>> who it is affecting, an what's happening with it. and second, we have to be ready and prepared to change our approach, depending on what the virus doe today, cbc is releasing conditional data on some tragic pediatric for talib is that occurred in the spring and i will provide you with more information on that. in addition, on flu.gov you can see a report that outlines the experience with h1n1 on five

countries in the southern hemisphere. and the extinct in those five countries is very similar to what happened in this country in the spring. large numbers of people, particularly schoolkids, became ill. in some locations, hospitals have challenges to keep up with a number of people coming in. but over all, no increase in the level of severity, knowing trees in the death rate. in these countries, some possibility that populations were more severely affected by h1n1 influenza, that you had a greater likelihood of having severe illness from h1n1 if you were a member of aribal or indigenous population. that is not proven but it is a possibility. this information as well as the child information that i will be presenting shortly emphasizes what we should do to prepare and what are the groups th are at

hyatt's risk and therefore we need to reach out to the most. the mmwr study being released today outlined 36 that were among the first deaths among children in this country. and two thirds of those, the child had at least one severe underlying illness, or underline disability rather than illness. cerebral palsy, but your dystrophy, long-standing respiratory or cardiac problems. so most of the children who had fatal h1n1 confection this past spng had an underlying condition. there were some children who didn't have an underlying condition and who did become severely ill, and they were generally infected also by bacteria. when you get the flu, your

immune system can be a little weak and. you can be more susceptible to other infections. that's an important message for doctors to know that if smmeone has the flu, they get better and then they get worse again with high fever. that's a clue that maybe they should be treated with antibiotics, things that will help them. most people with flu don't need trtment. and i will discuss that more in a bit. the review of several dozen children who died this past spring in past spring emphasizes that lou can be very severe, and it is important that we do everythinge can to protect people from thd flu. and i'm going to outline some of those things that we are doing. it also identifies theroups that are particularly important to address. we have been working closely with pediatric societies, with parent groups and others to

ensure that, for example, children with special needs, children with cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, other developmental disabilities are probably treated if they develop fever in the flu season. and are at the front of the line for flu vaccination when it becomes available. also, earlier today, about an hour ago, the institute of medicine released a report on protection of health care workers from influenza. protecting health care workers is critically important. we want to ensure that health care workers are and feel safe when they come to work. they are the first line of defense, and we need to ensure that we do everything we can to reduce to the greatest extent possible the risk of becoming ill on the job. protecting health care workers involved many different factors, including how the hospital or health care setting is

organized, what the people who are not severely ill come in for care and overwhelm the system, and how many different health care workers have contact with people who may be infected. what's particularly important are circumstances where we think the risk is highest, but in all cases we want to ensure that health care workers are safe. the institute of medicine was charged by the centers for disease control and prevention, and the occupational safety and health administration was looking at wt kind of mask or respirator health care workers should use. their charge consistent with the osha mandate required them not to look at the economic or logistic considerations, but just look at their view of the most recent science on protecting health care workers. we have just received their report. we are studying it and we will review it in the coming days and wes.

on the next issue that i would like to discuss has to do with vaccination. there's a lot going on with vaccination. we continue to anticipate that vaccine will be available by the middle of october. the vaccine itself will be free. the administration may be charged by individual providers, although in the public health system all vaccination will be free, we anticipate. it will not be easy to get vaccine update. we have the possibility or even likelihood that it will be a two dose series for children at least, and perhaps for others. we are going to be trying to reach out to children in large number, and parents to get kids vaccinated because we know that so many kids can get the flu, and the vaccine is likely to be quite effective. my kid will get the flu vaccine when it becomes available, and i would recmend that al schoolchildren get vaccinated. we also are recommending that

all people with underlying conditions get vaccinated. people who have asthma, diabetes, lung disease, heart disease, neuromuscular conditions, neurological conditions tt incrase the risk factors. and women who are pregnant. vaccination programs will be run by the states and localities throughout the united states. we are working closely with all juriictions to help them identify the challenges that they will face in vaccinating the people in their area, and in addressinghose challenges. we are in the process of releasing about $1.5 billion in vaccine planning, preparedness and administration funding. that will allow each jurisdiction to identify what are the strengths they are, in some jurisdictions will work largely with the public sector, other jurisdictions will work largely with the private sector. each place will know what the

strengths aren the area best, and will be able to reach out to the specialty clinics, for example, children with special needs, for people with asthma or diabetes, to havehe detailed planning available. we also are looking very closely at the possibility of reports of adverse events. we now that every year there are cases of paralysis, there are women who hav miscarriages. there are people who have sudden-death. in all of those situations, we need to know very clearly how many we would expect if the vaccine doesn't cause any problems whatsoever. and an average flu season, just as an example, around a half a million pregnant women get vaccinated. that's important because pregnant women are more likely to get severely ill from flu so it is a way of protecting them and ensuring that they ha a healthy pregnancy.

among those half a million women, if they hadn't gotten vaccinated, we would he expected more than a thousand miscarriages within a week after vaccine. if they hadn't been vaccinated. if they are vaccinated, we expect about a thousand, 1500 among a half a million women who are vaccinated. that's the kind of number that we need to track and understd to see whether when we do see adverse event reports, because we know there will be adverse events reports. they are occurring at a higher rate than expected or not. in the coming weeks and months with a school resuming, we do expect to see more cases. we are seeing it now. we expect that we'll continue. how long? no one can predict with certainty. influenza is unpredictable. that mns we need to monitor closely and be willing and ready to adapt to different approach approaches.

one of the challenges repairing our health care system for the likely increase in the nber of people who will seek care. we know that there are lots of things that can be done to reduce the spread of flu, and that needs to occur. but for most people with the flu there is no reason to se a doctor or go to the emergency department, unless you are severely ill. for example, you have trouble reading, or you have an underlying condition, such as diabetes, pregnancy, heart disee, lung disease. for people who do have an underlying condition, it's quite important to be seen probably if you get a fever. that can make a difference between being severely ill and recovering well. within 48 hours can make a big difference in hastening recovery. we also know that as of now, not only has the virus not become more of your lead, or more

deadly, but we haven't seen lots of drug-resistant strains. so that drugs that we have available are still very effective against the virus at this time. the big picture is that there are two things we can do to reduce the impact of flu. one is reduce the number of people who get infected and the second is reduce the proportn of those who get infected to get seriously ill. to do that, vaccination is our strongest tool. with vaccine not yet here, what we can do now is to reduce the number of people who get severely ill, stay home if you are sick. cover your cough and sneeze. and wash your hands weakly. that means that workplaces, for exampl should increase the availability of telework the extent possible. and we should encourage people to encourage at home if they are sick and employers should not

penalize workers for staying home if they are sick during flu season nor should employers require a note from the doctor to return to work because the doctors will be very busy taking care of people who are sick with flu. in order to reduce the number of people who become severely ill from flu, prompt treatment of people who have underlying nditions or severe illness is very important. blue is unpredictable. flu season is just beginning. it is very unusual to see flu continue through the summer as it did in the u. this year. it is very unusual to see this many cases this early in the year, but only time will tell what this flu season brings. what we are doing is everything in our power to be as prepared as we can for the things that may occur in the coming weeks and months. i would not be hay to take questions. >> thanks, dr. freedman.

i was really interested in these bacterial infections because those are the reports up until now have been about viral than on your. so i just wondered if you can comment is as bacterial pneumonia or what kind of co- infections are the? and in the upshot of this, more healthy children may be a risk of severe disease. i also want to ask you separately if i could about how significant you think these findings are in china that one dose of vaccine may be sufficient. thanks. >> so taking the last question first. we look forward to seeing the data from china and elsewhere about vaccine efficacy. it's very important, d as soon as we see it it will help us inform the policies here but fundamentally we need to look at the u.s. vaccine and how that vaccine do in the trials that are underway.

bacterial pneumonia a known complicaon of flu. this is one of the things that is often problematic. the findings that we are releasing today are really not unexpected. this is what we see with seasonal flu. it is quite similar with h1 influence of. it is i think primarily of importance to doctors to know that if someone has had the flu and a comeback with a high fever a little later, it's important to think that it may be a bacterial pneumonia and to treat for that. it also emphasizes the use of pneumonia vaccination for all peop for whom it is indicated, including children and the elderly. >> operator will take a question from the phone. please go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking e call. let me, people are very shocked, what more can you tell? i know you talk about the bacterial infection of obit but

what is the message you want to get out to the parents who are saying you know what, mike is sick, i need to go to the doctor even though that is not what you e recommending. what was the most coerning data that you found within the mmwr report? >> it is important that the report in context. in new york city for example we have the big picture on how many people got infected, hdreds of thousands of people got infected and the overwhelming majority of them had moderate illness. they didn't require testing. they didn't require treatment. and he did fe i children have underlying conditions, and two thirds of the children and his report had conditions such as muscular dystrophy and terrible palsy. it is very important that they be treated promptly. and if a child is severely ill, if they are having trouble breathing, if they're fever comes back after it went away, if they are having difficulty keeping fluids down, then it is

very important to get treated probably. but your question is an important one. this is a real challenge. and we need assistance from t media, as well as the public, to understand this balance between staying on the one hand, the overwhelming majority of people with h1n1 influence of our going to dfind. they don't need testing. they don't need treatment. on the other hand, if you haven't either underlying condition you have severe illness it is really important that you get treated promptly. that is a compensated message, but getting it right is not only going to be important for helping people stay healthy, it's going to be very important for making sure that our hospitals and our emergency departments are available to the community and to the people who really need the treatment. >> operator, will take another question. >> operator: denise grady, please go ahead. >> caller: could you please explain again what you said

about the numbers of miscarriages that would be expected if people were vaccinated and not vaccinated? i could not quite all that. thank you. >> the basic point is that certain conditions occur whether or not vaccination happens. and we need to anticipate that those conditions will occur after vaccination, even if they are not caused by a vaccination. in 1976, for example, there was increased rate of job or a syndrome. that occurs depending on the age of the population that you are looking at, somewhere around one per hundred tusand people as a route, or a norm, even if there is no vaccination. so we need to recognize if there are baseline rate of things like der logical syndromes and miscarriage. in an average flu season, around a half a million pregnant women get vaccinated. in that group, there will be

miscarriages. those miscarriages, even if you gave placebo vaccine, you get nothing that would cause a miscarriage, youould expect more than a thousand miscarriages, more than a thousand miscarriages d the one week following vaccination for those half a million women. so if we see that after h1 vaccination, that doesn't imply that there is a problem. with a vaccine. what we need to see is whether the rates that occur are higher than would occur if no vacne had been given. and with that only time will tell. i think the bottom line here is we will look very, very carefully to see whether there is a problem with this vaccine in terms ofafety. we don't anticipate that there will be. it is produced ithe same way that the flu vaccine is produced each year. it is a new strain just as we put new strings into the flu vaccine each year, and flu vaccination has a long-term,

very good safety record with literally hundreds of millions of doses having been given. >> operator, next question. >> operator: our next question comes from helen, the canadian press. >> caller: something i could get you to talk about something, you touched on earlier, the balance of identifying when people need to seek care. some people, you know, think they are fine and then start to get worse and he did go see a doctor to get it may be outsid the 48 hour optimal treatment window for antiviral drqgs. is cdc recommending that doctors and about treating with antiviral, starting with antivirals later than 48 hours if it looks like somebody is developing severe disease? >> if someone is severely ill, then they should be treated, even if it is more than 48 hours. but the most benefit, the most good is that if the treatment is done within the first 48 hours.

>> some questions from the room? >> dr. freedman, my name is brooks. i'm a producer at fox news. i want to ask a little more about the vaccination that cinepak and chinese and in switzerland they have announced they have a windows vaccination. is that something that we're going to see you in the united states? will we be able to have a windows vaccination as opposed to two? >> we need to look at the data as it comes out. the novartis study i believe was done with agitated faxing. it is a vaccine that has another material added to it to boost the immune response. we don't anticipate that we will be using that in most of the scenarios that we anticipate now, although that could change. and we would expect the likelihood of needing to doses with a vaccine that is not, it is higher than that vaccine. and for theata coming out of

china will have to see for seasonal fuel for kids under age nine we currently use to get a vaccine doses. so it is very likely that at least four kids, two doses are going to be required. but only time will tell. this is one of the things, our basic message here is where going to look at the data. we are going to understand the situation as well as possible and provide the best possible advice for people to have the best option is to take to protect themselves and their families. >> question here? >> harry, cbs atlanta news. a lot of parents are very concerned about this to get a feel that h1n1 starts to spread, they learn that h1n1 starts to pop up in their school or their daycare center, if they don't feel that the school or day care center is taking the necessary precautions, should they pull their kids out? >> we hope that schools will continue.

kids need to learn. parents need to work. there is a lot that happens at schools that is very important. we have had a handful of schools closed, most of them just for a day or two. if your kid is sick, please keep them home. they will get better quiccer, d they will not affect people around them. school should ensure that kids who are sick are separated and sent home with perigord caretaker, and that kids cover their cost, covered his knees, and wash their hands. if those simple steps are taken, the number of people who become infected will come way down. and went vaccine becomes available, schools will be an important location to give the vaccine in many parts of the country. >> operator, we will take another question. >> operator: our next question comes from maggie with reuters. >> caller: i want to ask the 36 children who die, how does that

compare to a typical influenza season? i know there is no such thing, but can we give just kind of a range, what is given in the report is more given in perctages. and can we talk about the presstime period in which these deaths took place? thanks. >> child deaths from influenza are really tragic, and one of the things that has prompted us to recommend broad-based influenzaaccination for children, even before h1n1 came around. each year there are on the neighborhood of 50 to a hundred aths from influenza among children in this country. in this year, only time will tell what that number is. the flu season this past year was very unusual. very unusual because you had first normal flu season, which was a relatively mild season. and then you had h1n1 influence of. so these deaths are outside the normal time piod, and again,

only time will tell what will happen in the fall and winter. the take-home message from the study, i think, is that particularly kids with underlying conditions need to be treated promptly, if they develop fever, and the first online or at the front of the line for vaccination when it becomes available. thank you. operator, another question. >> operator: thank you. steve, u.s.a. today, please go ahead. >> caller: thanks for taking these calls. there was a note in the report on influenza, the southern hemisphere, that suck me. said in argentina and chile that among hospilized cases of acute respiratory synome, kids of four years of age with the most effective. however, both countries reported on a low percentage of cases 20 to 30% this age group represent

the 2009 h1n1, whereas more than 70 to 80% represent respiratory virus. could you explain and expand on that? >> in par of the country an the world, where flu is spreading, it has been very important within the hospital, for hospitalized patients, particularly for patients in intensive care units, to determine what type of infection may have appeared in the testing fo influenza, not only is it not necessarfor most people who have only moderate or mild illness, but for those with severe illness, it's not sufficient because there are many false negative tests from the available tests. so in areas where there are large number of people in intensive care units, doing very and vigorous investigations to forget what is makin them sick is quite important. and we have seen in different parts of the country, different parts of the world that it isn't alys h1n1. it can be other things.

and only testing at that intensive care unit level of care can determine tt. >> question? >> iust had a quick question. in the southeast, what are using? i know we are seen a lot of flu activity. do you attribute that to the return of school earlier than the rest of the nation? >> we are seeing a lot of h1n1 influence of scattered around the country, particularly in the southeast. in the most likely explanation for that is that schools started earlier here in georgia. we have relatively widespread h1n1, and that again is most likely because we had the schools starting earlier. it may also be that some of the parts of the country that had less of h1n1 in the spring may see more of it now. but only time will tell. this is one of the many things that we have to monitor very carefully so we can figure out what is going on and adjust our approach based on what is actually happening.

>> operator, we have time for two more questions. >> operator: robert, nbc news, please go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking the call. i just want to follow up on the port on the end any five respirators. as you well know, there is not a lot of them and maybe even a week or two supply in hospitals. there is some in a strategic reserve, but given that there is a potential shortage of these, if there were to be a very large outbreak disease, how would you like health care workers to respond to this information and how do you think they should respond? >> we have just received the institute of medicine report. we a studying it carefully. their charge was specifically not to consider either economic or logistical concerns such as supply. and as we look at guidance for health care facilities, we will be looking at this carefully in the coming days and weeks.

and we have time for one more question. >> operator: my, associated press, please go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking the question. doctor, two questions. first of all in the piatric deaths reported on the bacterial co- infections, do you all know where the kids picked up those infections? were those hospital acquired infections? in the second question is, given the proportions of the kids who are under five or versus over five, is it clear yet, isn't swine flu deadlier to school age children than flu is? >> so for the first question, most of those infections were picked up in a community rather than in hospitals. the kids camin with the infection. in terms of the relative severity of seasonal versus h1n1, i think the jury is still out. so far it is not more severe. we don't know that it is less severe. early the number of deaths are not more than 500 deaths fro

h1n1 influence in the country in all age groups. and lens that can be a very serious disease. that's what it is so important that we take every step at our sposal. that means sying home if you are sick, coming or cgh or sneeze, washing your hands, and if you are severely ill, trouble breathing, or have an underlying condition, get treated promptly when you have fever. and when vaccine becomes available, make sure that we get as many people vaccinated as want to be vaccinated. thank you all very much.

>> we'll continue our review of the health care debate in congress with highlight from senate committee hearings and analysis by shailagh murray of "the washington post." this weekend a comparison of health care systems around the world with former post reporter tr reid. sunday on "q & a". >> a discussion now on the state of the economyosted by the u.s. chamber of commerce. topics include executive play and unemployment. we'll hear about the congressional agenda including health care, labor and immigration. this lasts about an hour and a half. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

i'm eric wolflabel, director of communication from the u.s. chamber of commerce. we're across from lafayette park and the white house for annual labor day briefing. our chief economist dr. martin regalia with us today who will do forecast on the economy and head of labor policy division, seor vice president of the chamber, randy johnson. talking about issues facing employees. thank iou and welcome. we'll start off with dr. regalia. >> thank you all very much for being here today. i will take a few minutes and run through a brief outlook on the economy. and talk what we're seeing specifically in labor markets and turn it over to randy. as with most economic presentation there is is always good news and bad ne. the good news that the economy is growing again. we're coming out of this economic downturn a very, very significant economic downturn. one i think without

hyperbole can be described as the worst economic downturn since the depression. it, beats the '74-'75 downturn. it beats the '82 down turn both in duration and descent and rifals -- rivals and rates of unemployment we've seen in those instances. clearly it was a very, very severe economic downturn and a very trying econoc time. i think we're coming out of it for a number of reasons. first and foremost, we saw price decline. price declines have a tendency to help boost real incomes and realages and real spending and we've seen a marked price decline over the last year. secondly, we had a stabilization program put into place by the last administration and continued by this administration, which, for all its warts has worked very wl. it has stablized the

financl system, which is what it was intended to do. and it has gotten lending back on track in many regards. it's kept the banking system from following their cousins on the investment banking side into oblivion and, all of that is something that was, you know, was needed and i think it's worked and now we're starting to see some of the funds being paid back b the banking system, and they're doing so with interest and, they're buying back the warrants so that the cost to the government is turning out to be considerably less than what the face value of the tarp program was. we've also seen stimulus programs put into place by both the monetary and the fiscal authority. congress passed a $787 billion fiscal plan. it, i don't think w nessarily the most concise or the best plan that could have been, could have been put together but it was one of the better plans that

could have been passed, and that was what was needed at the time. that stimulus program has helped to t the economy growing. we're still feeling the benefits o the stimulus program. we will for the next year or so. and that's probably a good thing as well because this economic recovery is likely to be somewhat lackluster. we've also seen significant changes in fed policy, a very aggressive monetary pocy that not only ran the interest rates down to zero but, opened up their balance sheet, expanded their balance sheet dramatically to keep the banking syste liquid. just this morning there were more reports on the consumer asset-backed lending program and how successful that has been in reliquifying those markets. so they kept the commercial par market from imploding with purchases of commercial paper. they have, addressed other asset-backed markets in the consumer and auto area.

and again, i think very high marks are deserved b those at the fed for the policies. they were precidential. these were things we had never seen the fed do before and we were well-served for the fed to throw o the old playbook and bring in a new one and i think they deserve for a lot of credit what has been a very, very trying time in our financial markets and for getting us through the worst ofhose. i was happy to see that the president agreed with me and reappointed chairman bernanke. i had done one of these press conference as couple months ago and athe tile i said i thought he dehe deserved to be reappointed and reappointed sooner rather than later. i think that was a good thing and a good choice and i certainly hop the congress aproves the nomination in short order and keeps him hard at work over there because there still are, you know, a

numberf areas that need his attention. and then finally the thing i think really turned the corner on this economy is the bottoming in the housing market. i think it is quite clear that the housing market has bottomed. i will show you a few slides but where we were kind of hoping that what we were seeing earlier this year was a bottom, forming of a bottom, it is clear at this point that it has bottomed out. we're seeing and you will see, in the slides, pictures of housing prices, of housing sales, of housing starts, all of which are bottomed and turned up modestly. you can see affordability numbers, mortgage interest rates numbers all of which are providing credit for credit worthy borrowers. we still have some problems in the subprime area. we still have elevated delinquencies and elevate foreclosures and those will remain for quite some time,

but i don think we're going to see significant increases in those categories. they're very, very high levels but, i don't think we're going to see increases in those categories going forward. and even in the commercial mortgage market, where there is a lot of questionstill to be answered, i think that we are seeing some improvement there as well, and the fed is addressing that with their term asset lending program as well. the reasons i think that what is going o be, that what we're going to see here, is a subpar recession, sothing on the order of a u-shape, rather than the v-shape recovery is that the economy is still quite imbalanced. consumption is still relatively weak although it appears to have picked up somewhat in the last couple quarters, it is still relatively weak. we're not going to see a bounce-back in consumption, the, pent-up demand coming forth. and we're going to see a

consumer that is periencing high rates of unemployment going forward. and, high, and high rates of job loss that were greater in this downturn than they had been in prior downturns. and these, it will take more time to turn these job losses around, generate new jobs, and higher income growth. for all those reasons i think we're going to see consumption be somewhat weaker than what we normally expect coming out of a economic downturn. in addition, investment is virtually nonexistent at this point. investment is always the second leg in the economic recovery. you get consumption, and then you get new orders. you get more spending get new orders. get more people coming back to work. you get new jobs being created and more investment in capital and equipment and structures. we're not likely to see that transpire any time in the near term. i think consumption is, investment is still probably a year away from any kind of

significant improvement. so we probably will stop declining over the remainder of this year. but, it is going to be hard to envisionusinesses, investing in equipment and plant, when in fact they have excess capacity and still relatively few customers. the so, the normal course of a recovery i don't thi will manifest itself this time around. the trade sector, which has been a real blessing to this economy over the last few years as the trade deficits have shrunk, we have sold goods abroad into new markets, is going to continue, but it is not going to, increase in pace. so, i think that the best we can hope for from the trade sector is more of a neutral contribution to our gdp growth. growth abroad is still, relatively weak, and for the most part, is lagging our improvement. while we see signs of improvement abroa, it

appears it will take somewhat longer for them to catch up tohere we are. that is what is required before we can start selling abroad in the manner that we have over the last couple years. so, when you look at the major components of this recovery, you see first, you know, weaker but positive consumption, very, very soft investment, and kind of neutral on the trade side. and all of those things conspire to give you an economic recovery that is somewhat less than normal. so, as he look at, you know, our forecast, we're seeing growth of maybe as much as 3%. probably somewhere around 2.5 in the third quarter. and, continued positive growth in the 2.5 to 3% range in the fourth quarter and first part of next year. the problem then is that the stimulus program starts to wane noticeably. and unless the ecomy has reached some balance and reacquired its footing at that time, there is quite likely to be some

backsliding in the second half of next year. so we get a little bit of a spurt, and then, a little bit softer growth going out into the, into the outer quarters. the reaction that this economy is showing to the economic dowurn, as i said, is just, just different from what we have come to expect. and because of that we're going to see a slightly different modification in, in growth rates, from what would normally be the case. i also think that, you know, th policies that we are addressing at this time, do raise the uncertainty level in the econo. so we're looking at some very, very fundamental issues that randy will talk about in labor supply and in health care. energy issues that will be vitally important for our long-term growth. we're also, as i will show later, kind of on the downside of a productivity surge that began in the mid-90s and continued into the mid-part of this decade

but is now starting to slow a bit. those are the kind of advances that give the and economy a little it about leg, that give it some lasting power. and with those weaker, rather than stronger, it is hard to be, overly sanguine abouthe economic growth beyond the immediate horizon. now i'm going to flip through these consumption. the housing charts i called your attention to and starts and sales numbers as well as some of what we're seeing in the financial side, affordability, mortgage rates, and the like and also, the fact that the subprime market is still creating a problem. these investment numbers i alluded to, very, very weak. and likely to continue to be weak. and they're going to continue to be weak, when you look what drives investment, industrial production, demand, is still fairly weak and is not anticipated to snap back as strongly as it has in other recoveries. profits which finance a lot of investment, are still very weak. and while business confidence is picking up,

and the purchasing managers index finally popped above 50 for the first time i think in 17 months or so, still, still, relatively weak numbers. the trade side, again, this is it what i want to concentrate on today, as a labor market. when we have an economic downturn in this country, where you feel it is in the labor market. this one was a considerable hit tohe american worker. we have lost 6.7, 6.6 million jobs since the beginning of the recession. we've lost 3.6 million jobs since the beginning of this year. we're looking at unemployment rate o 9.4%, but, more than likely, one that will rise closer to 10 over the course of the next couple of months. the, initial claims numbers that come out weekly came out this morning and again didn't show all that much improvement. they were down on a weekly average basis, 4,000, from,

last week's revised number. but if you look at the four-week moving average, had been on what it had been, 570,000. that is an elevated number. one of the things to watch for on a weekly basis for improvement, when that number really starts improving. a goodumber is down in the 2 hundreds. so we have a ways to go before we get to a good economy. but we like to see more sustained improvement in that number going forward. we look what is happening in the some of the other areas and one of the other reasons we think the unemployment rate will hang up for quite ahile is that, one, the growth isn't strong enough. unless you have growth well above potential, you're not going to drive the unemployment rate down and our potential rate of growth is probably 2.5 to 3%. that is our forecast rates of growth over the next year. doesn't generate enough to push the unemployment rate down. in addition, we have a significt number of marginally employed individuals. individuals that were

ll-time and now working part-time. they will have to be reabsorbed. they are counted as working. they're counted in the employment rolls. but when the economy picks up a little bit, the first thin businesses will do, is bring part-time workers back on to full time before they start creating net new jobs. so you have to reabsorb rginal workers. in addition we have a category called discouraged workers. workers unemployed but have quit looking for a job because they feel there are no jobs available. when that situation prevails, those individuals are not counted in the workforce, nor are they counted as unemployed. once the economy starts to pick up a bit and those discouraged workers start to lookor work, they will be unemployed, but they will no nger be out of the workforce. and they will be counted as unemployed. and so you have to reemploy the marginal worker. then you have to reemploy the discouraged workers and there is 800,000 of those

out there. so, we have a ways to go before we generate enough growth to get all these people reemployed. the duration of unemployment in this particular downturn has been significantly longer than what we have seen before. and that again, as you can see from the charts, the last couple of peaks i the duration of unemployment, they peaked after the end of the recession. so we still have some bad news to go on the duration of unemployment front. and participation rates, they're holding in there at about 65, 66%. i expect that they will probably stay in that range. now, when we look at the, the issue of this economic downturn versus prior economic downturns, insofar as labor market is concerned, you see some fairly drastic

differences. we have lost significantly more in terms of the number of workers. so it is deeper than what we have seen in the past. now we are a bigger economy but this is proportionally deeper. and the thing that i would call to yr attention in the lower panel is that those bars, the, blue bars indicate the length of time it took from the beginning of the recession until enough jobs were created to surpass the prior peak in employment. so how long did it take, not only before we got out of the recession but before we created enough new jobs to match the prior peak? the red bars are how long it took from the bottom of the recession, from the end of the recession. so the difference between the two is length of the recessions. the last couple of recessio took significantly longer to reach the prior peak, even though, those two recessions were only eight months in duration and relatively mild

in terms of gdp drop. and yet, it took two years in the '91 recession, and it took a little over three years in the 2001 recession before we generated enough jobs. now we're going to have to deal with a much steeper decline in employment this time around. i've seen projections that it going to be at least five years befe we generate enough jobs. just for, arithmetic purposes, we add about a million people to the labor force each year. a little bit more in some years. a little bit less in others but roughly a million a year. so over the next five years, you have got to make up five million new entrants, and you've got to make up about seven million lost jobs. so, in the best of all possible worlds to get to where we were, to our prior peak, you will have to

create, 12, in some cases probably a little bit more, because the actual additions are higher than a million in the near term, you will have to create somewhere between 12 and 15 million net new jobs in the next five years, just to get back to where we were. so, this is a, this is a daunting task. you're going to need the economy to grow, at significantly greater than it is long run potential in order to generate that kind of jobs. for instance, when the economy is performing just about at its potential rate, 2.5, to 3, you create about 150 to 180,000 net new jobs. and which you need is something a little bit greater than that to, to reach your prior peaks. so mean we could go growing at o potential rate and creating 150 to 18,000 jobs, net new jobs per month and we wouldn't reach the old peak within

five years. so this is where the labor markets have changed over the last few downturns. we've see the duration of unemployment creep up and the seen the time it takes to recover, fully recover and get back to prior peaks being stretched out. and i think that's, you know, quite likely to happen again. that to go along with with some other shifts that we've seen in the labor force. and, i'm going to jump through this slide. i'm going to look at, you know, what we see in terms of some of the distributional impacts in the labor force. if you look at the lower right hand panel, the so-called genie coefficient that is so disparate the income distrution is. as that number goes up the distribution gets more uneven. as the number goes down the distribution gets more even. we've seen in the last couple years, the latest data is from 2007, we've actually seen some

improvement in the gini coefficient and improvement in the distribution. but there is a very significant upward trend. that is to say, a very significant trend in the direction of lessee quality in the income distribution in thi country. if that is going to be addressesed in a policy sense it is going to have to require long-term fundamental policy changes. and they're going to have to be in the education and skill accumulation area. because, the economy is becoming much more technically complicated and complex and workers that can address that complexity are rewarded and ones that can not are not. 're seeing a hollowing out of some of the jobs a few decades ago, paid significantly high wages for doing relatively rote mean y'all tasks. if you were running assembly line and screwing same nut onto the same bolt again and again and again. you still made a pretty good

living and still had a pretty good income from that activity. with the robotics and efficiencies and the competitions that have driven these efficiencies, over the last couple of decades, those jobs really don't exist anymore. and they're not going to exist in the future. and, trying to reconstitute those jobs in a competitive world economy is a fool'ser rand. what we have to do is get your workforce prepared to meet the next challenge, that productivity challenge. that requires greater education and greater skill accumulation. and that takes time. you don't do that overnight. a tax policy to try and address the income distribution is a fool's errand. if you look at gini coefficient and look at the dates, during the clinton administration when w actually had significant tax increases in terms of marginal rates we saw the rich get richer. we had a big productivity surge, and a big technology

surge, and again, the people that had the education and skill levels to take advantage that benefited quite nicely. in fact during the bush administration where we see them vilified often giving tax cuts to the rich, we actually see the gini coeffits come down. they capped and have actually ce down because those tax cuts weren't just for the rich. they were tax cuts across the board. the effective marginal tax rates on the lower income groups actually declined by more than the effective tax rates on the upper income groups. when we look at some of those income groups and income quintiles, if we look over time, the bottom two, light blue and purpose pell those are -- purple, those are top of the income distribution. those are getting a larger share of total income in the united states. and the middle and two lower groups are getting a low share. but what's interesting is that the tax shares of those same upper groups has

actually gone up more than their income shares. and the ratio of the two, your effective tax rates. so the fact of the matter is, we have had lower effective tax rates on the lower income groups, the mid and lower income groups. higher effective tax rates on the upper group and it has, you know, hasn't done a whole lot to effect the income distribution. it's a much more fundamental problem. we've seen a little bit of a capping off of late with the bush tax cuts. but, the tax increases that were designed in the mid-90's to achieve some of this balance and achieve a better income distribution, or more even income distribution were woefully unsuccessful. so, to su up, when i look at the economy right now, things are definitely getting better. i think we're out of this economic downturn. a year from now, mbar tells us officially when the recession ended i would bet

at this point it will be pretty close to the third quarter of this year. but the reaction, the recovery, is going to be subpar. it will be slowe than normal. and as a result, the place where the recession really meets the road, when w where you really feel the recession, in the labor markets, in the unemployed, in wage growth, those things are likely to be subpar for quite some period of time. and that's going to be the political challenges to, create economic policies that provide significant ecomic growth, because in turn, the significant economic growth will provide job growth, wage growth, and it will also provide revenue growth for the federal government, so that we can address the absolutely huge deficits that have been projected over the next 10 years. deficits that are clearly unsustainable, and deficits that will wak all kinds of havoc if they actually

manifest themselves over next 10 years. we will see our dollar decline in value. we willee inflation come back and see a real tug-of-war between the fed and administration whether to inflate this economy or not. so, thank you very much. randy? >> tnks, martin. every labor day, when marty gets done, does all that mean i will get a raise next year or not. half the time it does or half the time it doesn't. marty pinpointed our challenges ahead. i think one of the queions as we go forward from labo day through this next year is whether or not the unions will work with the chamber and other business groups to create an agenda on capitol hill that helps create jobs, or whether or not we'll go down the usual usual path of the unions frankly demonizing the employer community and, saying that, basically nothing has changed since the 1930s. employers do not take care of their employees, therefore we need more regulations and new burdens

on employers to prote those employees from employers. obviously as i talk about a little bit later in the costs of health care and other issues, other costs on employers, marty will echo, much of that will be eventually passed on to workers or consumers and that is not a recipe, particularly in this environment, for job growth. it is a bit of ironic f me at least to look back on some of the pieces of legislation on capitol hill seeing much of the same ol' same ol', that the party in power was pushing a decade ago without really much creativity or recognition of the environment we're in. in that regard i'm, i would ask that you would take a look at the folder in front of it. it is chock-full of a lotf good information. i'm sorry we didn't have time to break it down in sound bites but as you write future stories like employee free choice act or state of the ecomy, what is pending on capitol hill i think you will find a lot of that information, hopefully very

valuable. you know, i did note that trump in a recent speech called, called, employers he did use the word demons, essentially. we sometimes criticize the unions for overly criticizing employer community, and, his response was well, to that, when the employer community stops acting like demons we'll quit calling you demons. so you they, that is in fact not what the employer community is. on labor day we celebrate the contributions of workers but i think it is worth nong that really what the workplace is, is a, is a pact of sorts between employers and employees and together, together, there is an environment created where a product is created. worker gets hopefully a decent wage out of that and the employer creates a product from which he or she earn as profit. sometimes the employer has to go to the bank and borrow money to dig out of a hole. sometimes the worker is not entirely happy with his or her wages but eventlly,

eventually this are worked ou there's ups and downs but overall the economy, there is a, aatisfaction in work place i believe between employers and employees. and, sometimes when the unions, who only represent 7.5% of the workforce, i think, argue much, i think to their discredit that is not true, i think it undermines their credibility generally. that doesn't mean there aren't bad employers. there are some. but they're certainly the exception to the rule. if you would take a second to look at the benefits sheet there in your packet, we point out that, employers provide $7.8 trillion worth of conization to their ploy he is. -- employees. some 1.5 trillion in employee benefits. employers provide in a world talking about health care benefits the employer community is still providing close to 180 million americans with health care insurance. about 160 million of that is

through private sector employers. what do employers spend on health care insurance? well over 500 billion. that is with a "b", health care insurance and billions still mean a lot of money in the employer community. albeit on capitol hill, perhaps it doesn't. in a world where employers are still struggling with health care costs, they're not just cutting copays and increasing premiums. they're experimenting with things like wellness progra and consumer driven plans to hp try to control costs. actually, despite all the rhetoric level of health care coverage with regard to americans through employer-based coverage has remained relatively stable although the census bureau will likely come out with new data next week and perhaps that will change a bit. private sector employers, close to $200 billion in retirement income. often paid leave is a benefit provided by employers. even in these dire economic

straits, the survey data with regard to american workers is quite compelling in terms of job satisfaction. the american enterprise institute came out in august, american still displayed a high degree of satisfaction with their jobs. 50 percent side of employed people said they were completely satisfiedith their jobs and another 30% or somewhat satisfied. for those with jobs, job stress, the amount that they earned, and even health benefits remained remarkably stable 68% were satisfied with the chances for promotion. 71% in 2009 said they were satisfied with the amount of money they earned. 67% in 200

>> in 2008, 71% were satisfied with their health insurance benefits. the ladder one is one that they are running into. most people are seeing what's going on as a threat to what they already have from helping them. before i get to health care, let's talk a little >> before i get to health care, let's talk about the agenda. it's back in the press with rich trumka indiating there might be some room to compromise. the three parts of the bill is one that if the union rounds up, the employer mustecognize the union. the second part opposes binding arbitration when a union and employers cannot agree. the gernment contractors will be appointed to write the terms an contracts for the employer.

now our first, obviously our our objection is tt these cars are subject to coherrings on the part of the union organizationer. this is not the chamber speaking. it's of courts that have said is. this is the organizers that have said this. in fact, i'm just going to read one quick paragraph. here's a former uniyour organizer. i began to realize that a number of signed card had less to do withupport for the union and more to do with how effective an organize was at doing his job. in fact, it's always this significantly less than the number of cards collected. card check campaigns have little to do with workers information. we are trained to avoid topics. many workers do actually realize

that they had been manipulated after the fact and asked for their cards back or asked to have them returned to them. the union strategy was to never return or destroy but include them in the official count towards the majority. now that's one union organizer. there's much testimony in here for people wh were employed by the unions to organize workers. they've had the courage to come forward and talk about how the system was manipulated, and in fact does not often represent worker intent. it's not the chamber. it's people who have been out there. the second part of the bill, binding arbitration, it's equally unacceptable to the employer community. the idea that a government arbitrator could step or arbitrator appointed by the government can write a contract for the employer which would gorn every termnd condition

of the workplace has never been accepted under the national labor relations act, and i think it's ludicrous and unacceptable. we will never turn over the workplace to the contract. i raise that because there's always been some talk about well, if the decision makers on capitol hill throw out the card bill, would we accept arbitratn. the answer is no. both on card check and on the arbitration provision, this is showing that run-of-the-mill americans recognize that both of these ideas are bad ideas and certainly shouldn't be accepted by congress. with regard to compromises, we'll see where the talk goes. we are not going to compromise using the employer act of negotiation. if they unions want to start at square one, some objective

balance units with regard to the national labor reations act which has not been updatedince 1947, we can go into that process. we will go from there. i'm sure there's problem we can identify on both the management and employer community. but we're not going t negotiate from the employer choice as a base. now recently the unions went after george who i think many of you are old enough to member. his choice for the act, i want to read what he did say about the employefree choice act. i find it's interesting that the union's vw. as a long time friend of labor unions, i must raise my voice against funding legislation as i see as an overreach not in the interest of management or labor. that legislation is called the employer free choicact. i'm sad to say it runs counter to the ideals that were once at

the core of labor movement. workers would loseheir freedom to express their will in ivate, the right to make a decision without anyone over their shoulder, and fear of reprisal. even on arbitration, it's in one sense govement deck indicated to employees what they will win or lose with no opportunity to approve the agreement. why should it be such a contract? anyways, i think the votes are not there for the employee free choice act. even when the majority leader talks about bringing the bill up, that's a choice that the votes will be there. it was just a question of time of educating policy, decision makers, so they knew what was in the bill and turning on the grassroots. the employee free choice is out there. it appears that the majority is not with oer labor legislation telling the free choice is done with. there's a list of labor bills in

your pact ranging from medical lee to osha reform to a myriad of oth issues such as arbitration. the common theme through all of these bills is again it's not really how should we help employers learn how to comply, the common theme is let's increase damages, let's make it easier for the trial bar to file a class action lawsuits, greater civil penalties, et cetera. i think it's with the mining people, which ishy the posters are up on the left, how complex our laws are here. that's one page out of regular laces, and this is the typical back, this is one book of 90 or 100 that employerr must figure out how to comply with.

when i see the department of labor talking about let's add more expenseful and then you see this frid ton capitol hill of new laws and burdens, i think it's worth reminding people that in the real world, employers don't have millions of dollars to hire lawyers to figure out every sentence this these books. there was a time under some administration where we recognize there was a need and perhaps a more obligation to help employers particularly all empyers, learn how to comply with the law through voluntar outreach et cetera. i'm hoping we will see that in this administration. the common theme is we have a lot of laws in the books. and we need to figure how where we can catch people on some violation, because it's a matter of great concern to the u.s. chamber. and certainly when we are talking about alternatives and

compromises we will b revisiting that theme in the sense of the reality of this guide is that no one can comply with all divisions of the law. it's simply too complicated. instead of let's go after them, how about helping small businesses understand the lieu through some sort of voluntary compliance program? before i leave i do have to note that the enforcement budgets of the department of labor has been increased expotentially, the one area we do see reductions is in the one program under the labor management reports and disclosure act which has cut the budget that enforces against union leadership to protect union members. as many of you remember back in the '50s, presumably, most of us don't remember, including me. under bob kennedy, but many hearings going into the union

corruption and coercion and a need to create a law that protects union members, that's called the labor management point disclosure act. it's enforced by the department of labor. that's the one budget that is not being cut by the department of labor. i will leave it up to you to surmise why that is. they are engaged in a room making now which is directed at reducing the unions, making it more difficult for union leaders or members to know what the leadership is doing in terms of spending their money. now we're going to be comment and we will follow that closely. health care on capitol hill, there's so testimony in your packet, where they laid out the chamber commission. obviously, you know the president is going to give a

speech next week. we'll see if that reshapes where things are. our concerns with the bill have been clear. one is the employer mandate. when the house bill says, you as an employer except for the very smallest employers, must provide a qualified health care, qualified is defined by the federal government. both in the bill and by a board yet to be created. you have to provide that lev of benefs or pay a fine of 8% of your payroll. 8%, someone making $40,000, that's a $3200 on each person making $40,000. but that can add up pretty quickly, particularly for a small business guy. why shouldn't all employers have to participate? not all employers can do that. particularly small start up businesses as i mentioned, the employer community is already kicking in

$500 billion worthf health care contributions and we think we're already doing our fair share. many sites have come out to concde that a tax such as this will lead to not just slower job growth but job elimination. some of those are mentioned in my testimony. but that's my argument on that basis. now with regard to public option which has more attention not press we will see where the president goes on that. i think the grassroots have been very tremendously, fairly -- mostly in opposition, but it depends which poll you read on what day. government suprted has an unfair advantage and what will eventually thrive out private sector insurer. again, there's another study

found that some $88 million workers would move to the public sector option and other studies have documented the clear cost shifting that has occurred between public sector and private sector plans. meaning private sector plans will always have more expensive premiums and public sector will always have an unfair advantage. where are w going to go on health care? my view is that the patent is fairly clear. the president auht to come back in and admit we were trying to do too much too soon. people are scared about what they are hearing on capitol hill, they don't know what they are hearing, but they are scared. i was at the hearings when hillary came up. she was much for hiding the ball at the time as you will recall. i would say what that process back in '94 was a model of transparency as compared to what

was said. unfortunate for those in the put at the hud that the bill did not go to the floor. but hopefully the predent will come if wit a proposal of some sort which is paired down. and we can come together over a package that's slimmer, more understandable, and move on t other issues. hopefully not the choice act, maybe we shouldn't resolve health care. but i think that he has his hands full dealing with obviously th far left. but it seemso me the public has pretty much made itlear, they recognize there's a problem. hey, we're fairly happy with our healthnsurance and don't mess it up. and it's hard to believe that message has not gotten through to the white house and people on capitol hill. i do want to mention this quick immigration reform.

we do work closely with the unions. we certainly are still hopeful about the passage in the next two years about immigration reform. we do have some disagreements over the unions over temporary worker program. clearly there is a need as you look over the demographics over the long term for greater immigration. we need some solution to t undocumented in this country. we hope that congress up in the next two years and unions on that issue. so thank you. >> i think it's your turn now. do you have any questions that anything that randy or i have said? we'll start over there and work right across. >> what about businesses bng able to meet their payroll? as long as your members mostly but not voluntarily how much,

they will be struggling for the legal obligations but announced as a contractor, i read into the pages. >> well, you know, all that's anecdotal. it's not bad, just hard to argue. as the economy has gone into the downturn, it's been harder for people to pay this. and in fact we have heard stories of loan -- we've seen the loan delinquency data rise, not just the mortgage loan, but other business loans are up. loan loss reserves at commercial banks are up. so the hard data that we have on that indices and tests the support the anecdotal data that it's become harder and harder to make ends meet in an economy

where there are fewer and fewer custers and the customers that you do have are spending less and less. we're hopeful with the economy beginning to improve that those stories kind of peak and reseed pressure recede as we go forward. i think we're going to continue to hear that ongoing businesses have meeting their commitments because of the weak economy. >> over here and then over here. >> you know, there's a small company. wouldn't a government option benefit those smaller companies that are trying to have extensive health care plan and providing coverage? >> well, i think it would depend

how it would be structured. i think, you know, i believe we don't take the positions, a good percentage is 90% of the chamber is compris of small businesses. and i think that generally speaking our members wld not, knowing the devil they don't, would rather continue to work th the current market combined with some of the market reforms we're seeing such as guarantee issuance, no limitation on the provisions. perhaps with the gateway of sorts which we agree with in coept, the federalist web site that would help small businesses go to one place to shop for the best deal. which is a characteristic in all these bills. combined with these for small businesses that can't afford insurance. i think in other words our membership would rather sort of

try to get to your point through some of these smaller little ideas rather than take a chance on the creation of some new unknown behavior which we're not quite sure how it would work. so i think there's others way of getting towards how can we subsidize the purchase of insurance or have them purchase insurance rather than creation of this new unknown. the other part, of course, is this the employer mandate. and we see these a sort of a package and clearly even with the exception of small businesses have continued to resist any sort of bill formation. >> yeah, given the jobs are in a lag. do you think the administration and members of congress will become more available to your concerns aboutll of these labor relation issues that you

say will -- do you think from your perspective of educaon of these issues will lock heads? >> i think in reality a lot of -- some of the reasons that the employer free choice act was slowed down for a couple of months w because of the economy. and we did come out with some studies. of course, criticized about job loss that would be associated th passage of the employer free choice act. i think your point is, yeah, i think people understand this is not the time to create a lot to heed new laws on employers which createncertainty with regard to how the new laws impact the bottom line. it does help our argument on capitolill with the cluster of 45 concerned democrats. and i tend in the senate, but of course those are key votes. i think there's a lot of stuff, though, backed up, and i think the traditional allies of the

democratic party will wait forever? the answer is no. there is some time. but i think we are still lacking at some changes to our nation's employment laws down the road. >> i think that macro economic sense if you look at what's happening in the very weak economy and you superimpose the budget and debt issues, one thing that i had a slide on but different cover specifically was the fact that projected debt levels are going from around 42, 44% in 2008 projected up to over 80% by 2019. these are unsustainable debt increases or levels and deficits. and to the extenthat you have to address the deficit, it has to be done in kind of two ways. i mean there has to be spending restraint. and there has to be economic growth. you cannot, cannot balance the

budget by raising rates without making sure that you have a base to apply that rate too. so, in fact, we've seen enormous increases in rev -- revenues for the 2001 to 200period when we are declining rates and stronger growth. so the think that i think congress is going to have to come to grips with, on the one hand if we have a health care policy or an energy policy that does not cut costs and it has been suggested that the health care system would not, that ceo's analysis, not ours, they would not cut costs, then you are not addressing the restraint side of it. to the extent that you have a weak economy because of those policies, youet the double whammy on the budget. in fact, the analysis that i ve seen en of the recent adjustments that omb has made to

its assumptions which now call to $9 trillion understate the true cost of health care and the energy policies, just to mention two of the big pieces. so i think in a macro sense more and more congressman and senators and congresswomen are seeing the dynamic where we have to have economic growt to generate renue growth. and we have to do things that will foster that growth. and at the same timee have to do things that will control spending. how ch eat one focuses on the given idea is virtually impossible to say. i think the general conception of these problems is out there. i thi that as we see these bigger deficits numbers come in and as we will see some of the negative impacts from the bigger decit numbers there will be more and more concern about that as well.

>> i have a question. the anniversary on several changing in the financial system, i wouldo think about what the new normal is going to be. consumption will be depressed, wage growth will be subpressed, we will get back to 2014 to the job picture where we were. what is the new normal? the '20s and '30s were gone psychological changes. is it overstate to say there's going to be a new normal? >6 well, i think there's always that new normal. everyone likes to coin the phrase and so they talk about it. what are we going to see this time around? i don't think we're going to see

an american consumer that tries morph themselves into the japanese favor that we have seen of the past. okay? but i do think there's going to be an attempt by the american consumer to be somewhat me judicial in the terms of the spending and to try to get the balance sheets in order. now the consumer balance sheet can be brought into order if they curtail their boring, not necessarily if they save out of their current income. so i think that we see higher saving rates, we've seen saving rates jump up to 5 or 6% from the negative rates a year ago. i would not expect us to go back to the negative rates. but i would not expect us to stay at the 5%. the so the new norm is somewhat more saving and a gradual repairing of the balance sheet. what does that mean in terms of p growth? i think it means that we probably see potentially rates

of growth that are in the 2, 2.5 range or maybe even in the high 1.8, 1.9, something like that, rather than 3 or 3 plus which is what we thought it was. and indd what it was. say back in the late '90s and in the first seven or eight years of this decade. so it is a movement to a slower growth economy. but i don't think it's in a stark move. i don't think it's an abrupt move. i thk what we have seen during the recession is not to be ignored. at we saw prior to the recession will not be the new norm. it's going to be somewhat between that. and i think that's the best that you can do in terms of focusing on a question. it's an important question. we'll all be watching it to see. we have seen people begin to spend. look at the cash for clunkers deal. you put a little bit of a

incentive. because it didn't apply to all the vehicles, it only applies to the gas mileage constraints. and look what it did? in a month they've kicked up the sales to 14.1 million units which is well above to whate thought. now we don't have it. we'll see next month. bqt there wereeople ready to buy. the housing market has given rise to additnal in both existing and new homes. and so those people weren't afraid to step back in. so i think that where we make the mistake is t lack at what was happening during the depths of the rescission. we're not going back to where we were. we're certainly not going to be see the fridge markets and frge credits. the people that don't have the financial wherewithal to buy the new house getting credit at

virtually low interest rates. >> my question to you, on the federal reserve has indicated on a number of locations that we need to keep interest rates for an extended period o time. but today the president of philadelphia federal reserve bank has said that he believes that the interest rates should be raised very quickly. and so i wld like to know how you see the chance that the federal reserve will increase the interest rates? >> well, i know on the board we always enjoyed it when one of the regional fed presidents gave us speech that had a policy directive considerably different from what was coming out of the board. i also saw bill dudley on cnbc

with steve liesman, and in tha interview he talked about the interest rate policy probably for some indefinite period. they felt they could control the liquidity and the balance sheet issue through some toolsike payment of interest on reserves that they could keep the banks from lending out the reserves and increasing the money supply by increasing th interest rates that they had or by unwindi some of the boring that they conducted which were de with repurchase agreement than with other short-term borrowings. and they would have to be aggrersively reuped rather than ju kind of there. so i think that there is a disagreement modest disagreement among some of the members of the fomc, and there are some more hawkish members that would like to see some more aggressive

retrenchment on the part of the fed as well some less hawkish members. and this is what gives the dynamic to the fed. and it's a good thing. because you don't want to fed in grotpthink. this is the group that we have entrusted toonduct monetary policy. you want there to be a little bit of discussion at the fomc meetings not to be rubber stamp meetings. i think what you are saying in a different tone from bill dudley or mr. plosser that dynamic can work. i take the lead from where chairman bernanke is going. he has said he sees the need f continued monetary accommodation. to be relatively important. and to move in this direction, though he is cognitive of the

fact at some point he's going to have to pull it back. i see a bigger issue out there. it's not the issue between what the president of the philadelphia or the pittsburgh or the st. louis bank says and what the board thing. it's what the difference between what the whole group anteadministration -- and the administration thinks. there will be some discussions in congress. but i think the congress will confirm the reappointment athen the question is when the fed starts to pullhis back, and some point they will. maybe the middle of next year, maybe sooner. at that point the administration is going to be looking at a situatiowhere the fed is slowing down gpd growth in order to keep control of the situation andhat's slowing gdp growth is going to mean that revenue growth does not return to a normal path as quickly a it otherwise would. and at that poi you would see

the tradition signs form between the administration that the generally leans towards more growth. that's not partisan state, bush the first had great wars with the fed over reinstructive monetary policy versus regressive monetary policy. i will we will see that natural antagonism grow a little bit overhe course of the next year. i tnk that will be much more important than the internal discussions of the fed. >> yes? >> i mention earlier the possibility of the backsliding in the second half of 2010. with that be more of a slow down in the gdp growth or actual -- >> it will be more of a slow down in gdp growth but the problem is when you are running your gdp growth at or below tential you are only a hair's breath away from hoot recession.

the bother you get, any kind of shock, extraneous or -- shock you can slide back in. the probably or possibility is certainly there. and t probability is not inconsequential. ihink that we have the potential for a double dip recession. i think we could see that occur in either of two ways. eier the fed is overly aggressive in their tightening and about the same time that the stimulus is wearing out, we then see high budget deficits, somewhat higher interest rates because of that, and a fed that is very concerned about potential inflation and pulls back a little bit too quickly. that could tip you into recession. on the oth hand, if you go into the middle of next year, the economy is do well and doing

better than norma you still have the stimulus, you still have some of that coming online. you start to see the economy hit the stride. what happens? well, the money supplyhat has been injected starts to create more transactions. those transactions work on a lower product base. so you have too much money as it were chasing too few goods. the fed doesn't pull the money back fast enough and you start to get inflation. when that happens, inflationary expectations buildnd those higher interest rates could trigger an economic decline. so you are walking a tight rope. and as long as the economy is owing at or above it's poteiayou have a leeway. you have some wiggle room. but when you start to grow at those slower rates when some of e artificial stimulus is pulled back and you're expecting the economy to run on its own, you get -- it gets very

temperamental. in those kinds of situations a little over or under can produce in either case produce an economic downturn. so we are not out of the possible w of the double dig recession. we won't know where we are until probably t middle of next year. >> we are 15 very for competitive capital markets that addresses those issues. they are currently looking at some of the reform proposals. i think one this sounds the worst to us are things that look at providing a new consumer protection agency. i think it's interesting there isn't one government entity out there, regulatory, that thinks

that's necessary. i don't know how that playing with y'all whether you subjected it is necessary or it isn't. and every single one the administration regulatory agcies has said they don't like it. and i think that there's a lot noto like about that policy. i don't think it would achieve what's it's aimed attaching. i think elsewhere we're going to have to learn that companies are going to have in that area are going to have to run wh more rather than mewhat less capitol. i think the overleverage has allowed the situation to get out of hand. i thk the fednd others that det with that honesy believe that you have to have somewhat -- you have to control the leverage and have somewhat more capitol. you have to be playing with your own money that focuses your attentioand forces you to take the count of the risk that's out there. than overregulation would be again a real problem.

and something would be the return to credit availability in this country. and we do run on credit. and we almost continue to run on credit. so if we have institutions that are restricted from the appropriately evaluating and measuring credit, then you're not going to get the return to a more normal functioning economy. and so it's going to be a tight rope there as well. and i think that, you know, we haven't seen really detailed proposals with the admistration outline. we've heard some of the congressional individuals that will be involved in that process. we have made a few comments about some of the pieces. but we have really not seen a comprehensive plan. and even the way the administration's plan was unfold would, it w a piece at the time. and i think that- i think it's clear we have too many bank regulators from an economist point of view. but when i was working in a bank and i was a bank executive, i

thought my regulator was good and everybody else was crazy. and i didn't wanthe other guys regulated. and so there was a very proprietary feeling. he was any regulator, and he understand my problems. and i could work with him. and he didn't always agree with me or she didn't always agree, but the fact w i had some rapport there. and i think there is a real fear of getting away from that. one ofhe things that you look at is a hog dodge of bank regulation. you have the controller, feds, fdic, state bank regulators, individual insurance regulators at the state level. and these institutions all interact and all cross over. ad so it's hard to draw a distinct lineetween the bank part of the bank ends and the, you know, the underriding part of the bank begins. and we don't have an investment banking system and a belaces

table distinctions about commercial and about, you know, commercial entity and financial entity that aren't there anymore. and a lot of these things as randy eluded to with the labor standards act that hasn't been amended since what '47 you said? we had gramm-leach-billey. now we're going to sit down and talk that out. you know, it's 10 years old or a little less than that, i guess. and we're going to talk that out and go down this road again. i think there's a lot of areas where we see real problems. i think the credit rating issue is a real problem. it's still out there. that has to be addressed. at last lot oforal hazard in that because you pay for the credit rating the same way you pay for your auditor. we've seen that cause problems. whether they are going to be able to get their arms around it

or not really in part depends on a good part of randy's issues that sit higher on the congressional totem pole and whether they get handled. clearly a potential for overregulation while at same ti the clear understanding at the regulation didn't cut it. >> in london, it means that the regulatory reform is going to come up he agenda. and there's potenti excess compensation, regulations there, and -- >> opposed to what? i don't think we're opposed to anything expect the consumer protection agency. >> well, we will start from that. and tough any -- >> basically we're opposed to that because we don't think it's

necessary. we don't think that consumer that the lack of consumer protections for what it was would cause this onomic downturn. okay? many, many people that got mortgages that they couldn't afford to pay didn't get those because they were doomed into it. in many cases many of these loans got term liars loan not because the bank lied to them but the individualied to the bank and the bank didn't -- or the broker in many cases didn't goth do the due diligence. going out and raising a problem and then addressing is in a less than standard or appropriate way we don't think is good public policy. we don't think that the broad brush of the pposed consumer protection agency would virtually allow them to go into even small businesses that have an accountable receivable and ll the really that's the loan. and it is.

when you have a account acceptable, the institutions has floated you a loan. in many cas, we used tg send out invoices at end of the month. we didn't consider ourself a bank. we were aharmacy. and we sent out a bill at the end of the month and said please pay for your prescriptions. if you were to do that under the consumer protection agency we would be considered extenting credit. we don't think that's an appropriate function for a consumer protection agency to get into that level of a business that is not in any sense or true sense making a loan. but it is really just handling kind of a very short-term financial issue. but technically speaking they would. so these are the reasons we've opposed that. in terms of the broader discussions we're not opposed to anything out there. we've in fact supported consolidations, we've supported some level of agreement among

international regulators. so that the regulations that are imposed are consistent in a board international market. so those kind of things we haven't opposed at all. we also haven't gone out and approved something that is essentially a pig and a poke. if you can tell me specificically what's been proposed, i'll be happy to give you a specific answer. but i think it's one of the problems that we've had a lot of ve nebulous proposals. we haven't had a health care proposal in the financial regulatory yet, a broad outline and the broad outline leaves ou of the details out, and in this case the devils is really in the details. the point is we don't have -- we have not -- we have not suorted or opposed many of these pieces.

>> there are some e greg wows reputations that are decision made by boards and boards of director. this is a business decision. it's not a government decision. the government doesn't have to like what the bonus are. okay. because it's the system that determines it. now these have been determined in collectly in all cases, no. absolutely not. but by the same token to suggest that the government's compensation, one-side-fits all would be a better approach is ridiculous. at this point we recognize the failure of some of the private sector company significae mechanisms. but at the sameime the suesti that you impose of government limit on everything is absolutely ridiculous. and, you know the minute they start imposing government limits

on a-rod's salary then we'll hear from the american people really thinks about all that stuff. you can go down in a whole lot of are and find cases. because i don't think they've hit 226 and struck out. >> avoiding the point, if a-rod is making this amount of money and there's no risk that's that pay instructor as a risk for the financial specific risk from the government. that's the rational between wider guidance. >> and in the cases where the government has taken ownship positions, they have exercised

those ownership positions to put certain compensation limits in place. and in a few places to p them in place, and then afterwards they wanted to go retroactively put them in place. so they got it wrong. okay? they got it wrong. although they haven't made that admission yet. but the fact of the matter is they put things in place that they later admittedidn't do what they wanted them to do. in other cases where they he put executive compensation limits and the have run them down, they have found the companies are in voice. and so they have recognized that and talked about it because they recognize the fact that if you have people getting compensated for the same activity a greater amount in one area and not the

other area where it's limited you will have a flow of talent from the limited to the unlimited area. what the is appropriate policy for compensation? i think the appropriate policy is to have the private stor set these compensation limits. if the government has to come in and rescue them, then the government is -- you play with the government's money the government gets to set the rules. when you are playing with your own money, no like banks, because they are regular gaited entities, as bei different than entities are in a sense owned and operated by the government. the one thing that was interested when the aig bonuses came out this was a vilification when in the same week the freddie and frannie came out and were in excess, there wasn't one word in the press.

everybody knows frannie and freddie even before they were taken own were government-sponsored enterprises. and afterwords there is no question that they are government-owned. and bonuses were paid there and nothing was said. if you are going to apply this kind of concept, it has to be one well thought out and has to be applied at a consistent sis. and in the end i believe that the private sector, while not being free of mistakes does a better job of figures out what people aught to be compensated at than ds a federal bureaucrat. and that's my opinion,nd i think i can substantiate enough caseshere the fedal bureaucracy has made enough mistakes that you can't make the compelling case that the private sector mistakesere s pervasive that they need a federal preexemption or

regulation of salaries. i don't think wage controls work. this is just another formf federal wage and price controls. >> one of the things is i take your point, i believe you have written that many times myself this is very difficult to actually do this. but onef the things that are struggng with is the question of sort of the risks that the sort of balance ofhort-term versus long term. ip's not so much where they have taken over some of the banks but tohe extent that we have now seen a demonstration that if the banks already financial enterpriseso things short term that cause masses losses that cause the government to step in and to the extent that they believe that the payment and bonus structures have effected that in the balanceetween long-term and short-tm risk, are you saying you don't have any legitimate government role in talking about how those structures should be set up requiring set up to at the

federal area? i' not arguing -- >> no. but i'm going to answer your question. no. and the reason that i think is when the government gets in on the government regulation, the government has to regulate the transfer of risk. so youo into a bank and you say okay. you have to maintain these capitol standards. you've got to maintain these type of loan loss standards. you have to provide this kind of otection to the insurance agent. and i send in a regulator on a regular basis, monthy, quarterly, annual, semiannually, biannually, maintained from the government. and beyond that it's the stockholders that are financing that operation. because we're not talking about government-financed operation or government-owned, we're talking about government regulator.

it is the stockholders that have the risk to decide wat is the appropriate compensation level that they think they can help them achieve and still maintain those government levels of risk. and if the government thinks the institution is too risky, then step in and do something about the risk profile that they want to adjust either through premium adjust wants or whatever. but to go in and tell them this is what you can pay people and this is who you can hire. i don't anybody with a wnd i want somebody in there thats going to work for $100,000 when all ohis competitors are making $1 million. this is what i want you to do. i think that's wrong. the question then becomes what is the appropriate level of government supervision and government leglation of entities in our financial system. and i have a tendency to ere on the side of appropriate risk

standards and ongoing assessment of how that institution is doing. so people in the institution looking at what they are doing. rather than going in and making business for that institution. that i just don't think works. so. >> mar schoeff with "work force nation" magazine, i have a question about e-verify. do you think you'll be able to halt the control tour rule about your emergency court filing. secondly, could you comment on the enforcement which will have to happen in september or sometime this fall ahead of conference reform because of the verify has to be reauthorized. >> well, unfortunately we did lose that case and the district court and we had filed a- this is dealed with the

implementation of the e-verify, workers verification system. we challenged that in court because we belie president bush did not have the presidential authority to impose that on federal contractors beuse the judgment lying statute we argued said it must remained voluntary. the district court surprisingly to us did no agree. we have filed a stay of the regulation pending appeal. we should hear about that fairly quickly. you know, when with the district court denies the stay we will have to evaluate our next step. i think your point is the evaluating our litigation steps we are pursuing relief on capitol hill in this in a couple of ways. but most importantedly to modify the regulation so that it does

not apply to requires verification of existing employees as you know right now the regulation said you must also not just verify new employees but those employees working on the federal contract. but many compaes it's difficult to separate who's working and who's not. a lot of companies are going to throw their hands up and say we will be forced to e-verify everybody. you can imagine what that would mean to some of the computer industry company has are huge. pending possible success in the courts we are pursue legislative relief on the hill. and we're going that this weekend and next week fairly aggressively. part of that awould be to preempt state laws with regard to e-verify requirements. but the real nub there i think is to say that e-verify --

e-verification would not be required. underlying e-verifying authorization pilot program will inspire by the end of september. if congress does not reauthor that, frankly regulation would have no authority. however, because of that we don't think congress will allow that to happen. and we think it will be reauthorized. is that? do you want more information on our labor that we're pursuing, we can give you that. >> sure. i have one more question. and then we'll wrap up with those. >> sure. >> in the recovery forecast, is it threatened on the stresses on the loaners and denders. >> no, it isn't. and i'll tell you why. as of yet we don't know that there is -- we know there's potential problem. we don't know that potential problem is an actual problem.

if we were to see signicant defaults in the real estate commercial real dstate market or concern inability to refinance many of these contracts that are come up. then it would be very problematic. and we would have to see. but the fed is very aware of the problem. we've been over as have many others. the fed is continuing to monitor that issue. and i think they would be ready to step into the bech if in fact there was a lack of liquidity and therefore inabilities to roll over some of these things. so i'm guardedly optimistic while fully aware that there is a significant sized potential issue out there. and if it were to flow up, yeah, it could close a reseizeture in the financial market. the financial market like was a

lot of different factors. it was erosion of the housing assets, the liquidity, lack of capitol in the institutions, many of these institutions that are dealing this market have been able to rebuild a bit of eir capitol. they are more aware of the problem. so i don't think it's going to catch them by surprise. i think that's working in our favor. definitely a potential problem. but didn't factor it into the forecast. and i'm not guardly optistic that we will not see a complete meltdown in that sector. everyby is watching. everybody is@ watching. q. last question. >> randy you are hopeful for the next two years. so you were talking about before or after the new-term election. would you elaborate on your differences with the labor laws and the commission now for the

future of immigration? >> a lot of our aies in this ar of particularly on the left we are hopeful that obama would come out will a bill. the end of this year to go forward next year. i always thought and still think, with health care and other issues, the american public -- i do not think the senator schumerr the lenders -- the administration understands how hard the legalization is and h difficult it would be to pass leslation that would legalize a great many of the undocumented workers here. because of that, politically, the best time would be the first year of the next term of the congress, 2011.

a lot of my friends disagree. in regard to our differences, >> organized labor, particularly afl-cio has always been very opposed to skeptical of the need for temporary worker programs. so they ha decided, congress should just create two study that. in our view, the commission would be slanted towards the conclusion of the afl-cio wants. they have been a little more open to our position in the fact we need a robust temporary work program provided there are mechanisms to make sure that employer does recruit from the dgmestic workforce first. by the afl-cio, who is very profitable writer, wants a coission. and we don't. so that's where our disagreements like essenally. with doctor senator schumer about this. he knows our differences, and we

have encouraged him to try and sort these through with organized labor and see if we can come uwith a bill that provides better security, a pathway to legalization providing certain conditions are met such as learning english, tougher employment verification requirements, on employers. and also encouragement of programs to help the undocumented and others to learn english. english as a secondary program needs to be expanded. me that one of the great concerns of many of us here, or opposition to copperheads of immigration reform i think i'm through sort of a reaction for people who don't speak english to this country. i think it would help, because there is a mistaken assumption that people want to learn english. they want to learning . i think if we can provide some sort of federal help in that area it would be helpful towards copperheads of reform in

general. >> are you pushing for hopeful for some peace meals. >> certainly are. it's capped at 65000. they didn't reach the cat because of the economy, which underpins our argument that it is market-bad and is responsive to the economy. and h. two b. htb which is capped at 66000 we are negotiating those bills on separate tracks. again, o limit has been they want to put in more and more hoops and hurdles that employers must go through before you can recrt a worker and we derstand that but at some point you render the program under latif, even if you want to ree to greater number is because you go through so many hoops and hurdles he just ever get to the point we can actually get that approval of a document. so that the details of the programs come in. we're trying to work through those as you probably know, the hspanic caucus support not

doing this piece that has changed recently, but a whole bill. it's going slowly. >> you didn't talk at all about trade, and there is now some talk that the president will come out with his long-awaited speech on trade and kind of clarify the potion. what's your sense of what is going on there and what it will take to get that on trade and you have any sense how much they are? >> i think he this. we have an international group here that specializes in that select either defer to them on the trade questions,nd i'm sure john murphy could give you a lot more thorough answer on that. and then also i think, aren't we doing a major presentation here in a couple of weeks, a week or so? [inaudible] >> select outpoted chambers entireolicy on trade will be laid out in exemplary fashion.

so i will not begin to preempt any of that discusion. i'm going to pass on that one, i am sorry. >> thank you everyone. d by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] [no audio]

>> congress returns from its august recess next tuesday. the house reconvenes beginning at 2 p.m. eastern when members will start the week with a number of bills dealing with federal lands and historic sites. a measure continuing federal programs to protect and restore the chesapeake bay on the eastern shore. the senate begins its session with general speeches, and later in the day debate on legislation promoting u.s. tourism to people in other countries that create a nonprofit corporation f that purpose which would get its money from fees on foreign visitors.

>> september 1 marked the 70th anniversary of the start of world war ii. sunday commemoration from gdansk, pulling, including german chancellor. >> and now a team of election observers recently back from afghanistan. mostar with the national democratic institute which sent 100 election observers into the country for the august 20 election. from the washi, this last about an hour and a half.

>> [inaudible conversations] >> can anyone take their seats, please. good morning, everybody. i am karen von hippel, the codirector of the reconstruction project along with this gentleman in the front row, rick barton. on behalf of doctor john henry, the president of cfi if i would like to welco you all here today to what we hope will be a very rich discussio about the president and provincial council elections in afghanistan which of course as we all know are still inconclusive. the latest figures we saw today e 60.3% of the polling stations have reported. 4743% for carter, 32.6 for doctor adbullah abdullah, and 11.6% for the third leading candidate. what we would like to do today, it is short and my pleasure to

introduce a very distinguished panel. what i would like to do is make a brief introductory remark about each of them. you all have their buyers. we don't have a lot of time. so i would encourage you to read or buy rows if you want more information about them. each speaker will speak for five minutes and then we'll open the floor for discussion. we have in addition to some of the cameras you see in the back of the newoom. adbullah abdullah also be recording this event so you can encourage your friends to download it on itunes university or watch it again if you missed some fantastic points. to offer speaker will been wollack who is the president of the national democratic institute. he and his institute have observed more than 200 elections, vast experience in this area. he will talk about the really extraordinary challenges of trng to organize elections in a very complex conflict environment that we have today in afghanian. he will be followed by doctor

christine fair who's a professor at georgetown. she was out as a long-term server working on the security -- she was doing a security analysis reelections and she will talk about e. she has to leave a little bit early, so if she is not upset or offended, if you see her slink off on the side. then we'll have peter manikas who is the region director for asia project at transactor to get into more than a degree in marketing houses about the election result and what may happen. he will be followed by, he is also going to compare with the 2042005 elections. and then kristin haffert runs the women's program at ndi and she was out for aut five weeks monitoring women's participation and the lead up to the election. she will talk about the role of women in the problems women had

in participating in the elections. and then finally, last but not least, ambassador karl inderfurth is going to - was one of the absorbers, part of the observing teen. you will provide someone else's from is perspective. so without furer ado, over to you, kevin. >> thank you very, very much, karin. karin has mentioned that ndi has observed from 200 elections around the world, and i have to say at the outset that this was by far the most challenging observation mission that we have ever carried out. and i think i can say o behalf of the other observer delegations that were there, it was perhaps the most challenging r them as well. d we should also not overlook the fact that there was a strong afghan domestic election observation dome by its acronym fefa, that trained and deployed

more than 7000 afghan observers that did an extraordinary job. and we are very proud to have supported fefa not only during this election but during its inception prior to the 2004 in 2005 elections. and we relied very much on the relationship that we have developed over the years with fefa. in addition to the people on this panel who were in the country, we also benefited immeasurably by a leadership group that included former senator gary hart, john manley, the former deputy prime minister, and foreign mister of canada who headed them in the commission. i was sponsored by the government of canada two years ago, or a year ago. that looked into canada's engagement in afghanistan. and also nora owen, the former justice minister of ireland. that leadership came also was

informed, as karin said, 27 long-term observers who were in afghanistan since july that were stationed in every region of the country. also, by individuals who are looking at functional areas. christine, who iexamining the afghan security forces. kristin haffert who is examing women's participation, an a third peon who is still in afghanistan now who was looking at the election administration and the mplaints process. tried to do witthe security issue in afghanistan was the most difficult challenge for our delegation, and the other observer groups that were there. we try to deal with this issue with some creativity. first, we tried to deploy in as many provinces as we could. we ended up being in 19 of the

34 provinces. which i think was more provinces than any of the other observer groups. we were able to do so because of a separate program ndi was encased in, that was training some 31000 candidate agent at polling sites in the months leading up to the election. that was a program that was supported by the undp. and trainers for the program were very talented group of afghans who have been with the institute for the past several years. i could go where internationals could not. they knew the eltion procedures and the laws better than anybody. and we benefited greatly from the report, which were among the best that were coming in from very difficult areas. we made a strategic decision at the outset not to send internationals into provincial reconstruction teams. others decided to do that.

we would rather benefit from afghan observers who were well trained and knowledgeable, because we feared that we would be fighting to get into the prt's, and then we would be fightingo try to geout of the prt's on election day and i think many of the other observers fnd out that once they were in the prt's on election day, they were either denied an opportunity to leave or they could only see polling site in the immediate vicinity of the prt. i think was a good decision. i think we were able to garner a lot of information on election day, but in the name of full discsure, i would have to admit thate, like the afghan voters, were hampered by the insecure envonment in a number of parts of the country. and we have to admit it. we have to deal with that issue that we could noto to certain provinces where wanted to go, and we could not go to certain places within certain provinces that we uld have wanted to go.

nevertheless, we received literally hundreds of reports, and some of those are reflected in the statement that you have that was released inabul and it will be part of a larger final report. i think our statement reflected a measured assessment, our preliminary state income of the election. we talked about some of the aspects of the election that were consistent with democratic principles, but at the same time we talked about serious flaws in the process. and needless to say, the insecure environment and a number of parts of theountry. as we look at this election now, and with all the problems that have emerged, some of which, some of them we witness to directly. there are two perhaps silver linings.

the first is a highly sophisticated software system that thendependent election commission possesses, and that software allows for certain votes coming from certain stations to be quarantined. if there seems to be anomalies or evidence of fraud. and from our observers who were watching the count now, it seems as tugh that software system is working. and there are a number of stations, results from stations that have been working. what happens to those votes, we do not know as of yet a second silver lining is that electoral complaints commission itself. from all the elections that we obsee around the world, this is a very unique institution. perhaps it reflects the weakness of the judicial system in afghanistan, but there are very few countries around the world that immedtely after the election that you have a body

that can investigate complaints quickly, can't adjudicate those complaints, and has the authority to an old result. and they can do all this before the final results are certified. a lot of responsibility falls on the ecc, but i can tell you in most countries the complaints go to the judiciary or to a special electoral tribunal. and sometimes it takes months if not years before complaints are resolved. in the case of nigeria, before the last elections, they were knowing result in elections when people have been succeeded in office for three years already. so this is a unique process, and i think it gives us some hope thathe problems at we have been reading aut and problems that we have observed will be dealt with. and we hope that's the case. finally, i think there is two things i want is a.

the first is that this was not simply a presidential election. this was 34 elections. won election to what the president, and 34 eltions that with provincial councils. and so we have to look at this election in a much more, in a much broader way. the proviial councilsn afghanistan is the only subnational entity that interfaces with citizens. and if the provincial council fails to perform its role, under very difficult and challengi conditions, that the afghan people to really could very well lose faith in the entire governing structure of their country. and yet, they face enormous challenges. on one hand, a highly centralized government that has been reluctant to devolve authority beyond the gernors. provincial reconstruction team's that are dispensing a good deal

of development funds. local warlords, and therefore because of these conditions, you have provincial councils that don't have budget authority. that begin to get marginalized because of all of these conditions. and i believe tt it behooves the international community, it is a lite self-serving, ndi hasn't worked with a 20 provincial councils, offices around the country, but it behooves the international community to spend more time building up the capacity of these councils so they can fulfill their responsibilities in the country. and finally let me make the point about the election. there are those before this election and those are those that now make the case that the best outcome in afghanistan is for a first round declaration of a victor. and that perhaps a power-sharing agreement that could avoid the

ethnic tensions that may emerge in the run up to a second round. i would argue, however, that the st important goal for both the afghan people and particularly those who courageously turned out at the p and decide the violence and the threat of violence, and for the international community, is first the integrity of the process, wherever that leads us. and secondly, to the issue of legitimacy of the government that emerges from this election, both at the nationa and the local level. and i doubt whether the afghan people would have gone into this election feeling that the best outcome would have been some behind the scenes deal between a handful of leaders to avoid a process that was to reflect the hopes and aspirations and the will of the people.

>> thank you very much, drinking. over to ynu, christine. >> so as you heard, my task was to go around and meet with several of the other long-term observer teams. i went to jalalabad. i met with our team in kunduz as well as iran and i spent time in cobble. to my task was to try to understand how didhe security environment shaky credibility, the multiple elections that ken discuss. an i think in many places, security was an over determining factor in the sense that it sort of sat there feeling as to how credible some of thoselections could be. prior to the election itself, the security environment shape the availability of updating the registration list. some folks were simply unable to update the registration list. and in some cases, folks were very able to register because you could actually buy the registration car in the open market. and you would have the peculiar

outcome of having enormous members of women regter. i'm nosure it is becausehe liberated ladies of oruzgan were out there claiming their franchise. so even going into the election, the security envionment shape, or put a limit, in termsf how credible that exercise would eventually be. the security arrangements that were in place, the actua security, the actual polling station itself, the first bird of security was the place. afterburner was the ana, and didn't actual extremist, isaf was supposed to be the provider of security. that were set up these things called opetional coordination centers, both at the regional level, the regional command, but also at the provincial level. we had a chance to go to one of those in konduz and to say that it was set up at the last minute i think would be flattering for the organition that was in

place. so the standing after the occ's were very uneven across the country. and some of them were literally constituted only theeek before the election. and get the occ's that were supposed to be gathering information throughout the province and try to come up with an appropriate security response buinterestingly enough, they were supposed to be in place a undp in like, a police training program. it was a train the trainer prram. and three, the police were trained in this sort of cascading fashion, but the reality was that under the best assumption that plays that we used on election day maybe got three hours or so of election training. and certainly one has to wonder what the outcomes were of that trning, given that the police capacity is really leave somethingo be desired. that i think the larger concern about the afghan elections is that police are so important. yet police have really flagged

behind the training of the afghan national army which i ink everyone would agree is a success. i think most people take the afghan national police training has not been a ccess. so you would have areas in kunduz river district you had 50 police officers. so it's not a surprise in those districts you had taliban running roughshod, which seriously restricted the ability of people to actually turn out on election day. another interesting thing that we stumbled across was the offense had really delad recruiting female security agencyr two, the women that will pat you down before you go down to vote. and they should have be anticipated to be a problem because outside of the capital, it's difficult to recruit within three for security jobs. even more so once you leave the capital. and in some cases this task was left to about two weeks before election day. so that seem to then a fairly large but ultimately preventable oversight. another interesting thing that we heard a lot about before the election, but it was definitely the dog that didn't bark. and that was what could be a

humorously called the norbert hi. some of you know about the so-called militias called archetype. presidenpresident karzai's brother by actually put together a circuit some time in june or july somewhat national militia plan that aim to deploy between 10 and 13000 militias conveniently they were largely planned to be deployed mostly in the south pickett was never clear what these guys were supposed to do, what did he harm, would they bring their own god, how did the uniform, how would the police know that they are legitimate militias and not a legitimate militias. no onehat we have spoken to or that i have spoken to on election day so i have a present of these militias. reason for this have ranged from a fellow colleague of mine down and boger, he said i tnk the governor ran off with him and. so who knows why we didn't see those militias but there was a lot of apprehension about them before election day. now about an election, about violence in self. before the election, we all know, there was considerable

violence targeting candidates, party workers, campaign managers. and while we don't have the complete universe of victims of violence or threats of violence, it does look as if women were more vulnerable candidates routinely complain that they had inadequate security, the ministry of interior told them they could glutted haida on folks but they said they would pay to. it wasn't clear how they would get paid, how they would be armed. so there was a fairly consistent concert among candidates. they were not getting the security that they needed. and obviously, leading into the election, voters themselves were intimidated. in taliban controlled areas and were reports that the talents were taking advantage of the mosque to issue sermons, making it clear that privately vote. we all heard about at your finger has the ink we will cut your thing off. and then it went up to your head if you voted. but again, there were shory afterwards reports of this, but the taliban really did not, they did not honor their pledge to

violence in the fourth. another thing that came up quite often was that afghans themselves were uncertain about the security arrangements the government put into place. their assessment was well, it behooves the incumbent to be sickly have an environment of insecurity to discourage them voter turnout, the logic being less voter turnout, less fraught. whether or not that is true that is how it was interpreted by going forward, the government might want to invest some effort trying to explain to the citizenry that this is the preparations. so therefore you should ge secure in casting your vote. there were a number of really interesting reports, and we actually saw someone is in the press yesterday, right, with "the new york times." therere all sorts of stories that karzai had actually cut deals with taliban commanders. by which no one would cut out to

cast a vote. but the taliban but also not stop ballot boxes in return for votes. i think some of yoe saw in the press report yesterday that in kandahar there was what, 23947 votes returned for karzai when in fact, no one had the opportunity to cast a vote. so i think perhaps another area that might merit thinking about is we thought about security in shaping the electoral exercise, but many people actually said security was actually used as an excuse to disenfranchise some voters. we heard quite a number of concerns that areas were deemed to be insecure because they were not areas that were to support the encountered there were coiderable disagreements between e iec and the security forces about which polling centers could be open, and in kunduz it wasn't clear what polling centers would be opened until the last minute. a problem with that is that in

some cases they decided to collocate polling centers. so if you actually look at a polling centers that were open, he would have polling centers moved up on the outside of the district into the districts in a. so you could say yes we have going centers open in addition. the problem is afghanistan is ve poor logistics, the roads are really, you know, not practible. and so women in particular if they had to move large distances to polling centers, it would be tantamount to being disenfranchise. it looks as colloting centers for security reasons might have some advantages. it did have the affect of making it impossible for many people to actually cast theirote. so moving forward, especially if there is ivanov, i think there is a number of things that really need to be thought out today, and not at the day before the runoff. inserted if there is not a runoff, thinking about the next set of elections. mainly, the parliamentary elections. police training has to remain a focus that the intertional

community is much in the afghan government is culpable for the lack of police on election day. we have known about these elections for some time, get the police training still remain understaffed at 30%. to go to u.s. government official last summer, that's great and let you actually want to win. so it's incompressible why police training has remained a low priority amost the international community. and in the american sharp pain to go, we're largely doinghe trinket he would be great if some of o nato isaf partners would set a. that has to be a priority. and similarly, greater effort needs to be ne to get search agents. whatever the security arrangements are in place, the government really needs to committee that. because a make no difference whether they have the best security arrangement in place and afghans don't actually believe that they're going to be secure in casting their vote. and finally, we really do need some accountability about what these militias were doing, if anything. we've had a lot of difficulty trabking down with the militias were actually up to. but i think the very fact that

karzai's brother-in-law put this plan into place, in the wake in which they were deployed with dubious. there needs to be an accountin of what those guys were up to. and going forward, women look at the noorzai plan, the internional community kind of sign off on. the logic went like this in the south, and people could get out to vote, then the credibility would be in peril. i think the message needs to be from the international community that militias are actually no different than place. if you're going to bodyweight to have a reasonably confident mitia force you are probably better served taking those efforts and try to get them into actual police training. thank you. >> thank you to muc krist. overwo, peter, for some trends and comrisons. >> thank you very much, traneighty. the news report i thi that we are receiving every day now present an unrelenting negative picture of what was going on in afghanistan.

in fact, i think it is reflected on our statement that our delegation found that the eltion was real difficult to characterize in a single phrase. violence was marred the electoral process. and now threatens the legitimacy of any new government. but unfortunately, those reports ovshadow some aspects of the election period, i think, that were pretty positive and an imovement over the elections in 2004 and 2005. unlike the election campaigns of the past, these elections in fact involve iues. the candidates campaigned throughout the country. abdul was able to go to remote districts in the pashtun south. another had a van traveling throughout the country, communicating s populist message. and president karzai of course

could travel almost everywhere try to make a deal. as did abdullah, fact. was well covered by the news media. our long-term observers were reporting that throughout the country's small groups of people were talkinggetting together and talking about the campaign, discussing the issues. abdullah was communicating the message of more decentralization and the parliamentary as opposed to a presidential system. and they were talking about karzai's record. in his approach to governance and. political parties played a role in this campaign that they had not played in the past. there are about 10 or so parties that were able to field candidates in between five and 10 provinces for the provincial council races. for the first time, parties appeared on the party names appeared on the ballot that had never been the case in the past.

promises to help establish an effctive party system that's been so far totally absent. there were more women participating in this campaign. there were more women candidates for provincial councils in there have ever been in the past. and millions of afgns voted, despite the threat of violence. all of those i think were important things that in discussing the election we don't wa to entirely overlook. unfortunately, there was really little that was done over the past five years to st of improve the process and address a lot of the defects of the system that we very apparent back in 2004 and5. perhaps foremost among them is of the millions of duplicate and counterfeit registratn cards that just one of the country. month before the election you could buy such a car for about $10. as the election approached the

price inflated quite considerably. what people were doing with her cards, of course, was not entirely a mistry. they were being sold to people that want to commit some sort of electoral fraud. they are used in schemes both for ballot stuffing and fo proxy voting. and they really threatened to delegitimize the entire process if something is not done about it. local election officials have not been well trained. they are quite well trained at the natiol level for the most part. the local level we saw in 2004 4 and 2005, they we not capable of fully sort of understanding th process. they implemented the inking poorly ack in, and we saw the same problems emerge at the local level now he and in addition to that, they are recruited locally so they are subject to political pressures at the villageevel, which of

courseeads into the proxy voting and ballot stuffing. the absence of a functioning judicial system really involve -- result in widespread immunity for anybody who engages in electoral misconduct. you know, all of these things that have been out there, everybody knew about them, very little was done. i think about five or six months before the election there was kind of a renewed effort to pour resources into the system and fill all the observable gaps that people saw in the electoral adnistration. but it was too lat you know, you can deal with problems of millions of ter registration cards in the system just a few months out. we have another election coming up and about, what, in october i guess. if these problems aren't addressed now they were will

threaten the entire legitimacy of the process. then there's not much time. what has to be done immediately is reconstitute the electoral complaints commission. it expires to automatically in about 30 days or so after the certification the results. and it has to be reestablished. they should do so in ely, because the ecc didn't have time to prepare for this current election. ere is a lot of other things. planning for the security, something that really requires several months. and that was done very late in this process as well. as ken mentioned, the results are still coming in. this process is not over. we are wating it play out day by day. 60% of the votes have been counted, and as karin says, a lot of the votes that haven't been counted are in the pashtun south.

those are presumably karzai votes, but there are also fewer votes down to. so how that plays out in the end is kind ofnybody'suess at the question of course is if 51% for mr. karzai, is that going to be widely accepted in the afghan population? or is it going to be sufficient, sort of a legitimate result. a lot of talk about a deal, you know, when we were the were talking to both afghans and people in the international community oubrokering some rt of arrangement. all that's going to be playing out over the next several weeks. so that's where we are. the complaintrocess continues. as i've mentioned there were 2000 complaints have been filed. 500 are considered serious. by serious, i mean can affect the outcome of the election.

so we wait as you do for the final tallies. >> thank you very much, and ow would you. >> thanks, karin. as karin mentioned earlier i was in afghanistan for five weeks monitoring women's participation and lead up to the elections. and i had a very unique experience and i was able to spend quite a bit of time speaking with many of the female provincial candidates. during that time. and so i thought i would do today, some of the challenges that women had any election have been mentioned already, security, proxy voting. but what i thought woulde interesting is if i sort of gave you a glimpse of what i heard from these candidates and give you a little bit more of a sense of what we heard on the ground from their perspective. prior to the elections ndi during 226 of the 3 women who ran for provincial council. and for most of these women come it was the only thing he had

ever had in their lives, and this is particularly important because for 122 of them they will automatically get seats on the provincial council due to 25% quota. of these 200 women, ndi selected 18 women from nine of the province's. and we interviewed those candidate three times. two times prior to election and once after. and these interview we were really able to sort of glean information that we weren't able to get even for our short-tm observers inur long-term observers, partly because some of themere in provinces where we did n have a presence to security concerns. and so we were able to sort of track their expenses as candidates throughout the election, but also hear from them what they saw in female polling stations. on election day. so unsurprisingly, university kerry was really the number one concern that all of them expressed. and christine mentioned the co-

location of polling sites which really prevented many women from traveling to be able to vote and while this was definitely true in the south and in the southeast, this is actually true what you really got out and many otr provinces out of the urban areas, just out the city. one woman said to us and got in, i rented a car with my personal money to take someone to the polling station, but they refused writing in my vehicle and told me that they are not permitted by theamilies to get in those cars. and basil we really heard. although the 18 women that we interviewed all went out and cast their votes for theelves they kw from frids and families that the male members of the family were not permitting women t go out and vote. it was interesting because we saw on election day that women actually came out later in the day. men were out, the lines were longer earlier. and then it looks like women sort of slowed in the afternoon which may have actually been a result of the security concerns. women also told us that, as

christine mentioned, the challenge of recruiting female staff was very hh. and they saw women who were unprepared. it was sort of unexpected were some women who are prepared and really following everything to a tee, and other women who are uneducated, unprepared. and these candidates that we spoke with him had a conrn that that would sort of create a virus or fraud. one of the challenges, of course ws security and recruiting female staff, both to check ids and as security guards, but also the lack of literacy. especially in the rural areas was another major challenge that women cited to being able to recruit staff. as far as the voter id goes, we heard from many women that women and rgers would go to vote and actually work to affect their faces were not checked against their pictures on their voter cards. and the photos on the voter cards were optional so in many cases where tre weren't photos, women still were not

asked to forget the name of their father. they were just allowed to vote without any sort of screening and we also heard a great deal from the women candidates that we spoke with about proxy voting, and we heard more about young females voting than we did actually mal members of families going. we heard both, but we heard quite a number of instances where women, young women and burgers under the age of 18 went in and voted and they had voter registration cards are there actually permitted to vote. so that speaks to really the flaws an in the registration process to onwoman said i was formed by my brother that he had observed some cases a proxy voting. in any specific case a man want to vote on behalf of his wife and daughters reasoning that they were not allowed to get out of the house on election day. he was further argued this was his right to vote instead of his female amily members. women also requested that the fingers not be inked. and actually their request were

granted for fear of retribution from the taliban. just on the issue of female candidate in particular. we heard a number of instances really throughout the country, including in kabul that won being warned of a landmine on the way to aampaign event, night letters, anonymous phone calls. in fact, one woman gave us the num@er of the man in pakistan who called and threatened her in case we want to follow up with him. but also, you know, a lot of these things took place in kabul to you can't imagine sort of the extent to which some of these threats took place in the south and southeast where tre were gunfight in front of some peanut candidates house but we had one woman in kandahar who said she left her province, wt to live with relatives and had been there in three weeks in the lead after the election to copy for not allowing her to campaign because of major threats that she had him in sort of coming around her house.

th armed men coming around her house. i was struck by really how brave these women were. and after being in 50 countries, i actually think these are some of the bravest women that i have ever met in my life. also just briefly on the candidates, because women had limited access to public space, as they do in daily life in afghanistan, you really saw women campaigning endorse. they talked about how desperate they actually lit up when they talked about going door-to-door. they were pleased with the receptivity they had. when they went into friend homes and families homes, but the interesting thing was there often really campaigning to women. it sounded like these gatherings were very much gatherings of women. and then you had women to a large degree disenfranchised. so i think it was interesting that aspect that they were campaigning just to women, in large rt. there were exceptions to somof the incumbents.

they had access to large gatherings, but in large part we heard from the women that really, from the time they get exceptions from the family to run, which is an absole critical, they are really reliant on men for every aspect of the campaign. most of them really talk about how they got permission from elders and tribal leaders and religious leaders to run. and then, you know, and very lucky cases, those men were able to, you know, provide opportunities for them to speak in mosques. but really you thought it was the elders and lders who opened the door and asked people to open the door for women to g into people's homes, to campaign. so i was done in a real private way. across the world you hear this, but in particular in afghanistan, the fundraising and ability to have any sort of small money to campaign was really a challenge and you saw women's posters, but a lot of times they were black and white instead of colored

ones. and women felt like they weren't able to compete on the same level as men because they were able to have this sort of visibility. and there was a resource women's resource center and they allow them to come in about 1000 posters for free other campaign posters. and you saw that 36 women came from various provinces, traveled to kabul, just to print 1000 posters. to hang up in their districts. just finally, we will have the conclusions and recommendations in our final report, but i think as you have already heard, many of the challenges that women face really could have been addressed with more preparation, particularly the staffing and the polling station and security guards which was a rushed effort at the very last minute to try to prepare for. we already included in our statement a recommendation for increased civic outreach to

women and men on the issue of women's dissipation and the importance of everyone voting and the privacy, the importance of the privacy of the vote. and finally, the ability to verify female voters without any sort of way of identifyi women, with a photo or whatever the case may be. if it is eye scan or something more sophisticed, you really have no way of verifying that a woman is who she says she is. so without i will stop there. >> thank you, kristin. >> thank you, karin. i am delighted to have a chance to be the final speaker so i can build on the points already made by my colleagues. my cobble colleagues i shou add. we had a great experience observing this election. i would like to step back and call attention to some larger point here.

and use that as our concluding comment before we go to questions and answers. i would like to start with what krtin had to say. now, i am looking at our report we did. i trust you have seen it. particularly the overview of the recommendations. i want to start what she left off. we say in the reporthat the ghts of women in the electoral process requires special attention. i just want to underscore that. we had an opportunity to meet with three male and three female candidates for the provincial council in kabul. we had a good discussion with them. the women that were there were extraordinary. they were the most animated and motited and articulate. they clearly see the stakes in this election for them and what is important here. christon said when we were in kabul that these were the bravest women that she has seen and coveri many elections, and

sang the role of women. i would have to underscor that. the women they'r also known that if the darkness descends again on afghanistan, they will pay the greatest price. so while we are looking at large issues of al qaeda and all of the security issues, we cannot forget fundamental pnciples and values at stake, what goes on there. secondly i do want to call attention to the reference in the report to the security situation. obviously violce and the threat of violence shape this election. and we say in the report that it is critical for the growth and survival of the nations democratic process that the insuency is brought to an in. obvious points, but it needs to be restated here and we have all seen that general mcchrysl has now ported his recommendations. this is a big issue. but we can't get afghanistan right and let's forget the

security part of his right. so we want, i wanted to call attention to the. we have already heard from peter and others about what the international community fell down in the run up to this election. we heard from grant kippen, who is president of the ecc, saying that the international community took its eye off the ball after the 2005 election for the next several years. a undp official called the years of 26 through 2008 a funding graveyard in terms of the ss and that we providing there. it did obvious a pickup in the lastear. we have a recommendation here about the international community in partnership with the afghan government, should he be the begetter prayed for the next election cycle and not allow that funding graveyard to continue. the elections in 2004 parliameary elections, and

that obviously the next round of the presidential elections five years later. this is all hopeful. we have to get through this current eltion before we can go onto the nt next, obviously. but we do need to not step away from the plate again in termof funding. now a broader issue i would like to just mention this, we saw in the washington post today the editorial setback in afghanistan. i don't think any of us cannot say that this was a setback. of course it was a setback. the security threats, the allegations of fraud, misconduct and the rest. t i do think that we need to also step back for a moment and place this election a broader context. if you look at where afghanistan has been and where it is today and we hope it goes, it's important. afghanistan's road to self-government, if you will, it was 2001 when we started the

u.s. bombing campaign in afghanistannd routed the taliban. we had the bomb process in november 2001, bringing together all of these groups there. an interim authority was established in december 2001. in 2002, the emergency loya jirga was convened to agree on a transitional authority. in 2003, the constitutional loya jirga took place. 2004, a constitution was adopted. also in 2004, presidentarzai won the presidential election. in 2005, elections for the parliament. and simmer 2000 by the convening of the national is in the. now we have this election. nobody is going to suggest that it was a major step forward in this democrac process, but it is a step. and we do need to place this in context. democracy, self-governance is not going to come overnight to afghanistan. there will be setbacks along the way. and what we need to do in terms

of the international community is to work with the afghans to see they make it through this difficult time. i want to call attention to one final part o our report. t@e last paragraph in our overview section i would just like to read this to you as a concluding comment before we go to the discussion. it reads, this election has demonstrated that millions of afghans want to participate directly in the country's evolving democratic political system. the august 2009 elections were the latest step in afghanistan's long road toward constructing a democratic political system. this delegation strongly believes that the international community must continue to assist them in this journey. a democratic and peaceful afghanistan is in the intert of the afghan people, and the international community. so wih that, concluding comment, tranny. >> big events. i think etelyn can see this was an extraordinary --

extraordinarily complex challenge. the observant as was the participation that ndi and other groups did along with their afghan countparts. i am noticing a lot of serious expertise in this room, and i'm sure we'll have a lot of questions. what i would like to do is take about three or four questions at a time and then go back to the panel. so if eryone here wille good notes. and please iroduce yourself. please try to keep your questions short so that we have time for me. i have alex, frederick, and hardens. alex, over there. >> and is thisn? >> no, back thanks, guys. fantastic panel and insights. two quick questions. i am alex from the u.s. institute of peace. one technical question in a broader question. one of thing in this election was about the ballots were to be

counted at the polling station. as opposed to having it aggregated a i connected and accepted invitations or bad invocations. one of the disappointing things i think the results that come in so far, together with the work that ndi and others did to train and employ candite agents and other monitors is that one of the things that we hope for is that there would be cnted that would be observed at the polling station in those figures would then be posted at the polling station which would allow for some kind of parallel check on the process of counting that the iec within. that seems to have iled completely as far as i can tell in the sense that from what i have heard from all accounts, the results haven't been reported. before often not allowed to view the counts. and so i'm wondering if you could explain why that hasn't succeeded or if we're not hearing about why that hasn't been tied up, that the information hasn't come out. and the broader thing that i

think ken said but i'm not sure that it relates to all of you. i think that the only way out of this election is a roff. i think the legitimacy is so tainted that any number that karzai gets, 51, 52, 53% isn't that going to be tolerated by the opposition or by the afghan people. when you look on youtube and see the fantastic views of guys with their ballot books chking vote after vote after vote. the level of evidence of fraud, to my mind, suggests the only thing you can get out of this is our run a. so if i'm rht or if that is what happens, what can we do in the next six weeks to do with some other problems? can we actually do a better job ofetecting the fraud or threatening to detect fraud in advance so that it will be a fair election or something on security that could have been better. what can we do to avoid having a runoff in jeske to the same place we are right now?

>> rick? >> thank you. rick barn from csis. it seemed as if the only institution solution is that the complaints commission really works well. so would like to hear your thoughts on how it's working. do they have the capacity to educate 500 series complaints? have the most viable complaints come from the campaigns as opposed to independent sources? e the members of the commission safe, or do they have offshore homes already? i mean, there's just a whole series of -- how were they selected? there is an awful lotf weight falling upon a handful of individuals who hate never probably had this kind of responsibility before in their lives, inside of a system that isn't going to guarantee them their safety. of insight into th commission would really be helpful. thanks.

>> just a comment about heartbreak and was in on par with democracy international. spirit my name is hard like a guy in here and international studies. and ken you made an excellent point about a number of delegations deployed in and ended up being sortf captured by the prt's as we attempted to carry out long-term observation. in kandahar, my particular delegations managed to set up operations outside the wire. which allowed us to move around on polling day. and at least observe inside of the city lits a bit of what was going on. antony, the biggest concern, the point of the greatest concern in my mind at ts point, we made our way to about maybe one third of the polling centers in kandahar city where we saw turnout rates pretty, rather low compared to 2004. in fact, your average for your

polling station was about 51 to 52 and the icr no releasing salt in kandahar that show results of 200, and then today there were some up to 400 per polling station in kandahar. . . kandahar. i'm wondering how this information gets filtered up and at what point the credibility becomes very difficult to sort of adjudicate and what mechanisms are i place to deal with that. and the second point to christine, just sort of a play off of the point you made about the preparations for security. we spoke t a number of -- one, a presidential candidate and then a couple of candidates for provincial council in kandahar who said frankly they were waiting to speak to their voters and supporters about turning out, not s much based on where the afghan national police were that day but based on the disposition oforces of the taliban the day before and what

they had picked up. so that's what they were really concerned about. and that's what they cled in to us to tell whether it was safe or not to go out that day based on where the taliban were. thanks. >> thank you very much. jeff from penn state university and the carnegie council. again, terrific pal. very short, very blunt question. i realize that >> the blunt question i was is there was a systemic attempt by president karzai to rig the election. that seems to be what i'm getting for all of your comments and precluding for the women voting, et cetera, et cetera. but is that really at this state the conclusion? there was a systemic attempt to rig the elections by the ruling party. and just one more in this und. over there. thank you.

>> general and consultant. this is sort of in addition to alex's question. i think the only other solution is some kind of a negotiated deal between karzai and abdallah. do you think the people of afghanistan would accept that and what kind of format would that take? >> okay. great. thank you very much. let's start, ich, do you want to make a few comments and we can just come down. >> first of all, this panel has not reach the conclusion that there was a systemic attempt. i never said tt. i dn't hear anyone say that. that was not our conclusion at all. you'll need, -- it's a much more nuanced look at this election than from what we've saw and we've been following since then. that was not our conclusion.

i'd like trespond to the question of ruling coalition of the president karza and abdallahbdallah. however this ends up at the end of the day, i think that the most important thing is for the afghan's themselves to full together. that means a lot of people being able to work with their opponents. we all here that the cck is ticking on terms of u.s. international 12 months and 18 months. we see the poles and statements. for this to work it is going to require the afghan's themselves if you will reboot. they need themselves, how do you do what we can do and only we can do what is governance and tackling the internal problems.

the international community can't do that. whether it be the bridging of abdallah and karzai, they need to pull together. because if they are divided, if there is weeks of leadership, if there's a deviciveness, we can't do this. however they work it out, i hope they do as soon as this election period is resolved. >> this is two points. first in regard to where the bells were being pounded. obviously, that was a huge controversy. after the last election the candidate objected. i think in retrospec the polls probably should have been coujted at presidential level.

at the polls station level, of the observers that are there and the pitical party agent have to sign off on the final tally of what is then supposed to be posted. if in fact on review on the iec or ecc finds thathe party agents haven't sigd off on the tally tt's being reported, they can trigger additional scruny and presumably t folks would be quarantined. inegards to the ecc, i asked grant kippen that question. he said he had been provided a personal security detail as were the other international -- there were five members of three of whom were internal and two were afghan. the international were

opponented by the secretary general and special representative of the security general. the other two are afghans. one comes from the human rights, one by the afghan supreme court. the afghan members weren't provided any security for some reason. he was quite concerned about it. he tught there was a real security threat. the ecc has a stuff of 200 people. they got theirunding quite late for the process. when i alived a couple of weeks beforehe election. they were still doing their last training for the prudential staff. you see he was very critical of the funding agencies nard to the movement of money to support the ecc process. nevertheless, i think that they're doing the job. they face an enormous challenge. they have 2,0 complaints.

i think they have already kin of thrown out about 1,000 of them. they still 500 that they consider to be very serious. whether they can process those by september 17th when the elecon is supposed to be certified remained toe seen. they are working very hard and doing what they can. >> yeah, i would just sa one thing to add to that. grant kippensed to be the director in afghanistan for a number of years. so he knows the environment. he's deeply committed to this process. and i think that they take a position i thi it's not electoral law that the iec is unable to certify the elections until the ecc completes its work. and i think that he raised the possibility granted yesterday in their press conference tha may not complete their work by september 17th. i think ty are driven by the process, not driven by dates.

and i think that is reassuring. there are a lot of i think safeguards in the software and iec is not known. they want to keep some of those safeguards secret. there could be some people that could figure out ways to hack the sysm. also there are provisions within the ecc to carry on their work. they have investigators that they are sending out. it's not just them sitting in a room looking at issues. they are actually sending people out to certain places. with regard to this notion of a deal, you know, this is, we saw the issues in kenya, we saw these issues that have been raised in zimbabw where in the end the notion of a power sharing agreement was the last

best hope to avoid blood shed. i think it is way t early to talk about those issues now. i think that the afghan people went to the polls wanting a process that was going to reflt their well will. if you look at every poll that was conducted in the country, that was not an artificial process. that was a process that presented the hopes and aspirations. if people now talk about this in some type of power sharing agreement as a substute to a legitimate election process, i think that the repercussions both short term but long term i think would be quite damaging. i think first we have to deal with the issue of integrity of the election process. and that's where much falls on the shoulder of iec and ecc.

and again i will say this is not only the issue of president but still the issue of 34 prudential councils around the country. those are the -- this is not a spectatorship at that level. and these are individuals and institutions that the afghans will have to interact with both in the course of the next four or fe years. on the kandahar that's harden raised, i don't know what the iec has warranteed, i don't know what the ecc is looking at. i know they sent a tm down to investigate in particular reports have been coming out of kandahar about problems. so these conceivably the numbers that were same thing could change. dependenting on what the iec does and what the ecc does.

i think there are going to be a number of places where we're going to see some numbers and then the question and then the responsibility falls of these two. alex raised of issue of parallel vote and i think lots of people would have wanted to see a system where fefa, the domestic monitoring system could have carried out nationwide. i think it would have been extremely difficult under the circumstances. now unlike the international observs fefa said they were in all 34 providences. but they were hampered by the security situation as well. when we trained the candidate agents, we insists on two things:when the first was that they literate, and the second is they should have already been accredited by the electoral commission to be candite agents. and what this did was the

candidates to register their agents before the training began. and so what we tried to do was help create a critical map of party agents. but i think it would have been very, very difficult for party agents to be in all of the places because of thatecurity challenge. and i imagine it still would have been difficult for any organization to develop wide enough sample. and a statistically random significant sample to develop the parallel tabulation. i think it's unfortunate and i think that in future elections that that will be a component. and now that the votes are being counted a the polling site level, there ishe possibility of doing some verification that will be seen as being an actual,

you know, an accurate reflection of what happened in the voting. >> i want to add an point to complete their work in time. if there is a runoff, it has to happen before winter. there are more donke and rules transporting ballots than vehicles. so they really have a lot of pressure to finish this early on. chris, it you want to have? >> just two points. i want to make the point about it's not so important where the police but rather wherehe taliban are. there's two sides of the same coin, the taliban are where there are no security forces. at the end of the day, we've known it was coming around for a while. i think the police challenges are inexcusable. you don't have to have 100

talibs, you just need one guy stands outside a polling center. he doesn't even have to have arms. even knows what he is doing. this should have been a priority. by the way, army don't win insurgencies, police do. there are multiple reasons why the oversight of the police is egregious. i'm not an election person by profession. i look at internalecurity issues. one of my biggest conrned about a karzai victory from a runoff is it comes bk to the issue of governance and incredible. and when we think about t runoff may be expensive and taxilly very difficult to do, it may be violent. but t long-term consequences of not having a runoff and esident which is seen to be credible will have much more

signicant long-term consequences in terms of trying deal with the insurgency. this came out in some of the comments. this is not just about security, this is about governance. if we don't have in there a president that's seen as creditable, being able to resolve this in any fashion being it the taliban, be it tray to provide government services, this is really difficult if you don't have a guy that seems to be legitimate. >> okay. let's do second round. thanks, chris. see you later. you also, okay. >> thank you, karin. let me first congratulate you for the great work out there al on training polling agent and the domestic monitoring. that's quite to be commended. if i could take another runout alex's question about a

potential secd round. i think your views are the views of your team. but the narrative is not nuance. the narrative is something like a sham. i understand there was positive things about the campaigning and discussion of issues and so forth. but the question of it goes to some issues which is inescapable about the legitimacy and afghan's themselveses whether this is legitimate or not. and alex asked a very important question. can anything be done in the limited time that would be there until the second round to make sure if there is a second round that it is better and more legitimate in the eyes of the afghan than the first round? i think that's important some people think the answer is no. and they think the taliban will get anher shot and you'll end with the same mess.

so it's quite a dilemma. the important question is very proofly in terms of the context, there is also a larger context not mentioned here. and that is that afghan's neighbor iran also had elections this summer that are auite disputed. so the notion of legitimacy has a larger context. theq simply say, well it was a stab. you can't expect too much. does that consider what we might be able to say about the challenges raised about the anian election? thank you very much. >> perfect. >> ed, let me just, i don't think it's our place to say that there should be a second round before the iec and ecc completes it's work. that would be ratr premature. ere is no doubt however when we looks politically that should there be a second round the

problems that existed in the firs round would take on less significance. and you will have people that will look at it a say despite all of these flaws and all of problems the system woks in that sense that there is another shot at this. politically, i think, even the notion of perception issue, no doubt look at our own electionere when elections are very, very close and you have a winner and tre has been significant irregularities. they take on added significance in those types of close elections. and so a second round allows those issues to be addressed. in terms of what happened in a second round, let me just say, somessues are out of everybody's hands. the question is what the taliban is going t do in certain areas. but i think in terms of what is does and what the afghan

police and military do, i think there could be beefed-up security. perhaps to eand areas that are less secure. i think there's going to have to be a concerted effort to be a greater presence to expand the areas of security. and so that is one thing that can be done. the other issue in terms of irregularities and misconduct, fraud, those are issues of political will. and those are the issues that the cdidates themselves are going to have to impose on their supporter around the country. and what pressure coulde brought to bear t ensure that there is th@t political will is a short period of time. and the question is as that falls on the leadership of these movements. to beble to propose some discipline to ensure that some of the more e egregious problems

are not repeated. >> okay. over here please. can you use the microphone? yup. i'm not sure i'm going to be able to get everybo. >> thank you. i'm from the atlantic council. i have two related question. one i about the relationship between the levels of violence in the providences proceeding the elections. that's an excellent wall "wall street journal" map. are you going to be able to analyze and help us understand what that effect hadn voting in those providences? and the relat question is in kandahar, there was less violence. what did you hear if anything

about the role in all of this? s there some kind of a secret deal made with mr. karzai that may have account for this? or was this something that was unexpected? >> great. can i take the gentleman in the back? thank you. yes, sir? >> thank you. can we unpack this notion of the international community and get to the question as to how the u.n. performed in supporting these elections? i think it's helpful to kind of break down the notion of international community support. >> thanks. i'd like to thank the distinguished panel for excellent insight. my name is steve gail. i'm on the house submmittee on

the foreign and international security. i guess iave two questions that span a number of issues. but one is you've talked about the short comings in the plying -- and a number of issues. my two questions are this, with all of these short comings, who do you see as the real winner in this election process in terms of institutions? and secondedly, whadoes it say about engagements in the last five years. and i would guess about $37 billion that has been spent. what does this say about the actual process in terms of supporting elections and -- i'll just leave it at that. thks. >> thank you. i have two quick questions.

first of all, in an election competition, there were excellence at all that are hand picked. what's the observation about that? second is about the media. there were some gentlemans who were investigating corruption, how did that play into the ection? >> are there any other positively or negatively from the role they have played and any contributions that stood out in a special way from your observation? >> i want to you start. so you can tackle it. >> tackle in terms of the iec our statement rers to the

independence and perceived lack of independence of the iec. there was no doubt that the -- there were some controversial statements made by the iec early on. there were also decisions that were made by the iec that demonstrated independence from the government. however, we said in the statement that if an organization is going to be call itself iependent and be seen as independent there has to be a structure that ensures that. so we recommended that they go back to the trueing boards and provide some czechs -- checks on the legislation. president parr xi has not signed the legislation. we recommended for future election that there will be a different system for choosing and confirming members of the election commission. i think in terms of

organizations and groups that performed well, i don't think i'm in a position and frankly to begin -- we had enough of a challenge looking at this election process to spend time sort of analyzing and grading international actors and what they did and what they didn't do i think would be very difficult. i think everyone, as peter said, were performs until 11th hour. and i think that was very difficult. and i was just going to say aid however seems to have a more sustained presence during that period between 2005 and 2009. and i should add that usa id had supposed this mission. a lot of other groups quote unquote funding graveyard had a different time ramping up in the 11th hour. i think that's a lesson that is to be learned from all of this.

in terms of the media i think from the observation and all of the studying that were done that the private media was relatively fair balanced in t process. but there was no doubt that the media commission issued report after report highlightinghe bias in state-run media. and it was unfortunate, and we talked about this in our statement that actions were not taken by the iec to impose sanctions on the media. to enforce the state-run media to provide by the conduct, that was passed by the iec and ecc which should have been done and should be done in the future. in terms of the violence. we are going to be doing some mapping for our final report and look at areas of violence. but there is also a element in

this too that effected the campaign. peter is right, the campaign surpsed lots of people. beuse it focused o issue 10 million people watched the debate. candidates crossed ethnic lines. there was very ltle interethnic violence that took place. the presintial candidates were able to operate even again the silver lining in the story that appeared in the post yesterday that you had in a phtun area, dr abdlah working out a deal with a pashtun tribe for its support. so you did have this notion of what appeared to be people willing to cross ethnic lines to vote in this election. and, but there was alsthe threat of violence and not only the violence that had an impact. in kunduz providence, radio

stations were begging candidates and women candidates to appear on radio. and yet they wouldn' appear on radio. so the campaign in those areas where there was the greatest threat of violence, during the campaign period people could rather campaign in thei homes ad not in a very virginia way. and so a lot of the media and visible campaigning just didn't take place. yet, there was very active campaign that was taking place in fact homes. and i think those were some of the main things. >> i want to mention one positive thing that i thought undp was play a gender unit roll. that was set up ry late due to aarious of constraints.

icis also played a role in helping the staff with iec. but there was no one women succumbed by undc. there was actually looking at a potential runoff, we may not be able to adequately address many of the challenges that women face, but i do see this gender unit as an opportunity going forward to focus. they did play a role in making sure it was gender desegregated. and we're definitely a voice and i think we'll be a stronger voice doing forward. >> just one additional piece of information about fred's question about undp and the united nations. do keep in mind that this election was afghan run. it was their decision. they wanted to move to have

responsibility for the election. after 2004, 2005 when the u.n. was the primary agent, not only did they want to have responsibility for the electoral process, but they also in terms of the security provided, they continually talked about the three rings of security on election day. first the afghan police, then the army within and isef would be there in needed. in terms of the road to the self-government, this plays into that. however, there was a graveyard which we heard from the u.n. officials that took place in 2005, 2006, 2007, and voter registration process. 2009 i think a quarter of a million dollars undp had. they set aside i think we heard about 20 million for the runoff or set aside some of that funding if needed for a run off.

but clearly more will be needed. antereal -- and the real issue here is the sustainability of the electoral process. they cannot pay for these things. they do not have the funding or the budget to do that. in terms of the international commitme we do need a get a fast start on what occurred next after the period is resolve hopefully successfully and legitimately and credibly. but we do need to be looking at electoral mechanisms as well as the sustainability of funding for these down the road. >> one concluding comment. i think what we've seen over the past five or six years is a -- the international community having very low expectations about what could be accomplished in afghan. and perhaps much lower than the

afghans themselves. when we would ask people, why didn't you prepare better for the '09 elections, we were told by some donors that we weren't even sure the elections would really take place. this isn't what could have put money into a process tha they thought would not even occur. although i don't think the afghans had any doubt that the elections would take place. but, you know, it's the legacy of the soft that mr. rahini first talked about back in 2002. i think that's really formed a sort of a mental framework for the international community in approaching afghan. and i think it's been much to the detriment of the country. >> all right. thank you. i would like before closing to than my colleague over in the corner there who really took us

all together and the other volunteers for helping us out today. [applause] >> if anybody is not on the mailing list, please sign up outside the door. thank you again for coming. >> i just wanted to add one name to this list. that is jamie metzohat was also part of our leadership team that i left off the list. thank you very much. [inaudible conversations]

>> congressman dicknyder of arkansas chaired the armed serves subcommittee on oversite and investigations. this is most two hours. - oversight and investigations. this is almost two hours. [inaudible conversations]

>> good morning. we are going to gohead and begin mr. withman will be joining us shortly. this is a subcommittee on oversight military education specificically today officer in residence. on may 20th outside witnesses discussed the bill waters act. we also discussed the efforts of the 1989 panel to review p to ensure that jointness became part of the culture through the education system. today we are looking athe six rules in the pme enterprises and the colleges of the armed forces. these schools are meant to develop and teach strategies national, military, and resources. later we will hear from the deans of the intermediate and

care school and will also invite to employ these initutions. they should also be involved in these discussions. today the panel is the senior leadership including the commander and some cases presidents and they are joined by their academic deans. we will now here from mr. whitman. >> thank you. good morning to our witnesses. we appreciate you being here today d your service to our nation. our opening hearing featured outside experts who opened a range of suggestions. while it's always useful to hear from observers, we must also learn from those faced with the day-to-day reality of managing our professional military education system. we have such people here today thatelp in the military service in senior war

colleagues. these institutions are the to of e pme system. each of our witnesses has had a unique career path. even s the roads to your positions lied predominantly with operational assignments and academic posts. that successful officers come from the operational part of their services is no surprise. but i wonder how each of you adjusts to the particular challenges of running an academic institution where faculty shares the right to academic freedom. and students are encouraged. in sho, the witnesses believe their careers prepare them be turing educators. i'm also interested in your suggestions on recruiting and remaining the best facity. do you have the tools that y need to recruit the high facility teaching? can you offer an academic environment attractive to the

high caliber we seek? finally, have to ask if the military services are sending the best students to the senior services colleges. the military services even have their own uque culture, and part of that is the view of the value of professional military education. is the culture reflected in the quality of students? the departments consortium of the military professional education institution is distinguished collection of acadic eellence in all aspects of national security, diplomacy, and strategy. we provide experienced challenge military officers a year to read and think at taxpayers expense. is the investment worth it to them and to the nation? i believe it is. but we'd like to get your though on the record. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr wittman. we're pleased to be joined again by the chairman ike skeleton.

he's already got the microphone. >> here. i'll hold it. >> mr. skelt. >> we could use this back to pop it up. ike skelton's book. go ahead. >> thank you. mr. chairman, mr. wittman, thank you very much for the option to sit in on this hearing. i want to compliment dr. snyder and the ranking member on holding hearings on this

subject. which as you may know is near and dear to me and through the years, a bit of history backn of 1982 richard white, a member of the armed serces committee held aeries of hearings in his subcommittee which was the predecessor othis subcommittee . ands air force, chf of chair, and later joint cheer of staff said publicly that the joint chiefs of staff gives us advice. it was very critical. needlessly to say, he became a par rye ya, but sadly he was very, very right. after richard white did the

hearings h retired to one of those rare staff members that should be englazed in stone because he convinced me to get involved. the legislation that abolished the joint chiefs of staff which none of them handle very well. after passing legislation three times in the house over four years the chairmanship in the senate join from john power to ic goldwater and barry goldwater had their own legislation. we ended up in conversation passing later goldwater/nickels act which was not well

received. followinghat i shared a panel working on joining education. and we ended up with a series of year-long hearings where se came out with phase one ab phase two, you know all of that, and ted to reestablish vigor. we found that the various w colleges varied in complexity and difficulty. and the marines were way behind and to outraise credit and turned around 180 degrees. and air force had a long way to go. and that came around, the army was getting a b or b plus and doing pretty well.

best was in '80 by far. and you didn't have to go there to get promoted. but it was for some reason the premier of in 1988. well, fast forward to today. you have the war challenges, including the national, have they fulfilled their main purpose in le? and what is the main purpose? well, mr. snyder mentioned it was to create strategic thinker. evybody that graduated from school is not going to be a strategic thinkinger. but they will understd it hopefully. but i also think that there should be a great deal of rigor, they should study every bit as

hard as i did in law school, and of course being a product of the law school that did the case method. i think that might not be a bad idea for the battles, campaigns, conflicts, to be studied on case by case basis and hopefully you do at least some of that. but i question whether you're turning a, the stratist, and b whether they are be recognized and taken care of and put in the right slots or not. i have a dean aoncern about that. i have expressed that at the highest level within the military. and i quote that those magic people who are great strategist can be guided by you to the

right positions on staffs and in commands where they can use the strategic thinking rather bein shunned aside and caud to be discouraged. i have seen instances of this. needless toay, it bothereds me a great deal. we are or haveeen blessed for years of the outstanding thinkers. but we have morbeing utilized as they should be. i think that's up to you to identify those rare breeds and to make sure that they follow on assignments that allow them to encourage into make contributions to the best of their abilities. this is a serious time. these are very serious times.

a ar off with your family at school, it's not goi to do it. because it's wonderful to have a family in school and to participate in the activities. but you're trying to turn out, and you should turn out and then later make sure that they get the right slots within the military whether they be joined or within the service serve. i cannot stress that enough as i am now. thank you for your hard work and intellectual abilities and for your learship. and again, let me compliment you dr. snyder for this series of hearings. it's timely and in dire need for our country. thankou. >> thank you for your work through the decades on the important subject to our nation. ouitnesses today are garry

hall of the united states navy, major general robert steel, admiral james wisecup, united states marine corp director and war college. we will put the timer on you gentleman. your written statements will be part of your record. when you see the red light, we are not going to shoot you. but you should feel free to continue if you need, the challenge that we have with six, we wanted to have all of you together. we thought that would be good. if you all go 10 minutes instead 5, it will be an hour before weet to any questions. admiral we will begin with you and move on dn the le.

thank you for being here. the written statements will be part of the record. thank you all. >> goomorning. thank you for the opportunity to be here today. based on your opening statements i know that you really get it, and what we're trying to tablish at our schools. ive on a come daunt for 80 months. and we've worked with jusunder 100 facility members. m extremely proud of the institution. my written statement is part of the record. i have three takeaways that i would like to make. the first point is that we are unique. we are the only military service school that teaches economic. that translates into an appropriate of resourc constraints. our students learn to develop a

national strategy by considering the resources. this was recently highlighted at the stimulation held annually where they were recognized for their bringing all elements of power to bear, diplomatic, military, and economic. so they really bring the soft powers and understand the resources. int two i want to make is you spoke to navy flags well before i was appointed to icav. and i remember you saying you want your students to work as hard as you do in law school. as well as the shoe sign, what's the difference between $3 and $5, it's attitude. icaf is a challenging and rigorous program it's not your old genebal's

icaf. many people say when you are sent to icaf, it's a great time to work on your handicap. it's no lot of reading. and you're going to do it. there isot the hold school icaf. our students are graded rigorously based on class contribution, not participation, but contribution. they are also graded on in-depth research papers for every one of their courses and we evaluate them. this gives us the ability to hand out an honor graduate and to recognize about 12% of our graduates as distinguished graduates based on their gpa and leadership contributions. anecdoteally, they looked at the program, and he said it w equal to her phd program.

also, a stanford professor said we are perhaps the finest senior developing coue in the nation minus the finan. we teach economics but not finance. also during our industries studies anduring the field trips i've watched senior executives after being interviewed or discussed or having discussions with our icaf. these guys know more about us than we know about us, and our folks ask questions in a polite manner. so there is rigor. point three, we are still true to our charter. we have a small school, we're still true to being in touch with industry, but we are not adverse to change or growth. we are constantly growth. icaf provides education for today's environment. and chairman slton you always ask, can a graduate have a

conversation with general marqhall? i feel after observing 6406 students, not all of them, but over 90% could not only have an conversation, they could understand, politely challenge, and help him development, and they could capture, put it in writing, and being able to communicate it to others. something that is important to or commanders. and an example it's good to have the conversation, each for the past 15 years we've had the national security strategy where our students look forward ten years. they then at the conclusions of two weeks brief out to 60 distinguished visitors at the three and four star rank in uniform and in government. and again and again the participates say can we please come back? these folks are really great.

i do think we are producing strategic leaders. so in summary, i'm proud to be the come didn't. i'm the strong believer that we can make a different. next week we will graduate 320 individuals who will go out to operate at the strategic level. an example will be in uniform general dudwitly is the first four-star inovernment. in business, industry, healt hubert is now the e ceo of on star. so mr. snyder, you asked about a remember ration for our commedant. president obama used the quote

that the life of law is not logic but experience. and i translate it is the experience that is important to these colleges. so it's my experience operationally that gives a differen and makes a new set of eyes. it's very easily to operate in an environment of academic freedom. so comes down to moral courage and moral leadershi in doing what is right. and so i feel that i am prepared to be the commedant and i'm proud to answer your questions. when i see the unique people with the right energy and intellect to make sure they are placed in the right environment or tal to their service. and my biggest concern is more with the government employees who often go back to their original jobs. so i talk to all leaders that come through about placement in the next job. so i'll be happy to take any

further questions. >> thank you. >> chairman and members of the subcommittee, i want to thank you for the opportunity to address the education of the men and women protecting and representing our country. in my written testimony, i address my vision for the national war college, the quality of its facility, the excel gnificance of the student body, and rigor of its curriculum, i would like to note a few key points. it is an honor and privilege. the national war college prepares future generations of americs top military and civilian leaders through a course of study that enhancing study knowledge of the national issues, sharpens their analytical abilities and focus on the successful formulation and execution of grant strategy. we also stress the habits of the mind needed by senior

policymakers and military commanders. above all we encourage students to hone their critical thinking skills. many any opening remark, i'd like to emphasis it is important to recognize and preserve the unique mission of each war college, second, national war colleges focus on grand strategy is critical to producing leaders who can lead with the national security challenges of today and tomorrow. third, the leadership and organization of soon your service colleges are not broken as some would suggest. ensuring at all the war colleges is student. but it shouldot be tracked from the specialized excellence that each provides. when chairman skelton stresses years ago, he was careful to ensure that peach -- interpret

that as when it synthesized each service brought to the table whop with we look for ways to improve, i ask that you preserve the mission that each war college was chapterrered to accomplish. for the national war college, it was the national strategy mission that must be preserved. each of the three components of the college, facility, student body, and curriculum has unique interagency excel significance. there is no particular service or agency to which problems are viewed. equally important are washington, d.c.'s way that means we can attract top nond.o.d. u.s. government students and facility. it also means that our students have tremendous access to the highest echelons of our three

branches of government, and the entire whington diplomatic co. wi the exception o our sister college, icaf, i'm aware of no other institution, government or private, that has these critical assets. finally, i challenge those at the leadership and organization in the senior services colleges that are broken. leading the colleges requires leadership skilled required for any large institution. a dedication and ability to integrate the very best that the academic world can officer and a vision to anticipate the challenges of tomorrow. we must rememr that these are high organization,iitary, civilian government, and academib environments. it flowsromheir diversity. i would be concerned by any line of thinking that failed t take

into count our unique strength. : the critical a central element in achieving our unique mission

and professional diversity, diversityn our leadership, in our faculty, in our student body and in our curriculum. well academic professionals helped guide curriculum development, understand the reef maintain academic rigor are professional practitioners freemasons of operational reality that can be applied to the theories we teach. leading these institutions requires a careful blending, a balance of these two forms of education, where we will find the success that chairn skelton, you and your subcommittee chairman snyder and we believe the schools if all see. mr. chairman thank you again for this opportunity to testify on our vital national security issue, the education of our future national security aders. >> gener wisecup. >> good morning mr. chairman, chairman snyder, mr. whitman and jones m&m ladies of the oversight investigations

coittee. i thank you for the opptunity to speak with you today about professional military education in our senior level course and the work of the team at the naval war college in providing career long educational opportunities related to the mission of the navy and serving the people of this nation. the united states naval war college will celebrate its 125th anniversary in october. from its humble beginnings to the structure the colleges build an international reputation for professaonal military education with alumni and nearly every corner of the globe. our founder rear admiral loose sebe truett course predicational success by choosing an approach based on focused holistic study of war, is prevention and statesmanship involved with both. he envisioned active learning by students and faculty on seminal strategic issues in a collegial environment. 125 years later those traditions remain at the center of the approach to education and

carefully apply a wide aperture of perspective, disciplines and culture to the study of war and its prevention. we continue to seek to prepare a nior level students for the challenges and responsibilits of higher command and staff i an uncertain, on big u.s. and surprising earl. we aim to help prepare them for strategic level, not simply their next to the station. we do that by inculcating in them discipline habits of thought through strategic level lands and by helpine them call on their abili to critically think and write about the associated complex issues. we are confident our approach which highlights and executive perspective in a seminar centered environment requiring an appreciation of alternative few points in the synthesis of complex ideas using multidisciplinary tools is precisely on target. we expect that the application of principles to case studies have really van zandt issues and require our students to provide written analysis of complex,

open-ended issues, grading clearly sustains the academic rigor. three such an diverse we believe wean we'll judge if our students are achieving the required educational outcomes. the college of naval warfare is the ten months senior level program with jpme face to desied to produce broadly educated leaders who possess a strategic framework. graduates will be able to apply discipline, strategic minded, critical thinking in challenges in the multiservice, multiagency and multinational environment. about 20% of our student body is made up of international officers, handpicked by their services. udents that he three, 13 me courses. the strategy and policy course focuses on educating students to think strategically, to develop the discipline, a critical approach to strategic analysis to understand the fundamentals of military strategy, national

policy andhe interrelationships between them, to appreciate the political uses of military power and become familiar with the res of both military and political leaders and policy formulation, military planning, conduct of war and peace. the national security decision-making coursings to prepe our officers and government stevens to successfully lead change in the large, complex organizatins boys to meet national security challenges in on rtain international security environment. the joint military operations course refines military officers critical at creative thinking skills under the umbrella of military problem-solving especially the ability to evaluate a range of potential solutions to real structured problems and functioning volatile and uncertain complex and ambiguous environment. these courses complemented by to conferences and a speakers program for this framework for examination of national security and strategic studies.

over the last two decades our educational approach and methodology has stayed on course hover much else has changed. first, we have implemented the recommendations by the panel on military education of the 100th congress. today we have this thing curricula for our senior an intermediate level courses. there discrete forces with differing focus of an outcomes. since we have a single faculty to teach both levels i am confident the distinction will remain and that these courses will complement each other very well over the longer term. as our recent jpme showed, though this places a greater work load on our distinguished faculty they have told me personally that they are vy proud with the end result. our culture is one of constant reassessment. second, our educational outreach has expanded along with their mission as a result of decisions made by my direct sr., the chief of naval operations and i can tell you he is foursquare behind us. the college is not responsible

for professional military education. as a result the number of students we touch had grown from 1500 in 1989 to over 27,000 today and the president's program from 300 to almost 600. in my short time as president, seven months on saturday, i have found work college to be professional graduate institution of the highest quality with faculty and staff members who are satisfied they are doing meaningful work that makes the difference. the students are highly motivated professionals, many bright of e front lines overseas and we invite them in as we learn together about the rious business of war. thank you mr. chairman and i am happy to take any questions. >> generals williams. >> german snyder and distguished members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. my name is maj-general bob williams nimh commandante in the war college at carlisle baacks.

how are soldiers had the good fortune of being associated with training of cadets and soldiers for more than 34 years. i've served as an instructor and assistant professor at west point and as commander of two of the army's premiere combat training centers as well as the armours school and center pirg additionally i have had the great privilege of serving in the operational army of both the peace time and in war. i feel well prepared for the duties associated as commandante and it is an honor to be here today to discuss the professional development of our nation's strategic leaders at the war colleges. ssn said the mission of the war colleges to shape and develop senior leaders our nation will require. the army war college is a unique contribution to prepare students to deal effectively with complex, unstructured problems in strategic security environments and render sound military advice when the application of land power is part of a policy option.

we do this recognizing foley that military actities are often only a part of the solution to complex problems. as we preview the ever-changing security landscape, particularly since 9/11, i believe that we will best and we do best serve the country through these men and women that reeducates by cheating aropriate balance with facul, the student body and the curriculum. i would like to speak befly to these three aas that i believe are the key to assuring their rigor and responsiveness of professional-- to begin with faculty pagoda's the cenr of gravity for the army war college and i am pleased to report our-- d the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff officer profession are of military pocy. our faculty achieves i believe a powerful sergy between the melding of two cultures. first, our military officers

have 22 to 30 years of professional expertise and a lifelong experience and training and mentoring. second, our academic professors with their academic credentials, their research expertise and their ability to publish. i firmly believe students success is directly related to the assignment, a quality experience offered representing the joint u.s. forces and recruitment of high-quality academic professionals. we recognize the value of assuring stability in keep faculty positions and have instituted the professor of the united states army war college program to create for lack of a better word, hybrid professionals. that is to say officers elected to pursue appropriate doctoral degrees and return to the army war college faculty. even as we seek continuity we are willing to give up faculty to support ongoing operations for periods of six months to a

year. most faculty members return but that valuable experience that enhances our@ curriculum and helps us stay current with the challenges are operational force are facing in the field. balances equally important than the student body. if we are to meet the expectations for futures to teach you lders. the war college experience works best as we have all found with a cross-section of those military officers who will lead our nation's future operations. we know that a joint student body representing all the services are important and equally iortant is a mix of the branches that make up the core of the army's ability to execute its missions across the spectrum of conflict. we also gland civilians from nsa, cia and other branches of government and international officers into the students. a 21st century reality is that we are never going to fight alone and so we have embarked on

a program at the request, at the direction of the chief of staff of the army to increase the number of international fellows of the student body. we wilincrease that number by 25% this next year. he has asked me to look at increasing it 100% over the course of four years. this is not only important for u.s. officers to understand how to fight together. it is imrtant to prepare them for the effect of coalition operations andherefore we need the diverse perspectives that come from international fellows. wees fanta the same dialogue and challenges in the seminar that they will see in future battles space with each other. students ought to be exposed and challenged by air nations points of views. our national investment in these international students pays large dividends as former students, as we all know are often promoted to the highest ranks for their military and civilian government. for similar reason we believe we should be stronger with a greater interagency

representation in the student body. it is our business to prepare students to understand how a military power works in concert with other national elements of power. are seminars duplicate interagency dialogue and explore the distinct culture, skills and attributes of other agencie our students learn perspectives of diplomacy, economic information alamance. i understand that other u.s. government agencies to not have the depth, the personnel, to allow them to divert many for graduate level education. that makes it tougher to recruit interagency students and that makes it all the more important to incorporate interagency representatives in the professional military education. it is a smart investment in our nation's ability to apply what is commonly referred to the whole of government strategies. my final comments are about achieving balance in the war college curriculum. in the face of the chelating demands to get to the curriculum we sometimes rest diluting our

focus on education and slipping into training missions. i will admit that to you here. therefore our curriculum reviews are marked by continued its debate over bratton versus depth and hard decisions about the time devoted to each subject. contact on the faculty, time to readnd reflect have to be made. ifill the mechanisms are in place. for me at the commandante to pushback and those things but it does require card costs. insel's steadyonducted by this committee the army war college has transitioned its program to incorporate the study of strategy as a central aspect of the curriculum. army war college students that e classic series, but they also study new strategies as well. the army war college must be adapted to the needs of the current and future fighting in service chiefs as we asss and shape the curriculum on an annual basis.

seek to achieve balance between case studies in military history, emerging doctrine such as the regular warfare doctrine, coin manual as example while providing a broad strategic level let the leadership at dixon cultural intersection with a national stregy. in closing i can tell you today's army war college is much different than the one of the late 1980's. it is a dynamic institution that plays a significant role in preparing leaders the responsibilities of strategically leadership. reforms in the last 20 years and particularly the advent of jpme subtilize standardand expectations for assessment and adaptation. because the nation needs agilent resources as create strategic leaders are senior service colleges must themselves be agile, resourceful and creative. we all knowhat education is an adapti process. one which will require continuous assessment and adjustment to ensure we are still getting it right.

i am confident that we are on that path. german snyder i know i've requested my written statement be provide thank you for the opportunity to discuss this fundamental issue with the subcommittee and i look forward to your questions. >> general forsyth. >> chairman skelton, ranking member whitman, members of th subcommittee thank you for the oppounity to testify about the four college. this morning i would like to capture the essence of our vision for t air war college in a senior professional military education version of the free r's, relevance relationship and renewal. i admit right up front i spent my career is the pilot to joint staff ficer in commander, not an academic. as such however i believe i can identify closely with both the needs of the students and the needs of the general officers an senior civilians to employ our graduates. like my colleagues here today i've witnessed first-hand some of the tasks, dilemmas and

strategic choices that are graduates have faced. if our program is to remain relevant at the air war college of education must prepare our graduates to meet the needs of e joint interagency and multinational operations and not only in today's fight but also in tomorrow, as unprediable let's that may be. our curriculum must balance the presentation of the erie with practical knowledge gain to the study of history, personal perience and experience of others to produce strategic thinkers and leaders. relevance demands consistency and experience for fighters to inspire and educate our students. menu kumar coming to school bite of the battlefield. finally the relevance requires that as a complement to our credit joint curriculum eats scolded but some part of the educational experience to service competency. in our case that the air war college, the competency of the air component. highly qualified faculty in challenging curriculum shape the

relevance of our program is due to hold the key to building all important relationships. the air war college experience thrives on building relationships in and out of the classroom between faculty and students and most importantly building relationships among he students have come from different backgrounds, different services, the different agencies in different nations. addition to the academic growth their relatiohips forged during the shared experience of war college can and do have lasting impact as graduates deal with complex issues throughou the remainder of their careers. oftentimes that and that is manifest in a phonecall seeking a perspective on a challenging issue. other times it's a chance encounter with entrusted fell gradua prior to a crical meeting or even more significantly at a deploye location. perhaps the most important of these relathips are the scourge of the international officers for 45 countries to make up almost 20% of the integrated student body. well some aects of the air war

college are for u.s. students, maybe duplicated in other graduate school settings this one cnot. the chance to meet, interact and build a lasting relationship with officers selectedy their countries to spend time inis formative years of senior military education in the united states. many of these international fellows want to hold the most senior positions in the military government, cultivating these relationships that never been more important in today's interconnected and interdependence security environment. the importance of relationships is difficult to quantify but hard to deny. similarly difficult to quantify but just as important is the opportunity for renewal. the air war college expience must build energy, strengthen enthusiasm for the difficult task that lie ahead for graduates and their families. renewal comes from a student discovering other students have overcome similar difficult dilemmas. renewal comesrom debate on the

role of leadership, command and integrity and ethics. renewal comes from the student gaining confidence in their ability to craft a strategy in international environment at the strategic level. wendell comes from mexicanhe demanding ademic schedule, built on a scaffold of stability and predictability that aows students time to reflect, synthesizend discuss material they study as well as time to reconnect with their vital support. finallrenewal comes om developing a clear understanding of the impornce of the contributions of graduate tut nina leaders to the success of their units and their nation. i thank you for the opportunity to testify in the chance to outline the important contributions of relevance, relationships a renewal the air war college of success and the success of our graduates. i look forward to your questions. >> thank you general forsyth. colonel belcher. >> i appreciate this opportunity to address the subcommittee today, to discuss the

educational achievements of your marine corps war college. supported by the house armed services committee and its chairman the 29 commandante of the marine corps a united a renaissance of marine corps' professional military education in the 1980's that still burns day. in august of 1990 he directed the convening elite group of six lieutenant colonels to conduct an intensive one year study of the war and profession. he entitled the art of war studies program it was the precursorf today's marine corps war college. since then the college is gwn in size and scope yet remains true to its original charter. now, as then, the college remains committed to preparing the nation's next generation of strategic leaders, confront the challenges of an increasingly complex, volatile and globalized world. to do so andmploys the rigorous multidimensional curriculum presented by

first-rate faculty the u. small elite group of hig caliber, highly competitive senior military officers and government officials. focused on the strategic level of for the curriculum examines both traditional and their regular tes of warfare, the instruments of national power as well as the application of soft and hard power. it employs historical analysis, derive enduring lessons from history and applies them to the critical issues existing in today's orational environment as well as those emerging on the strategic horizon. the curriculum also reflects the culture of the service in which is born. specifically, lean, agile adaptable mindset pettis bans air, land, sea and cyberspace spectrum. it also reflects the words of general james d. bonaway, commandants of the marine corps or more accurately his commitment that we believe in

the human dimension of wharf is theost ctical elements and the boldness, creativity, intelligence and the warrior spirit are prime attributes. to foster the development of creative thought the college employees active, dill learning methodolog to include highly personalized in class instruction, local domestic and international field studies, practical application exercises, self selected scholarly research and professional time for reading and reflection. to remain current in coach and the curriculum undergoes a bigger is continuous and multilevel review an validation process. the curriculum is taught by students and faculty comprised of military, government and civilian professors. some operators, some academics, but all professionals in their fields of endeavor. the instruction is enhanced by the expense of an adjunct faculty of functional are

experts, regional experts and interagency experts as well as visiting guest speakers. due to the colleges proximity to national capital region d our small size, the students are afforded access to senior military interagency industry d academiceaders. komai they meet with on a one-to-one personal basis which promotes open cummins met in informal discourse. our guest speakers rivaled those of the most prestigious civilian universiti. others hope to have a commencement, we have it on a classroom on a routine basis. live with the educational experience is enhanced by the quality and diversity of the college's student population itself. while small come the student body consists of top performers and selected by the respective service or agency for their exceptional operational and academic performance as well as their future potential for service. the student body includes representatives of all four

services both active and reserve componen united states coast guard, the federal government agencies, multiple ethnic groups as well as the myriad of occupational specialty thanks to this mixture of the students learned joint interagency operations, not jusfor instruction but also through personal observation in daily interaction. our vion for the war college is to retain the academic advaages inherent in being a small, elite college. >> civically the academic access, agility and excellence we currently enjoy while growing into a more robust educational institution. to achieve this visn we have commenced a program to expand the size and diversity of our student population, to expand the size, the capability d diversity of our faculty. anmost importantly to expand our academic outreach efforts. while the college's educational experience cannot be replicated

by any civilian university, we believe it can be enhanced through increased interaction with leading-edge civilian institutions as well less collaboration with the other military educational institutions here today. mr. chairman, are graduates-- from their predecessors. consequently the marine corps war college is dedicated to intellectually farming them to the challenges ahead. mentally reset the force for the fight yet to come. i am convinced we are achieving this objecve and with the continued vocacy and support of this subcomme, we will do so far to the teacher. thank you for this opportuni to address the panel and i look forward to your questions. thank you. >> thank you colonel belcher. i know admiral hall, every question will come to him first and we are not going to do that. we will move it around so you

can all have the experience of saying i am so glad wasn't the first one [laughter] in fact admiral wisecup we are going to start with you this time b i want to ask you the following question. thisorning, president obama about 7:00 eastern time, and did not see the whole speech, i salt experts of it, gave a well received, and certainly much anticipated speech calling for a new beginning through the relationship with our nation and the world of islam. how will that speech impact what occurs on your campuses and classes this week? >> sir, thanks for that question. i watched part of that this morning, and i wl tell you, knowing that faculty like i do, this will all fall into our

constant reassessment. we have faculty members who are very well connected. they are always out and about. a faculty member for example who teaches in strategy and policy is also our area specialist in the indian ocean, pakistan india. he will what income and know about this speech, to cup he will have the text, three probably knows people connected with that and then when the faculty does their curriculum refute, which in fact there in the process knell for the next academic year, those kinds of ideas will factor into how they reach torque the curriculum, so, imagine a can the network of people from our very distinguished faculty, you are doing this same thing and then they all bring these into talk about these. they do what they called

bootstrap sessions. as they reviewed the curriculum for the next trimesters teaching, week by week, a class by class, and so these faculty members will sit in a broom for example and have oftentimes the heated debate over what is going to go into this curriculum. that is when this kind of information come this kind of context, can be provided and factor right into the development of the curriculum, write up to jus a few weeks before they tually go in front of the students on the podium, which really keeps things rrent. >> thank you. >> sir, i would echo what admiral wisecup said. what i would add to it is, even while his speech was ongoing, the ogging network was already alive with their network of

graduates throughout the region there. already, communicating with faculty here at the war college, with what they, what they were perceiving the receipt of this speech was. i anticipate that network to be alive and well here throughout this week, the discussions to be had. we will rolled-- roll ol transgresses and other discussions, that thinktanks come out with into our faculty or curriculum review here during the summer, and when we get to this particular phase in our curriculumith next ye's class, i am sure there will be the new information to roll into our classrooms here as much progress is made in the months ahead from his speech here.

>> admiral. >> yes sir, i think this is the perfect time of the year to have this take place in the academic environment. >> do you will have, some of you have got graduation coming up don't you, so you are kind of not in a full class remote right now? >> i still know it will have an impact and as i said it comes at the right time of the year, where we have 20 international fellows at icaf. i think we have 50% of that from the middle east, or muslim countries and also an israeli student. now, at the beginning of the year in the eye might be hesitant but now as we said academic freedom and the policy of non-attribution. as we go to the yearotnly are there might expanded but they become comfortable in the environment and they realize, international fez to have the freedom to speak openlybout their opinions, and new students

have learned to accept these. it is a very fascinating process to see this awakening happened, so the fertile minds to process this. today is the picnic for the international feliz which i will attend and i will ask them what they thought of the comments, but each seminar has w international level. they will be question. what do you think abouthis, thacademic directions, without any fear of attribution so i think it is a perfectime in their minds are open. i have observed from to classes, it is about this time of yeawe want to get rid of our students because we have opened their mind so much, they are a real pain in the fact that they challenge every assumption and openly discuss issues. it is a perfect time and it will be well received. >> the ampac beckett the college campus would be one, the professors beaming with pride that what they talked about roughout t years now coming

to fruition, the history in the background theyave regarding islamic culture, regarding previous campaigns, the regional studies that we did as well as th international travel to the asia-pacific region, specifically india have proven true. though theyre violently blushes, the students are in auth that welch they got it right and they prepared us for what is coming up and prepared this to address these issues. from that there will be continued discourse and debate regarding what that means in the future, how that is applied, but the policy implications, and more imporntly what are the military ramifications that they need to be ready to implement when they go on to their next job at a service or combatant command headquarters. for the curriculu we will continue to enhance that and look at that as we dour curriculum reduce. and also it leads into the

perfect segue that next year's we introduce their first international fellow, we have three coming on board, one from france, one from canada and most important brigadier-general from pakistan, that allow us to continue the discourse and debate for the following academic year. thank you. >> mr. chairman sadly on two counts i did not hear the speech number one number two, at the air warollege they did graduate last thursday's that we have no students there but that sa, i think this is part and parcel to quite frankly one of the best class case studies if you will this whole entire year. dull holt changing of the government and thereby changing of the strategy, the national security strategy that will roll down to the national military strategynd how that takes places been an incredible academic classroom in and of itself and this is one other piece of that. as everyone has said, to be

rolled into next year and quite frankly not justhis speech but the way we have gotten to where we are from the bush administration to where we are in the obama administration to route the entire year has just been an incredible academic groundwork if you will. >> sir, i did have the opportunity to watch it this morning and there were a think the president had a number of major themes. obviously the two of them that i ok note of was the one of diplomacy and willingness to listen and also assist was one thing. clearly also he reconfirmed that he will come of this administration will protect the american public. i believe for us it will perhaps push artists scire as we have d for some time now in the education of our strategic leaders to focus on an emphasis of all elements of national

power, including diplomacy, economics, information as well as the parts that were experts in, the military component. it clearly signals for us i think an emerging national securi strategy that of course are academics as we and our course on saturday her, will take the board and adjust our curriculum as appropria. >> mr. whitman. >> thank you mr. chairman. gentlemen i think as a follow-up from that i want to ask, in context of what we see today which is a very dynamic period of time in our history both nationally and internationally with things changing constantly, how do you see your challenge in making sure that your schools can change in relationship to those external changes but also main true to making sure those fundamental subject matters are being taught and still in the

graduates from your institutions and also how you take the lessons learned under current operations and incorpora them within the whole context of making sure your graduates come out with a rounded, strategic knowledge to be the leaders our nation nee going into the future and i will start with general steel. >> sir, you are right to highlight the challenge by t school in protecting some of the core elements in our educational requirements. for example at the national war college, we try to stay at the stratdgic level and i have got only ten months to work with. we have got a lot of ground to cover. our students, when they first show up, have all been operating at the operational level. their minds are rather fixed and

it takes several months to kind of unlocked that and make progress. we constantly get challenged with themes that commanders in the field would like to see in graduates so that they are ready to go as soon as they get into their new job. most of these requests are at the technical and operational level, and so, i work with my faculty regularly to resolve how to best approach the requests of the combatant commanders, senior leadership, other agencies that this particular new dynamic environments be incorporated into your curriculum somehow. we usually find a way, where either is already being discussed. is just not a soul centerpiece

in the curriculum, but if we can find how to best thread that new dynamic environments into our curriculum, we will do so and we will find the best course to put that in. also, elective turn out to be pretty good option for our student body as well, to get a more focused study on a particular concept, so we do use the elective opportunity as one to take on some of these new fields that are being asked for the colleges to invest in. >> very od, thank you. admiral. >> i think the best way to enter your question is to go back to the question that chairman snyder posed about the obama speech for example and the mechanism that i outlined for you. how we can roll things into our

curriculum. this is again a function ofhe faculty. and, i will give you an example. at this point, we are going into the nuclear posture review, and so now time is ripe for people who can talk to these issues about nuclear deterrence in a new world, and the interesting thing is, we have people who have been cofstantly working those issues, kind of like the preserve sacred text during the middle ages. and in fact, we have this expertise that has not been permitted to atrophy and now that it is needed we have been able to provide that expertise to a variety of agencies and governments folks who have been asking for it in surging it out. the her thing is, looking at how the faculty gets out, one of our faculty members visited

north korea about a month and a half ago with a private visit of a major foundation, and he works research. our faculty is constantly publishing. they are contributing constantly d these are the same faculty that are going to roll into the bootstrap sections and tk about the curriculum. the other thing is for example the ronald reagan strike group commder, before i knew i was going tgo to be president of the war college, i knew the expertise of some of these professors and actually ask them to come out, like general steel was explaining to come out to my strike group and talk to what the delta region of the indian ocean so they got the benefit of coming out and talking with commanders about the current situation and then flew off to visit their contactin different places in the region and we got the benefit of their knowledge, and then these are the same people who are going to roll this information into the

bootstraps and into the currulum development. >> thank you admiral. colonels belcher. >> our curriculum is founded in the enduring tenants of war which have not changed in many, many years. however, with that said we do look to capitalize on new and novel approaches coming out of the current operations that we can apply within our curriculum. specifically we look ba into history, identify those principles and then applied them in modern scerios in the current studies that our students are operating in or will operate and. to drive those we go to multiple sources. first and foremost the chairman of the gee to step to the learning objectives he has established, and the yearly special areas of emphasis and a large part these will be the most critical elements of the upcoming year that we began to integrate into our curriculum, to ensure that we are dealing

with the top issues but not chasing the topic of the day. the other ways we do this are through hiring of faculty that are coming directly from operational background. myself having just come out of the regimental command to work, bringing the experience from that pvious combat tours right through the full house. secondly through continual scanning by the professors, after reading, research, interacting with the thinktanks and study groups such as the taji cheek vision group, the joined war fighting centers, to see what is on the strategic horizon that we need to prepare students for and the incorporating that into a coherent method that is synchronized with the rest of our curriculum. other ways include routine interviews with combatant, component commanders and service leaders. yesterday i have the opportunity to sit down and talk with

lieutenant general allen regardingis most critical issues as well as critical capabilities he is lookingor from graduates from our work college. other ways come continuing to interview are graduates and their supervisors to see that the curriculum met the needs when they came into the force. finally, we also alw the ademic white. we have a series of classes colt issues in modern warfare that we purposely did not fill at the beginning the year, kwing that critical issues will pop u during the year that we would li to craft classes for. having a small faculty, i have the organizational agility to put classes together, find leading-edge experts to come in and fill those because such topics in the best event the repe of don't ask don't tl, what would be the implications for the military, the effts of a pandemic which happens to be very timely because several weeks later the swine flu began

to reach they have lines. a variety of topics that we can then add into make sure that the studenwhen he walks out the door is as up-to-date as he can be before he begins his next job. thank you are. >> thank you colonel. general williams. >> sir, i appreciate the question. i think i don't have a problem with staying current with the current stunt body at the technical and operational level. with 72 80% of them coming in with recent oef experience. with anything that is a challenge for us to push them to the strategic lel. in terms of staying current at the strategic level, we have always been like some of my colleagues here, a source, think-tank for a lack of a better description for the department of the army and various other agencies in the united states. there is enormous intellectual talent inhe faculty and they often are called for their

expertise. in fact this last year, i have hadembers of the faculty's serve on brigadier-general buckmaster's team building a new strategy for afghanistan. as well as answering a call from isaf for stratists were sent my director of national security strategy for six months to assist in the building of the strategy for afghanistan. by the way it is his-- ve sent the numr two man from that department and he is downrange ght now so any given time we lo for opportunities to take our faculty and offer our faculty up to work on some of the hardest problems the nation is facing at the strategic level. when they come back of course they see the faculty, they informed the curriculum so that is enormously empowering. the other part of your question though is how we protect the court from a whole host of requirements, oftentimes that

are, look-alike training as opposed to education. sometimes those things come through the cjcs at the military education committee, and we are all in attendance of those as well as our deans the route the year and we have an oortunity to push bac on those items so that we aren't required to put them into the curriculum. sometimes we win, sometimes we lose but i feel confident the mechanisms are in place for us to do what we need to do or i need to do as the commandante. i do not get that many requements from the army that i would call training requirements, apart from those kinds of thingthat we would want to do anyway. recently training. we take the time. it is important and absolutely requed and we are proud to do that. i hope i have answered your question, but i think we have the mechanisms in place to stay

current, which is to say we stay at the strategic level. we are in the business of allowing students to master the strategic garte and we have to stay focused at tha thank you very mucr. >> general forsyth. >> sir, thanks for the question. everybody has touched on or at least danfoss around a little bit where i'd like to go with this and that is the balancing act of the attention that is always there between the current events are the current topic of the day and the foundations of the leadership, ethics, strategy and those things that need to be the bedrock of what we do. i think that pretty much in many instances comes to the people to make sure that we have an advocate for both. the faculty, at least at the air war college, is one-third civilian, one-third military and air force military and about a third joint military and interagency and quite frankly

coalition as well. and that next year allows us to stand the spectrum between the basic foundation and current defense. add into that the student that, as we just heard many of them just came from the ar and you try to extract them from me the tactical level or the operational level and bring them up to the strategic level makes for quite frankly areat dynamic within the classroom. so, with respect to making sure that foundations are there in the balance is correct i think that rises in many cases to my level. >> admiral hall. >> i heard the question as, does the president's speech affect your curriculum and how do we maintain our core courses? this is a dynamic period and a very compelling speech but at icaf we want to develop st. cheek leaders, folks that

can formulate strategy, analyze sttegy but not chase strategy so this will become a case study to be in our national security studieshen there's ddg cleve courses as we work students through the sing craddock meth it in challenging the assumption so we are constantly producing our curriculum for convict we are inthrougthe formal process riedel and we see what is relevant. i see it becoming parof a teaching package, to use an example, in a casstudy but not changing the curriculum. you don't want to chase policies beaches learn how to challenge and interpret policy and velop policy. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> mr. davis. >> thank you mr. chairman, thank you to all of you for all of your comments in your openness. i have thoroughly appreciated. i have a few questions, asou have been talking for the one is the issue you mentioned is the

six months going to turn around in terms of deployments in bringing people back into the-- has that been a problem, a major problem for any of you in terms of deployments and does that mean that we might have fewer officers who were trained in advance professional education? >> whenever i get a request from the theater for assistance that might involve the polling of one of my faculty for that purpose, i immediately go to the dean who is sitting directly behind me and i asked him, can we support the ited states army or the theater commander, wherever the requirement comes from, and not degrade our primary mission which is the education of the students which we are charged with. if he comes back to me and says, yes we can do that, then i beeve it is part of my mission to support the operational a

institutional army. so, i think it is important that we do that. by the way, to your real question do i have trouble with that, i usually have faculty members lining up in the hallways volunteering to do this. because they fully understand, as great educators, they are adding an additional tools to their kit for the audience and the constituencies that they have to talk to. and so, ion't have a personal problem insofar we have not had to say no. we have gotten close a couple of times but iope i have answered your question, maam. but i have not had a problem with this. >> anybody else want to wait in differently on that? >> i think the question goes to deployments and expectations and did the plymouth affect all aspects of military life, including family life.

bat when senator mccain and his classmates went to national defense university, they said you were coming back from the p.o.w.'s this will be an opportunity for you to relax, to get back in touch with your family, to regroup and work on your help. our programs dull blunder allowed that as i referred to in my opening statement. liebling fks and right from the field whether it be army, air force, navy marines and many of our depyed civilians. their told it is the time to catch their breath, when really it i a very rigorous academic year and they don't often get to catch their breath, so also, many if they are coming from out of theater they may leave the families and previews doody stations donough you have the situation of geobatching, geographically isolated from your family so there are implications of that. so, what do we do? we are always talking about post-traumatic sess and

looking for that in our students. we have medical, psychological help. we have health and fitness so we do work on that basis and of healinwinds seeing orrin scene. we have both types of wounds come to icaf. so it is challenging and you work with them and you work with the families but it is a rigorous course of study and overall the military everywhere is going to find challenges with all the deployments. that is a different perspective >> maam, if i could add it is not just deployments but our schools and our faculty are soht after globally, because of their expertise. so, whether they are being asked to go and deployed to support the army or combatant commander or just to come and help them with some research aspect, quite often the schools and here it

nationals well, the first thing we look to see if we can support it with our ongoing activities athe college. if we can do that, and it enhances and this faculties exrtise, we will do everything we can to support it because that faculty member will return with value add. >> i can understand that. if i could go really quickly mr. chairman, back to general william sprigg why thank you mentioned you would like to increase the international officers by about 25%, 100% over four years. what percentage are they now? >> we have 40 in the class of 340. i have never figed out that percentile. we will go to 50 next year a the chief of staff of the army has as me to look at how we would go to haiti. currently everyone of our seminars has approximately two

for an international students and it would go to four. again, the desire is to open the aperture as part of our cultural training at the senior level and there is no better vehicle i think to do that then to bring these very successful officers from around the world, all nominated by cocom's that comes through in some cases come in all cases the army staff and then there's the two was based on the g-3's decision of who will make it. i believe-- >> are there barriers to bringing more international officers in? it is aatter of having seats essentially or are there other, the sec, the other constraints? >> your absolutely hitting on an issue here that for us, but it

is a matter of facilities and faculty. i am ok for this next year to go 50, but the dean of the academic board have reported to me that beyond that we have t look at some other ways before we increase it any further but there are no barriers beyond that that i think i need legislative help on for sure. >> thank you very much. mr. chairman. >> i am going to pick on you admiral, but how often do you will get together to formally or informally as the group? >> i am new tohis process. i miss the meeting we recently had. >> sir, i have been doing this for about 14 months now. i believe i would be correct in saying i had seen these guys about three or four times this last year for various forms. about eight months ago, my board

of visitors sponsored a symposium in washington and all of them were invited to discuss pma and together we collectively decided to get together prior to the joint staff meeting and general caldwell at fort leavenworth where we sat down and discuss the issues, ideas before we would go to that meeting in washington dc. and i believe and if i am not correct, and talking for the air university i believe they are going to host a meeting of just those you seat this table this coming fall. hope i have answered your question. >> i wanted to ask, someone talked about this before, but we have heard since we started doing this stuff asserted also that there is variability among the services, both in where the students are at within