican-americans with that kind of a brush, that doesn t help the cause. when trump won in november, spicer with the help of long-time boss and chief of staff reince priebus began to lobby to be presidential spokesperson, coming right back to work as transition spokesperson after his father passed away, which sources say showed trump how much spicer wanted the job, because he was not an early loyalist, at times spicer appears to go out of his way to prove his mettle to his abu boss. he has not changed a strange habit. chewing multiple packs of gum and swallowing it. his wife and two children always come first along with his country. one thing about him, he is a true patriot. he will focus on the right priorities. even before he worked for president trump, spicer has always been eager to do battle with reporters he thought were unfair or getting a story wrong. but he also has a long history of good relationships with journalists. balancing those two dynamics is a learning curve for any press secretary, especially one constantly watching from down the hall. there is no reason for anybody to expect the white house will stop taking shots at the media. but does fighting with the press actually help the president and his agenda? if you have medicare parts a and b and want more coverage, guess what? you could apply for a medicare supplement insurance plan whenever you want. no enrollment window. no waiting to 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cnn s senior correspondent, and cnn contributor, salena zito. hello, we have been talking about the new york times interview where they interviewed the white house s chief strategist, steve bannon. said the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep their mouth shut and listen. they don t understand the country and why donald trump is president of the united states. labelling the media as opposition party, saying keep our mouths shut. we re playing his hands. he knew it would be covered. he s sowing divisions, trying to play the base who is skeptical of the media against it. but it s corrosive to media to hate the press this way. salena, do you think his helps his agenda to fight with the media? it s always been part of his thing right? up until he won the nomination used us very effective and brilliant way. and as soon as he won the nomination, he understood we were the opposition. low approval ratings and easy target. anything said, that s just the media. and so that definitely plays into his hands. look, what bannon said has not ever been said ever in an administration, just using inside voices. he actually said it out loud. and it escalates this battle between us and honestly, i don t think it helps anybody. because it just tunes everybody out to the whole dialogue, and we re not paying attention to the important things like you know what is his policy? what will he do going forward? we re so focused on all of this sort of white noise that you know it s keeping us from reporting on everything that he is doing and in some ways that does help him. i was just e-mailing with the head of the committee, and normally they try to help countries like syria and russia and iran, he is now paying more attention to the united states, he believes it undermines the press. steve bannon sought to promote that. don, i think it gets to your point how bannon wants us talking about it. he wants the media to be offensive, we have to note it but keep playing our own game. i thought it was interesting that our colleague, maggie, the words dishonest, trump does not hate the media. doesn t mean he understands what it s like being potus. there are a lot of people he was up watching fox news this morning at 55:00 a.m. this issue on criticizing the press, partly it s about creating confusion so people don t know what is true or what is false. today, trump said the murder rate the philadelphia has been increasing. the murder rate in philadelphia has been on the decline. the mayor of philadelphia is blasting trump for that, yesterday, he said there were two people shot in chicago when president obama was giving his farewell address. the tribune confirms, nobody was sh shot during the speech. there was another person shot, he continues to mislead people and sews confusion, sometimes it helps people in power. the point is to refuse to be confused. he has very strong support with the police, and saying that they worked hard to protect him in philadelphia. salena, the president sat down with fox news and the cia speech came up again, watch this. there was one standing ovation, the whole thing. so i get back and i will say fox treated it great. they said it was great. when our new person running, mike pompeo is fantastic, he said to me the other day that was so great. everybody loved it. when i got back i saw the speech, they didn t like it. it was not respectful. it was a smattering of applause, there were over 300 people in the room. over a thousand wanted to come. if i took a vote right now i would have won 350-0, but even that was demeaned as much as they can demean it. what i m saying, sean, is this, much of the media is very, very dishonest, honestly it s fake news. it s fake. they make things up. so the cia story, his speech, maybe mentioned in passing on this show, i can t remember it. maybe somebody mentioned it in a response, had he not spoken about it we would have moving on to something else. so my question, is he expecting the media to pander to him. it seems like somehow he thinks that anything other than glowing coverage is unfair criticism. here is what i think, i think he has had a breathtaking week. if we took all of this noise aside and took a look at everything he has done from tpp to mexico city, to taking that back. to meeting with the ceos, and meeting with the head of the car companies. talking with all of those labor unions and trade unions, and i mean, obamacare, it s just in egypt, this has been a fast-paced great week. and the only thing that has gotten in the way of it is just focusing on these things that don t matter. and i haven t quite decided yet if it s to his advantage or disadvantage, but as the press i would like to be talking about policies, the effect they have on people, the economy, the national security, i feel like that is what we should be doing as a press but we sort of have been boondoggled by all of this white noise. yeah, when the president talks about something he is the leader of the free world and we talk about it. but i think some things were crucial, if he didn t bring up the ratings or the crowd sizes then there wouldn t be these distractions. there would be more conversation about the policies. it s about the fundamental fact of his taking criticism. he is still watching tv in the white house. we re all wondering if that will rise. if you don t want to talk about it, don t bring it up. you just let it go. and he is doing interviews. that is a positive. listen, you re out with a new piece on cnn.com, brian, you say that the president is fox news s top pr guy. what i mean by that, he is promoting fox, he said to david muir, turn on fox, they gave my speech a positive coverage. this is a continued spin on opposing the media that he doesn t think is fair, but preferring another. he is consuming a lot of media. and i hope that had when he is watching this network and other coverage, he is learning more about how to govern the country. it is very clear, especially for this businessman, there is a learning curve, maybe cable news has a responsibility to educate trump and his news. there is so much opposition because of that. thank you, president trump turning out executive orders as fast and furious as he can at a fast and furious rate, but do all of these actions have teeth? o shows up in that dress. who hugs a friend. who is done with treatments that don t give you clearer skin. be the you who controls your psoriasis with stelara® just 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tuberculosis. before starting stelara® tell your doctor if you think you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. always tell your doctor if you have any signs of infection, have had cancer, if you develop any new skin growths or if anyone in your house needs or has recently received a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions can occur. do not take stelara® if you are allergic to stelara® or any of its ingredients. most people using stelara® saw 75% clearer skin and the majority were rated as cleared or minimal at 12 weeks. be the you who talks to your dermatologist about stelara®. for a man who cares so much about ratings president trump cannot be happy about the latest polls that we have here. joseph bareli, new york city councilman, and democratic strategist and host of the pod cast working life. i m here. i want to make sure. so you re ganged up tonight i m ganged up on, i handled it before. all right, matt, let s talk about this new poll, only that 36% of americans approve about how he is doing his job, 44% disapprove. how does he turn it around at this point? well, the only people less popular are at this table. so step one, to keep a campaign going and go after the media, that is part of it. look, this will sound you know, hackneyed maybe, but it s an opportunity. if you start off very high with huge expectations, there is nowhere to go but down. donald trump can now build from this. he has to turn it around. how will he do that? if people start to get jobs, the economy turn around, those numbers will fix themselves. i don t disagree with you politics is always about over-promise, under-achieve. welcome to the show, do you think republicans, joseph, in congress are concerned about those numbers? well, i think as far as the republican base they should not be. because republicans in this poll were very supportive of donald trump. i think republicans in congress are looking at this as somebody who is fulfilling nine out of ten promises he made on the campaign trail. and i think they have to be happy about his performance so far. he is doing what the party wanted him to campaign on and what he in fact promised himself. they are willing to make good on funding the wall and repealing obamacare. i think we have been reporting here on cnn that he is doing what he said he is going to do. now whether or not these executive orders have teeth, he is doing exactly what he said he is going to do. if not for the self-inflicted wound let s weigh on the analysis. the republicans approve 81%, right? democrats disprove 77%, independent voters, 45%. so far it s not actually you know know his approval ratings and likeability ratings have not been strong for quite sometime. to be honest, i don t think their team cares about p populari popularity, they care about performances and policies and promises. as joseph said look, he campaigned on repealing obamacare and building a wall and securing the border and already he is out of the gate. i think you have to give him credit for focusing on what is important is doing the job of president and not being like president of his fraternity. he is president of the united states. but his team does not care about the polls and numbers, i mean, you know he does. i just wonder if you re worried about you can weigh in, the independent numbers because that is where folks that well, certainly, we saw from the coalition that actually elected donald trump, he pulled over a significant number of independents. the q-poll is not the only one out there, the rasmussen poll last week was gospel when it had barack obama at 60%, and the media talked about him at the highest ratings ever. now they have donald trump at 59%. we never use rasmussen polls because they re heavily weighted the other way. and then you the huffington post did a story on do you believe the huffington post ? donald trump did not win the popular vote in the election, that is just fact. democrats love pointing that out. i didn t mean it to bring it up in terms of illegitimate numbers. a lot of people don t go to the polls, i assume i don t know if they were just registered polls, look at what is happening in the street, there is a rebellion going on, the march, that was unprecedented. the number of people who turned out to protest against donald trump. donald trump is not a liked politician. and he is reinforcing that by frankly his personal behavior. when you try to govern by twitter, i think people out there, the average person is reacting. this man is out of control. even his even supporters say he would show a little by it is a polarized country, too, if hillary clinton were president, i don t think her numbers would be terribly high right now either. my colleague, van jones said when you were talking about the number of people out there the day after the inauguration, he said all you have to do is look back remember? we covered the tea party, all you have to do is look at the tea party and how those things can become a movement. so when i bring up the independent numbers i just wonder if it s concerning. at the same time, 53% of americans say they re optimistic about the next four years. 44% say he will help rather than hurt the economy. again, those are not great numbers. should there be some concern within the republican party and within the trump administration that well, republicans and that maybe he can t yes, but that then reflects it s in two ways, the republicans control congress and the white house. the mid-terms will be really tough. so in the next two years it s going to be very hard to democrats to stop most things with the exception of potentially the supreme court nominee. but that is different than the movement in the streets. and i want to say as a democrat, that rebellion, at least the things i have seen also gets the democratic party, not just donald trump, there is a rebellion against the elites. they should be concerned. i think the pink hats are as poised to have a new movement if the republicans are not on guard they could lose seats in 2020, the thing they re not doing is focusing on who is the trump coalition. you saw the women s marchers focusing on social issues. you re not going to win over to the republican party people who fundamentally disagree with them on social issues. the blue belt, the democrats, those are the people he is working for right now focusing on jobs and american progress and focusing on renegotiating. there were people out there at that march though, who were front those rust belt states. those people, not all of them are happy with the democratic party. i think the difference is they need to organize. and they need to find a single message and resonate on that. because the tea party was limited government and fighting obamacare. the pink hats, they were all over the map with their issues. but they had a lot of energy and enthusiasm. they just need to organize. and do what and which was very smart of the trump campaign then, i mean, immigration. build a wall. jobs. and those were among the two, right, that he just kept hammering home. and obamacare. and clinton had a whole variety of things, that is all he talked about, basically two or three things, we ll be right back and continue our conversation. using smart traps to capture mosquitoes and sequence their dna to fight disease. there are over 100 million pieces of dna in every sample. with the microsoft cloud, we can analyze the data faster than ever before. if we can detect new viruses before they spread, we may someday prevent outbreaks before they begin. be the you who doesn t cover your moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. be the you who shows up in that dress. who hugs a friend. who is done with treatments that don t give you clearer skin. be the you who controls your psoriasis with stelara® just 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tuberculosis. before starting stelara® tell your doctor if you think you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. always tell your doctor if you have any signs of infection, have had cancer, if you develop any new skin growths or if anyone in your house needs or has recently received a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions can occur. do not take stelara® if you are allergic to stelara® or any of its ingredients. most people using stelara® saw 75% clearer skin and the majority were rated as cleared or minimal at 12 weeks. be the you who talks to your dermatologist about stelara®. you won t see these folks they have businesses to run. they have passions to pursue. how do they avoid trips to the post office? stamps.com mail letters, ship packages, all the services of the post office right on your computer. get a 4 week trial, plus $100 in extras including postage and a digital scale. go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again. back now with my panel, jonathan, unlike the last president, president trump has a congress that wants to do business. here is vice president mike pence speaking to congressional republicans today. the point is by sticking to the president s agenda, we re going to kick the economy into overdrive, so as i said in my first visit to capitol hill say with great respect to members of the house and senate. buckle up, we re ready to go to work work. so he the president has signed a lot of executive orders, but do they have any teeth? well, it depends on executive orders that require money he will have to go to congress to i assume build the wall and other things like that. there will be some lawsuits around the executive orders, for example, his threat that they will hold money from states or cities that want to provide sanctuary for undocumented immigrants who trump tries to deport. he will try to with hold that money and there were already signs that there will be lawsuits around him. so we ll see. the threat of a lawsuit will not scare him. but the thing is, withholding funding to sanctuary cities is nothing more than him asking the cities to enforce immigration laws, why is that so hard? why would they have a problem with that? and for the money with building the wall, there is already funding in place under a george bush law that is sitting there. they just have to continue the funding for that. i don t see that being a big of an issue i thought the price tag they were talking about this crazy, stupid wall that is completely unnecessary, a solution for a problem that doesn t exist. that money, they re talking about a price tag of $14 billion, 20 billion i don t think you can say there is a problem that doesn t exist. i think you can say they re making the problem bigger than it is, you think more people are going back the other way than who are coming across the border. it s actually a fact, now i can tell you that this is the pugh study that said that actually the number of mexicans coming to the country have declined dramatically. people are still coming. but there are central americans going through, even of you look beyond the immigration issue the obama administration put out a study in 2011 say there is $190 billion in laws it s not about the drug trafficking o trafficking no, no. there is no problem in terms of the flow of people that this wall is required to deal with. it is just nonsense. it was all about fear and division. i think the positive thing that could come from this too, though, which is to say if we ever want to do immigration reform. if it s something with the dreamers or treating you know people who came here a long time ago compassionately, i don t think the american public is going to go for it until they believe that we actually can and have secured a border. so building a wall would be i want you guys to discuss this. because again, we re dealing in facts here, jonathan is right here, more people are going back, there was a whole series on the border wall. you still can tunnel under the wall. most people come into the country illegally on airplanes from places that are not mexico and they overstay their visa in numbers that are larger than people coming from mexico. that is the real problem. that is why he is adding 10,000 officers and 5,000 border customs agents. this is a bigger problem but that is not what people believe. they think it s people coming from mexico, when you think of immigration you think of mexicans. going back to the campaign, donald trump used the wall to symbolize, it was division and fear. and what he said to people particularly in the midwest and it worked politicly in the election, he said it was them. which was false. that is not the reason people have lost their jobs in the industrial midwest, not the reason wages have declined, it is because of corporate greed. it s it s not the it is the driver. not the main thing. it s not because of people coming from mexico. it s a completely. do you remember ten to 20 years ago to match point when a moderate position was we should allow people who are here to stay here but before we do that we should build a wall. that was something that bill clinton, hillary clinton you did preface it by saying ten to 20 years ago, i m not saying it s right. i m not saying it s right, i m just even reagan s amnesty on securing the border i think the american people are generous and compassionate, but if time after time you tell them we re going to secure the border. and then but we re going to do it with amnesty but never secure the border. but you have to be honest with them about the facts of the border just that you have to understand the coal industry, i understand my brothers and sisters in the industry, automation it s a prime example where there are fewer people to run the factory. there are several reasons behind building the wall, obviously the influx of people coming here and taking haven in this country using our goods and services and health care and education without having to pay for it. there is also the enflux influx drugs, that president trump mentioned numerous times. i talked with farmers and those who live along the border. they say it s hell on earth along the border with illegals coming into the country and the easiest way is to build a wall i do hear people say you don t understand unless you live there. but the raw facts show that immigration and people contribute to the economy, billions in the economy. thanks everyone, that is it for us. no sir, no sir, some nincompoop stole all my wool sweaters, smart tv and gaming system. luckily, the geico insurance agency recently helped baa baa with renters insurance. everything stolen was replaced. and the hooligan who lives down the lane was caught selling the stolen goods online. visit geico.com and see how easy it is to switch and save on renters insurance. . . . children: grandpa!
e-mails. and then the letters comey sent to the hill, one saying we found more e-mails on anthony weiner s laptop that could be pertinent to our investigation, we need to look at those, and then his follow-up letter a few days before the election in which he said, we ve done that review and we haven t had anything. hillary clinton herself has said she thinks that first letter in late october changed the course of the election. so, the inspector general is going to look at that and a couple of ancillary things. there have been allegations that an fbi deputy director should have taken himself off part of this case because of some connections to the campaign or his wife s connections to the political to politics in virginia. some allegations that an assistant attorney general for legislative affairs passed information along to the clinton campaign, and other employees disclosed nonpublic information. the foeklecal point is the two actions by the fbi director, the letter to the hill in late october and november. thanks so much. former clinton campaign senior adviser joel benenson weighing in on today s news of the inspector general review. here s what he told my colleague katie can tur a few minutes ago. the real question here, is it appropriate for the fbi and the fbi watchdog to investigate behavior they think violated fbi practices in the course of conducting investigations and engaging in public conversation about that? i think that s appropriate. no one s trying to get a do-over in the election. that s not going to happen. nobody says it s going to happen. but when public officials abuse or potentially abuse their authority and their office, that investigation there s not a statute of limitations that says when the election is over we re not going to go back and look at the behavior of a prosecutor who was advised not to do this 11 days out, who was criticized by former fbi professionals from both parties for doing so, to look into that. for more on all this, i want to bring in stanley pottenger, former civil rights attorney at the department of justice. thank you for coming in in a hurry. i know you had to rush to get here. let s talk about the reaction. we just heard joel benenson. we actually heard from republican congressman jason chaffetz say he supports this investigation. you served at the justice department. first of all, are you surprised the inspector general would get involved or does this seem seem, in your view, an appropriate use of time? yes, it s unusual. but the entire episode he s investigating is unusual. the thing pete williams talked about is the thing to keep in mind. are you investigating the substance and the prosecutorial, the answer is no, apparently. or are you talking about how it was handled, the publication of documents. that is appropriate for the i.g., the inspector general to use. apparently, that s what he s going to focus on. what he s focused in part on carefully. i would not be surprised if you find that james comey defends his position pretty effectively. the inspector general right now, i don t know if you know him, a man named michael horowitz, started as assistant attorney in new york, moved to the department of justice. many years in doj. in 2012 he becomes the i.g. he s appointed by the president, president obama. it s my understanding, is it a ten-year term for the inspector general? i think that s right. it may be. i know there s a ten-year term for the director of the fbi. typically there are very few ten-year terms. this could be. we ll check that. my question was going to be, what happens now? so, donald trump, takes office next week. he can replace this inspector general or is he going to continue with this investigation no matter what? if he has a ten-year term, he can only be replaced for cause. there s no indication there is cause. if he doesn t have a ten-year term, he will be replaced. the new attorney general, presumably jeff sessions, will have to decide, does he continue it with the existing staff, shut it down or change it? that s why we have more questions right now than answers. in terms of how quickly all of this could play out and whether let s assume he stays on this investigation, the inspector general, what he does, what are the possibilities in terms of reprimand, punishment? i mean, what can happen with an i.g. report? that s a really good question. the answer is very little because the he s investigating the people who actually do the prosecuting. it isn t likely they re going to turn around and prosecute themselves if he recommended there was something. the truth is, i don t think he s looking a prosecutal crime. he s looking as who the department and then presumably the public and press what happened. that means what he s doing is basically a report to the public about what happened, but not something that will involve criminal prosecution. joel benenson said last hour that he doesn t think any of this will impact what happened. i mean, the past is past. the election is over. i want to play some sound, though, if i can, from hillary clinton. this is at a party with donors. she was talking about the impact she believes that comey s letter made right before the elections. take a listen. . don t take it from me, take it from independent analysts, take it from the trump campaign, take it from nate silver who s point out that swing state voters made their decisions in the final days breaking against me because of the fbi letter from director comey, and nate silver believes, i happen to believe this, that that letter most likely made the difference in the outcome. again, this investigation does not look at that. pete williams said it s not going to look at whether everything that happened impacted the election or not. in your view, as former assistant attorney general, do you think it? you said the election s over. apparently it s not over. everybody is talking about it. until the 20th, news will start to turn to events instead of speculation. don t think it will make much difference. i was sorry she cited nate silver. i like him. i read it. he missed it. he missed this elections. he missed brexit. he doesn t have a record right now that says his polling is hitting the buttons. i m want sure that helped her make that claim. now, do i make her for making that claim? not at all. you know, she s handling this as well as she can having lost a surprisingly lost the election n her view. i don t think it will make a difference by the time this is over. in terms of the new investigation? yeah. i think we ll learn something more but we have this big flip-flop. you remember in the summer everyone was singing the praises of jim comey because he had exonerated republicans. republicans were mad. excuse me, democrats. democrats were singing praises. right. then when he lost, democrats were furious with him. i think the american public understands that to some extent our perspective is warped by the results we want. that s true for both sides, democrats and republicans. thank you for your analysis. thank you for coming in quickly, former assistant attorney general. almost promoted you. in the civil rights division of the department of justice. nice to have you. turning now to the current commander in chief, president obama and a parting tribute for vice president joe biden scheduled for this hour. nbc news senior white house correspondent chris jansing is live at the white house. chris, i said the words, so now we can say this is happening, but all day we ve been waiting because it seemed like it was a bit of a surprise for joe biden? reporter: yeah it s supposed to be a secret, is what we re told. it s hard to imagine how within those walls and given the small number of people who were involved in the planning of this that joe biden doesn t suspect something. already people are gathering there. we are told that those seats are being reserved for family, for friends. chris dodd, the former senator from connecticut has been spotted. you can bet there will be dignitaries there as well as as well, not the least of whom will be the president, mrs. obama and, of course, vice president biden and his wife jill. this is something that is sort of a story many people have found to be tremendously unexpected. these two men who would seem to be so very different, who came so very close over the course of the last eight years when they have served together. they ran against each other in 2007. generations apart. first-term senator from illinois and a senator for, i think, it was, seven terms, six youngest when he came in in 1972, joe biden was from delaware. he left to be the fourth most senior senator. when he said he would do this. when he said, i ll become your vice president. the only ask he this is i wanted to be the last guy in the room. he didn t want to be one of those vice presidents who was merely ceremonial. and pretty much, he says, the president kept his word. he relied on him pretty heavily, we re told, for that first term for his foreign policy expertise. he was chairman of the foreign relations committee for a time, he was chairman for a time of the senate judiciary committee. but it s not just policy where we have seen all those pictures of them huddled in the oval office. they have become just really good friends. in fact, the way time magazine put it was, the great american broman krechlt. not just a bromance, but the great american bromance. there have been plenty of photos and videos of them, everything from running down the halls of the white house. no one quite knew what they were running to, to some of the most emotional times they ve ever had. it was the president who delivered the eulogy at the funeral of joe biden s son, beau. they were together in the rose garden when joe biden announced he would not run against hillary clinton for president of the united states. a very close friendship, not just between these two men, but between their families as well. they ve spent a tremendous amount of personal time together. in is a time for the president to say thank you, to say more about what vie presidece presid meant to him. he had a chance to start that at the farewell address, calling out the scrappy kid from scranton who became delaware s favorite son and drawing who is familiar who follows joe biden, that air gun he gave in that moment, but we re expecting a tribute and an emotional time for everyone who was involved, as we have seen many members of the white house staff and the president and first lady, vice president and dr. jill biden as well acknowledging that it s become much more emotional to them as their last days near. chris, if anyone saw that andrea mitchell interview a couple hours ago on her program, the emotion was right there, as joe biden she spoke with joe biden and the vice president expressed his love, he called it love, for president obama. again, what we re waiting for right now is we think a surprise for the vice president. although hard to know if he really could if it could be kept quiet in the white house. but it is president obama who will be basically hosting a farewell for vice president biden. if i can ask, we know a little bit i know a little bit has been reported about joe biden s next move and his plans after the white house, after being vice president. i read he ll be working with a couple universities. what more do we know? reporter: he said he s been made a lot of different ofrsz. it s interesting. he seems to be in the same head space as a lot of the senior staff. i know people don t necessarily believe this, that the president, the first lady, the vice president, all these members of the senior staff, jill biden as well, haven t had a tremendous amount of time to lay down in stone exactly what they re going to do. obviously, when you have come from this stage, the world is your oyster. joe biden is very open about this, his goal for many, many years, for decades, really, was to become president of the united states. that does seem to be behind him at age 73 now, but he is going to do some teaching. as he and others have said, they re going to do a little bit of sleeping. something they are very much looking forward to do. spending time with his family. you know, he did go back throw himself back into work after the death of his son, beau. he was out for a while but has been really key for a lot of the issues that have come up in this last year or so of this administration. he s continued to work very hard. so, there s some time for him to spend with his family, with jill biden. you know, when you think about where he came from, again, you know, for somebody with a long career in the senate and how different they were, somebody with that experience coming into politics as opposed to barack obama, who comparatively was a relative newcomer and people who seemed to have very different approaches to things. the fact they have become so close, i would not rule out i ve had some conversations about this, but i would not rule out the possibility you will see him and barack obama working together on some of the initiatives that eventually are decided upon by this president, where he wants to have influence moving forward. it s not as if a key is going to turn, another family will move into the white house and these folks are going to scatter to the wind. many of the senior officials will continue to work with obama, either on private staff or as part of his library foundation. those things haven t been announced yet but they will happen. i think there s going to be a long time for joe biden to continue in some way in a different kind of public service, kate. chris, stay there. don t move. i want to bring in also lynn sweet, washington bureau chief at the chicago sun times, that being the president s sort of adopted hometown newspaper. nice to see you. how are you? good afternoon. good afternoon. as we wait and look at this room where we expect the president to come out, and we re not quite sure what to expect, but we have been told by the pool note that it will be in honor of joe biden. talk about lynn, talk about their relationship and talk about what you think we might hear out of the president. well, the relationship really started in iowa when they were running against each other in that democratic primary. and it was not a hard decision in the end for the obama team to select biden as vice presidential candidate. the announcement was made in springfield, illinois, where obama had kicked off his campaign. and the relationship not only between the president and vice president, but between dr. jill biden and first lady michelle obama has also rypiened through the years, too. they ve worked on their joining forces initiative. i m sure they will chris kroris all four of them, throughout their lives. not only with biden with his cancer moonwalk and the various enterprises. i would bet there will be a lot of humor, a little ribbing, a little, you know, this isn t a towel snap sort of joking, but those two right, chris, they have a little bit of a schtick when they re together? chris, we haven t gotten any word on timing. we were told 3:00. but there was a lot of secrecy around this whole event. reporter: then we got 15 minutes late. i don t know what s going on behind the scenes. i keep checking my iphone. there is this sort of ribbing that goes on. when you look at some of the memes of them together, the pictures of them together, there are a lot of pictures that pete sousa and other white house photographers have taken where it seems like they re holding hands, where they re laughing. they love to laugh together. they ve had a lot of light moments ago. and they re also both can, as we ve seen, you mentioned the andrea mitchell interview with vice president biden and the president in chicago, they can also get emotional. we ll watch for that. very clearly, you know, the yin and yang, mr. cool and mr. emotional, that s been fascinating to see how that goes because joe biden is someone who wraps someone he barely knows into a bear hug. when you think of it, we couldn t have we couldn t have done a formula of two men who have gotten along better. i think the age difference has helped, too. i think the idea that biden knows what it takes to run for president and he knows the senate and he knows foreign policy. so, he came in with the skill set, very helpful to the president. thank you, both, for waiting with us here. i apologize. i thought my mike was down and i was speaking over you guys. apologies for that. i want to take a quick break, ask lynn and chris jansing to stand by with us. the white house running a little behind schedule. we re waiting for this big event for joe biden, to honor joe biden, being led, we understand, by president obama. so, as we wait for that, we ll take a break. want to bring you one little piece of news before we go to break. the senate, the full senate has just voted to allow a waiver for mattis, general mattis, who has now been nominated, of course, for department of defense secretary. he had to get a waiver because it s so recently he left the military, the senate had to approve of him having the potential for being department of defense secretary so soon after leaving the military. that has just happened. that vote just took place in the senate. it was approved. it doesn t mean he s now the secretary. it means he can be. and they can vote on that later. we ll take a quick break and we ll be right back. everything your family touches sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don t stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox. trubiotics a probiotic from one a day. naturally helps support both your digestive and immune health. feel a difference in two weeks or your money back. take the trubiotics 2 week challenge. so, let me first ask, any reaction at all from the trump cache ca camp to this? nothing yet. i just checked his twitter feed during the break sure. wouldn t be surprised if he would react later today. we reached out to transition officials and yet to hear from them. we ll pass that on as soon as we get it. bottom line, in the waning weeks before the election, before this case was, in effect, revisited by the fbi, before that announcement on october 28th, donald trump basically said he wants to investigate the investigation. he called it collusion and corruption of the highest order. said it was a disgrace. of course, his position changed late in october. i was with him just as that announcement was made. he was in manchester, new hampshire, at the time. it was almost as if the cork on a bottle of champagne just popped. the room went nuts when he said it. he started his remarks saying there was critical breaking news he wanted to announce. in the days, he s part of the way he recast his view of fbi director james comey. take a listen. i have to give the fbi credit. that was so bad what happened originally. it took guts for director comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. you know that. it took a lot of guts. i really disagreed with him. i was not his fan. i tell you what, he brought back his reputation. he brought it back. he s got to hang tough because there s a lot of a lot of people want him to do the wrong thing. what he did was the right thing. bottom line is we ve heard nothing new from donald trump about the inspector general from the doj saying they re going to open up a review into the handling of this situation here. what s notable is in the days after he was elected, donald trump on 60 minutes and elsewhere was asked whether or not he thought james comey should keep that position, whether he would ask him to resign his position as director of fbi and he said he hadn t made up his mind yet on that issue. pete alexander following that for us. thank you so much. president-elect trump s pick for cia director, mike pompeo, was on the hill today for his confirmation hearing. one of three hearings that happened today. nbc news intelligence reporter joins us for more on that. we had simultaneously three hearings going on. what were the fireworks? what were the headlines out of pompeo? pompeo was very polished. kind of a love fest. he s a former trial lawyer, former army officer. he did very well. but he, without hesitation, endorsed the findings by the u.s. intelligence community that russia was behind the hacking, which trump has had trouble doing, president-elect trump. and he said that if ordered to engage in torture, he would refuse such an order. he s one of several nominees who have said that, even though donald trump during the campaign talked about wanting to waterboard. none of the people who work for him say that s legal. that s interesting. potentially a split with his own boss. exactly. in terms of other headlines out of it or anything i moon, you said it was it went fairly well for him. is there a sense this committee will approve him or was there any glaring, obvious senator saying, i ve got concerns? no, nobody expressing concerns about his nomination. he was asked about this dossier that everyone s asking about. you know, unverified information damaging to donald trump. if there was something worth investigating, would he follow those leads? would the cia under mike pompeo investigate those things? he promised, yes, they would. thank you so much. appreciate it. we re continuing to wait that that shot in the bottom right corner of your screen is the white house. that is the state dining room. that s where we expect president obama, we expected him about 15 minutes ago, with some sort of a potentially surprise event, although now we re talking about it on tv, so i don t know how much of a surprise it will be. but a tribute to vice president joe biden, his good bud y his friend. we ll bring you that as soon as it starts. back after a quick break. be the you who doesn t cover your moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. be the you who shows up in that dress. who hugs a friend. who is done with treatments that don t give you clearer skin. be the you who controls your psoriasis with stelara® just 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tuberculosis. before starting stelara® tell your doctor if you think you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. always tell your doctor if you have any signs of infection, have had cancer, if you develop any new skin growths or if anyone in your house needs or has recently received a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions can occur. do not take stelara® if you are allergic to stelara® or any of its ingredients. most people using stelara® saw 75% clearer skin and the majority were rated as cleared or minimal at 12 weeks. be the you who talks to your dermatologist about stelara®. ltry align probiotic.n your digestive system? for a non-stop, sweet treat goodness, hold on to your tiara kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support, with align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. now in kids chewables. hei don t want one that s hadch a bunch of ownersd car? just say, show me cars with only one owner find the cars you want, avoid the ones you don t plus you get a free carfax® report with every listing it s perfect. start your used car search at carfax.com we continue to wait for this live event at the white house. that s a picture from inside the state dining room. we re expecting the president, the first lady and joe biden, the vice president, and dr. jill biden, to be in that room in what is billed as a tribute for vice president biden. earlier we were told was a surprise to him. not quite sure what the holdup is. they re running a little late. we ll bring that to you soon. meantime, as the vice president prepares to leave, earlier today my colleague andrea mitchell had a chance to have a wide-ranging, fascinating interview with him. here s a portion of that. reporter: looking back now, president obama said that he could have defeated donald trump. could joe biden have defeated donald trump? oh, i don t know. i don t know. i don t want to speculate on that. reporter: in your heart of hearts, the criticism is there was a lack of an economic message. that s your ballpark. pennsylvania, the rust belt. look, i don t reporter: regrets? no, no. look, i you re i m about to hurt your reputation, you re a friend. but i know my family. you know of my relationships with my family. and i just wasn t prepared to do it after i lost my son. and so, i i have no regret in the sense that did i make the wrong decision. i made the right decision. and but do i regret that my point of view is not going to be reflected in the next administration because we have mr. trump? yeah, i do regret that. one of the big issues is, he said, drain the swamp. now, he is yesterday he repeated that he is not going to release his taxes ever and says he doesn t need a blind trust. he s going to just turn it over to the sons. has he done enough, the government of ethics, which is nonpartisan, says what he s done is meaningless. i don t think he s done enough and he may sink in the swamp. if you don t drain it, you sink in it. look reporter: look, you re one of the with all due respects, sir, one of the poorest guy to ever emerge, got a house, i don t know what other assets you have. can you he said he could run his business as well as run the government. the laws no doubt that he could, but you shouldn t run both. are you going to be president or are you going to be a businessman? you don t do both. he ran for the most coveted office in the world. the most important office in the world. the thing that the american public looks to most for their security, opportunity, guarantees, focus on your job. that s the job. i found it bizarre to talk about, well, i could have made a $2 billion deal, i could have done both, but i decided not to. as if you re doing me a favor mean, the country a favor. i just think it s look, this is a place where the public s going to decide whether or not the failure to divest, the failure to meet what were considered to be the basic minimum ethical standards of disclosure, and if the public turns around and 50% say, no problem, or if 80% say, this is a big problem, that s the only thing that will alter the outcome. andrea mitchell joins me now. andre andrea, congratulations. it covered so much ground, i don t know where to begin, as we wait for this event to start at the white house. i thought some of the most touching moments of the interview was towards the end when you asked him to reflect back on his career and how he got started. and you know, the terrible hardship he suffered as he was starting his senate career. the fact when he start his senate career, he had not been sworn in. when his wife and child were killed in a car crash, his two boys were injured as toddlers, and he was bereft, deciding to stay home with his children in delaware and not be sworn in. he said he was surrounded by the support of republican and democratic leaders, mike mansfield was one, i know, who persuaded him he had to do this and his sister, frankly, stepped in and mothered the children and he commuted for his entire career, commuting daily back to delaware, you know, the amtrak senator. but the fact is, this is a long career and one with a lot of ups and downs, and obviously the tragedy of beau biden. he said he had no regrets about the decision not to run for president. the fact was he knew with his family that that was the right decision for him at the time. he wouldn t discuss whether he could have defeated donald trump as president obama opined that he could have defeated trump. obviously, a reflection on hillary clinton. he wasn t going to go there. but he did talk a lot, defending the intelligence community, saying that what they had been told by the intelligence community was that they included that basically unvetted smear campaign, the opposition research, the two-page synopsis of that as a separate item in the briefing materials for both the president, the vice president and also for donald trump, controversily, that they did it they told he said, we asked them, why did they do it? i m not sure if you played that part of it. he said they told them that they thought they would have been derelict in their duties since it was in the press, bei ining circulated. a lot of people in washington had seen it, as well as abroad. there could be impacts on foreign policy if that information came out unvetted. we did not have a chance to air that part of it just now. to me, that sounded like some of the most newsy part of the interview, andrea, because we hadn t had anyone plain why that wasn t included in the briefing to begin with. i think that s likely what general clapper, what the dni clapper said to donald trump last night in that conversation. right. let me ask about his future. and this idea of a cancer moonshot. i know you asked him about that. what s your sense is he going to ease into retirement and dabble into that or is he full is he going to be working full overtime on that? he s all in. he said he is going to be doing foreign policy at the university of pennsylvania. there hasn t been a formal announcement but it was overheard saying that on c-span and teaching at university of delaware, his alma mater. he has a lot to look forward to. it is the end of this chapter of public service at his age. you saw the younger generation, cory can booker in what he did at an unprecedented way, a lot of people in washington are saying that s the opening of of the 2020 democratic primary campaign. so, you ve got the next generation already looking at what comes next. but there is going to be a lot more from joe biden. as from president obama, he said, i m going to be with you every day. i ll be with you as citizen in his farewell address. i asked him how president obama had described joe biden as his brother and he said, i don t just like the guy, i love the guy. we are family. and then he said that michelle obama is the finest first lady in american history. now, there s obviously you know, he said, we ve had a lot of fine first ladies but she is the greatest one in history, which obviously that is a reflection on the other first lady who just ran for president. as we watch this room, i can t help but wondering what was happening behind closed doors because this was supposed to be a surprise that was supposed to happen about 40 minutes. the white house state dining room where we think we ll see president obama come out and deliver some kind of tribute to joe biden. as we wait, if we have a couple more minutes because we haven t gotten any guidance from the white house, can i ask you about the news breaking. about the inspector general who says he s going to launch an investigation into parts of the way that the clinton e-mail investigation was handled by the fbi and by the department of justice. you covered the clinton campaign. we ve had a couple of clinton former aides on with us saying they welcome this decision. they must be elated that at least someone s looking at what happened. elated but, of course, there s still a lot of anger and resentment. they, of course, hillary and bill clinton do blame fbi director james comey for the timing of that letter, both letters. the one reopening the issue 11 days before the election and the one two days before the election, clearing her. not really reopening the investigation. in fact, it was technically never reopened. just reopening the issue. and they do blame him. but this is also going to be looking into what loretta lynch did with bill clinton and trying to clear up that 35-minute conversation on a plane in phoenix. she regrets it. she thought it was going to be a hello. once bill clinton sat down, they claim about golf and grandchildren, nobody substantive, it did mean she was recusing himself, taking herself out of the operational decision-making about the clinton investigation. that gave james comey a great deal more prominence, leverage, decision-making. all of this will be looked at by the independent watchdog, the i.g. depending on the findings, and obviously it s too soon to discuss what the findings r but nothing was going to change the election. that s a done deal. is there are legal implications and ethical implications and there could be a slap on the wrist if anyone behaved badly or even more strongly if there is something behind the scenes that we don t know about. but this would be the first inquiry into what happened. for the clintons to be blaming comey and all of that is controversial because there s a lot of other issues out there. other democrats saying, you can t pin it on just one thing. was it vladimir putin? was it wikileaks? you know, the hacking. was it original the decision to have a private server, which clouded the first months of her campaign and then all the way through? her response to that decision rather than dealing with it quickly and not apologizing from march until september. we didn t hear her say she was sorry about it. so, all of that could have had an impact, the lack of an economic message, some have said, the failure to go to wisconsin, failure to campaign more aggressively in other parts of michigan and in pennsylvania. other decisions that they made, polling and speechwriting decisions, spending so much time on debate preparation rather than on retail politics. the fact that the news media, as joe biden said to me today, focused so intensively on things that sounded a lot more exciting, like, you know, whether someone had been groped rather than on hillary clinton s college tuition plan, you know, the failure to cover issues substantively in a lot of media, the access that donald trump had during the primaries to, you know, live coverage of his rallies that other candidates didn t can, so many factors went into, it i don t think we ll know what influenced the campaign. andrea mitchell on such a busy hat. i appreciate that. we got word while andrea was talking, we got word from the white house that any minute president obama is expected to appear in that room. we were going to try to fit in a commercial, but we re not going to do that because we re afraid we ll miss it if we go to break. sasha and malia, obama, i understand, just walked in and have been seated in the room. we believe michelle obama will be there as well as dr. jill biden. again, this, if you re just joining us, is billed as a tribute to joe biden, led by the president. we have been guided earlier that this might be a surprise for joe biden. we re not quite sure what we re going to see here, but that makes it even more fun. chris jansing remains with us on the white house lawn. chris, if we see the president coming, we ll pause. any guidance at all about why today and what this marks? reporter: no. we asked the question repeatedly, but clearly this is something that is highly unusual but really speaks to the relationship between these two men that is far beyond professional but personal. the fact sasha and malia are there. they don t do a lot of public events. they ve become friendly not just with the bidens but their children and grandchildren. when they talk about family, they mean it. and thunk aboink about in the f his farewell speech in chicago on tuesday, the president mentioned only by name his immediate family and joe biden. think about the moments when you think about that iconic picture in the situation room when osama bin laden was gotten, who was sitting next to the president of the united states, joe biden. so, this tribute to him is something special. we don t know that obviously, he knows there is something going to happen. maybe it is something within this event, we were speculating s there some sort of special award that could be given to him. will there be surprises in terms of the people who are there. i can tell you this white house has kept a very tight lid on it. you were mentioning lynn sweet it-s with us in washington but she s with the chicago tribune sun-times . forgive me. we ll talk with you right after the event. let s observe what happens here. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, the president and vice president of the united states. [ applause ] [ applause ] [ applause ] don t want to embarrass the guy. welcome to the white house, everybody. as i have already delivered my farewell address, i will try to be relatively brief. but i just wanted get some folks together to pay tribute to somebody who has not only been by my side for the duration of this amazing journey but somebody who has devoted his entire professional life to service to this country. the best vice president america has ever had, mr. joe biden. [ applause ] this also gives the internet one last chance to talk about our bromance. [ laughter ] this has been quite a ride. it was eight and a half years ago that i chose joe to be my vice president. this is somebody the people of delaware sent to the senate as quickly as they possibly could. elected at age 29. for more than a dozen years apiece, he served as chair or ranking member of the judiciary and foreign relations committees. domestically championed landmark legislation to make our communities safer, to protect our women from violence. internationally his wisdom and capacity to build relationships has shaped our nation s response to the fall of the berlin wall and the iron curtain. to counter-terrorism, iraq, afghanistan. and for the past eight years he could not have been a more devoted or effective partner in the progress that we have made. he fought to make college more affordable and revitalize american manufacturing as the head of our middle-class task force. he suited up for our cancer moon shot, giving home to millions of americans touched by this disease. he led our efforts to combat gun violence, and he rooted out any possible misappropriations that might have occurred, and as a consequence, the recovery act worked as well as just about any large-scale stimulus project has ever worked in this country. he visited college after college and made friends with lady gaga for our it s on us campaign against campus sexual assault. when the pope visited joe was even kind enough to let me talk to the holiness as well. [ laughter ] behind the scenes, joe s candid, honest counsel has made me a better president and a better commander in chief. from the situation room to our weekly lunches to our huddles after everybody else has cleared out of the room, he has been unafraid to give it to me straight, even if we disagree. in fact, especially when we disagree. and all of this makes him, i believe, the finest vice president we have ever seen. and i also think he has been a lion of american history. the best part is, he is nowhere close to finished. in the years ahead, as a citizen, he will continue to build on that legacy internationally and domestically. he has got a voice of vision and reason and optimism and love for people, and we re going to need that spirit and that vision as we continue to try to make our world safer, and to make sure that everybody has got a fair shot in this country. so, all told, that s a pretty remarkable legacy. an amazing career in public service. it is, as joe once said, a big deal. [ laughter ] [ applause ] it is! [ applause ] but, we all know that, on its own, his work, this list of accomplishments, the amazing resume, does not capture of the full measure of joe biden. i have not mentioned amtrak yet or aviators, literally. [ laughter ] folks don t just feel like they know joe the politician, they feel like they know the person. what makes him laugh, what he believes, what he cares about, where he came from. pretty much every time he speaks, he treats us to some wisdom from the nuns who have taught him in grade school or an old senate colleague, but of course most frequently cited, catherine and joseph sr., his mom and dad. no one is better than you, but you re better than nobody! bravery resides in every heart and yours is fierce and clear. when you get knocked down, joey, get up! get up! [ laughter ] get up! [ applause ] that s where he got those broad shoulders and that biden heart. through his life, through trial after trial, he has never once forgotten the values and the moral fiber that made him who he is. that s what steels his faith in god and in america and in his friends and in all of us. when joe talks to auto workers whose livelihoods he helped save we hear the son of a man who once knew the pain of telling his kids he lost his job. when joe talks about hope and opportunity for our children, we heard the father who rode the rails home every night to talk his kids into bed. when he sticks up for the little guy we hear the young boy who stood in front of the mirror. studying the muscles in his face determined to advantavanquish t stutter. we hear a kindred spirit, another father of an american veteran, someone whose faith has been tested and has been forced to wander through the darkness himself and who knows who to lean on to find the light. so that s joe biden, a resilient and loyal and humble servant. and a patriot. but most of all a family man. starts with jill. captain of the vice squad. [ laughter ] the only the second lady in our history to keep her regular day job. [ cheers and applause ] jill says teaching isn t what she does, it s who she is. a few days after joe and i were inaugurated in 2009 she was back in the classroom teaching. that s why, when our administration worked to strengthen community colleges, we looked to jill to lead the way. she has also travelled the world to boost education and empowerment for women, and as a blue star mom, her work with michelle to honor our military families will go down in history as one of the most lasting and powerful efforts of this administration. of course, like joe, jill s work is only part of the story. she just seems to walk this earth so lightly, spreads her joy so freely. she reminds us that, although we are in a serious business, we don t have to take ourselves too seriously. she is quick with a laugh or practical joke, disguising herself as a server at a party she once hosted to lighten the mood. she once hid in the overhead compartment of air force two to scare the senior staff. [ laughter ] because why not! she seems to have a sixth sense of when to send a note of encouragement to a friend or a staffer, a simple thank you or a box of macaroons. she is one of the best, most genuine people i ve met not just in politics but in my entire life. she is grounded. generous, caring and funny. that s why joe is proud to introduce himself as jill biden s husband. to see them together is to see what real love looks like. through thick and thin, good times and bad. it s an all-american love story.