quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from rho isld. emr. reed: skilled to dispense with the calling of the quorum. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reed: thank you, mr. president. irrise in support of the

nomination of lael brainard to be the undersecretary of the treasury for international affairs. i know lael personally. she is a renowned expert in international economics, dedicated public servant and is highly qualified for this important position. i've had the privilege of working with her when she was a member of the clinton administration, deputy snrants to the president for national economics. then she went on to be a vice president, founding director of the brookings institution's global economy and development program, and then an associate professor of applied economics at m.i.t. shown school. she has extraordinary he credentials and experience, but she's also, in addition to that, someone who has a wide-ranging interest in ndges economics, international affairs, and international security policy. she's someone that i have known for many years, someone i respect immensely for her judgment, her maturity, and her

dedication to not only the country but also to ensuring that our policy reflects our highest eye dells as well as -- ideals as well advances our course throughout the world. she has been nominated for a very critical position. international economics is no longer a secondary concern. it is a primary concern, if it ever was a secondary concern. we're now approaching a time when our relationships with the world's economies is no longer one of the strong versus the many smaller economies. we're in a very competitive global economy and we need this type of representation i treasu. we need to engage china. no someone more prepared to do that than lael. we have to stablize this global economy through this financial crisis, which we're seeing not just in terms of private markets but the situation in greece.

all of these things call out for an individual in the department of treasury who is not only well-versed but also in place to do the work. and, again, i could find no higher qualified candidate than lael. we've got to expand export opportunities. the president has rightly called upon this country not only to begin to grow again but to direct our growth away from domestic consumption to export. you need someone in the international arena fighting for us, the united states. you need an individual who is responsible for and accountable for that effort. and, again, i can't think of a more experienced, more dedicated and more qualified individual than lael. we've been waiting, the department of treasury has been waiting, lael brainard has been waiting since december 2009 for confirmation. that is a long, long time to put

a high-priority issue on the back burner. and what is ironic is it appears that no one is challenging her experience, her credentials, her didemeanor, her temperament, her maturity. anything. she is collateral dmaj another dispute, which is not one of the most significant and commendable parts of the process here. we all have issue issue individl candidates but after those individuals are very well ventilated and since december 2009, that's a long time, we have to take it to vote and we have to do it up or down. so i would urge that her nomination move forward this evening. she is extraordinarily qualifi qualified, and she is someone who can take on the extraordinary challenges of this job. and, frankly, right now we've

wasted, through this process, months and months and months where we could have the very best person available focusing on our international competiti competitiveness of the united states, and i think our constituents deman it. and i yield the floor. and i would note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call: the presiding officer: is there objection? the presiding officer: without

objection, so ordered. the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture motion. we the undersigned senators in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate hereby move to bring to a close the debate on the nomination of lael brainard of the district of columbia to be under secretary of the treasury, signed by senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is is the sense of the senate the debate on the nomination of lael brainard of the district of columbia to be an under secretary of the treasury shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory undethe rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: is there anyone whing to vote or wishing to change their vote? hearing none, on this vote, the yeas are 84, the nays are 10. three-fifths of the senate duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.

a senator: the clerk will call the roll. the presiding officer: quorum callquorumcall: a senator: i suggest the absence

of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. kaufman: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. kaufman: madam president, i ask to speak as if in morning business. is there a quorum call? i ask the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: i ask to speak within morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: madam president, as we continue to learn more facts from various investigations of the 2008 financial melt down, a certain picture is becoming increasingly clear. like a jigsaw puzzle slowly

taking shape, we begin to see the outlines of many of the causes of the crisis and the solutions that they demand. in my view, it is a picture of wall street banks and institutions that have grown too large and complex and that suffer from irreconcilable conflicts between the services they provide for their customers and the transactions they engage in for themselves. it is also a picture of management that either knew about the lack of financial controls and outright fraud at the very core of these institutions or was grossly incompetent because it did not. and the picture includes regulators -- the presiding officer: the senate will be in order. mr. kaufman: thank you, madam president. the presiding officerand the pie includes regulators who failed miserably as well due to malfeasance or incompetence or some combination of both. until congress breaks these institutions into manageablely sized banks and draws hard, clear lines for regulators to

ensure that effective controls remain in place, we will have done neither that which is necessary to restore the rule of law on wall street nor that which will ensure another financial crisis does not soon happen again. what have we learned in just the past five weeks? on march 15, i came to the senate floor to discuss the bankruptcy examiners' report on lehman brothers and said, as many of us have speculated all along, that there was fraud, fraud at the heart of the financial crisis. the examiners' report exposed the so-called repo 105 transactions and what appears to have been outright fraud by lehman brothers, its management and its accounting firm who all conspired to hide $50 billion in liabilities at quarter's end to window dress its balance sheet and mislead investors. and this practice does not

appear to be unique to lehman brothers. i went further and noted that questions are being raised in europe about whether goldman sachs had an improper conflict of interest when it underwrote billions of euros in bonds for greece. the questions being raised include whether some of these bond offering documents disclosed the true nature of these swaps to investors and, if not, whether the failure to do so was material. last week, we learned that more alleged fraud at the heart of the financial crisis. on friday, the securities and exchange commission filed charges against goldman sachs and one of its traders for alleged fraud in structuring and marketing of collateralized debt obligations tied to subprime mortgages. goldman allegedly defrauded investors by failing to disclose conflicts of interest in the design and structure of these collateralized debt obligations. the s.e.c. says this alleged

fraud cost investors more than $1 billion. while i will not prejudge the merits of the case, the s.e.c.'s complaint alleges that goldman sachs failed to disclose to investors vital information about the c.d.o. in particular, the role that a major hedge fund played in the portfolio selection process and that the hedge fund had taken a short position against the c.d.o. robert kazami, director of the s.e.c. division of enforcement said -- and i quote -- "goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party." kenneth lynch, chief of the s.e.c. structured of new products unit added -- and i

quote -- "the s.e.c. continues to investigate the practices of investment banks and others involved in the securitization of complex financial products tied to the u.s. housing market as it was beginning to show signs of distress." goldman sachs has denied any wrongdoing and has said it will defend the transaction. this particular case involving goldman sachs was almost certainly not unique. instead, it was emblematic of problems that occurred throughout the securitization market. late last month, barb ivory and jodie shann of bloomberg news wrote about the conflicts of interest present in the management of c.d.o.'s, a topic also discussed at length in michael lewis's book, "the big short." the s.e.c. should pursue other instances of conflict of interest in the c.d.o. market that led to a failure to disclose material information. madam president, last year, senators leahy, gras grassley ai

along with many others in the congress worked to pass the bipartisan fraud enforcement recovery act so that our law enforcement officials would have additional resources to target and uncover any financial fraud that was a cause of the great financial crisis. however long it takes, whatever resources the s.e.c. needs, congress will continue to back the s.e.c. and the justice department in the efforts to uncover and prosecute wrongdoi wrongdoing. i applaud s.e.c. chairman mary shapiro and especially rob kazami and the team he has reshaped at the enforcement division. they deserve our steadfast support. as the leadership of the s.e.c. continues its historic mission of revitalizing that institution and making it clear to all on wall street there's a new cop on the beat. also last week, our colleague, chairman carl levin, ranking member tom coburn, and the staff

of the permanent subcommittee on investigations began a series of hearings on the causes of the financial crisis. it is a testament to the professionalism and dedication of chairman levin that he has brought the subcommittee's resources to bear in such an effective and thorough manner. i also want to commend ranking member tom coburn for his dedication to the effort as a partner in this effort. chairman levin and the subcommittee staff deserve credit and our deep appreciation for the work that they have put into this series of hearings on wall street and the financial crisis. since november 2008, subcommittee investigators have gathered millions -- millions -- of pages of documents, conducted over a hundred interviews and depositions, and consulted with dozens of experts. it is truly a mammoth undertaking, and the fruits of their labor were evident in last week's two hearings on washington mutual bank.

i look forward to the subcommittee's remaining two hearings on this subject, including this friday's hearings on the role of credit ratings agencies. i commend this to all my colleagues. the levin hearings deserve comparison to the legendary but core investigations of the 1930's which were held by the senate committee on banking and currency to investigate the causes of the wall street crash of 1929. the name referred to the fourth and final chief counsel for the investigation, ferdinand pecora, and assistant -- an assistant district attorney for new york county. as chief counsel, pecora personally examined many high-profile witnesses who included some of the nation's most influential bankers and stockbrokers. the investigation uncovered a wide range of abusive practices on the parts of banks and bank affiliates. these included a variety of conflicts of interest, such as

the underwriting of unsound securities in order to pay off bad bank loans, as well as pool operations to support the price of bank stocks. the pecori hearings galvanized broad public support for new banking and security laws. as a result of the pecora commission findings, the count country -- the congress passed the glass-steagall banking act of 1933 to separate commercial and investment banking. the security act of 1963 to set penalties for false -- for filing false information about stock offerings and the securities and exchange act of 1934, which formed the securities and exchange commission to regulate stock exchanges. thanks to the legacy of the pecora commission hearings and subsequent legislation, the american financial institution rested on a sound regulatory foundation for over half a

century. that is, until we began the folly of dismantling it. the levin hearings have shined a much-needed spotlight on the role of potential outright fraud by financial actors as well as the incompetence and complicit of bank regulators in the financial crisis. there is no better example of the dangers that fraud and lax regulation poses to our financial system than the collapse of washington mutual bank, known as wamu. far too often the failure of institutions like washington mutual is blackmailed on high-risk business straiteds. kind of sounds all right, doesn't it? while such strategies are clearly part of the problem, they should not be used to mask other causes such as fraud and malfeasance which played a significant role in the collapse of wamu. evans stabe levment levment represents that wamu encouraged

fraud as a by-product of the expansion of loan volume. the most blatant example was a widespread use of what are called stated-income loans. stated-income loans. a practice of lending qualified buyer loans without independent verification of what they state their income is. listen to this. this is unbelievable. approximately 90% of wamu's home equity loans, 73% of its option arms, and 50% of its subprime loans were stated-income loans. you go to the bank, you walk in, they say, ted, what's your income? you say what it is. and that's it. based on that you can get 90% of wamu's home equity loans, 73% of

its option arms, and 50% of its subprime loans, which with stated-income loans. as a rick thorston said last week, wa muvment u's stated-income loans create add target-rich environment for fraud. because mamu made these loans with the intent to resell them into the secondary market, there was less concern whether borrowers ever were able to repay them. wamu create add compensation system that rewarded employees with higher commissions for selling the very riskiest of loans. in 2005, wamu adopt what had it called its -- quote -- "high-risk lending strategy" because loans were so profitable. in order to implement the strategy, it coached its sales branch to embrace the -- quote -- "the power of yes." the message was clear. as one industry analyst said, "if you are alive, they would

give you a loan. if you were dead, they would give you a loan." that this culture led to fraud on a massive scale shouldn't surprise no one. an internal review by one southern california loan officer revealed that 83% of loans contained instances of confirmed fraud. in another office, 58% of loans were confirmed to be fraudulent. and what did wamu management do when it became clear that fraud rates were rising as house prices gone fall? what did they do? rather than curb its reckless business practices, it decided to try to sell a higher proportion of these risky fraud-tainted mortgages into the secondary market. thereby locking in a profit for itself even as it spread further contagion into our capital markets. in order for wamu, an institutions like it, to sell these low-quality leans to the seactd market, they need add

triple-a rating from credit rating agencies. so what did these institutions do? they gamed the system and manipulated the agencies by encouraging in a practice called bar-belling. apparently, the credit rating agencies did not examine individual fico scores when rating mortgage-backed securities and instead relied on average fico scores. it was revealed at the hearing by a wamu risk officer and detailed in michael louis's book "the big short," lenders could create the requisite average score by pairing loans of borrowers with relatively high scores with borrowers whose scores were lower which is the reason why it is called bar belling. so if the raters want an average score of 615, a lender could pair scores of 680 about scores of 550 even though borrowers were scorse of 550 were almost

certain to default on the loan. this barbell effect satisfied the ratings agencies even though half the loans in many cases had little chance of suck ssess. at the hearing, wamu's ceo effectively admitted to barbelling by saying, "i don't have the barbell numbers in front of me." to make matters worse, wamu secured hi-fi coscores by seeking out borrowers were short credit histories. such borrowers often have hi-fi coscores even though they have not demonstrated the ability to take on and pay off large debts over time. these borrowers are called "thin-file borrowers." according to a report in "the new york times," wamu encouraged thin-file loans, even circulate add flier. "a thin file is a good file."

the big short, the book, even discusses a mexican strawberry picker with an economy of $14,000 and no english that was ostensibly given a $724,000 mortgage on the basis of his thin file. plainly, the office of thrift supervision failed miserably in its responsibility to regulate wamu and to protect the public from the consequences of wamu's excessive and unwarranted risk taking including the toleration of widespread fraud. although wamu comprised fully 25% of o.t.s.'s regulatory portfolio, o.t.s. adopted a laissez-faire regulatory aattitude at wamu. although line bank examiners identified the high prevailance of fraud and weakened internal croalts at wamu, o.t.s. did virtually nothing to address the situation. in fact, o.t.s. advocated for

wamu, among other regulators, and even actively thwarted and fdic investigation into wamu during 2007 and 2008. the complete abdication of regulatory responsibility by o.t.s. may find sad indication of fact that o.t.s. was dependent on wamu's user fees for 12% to 15% of its budget. the regulatory failures at o.t.s. were not unique. the overall regulatory environment at the time was extremely deferential to the market based on the widespread but faulty assumption that markets can and will effectively self-resmght -- sel self-regula. at last friday's hearing, the secretary of the treasury was particularly noteworthy. he said that bank regulators "hesitate to take any action

whether it is because they get too close after so many years or they're just hesitant or maybe the amount of fees enter into it. i don't know. but whatever it is, this is not unique to wamu and is not unique to o.t.s." lellet me repeat. it was the conclusion of our treasury department's inspector general that the failure of regulators to harness the lawless nature of conflicted institutions was not unique to washington mutual or to the office of thrift supervision. madam president, i've said it before and i'll say it again, it is time that we return the rule of law to wall street. where it has been seriously eroded by the deregulatory mind-set that captured our regulatory agencies over the past 30 years. we became enamored that self-regulation was adequate, that enlightened self-interest

would motivate them to take better forms of due diligence than any prergt could perform. and that market fundamentalism would lead to the best outcomes for the most people. some people even say that today. they say transparency and vigorous oversight by outside encounsel tans is supposed to help our financial system -- keep our financial system credible and sound. the allure of deregulation led us instead to the biggest financial crisis since 1929 and the former federal reserve chairman alan greenspan's frank admission that he was -- quote -- "deeply dismayed that the premise of enlightened self-interest had failed to wo work." and now we're learning, not surprisingly, that fraud and lawlessness were key ingredients in the collapse as well. as we turn to financial regulatory reform, we must

remember that effectively regulation requires not only motivated and competent regulators but also clear lines drawn by congress. based on what we've learned, what must we do? first, we must undo the damage done by decades of deregulation. that damage includes finance institutions that are too big to manage and too big to relocate, and too big to regulate. as former fdic chairman bill axis called them, too big to manage, too big to regulate. it also requires includes a wild west attitude on wall street where conflict leads to conflict of interest. the rule of law depends in part on having manageably sized institutions, participants interested in following the law, and gatekeeperses motivated by

more than a paycheck from their clients. that's why i believe in a separate commercial banking from investment banking activities, restoring a modern version of the glass-steagall act to end the conflict of interest at the heart of the financial speculation undertaken by megabanks that are too big to fail. we further should limit of size of bank and nonbank institutions, something senator sherrod brown andly propose in legislation we propose to introduce this wednesday. otherwise we will continue to bear those megabank claims that they are merely -- no one who deals with amateur trust whether the creator of a financial product they sell is secretly betting its against success. second, we must help regulators and other gate deerps not only by demanding transparency but also by providing clear ands,

enforceable rules of the road wherever possible. one clear lesson of the goldman allegations is that we need greater transparency and disclosure of counterparty. we must mandate that derivatives are traded on the exchange. the rare exemption should carry with it a reporting requirement so that all counterparties understand the positions being taken by other clients in the deal or firm. clearly, we need to fix a broken securitization market. no more, regardless of -- no market can function without proper transparency and disclosure. why i'm pleased with the current reform bill will direct the fdic to issue rules requiring greater disclosure regarding the underlying loans in an asset-backed security, i believe we must go further still.

requirements for disclosure should not begin and end at issuance. instead, disclosure should be automated, standardized, and updated on a timely basis. this will provide investors with relative information on the performance of loans. their compliance with relevant laws, fraudulent origination for example is generally uncovered after the fact and the replacement by new collateral. this information should empower investors and counterveil the malfeasance of issuers looking to select dodgy capital that they're also shorting on the side. moreover, such real-time monitoring by investors would also have beneficial effects further up the securitization supply chain. if originators know they can't get away with selling fraudulent or faulty underbritten loans, they will also be forced to improve their standards.

while not a silver bullet, i'm also generally supportive of environments that those originate and security tied loans include risks by some percentage on their very own balance sheets. wamu developed in senator levin's word a conveyor belt that originated, packaged, and dumped toxic mortgage products downextreme to unsuspecting investors. their lack of skin in the game allowed them to make a mockery of the originals nate to distribute model. while bear stearns and others faltered, this basic requirement will better align the interests of original nairlts and secure tiesers to those of investors. moreover, a clear lesson of the levin hearings is that congress must ban the widespread issuance of stated income loans. i understand senator levin and

i'm working with senator levin. he is developing further reform proposals based on his conclusions from the hearings. third, we must concentrate law enforcement regulatory resources on restoring the rule of law to wall street. we must treat financial crime for the same gravity as other crimes, because the price of inaction is enormous. that's why i'm pleased the s.e.c. is turning the page on its recent history and sending a message throughout wall street. fraud will not pay. madam president, last week revelations about washington mutual and goldman sachs reinforced what i've been saying for some time. deregulation is based on the view that rational actors will operate in their own self-interests within the framework of the law. but even the most rigorous regulators, even with the most

rigorous regulators, it is impossible -- impossible -- to trace the financial self-interest of convoluted financial conglomerates much less constrict their behavior before it runs afoul of the law. wamu made loans. they knew could not be paid back. goldman sachs allegedly permitted clients to take secret positions against the very financial products that it had created. the picture being revealed by the jigsaw puzzle of multiple investigations is now emerging clearly in my eyes. these financial institutions are too big and conflicted to manage, too big and conflicted to regulate, and to big to fail. even alan greenspan has said about our current predicament -- quote -- "if they're too big to fail, they're too big."

our country took a giant step backwards during the last financial crisis. upending the dream of homeownership for millions of americans and throwing millions of americans out of work as well. the credibility of our markets, one of the pillars of our economic success during our history, was badly damaged. it must be restored. there must be structural and substantive changes to wall street where bankers must resume their central role of efficiently allocating capital, not taking bets in a market that no one can understand. you know, the solution is clear. we must split up our largest financial institutions into more manageable entities. separating their two component

parts so they are no longer inherently conflicted, can be properly regulated and if necessary -- and if necessary -- allowed to fail without spending our entire economy -- spinning our entire economy into the precipice of disaster. madam president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. 4 quorum call:

mr. durbin: madam president?

the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the qrum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i ask consent recess adjournment or period of morning business count post cloture, that following a period of morning business on tuesday, april 20, the senate resume executive session, that the time until 12:00 noon be equally divided and controlled between senators baucus and grassley or designees with senator bunning controlling 15 minutes of the time under the control of senator grassley, that at 12:00 noon all post cloture time be considered expired and the senate proceed to a vote on confirmation of the nomination of lael brainard. a that upon confirms the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, no further motions be in order, that the president be notified of the senate's action, that the senate stand in recess until 2:15 p.m. that upon reconvening at 2:15 p.m., the senate proceed to calendar number 165, the nomination of myrrh as is a demeo to be associate judge of the d.c. superior court, six

hours on debate of the nomination. that upon the use or yielding back of time the senate proceed to vote on confirmation of the nomination. that upon confirmation the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid on the table, no further motions to be in order and the president be immediately notified of the senate's action. that the cloture motion with respect to the nomination be withdrawn. that upon confirmation of the demeo nomination, the senate proceed to calendar number 333, the nomination of stuart nash to be associate judge of the d.c. superior court and immediately vote on confirmation of the nomination. that upon confirmation, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid on the table and the president be immediately notified of the senate's action with respect to calendar number 333. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mr. durbin: madam president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: madam president, i ask unanimous consent the senate now proceed to the consideration

of senate resolution 489 submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: 489 honoring the life and achievements of dr. benjamin l. hooks. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. durbin: madam president, i ask unanimous consent to be add as a cosponsor to this resolution. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: madam president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h. con. res. 243 he desk and just received from the house. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: h. con. res. 243 authorizing the use of emancipation hall in the capitol visitors center for an event to celebrate the birthday o king kamamayo. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure. mr. durbin:.

mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the veterans' affairs committee be discharged from further consideration of h.r. 4360 and the senate proceed to its immediate considerati. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: h.r. 4360 an act to designate the department of veterans affairs line habilition center in long beach, california, and so forth. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent -- the presiding officer: if not, the with the is discharged -- the committee is discharged and the senate will proceed. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the bill be read a third time, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table with no intervening action or debate and any statements in relation to the bill be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: madam president, that when the the senate completes its business today it adjourn until 10:00 a.m. on tuesday, april 20, that following the prayer and pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning

hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders reserved for their use later in the day and the senate proceed to a period of morning business for one hour with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half, that following morning business the senate proceed to executive session as provided for under the previous order. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: madam president, under an agreement reached earlier tonight at 12:00 noon the senate will proceed to vote on the confirmation of the confirmation of lael brainard to be under secretary of the treasury. if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it adjourn under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until 10:00 a.m. tomorrow

a portion of a white house conference on conservation and outdoor recreation. speakers include interior secretary ken salazar and agriculture secretary tom vilsak. roughly 600 people representing a range of interests attended this event. this portion is just over an hour. >> well, we're going to start the panel by first and foremost introducing all of the panel members. we are really privileged to have an extraordinary group of folks with us today. let me start by introducing mayor poker. he is as everyone probably knows the mayor of new york, new jersey since july 2006. under his leadership the city of newark has committed close to $40 million, transformation efforts for their parks and playgrounds for ground-breaking public and private partnership. in addition years ago york took steps to protect the source of drinking water by protecting

35,000 acres northwest of the city with force when not only service as a place where the drinking water but the city also uses it for a number of activities, fishing, hiking and canoeing and hunting some mayor, thank you for being here. sitting next to the mayor is re mccormick and we are blessed to have him today. he might rather be planting corn on his operation in knox county, indiana and lawrence county, illinois. he operates a fairly significant grain and bland farm in those two areas. in addition mr. mccormick also operates the mccormick farms peach orchard and waterfowl hunting business on his land and he was appointed by former governor and now senator buy to the indiana department of natural resources advisory council and been a member of the natural resources commission for the state as well. thank you for being here feared

a sitting next to mr. mccormick is jaime beckham, jaime is a citizen of the nez per say tribe and has served in overseeing forestry, agriculture, wildlife and fisheries programs and in addition to vice president of a archibald bush foundation in st. paul, minnesota. leading this nation program working with 23 tribes in minnesota and the dakotas he has served as president of the intertribal timber council as well as the chair of the travel plans advisory council of trust for public land. we thank you for being here today. sitting next to jaime is lynn, a fifth generation rancher and lives with her husband on their conservative ranch in colorado. she served as executive director of the colorado cattleman agricultural land trust rashid has 125 families to protect nearly a quarter of a million acres of productive working

landscapes. today she is the land trust alliance policy manager. thank you for being here. in addition to our panel we're privileged to have dug brinkley, let me simply say that he is one of the nation's greatest and most respected presidential historians. and he knows just about everything there is to know about teddy roosevelt's which you will hopefully share today and also in the number of books one of which my favorite focusing on the disaster in new orleans following katrina which was a very extensive look at the orleans and the important history that is to be preserved in that great city so thank you very much for being here. the way this is going to work, folks, start off by asking the first four that i've introduced general question and ask a respond as best they can and then like done to give us an historical overview of how

difficult or how easy it may be two have a grass-roots effort on conservation and the environment and then there will be individual questions and hopefully will take a good our to generate some thoughts and ideas for all of you. so let me began. perhaps the place where we need to begin. there are some who would suggest that we are, using a connection between non the people of this great country and the great outdoors. and am interested in knowing from your individual prospectus whether you see this as an accurate description of the division or a distance between people in the outdoors and if so what can we do to reconnect people to the great american outdoors so i'm going to start with you, mayor and go down the line. >> if you flew over a new work, new jersey you'd be stunned to

see that we are physically disconnected and separated, isolated really from the great outdoors and i remember the first time i had the opportunity many things jump out at me. we had this one major housing complex public housing that was right on our river one, it was the lifeblood of this city. this housing complex with low-income families had a barrier not only in france but stacked up containers blocking the river. so we were one of the most under part cities in america and our children were suffering from that on different levels. my first year i had a fight break out in the early days between little leagues and other sports in my office because there was no usable field. it we have a situation where type two diabetes is rampant in our city because kids have no place to go out and play you're

even more so which is important to me is that since you do not have these people -- space is readily available he started do ultimately undermine the kenaf's and harsh social beings and as a result with you dislodge the social connections that make strong communities. we immediately very aggressively tried to return our citizens to nature and really rediscovering that which is themselves by tearing down walls and barriers, moving to rediscover rivers, opening up parkway and taking sitting down center of them into useful park space and a final thing i'll say is not just within the newark but the beautiful areas around our city so we started to try to expand programs going out to our pineland in new jersey and realizing even i took on some anger little brother program and take them over to the hudson river. they'd never done that and crossed the river so getting

kids out even further into nature we found is a critical part to break them up and have larger vision of the world and children tend to rise. >> rural america, your perspective? >> thank you, secretary vilsak. as you know coming from i was the midwest is heavily in private land ownership and farmers control much of the land in the midwest and in the heartland. there's a place where we can make some progress is backed with our conservation programs that we've put on the grounds such as the crp program and the wrp program and the flood plains is really put a patchwork of conservation all over the midwest and there are opportunities there to bring young people out there and let them experience that. in my experience it was almost the opposite, there was a lot of information there that said was to enroll in these programs you didn't have to let people on the

ground and it was yours as a private landowner versus saying if you like to be connected with young people and like to be connected with schools years opportunity and the people you can talk to to make these lands available. i've heard it said before the american taxpayer paid for all these conservation projects but then they don't get to utilize it. i think farmers in their true nature would enjoy having kids and young people hikers and bird watchers, duck hunters, pheasant hunters and some states promoted the use of some of these conservation lands. i did we should make all of our conservation program lands we brought easements on and on these rentals on a lot of times these are beautiful prairie grass quarters along streams and so forth and i see the neighbor's riding horseback up and down through that. those opportunities for never they're so maybe we can get people in the usda whose responsibility it is to initiate programs where we can a link

young people and farmers and landowners in those conservation programs, the soil and water conservation districts are having the mechanism and the people in each county and they can be the go-between between the landowners in the land linking together. if you say why would farmers want to do that, we could have a scoring system and our crp and wrp and floodplain easement are scored in and only certain ones are funded. the better funded could be the ones for you gain extra points by signing up to allow or encourage and people to experience these lands that are on private land that are being paid a three usda programs. >> jaime, one would assume you're representing really won the first citizens of this country and people that were very well connected to the land and still well-connected but is that true?

>> i say it is and let me preface my perspective comes from being raised in the nez per say and the lessons learned and i hope people don't take me to represent the sovereign indian nations but i've noticed a trend, there hasn't been a drift away from the connection to the outdoors. in some cases is based on necessity. when i moved on to manage the tribes national resources we had on a plan rate at 64% in the winter and the income level over 50% earned less than $12,000 and what does said to me was the traditional foods and medicines that insisted on those lands responsible for managing provided the mainstay for human sustenance. we were dependent on the land to provide not only timber and grazing and farming but also provide the traditional foods and medicine so there's maintaining that connection to the youth to provide the resources that feed in meet the needs on a daily basis. fortunately for us we continue to celebrate the change in

seasons, the natural cycles and when the salmon richard reiss celebrated one, even as the young people who get involved in these activities we do celebrations' so the connection israel was and we look how we can expand our relationship. and as a person we were two have a cooperative relationship and montana and we can hunt buffalo like we did an absent from doing that for the last three generations but working with the governor there are back doing that. i recall the first time we did that in montana rebuild that around the use actually doing the harvest. one of my nephews is on the trip and caught the media attention, he was being interviewed and he told a reporter, my ancestors have been hunting bison here ever since your ancestors thought the world was still flat. [laughter] but granted my nephew was kind of white but really what suv was

saying this statement really expressed a deep connection to history and deep connection to place. we need to find every opportunity to read engage our youth and bring back the old traditional practices to those places to keep the connection alive and real. >> your perspective? >> i like what he had to say about connection to place because those of us in agriculture that despite the challenges there are two that way of life that's what keeps us doing what we're doing is the connection and our biggest challenges translating that to others who don't have that for a reference and i think the biggest challenge is helping kids today and a stand what our lifestyle is about and why they should appreciate. the old adage of think globally but act locally and i think a great example of what we did years ago i was raised in colorado which used to be a small ranching community which turned into a major ski resort and put tremendous pressure on

the landscape there. in terms of dollars and cents. so we tried really hard to figure out to connecting with the local community to understand with the ranchers were and why we were important to their way of life and one of the things we came up with was the local cattlemen's group in ranch week. we went in for a week and had sessions working with the local schools and training the kids to help understand the different facets of ranching. agriculture and why that would make a difference to them. i did one of the sessions and as i sat and talked to 103rd and fourth grade kids who didn't go far to find breaux landscaped asked how many have been on a farm or ranch and three raised their hands. i was horrified. that effort still continues today piatt is exciting the end of the week culminated bringing these kids to the school buses to a ranch and let them get their hands dirty and to work on the ground and find out what it is to be part of the production of agriculture and what ranching

offers the community. .. picked up the torch of roosevelt. i think we are at a point now where all of us here could say what would stewart udall do.

[applause] he was that important secretary of interior and there was a flashing moment in the 60's where people really pulled together. lyndon johnson famously once called stewart on the phone and there was a problem with lake erie and some of the great lakes power being fished out and they were contaminated and was a problem and he called the secretary of interior udall and said stuart, what is going on in the great lakes? i want them cleaned up right away. and udall said mr. president, that's not -- this is pre-epa -- said of have jurisdiction to clean the leaks up. and johnson said god damnit, stuart, when i think of dirty water i think of you. now clean it up! [laughter] and they're began in the 60's

with lady bird johnson as first lady much like michelle obama now is doing and you have secretary of an agriculture and interior during the johnson period was very proactive. i think it was quite helpful. but roosevelt's big concern is what he called what we call today nature deficiency disorder. it's a fancy term. it's the strenuous life. but the believe the all doors is part of what makes the space spirit theodore roosevelt climbed up the top of the mountain and solve no wild life and make sure we wanted to keep wild life in the appalachians and the rockies and the sierra and felt the bird life for the charming aspect of birds and because the way they help farmers eat insects so it to keep bird life and that wildlife didn't know artificial borders and i think the concept are

developing today of wild life borders with private land owners and public land it's going to be very important and i do think that when we do a climate change it's hard globally. china is saying you guys have your industrial revolution. don't stop us from having a worse. but you might be able to do global things with global wildlife protection laws arana the world to save animals. and finally roosevelt believed that if you look how she saved the buffalo at the wichita mountains in oklahoma, the first game reserve, today people come all over oklahoma and by buffalo and eat buffalo. if you see a buffalo from mount rushmore they come from the heard raised in the suit and reintroduced. he created the federal moose's reserves in alaska for example. i think of the charismatic animals and national kidney do

in alaska and the arctic, and national polar bears betting area and perhaps a national manatee reserved. mammals important to the country need to be added to that model and manatee are part of the electric power plants, it would take a kind of national wildlife conservation largely ride by private sector in many ways. >> i talked for your recently a few minutes to read a statistic that 11% of family farms income comes from the farming operation which suggests farmers have to look for of farm opportunities in order to people to keep the farm. how realistic is it for us to be asking farmers and ranchers to consider conservation? what is in it for them? how does it help them in your view create a more profitable operation?

>> one of the reasons you see farmers getting the of farm income as they need health insurance and their wives are sent to tom to work at a job where they can get health insurance and we did that at my house and so when mother comes home late from work the kids have already got off the school bus so that's partly related to the crisis of the world health care is the wives and the mothers have to go to town to get a job for health care. conservation is already a part of farming and has been. there is a legacy of that but we have got a long way to go. knowledge and training and teaching do a lot to help farmers progress in conservation but i look in the long term and the topsoil is so important to the future of farming and to the country. we have more responsibility now to raise not only quality healthy food but fuel and fiber for this country to progress on

so conservation and protection of topsoil is important and of course we have water that links urban neighbors in two ways. the water that runs off my ground impacts downstream people who would utilize that so conservation is important for protecting water quality for the downstream and also it's important because a lot of the ground on a farm is impacted by flooding and we are finding that flood events are quicker and for a dramatic than they ever been before so land use and land use planning in pact water runoff and there's always downstream land owners like myself so there's a connectivity on conservation there. we are also going to have a responsibility in the future of helping mitigate the changes in the climate and certainly cover crops and keeping it carbon in the ground are going to be imported with that and there is revenue projected revenue streams from that the will be

twice the value of the american wheat crop. what we get from that is the secondary benefit of covering the land, protecting topsoil, helping protect water and create wildlife habitat so there is a great secondary benefit that can come in the future from the revenue streams of farmers setting climate change with practices they used on the ground and is another benefit will be as the climate's protected the threat is impacting the farming operations become floods. when i left it was 85 degrees in early march and we are planning as far as we can do and that is a little scary it is that warm that early in this evening and i planted corn this year in march and it's up now so farmers are adapting at mitigating to the change and i think that will all be part of the future formula of income streams from conservation >> lynne raised a couple of

challenges from your perspective as a rancher what do you see the biggest challenges and opportunities are relative to conservation and the relationship with the ranching community? >> i think it's a really interesting question and as i was preparing for the panel will hold a lot of my branching friends from across the country to ask that question and i got a lot of answers the all basically pointed to one single topic and that was profitability and the recognition i think of the value that the ranchers and farmers bring to the country and the national resources take for the stewardship and think a lot of people don't understand where the food comes from and if we will secure the land base we will not secure the source of food. and i think is tremendously important the best way i can describe the sort of dialogue that's involved from the ranching community that topic and why conservationists such an important part of this.

years ago my husband and i managed a ranch for an older couple and one fall when the forests within his early seventies we were in the fall gathering out of the high country on a tremendously beautiful day, one of those that live in your mind, incredibly blue skies and the bold leaves and the valley below. we were on a ridge looking out at the river valley and the forest was heartsick because he lived there for ever and saw his neighbors about the pressure of development and selling out for high dollar value and we were both sitting horseback and he looked across the valley and said i don't understand how these people can sell not understanding the economic pressure there were on these people. he leaned forward and i could remember his gnarled hands and he looked at me and said when you have the land you have

something you can't feed your family is, when you have the land you got a dollar and with the land is gone you've got nothing and without conservation and securing the land base, we've got nothing and as those ranchers and agricultural landowners can learn to trust the conservation initiatives in the local communities and land across the country can help them secure that land base and i think the biggest challenges to that is it shouldn't be on the back of agricultural land owners to provide the natural resources this country appreciate. the need to be compensated for that. there needs to be greater federal funding in the programs. there's a wonderful start we are tremendously grateful for what we need that funding secure and it needs to be more. there's never enough. and the author is this huge bonus of the tax staring us in the face how we pass that to the next generation is a huge challenge to all of us.

>> jaime, lynne's comment could be applied to the force and with your experience and the foreside interested in what you see as important in the future of allowing us to maintain the force so we still have it. >> i am a forester by education and gave up the practice at forestry it seems like generations ago but one of the things is trying to find a long-term force vision. where do the forests fit into the nation's future? it seems we are living back home in idaho and forest land of wonders and you look at the small communities that are forestry dependent and every time there is a shift in the political pendulum one way or the other the comity, the certainty is in doubt. when you find a way to find the sense of long-term certainty for these communities and maybe i am being political life but i can still hope there is something we can do for this courageous

leadership to find a way that there is certainty in these communities. and i look at one of the things when i was working at the timber council in the 1990's we passed the indian national forestry management acted one of the things the act called for was the first ever independent study of indian forest land, their management and mission of forest land and we included a blue-ribbon panel to go out and do this investigation and one of the things that was a significant finding in the report is this independent panel said that indian forests of the striking potential to serve as models of sustained about and the reason to keep to the conclusion was the sense of community they have on this homeland that we live intimately with the consequences of the decisions about how we manage those lands during difficult economic times or even changes in political trouble leadership we would never sell those lands or relocate our operations elsewhere swith the indian

forester there was always a sense of certainty, long-term stability in the future. and i know there's a lot of communities out west where i'm from that struggle with what that certainty is and that is why we need to call for a long-term stable forestry vision and this nation which can survive for one administration to the next. >> you know, mayor booker, when we talk about certainty one of the things that unfortunately is certain is our youngsters are not getting all doors as much and the consequence of that at least in part is a rising level of obesity which can cause serious problems for the young people involved and certainly difficulties for the community because of health care and loss of productivity. i am pretty interested in what you've been able to do or what you think is important in terms of getting us our young people better come connected to the outdoors and what kind of impact beyond the obvious might have experience with that i think

you've got to share that. >> the environmental are challenging and not just in this community but i've worked in connecticut and i see a video like we saw earlier and i get misty eyed. we are so proud a beaming about the country and i love the purple mountains magazine but if you come to my community and want to talk about preserving the habitat for buffalo they are going to look at you like you are -- like you have fornes on your head yourself. [laughter] so, you know, there is a powerful disconnect between and understandably so between families struggling to make but i for their kids and you can't preach to people, you can't compel them with video and what have you, you have to show that there is a way that you can significantly improve your life and we are going to find ways to help you do it and i hear people all the time preach in my

community about stop eating fast food, stop eating trends that and the like but if you drive through to don't see grocery stores you see mcdonald's, burger king and the like so these are the problems we have to as a nation combat because 80% of americans live in the cities like newark or the immediate suburbs so what we have tried to do is create a cultural norm that are going to in power the residence to be successful so people understand my kids got diabetes, my kids have asthma. that has direct relationship what is going on in your neighborhood and we will need is a that you don't have to walk 5 miles to a park but we are going to try to put one in your neighborhood that we are going to reconnect to not only by having a part in your neighborhood we are going to show you by creating the part number one your family is going to have job opportunities. things that park that we are going to stays delete to sustain

and do solar panel installations but you know what we have kids right now who attracted to solar companies to the city and they are training young kids at risk of dropping out of high school and disaffected youths are going to get jobs to not just have an opportunity to the solar panels but have a long path that makes sense for them. closed problems to talk about from obesity to the carbon footprint and the like often seem distanced people or can help. we who are doing public policy have to find ways to join with others to create a real tangible opportunities and change in people's neighborhoods and that is what is going on in the work and some people represented whether the trusts republic land or wonderful epa cabinet member in newark just last week is coming up with solutions that transform people's lives right

now where they are and i found that by getting kids we created this wonderful oasis in the middle of the central york which is one of the poorest census tracks to the greater conservancy the but now we take classrooms who don't, can't afford average budget cuts going on in states going of country and getting them to afford to take the bus assemblies is hard so by doing it right in the city and kids to give the first steps for word about nature and receiving a church they create a bridge for their greater understanding of the west and other areas of the country that are just as critical and the last thing i will say is that is the power of the national is they are becoming so much real and it is a guy that wrote a letter in a jail cell and 63 before i was even born who said that if justice anywhere is a justice anywhere and they were caught in the network of neutrality tied in the common ground and destiny so that is a spiritual statement that is now the truth more so than ever when it comes to our environment and

the job of us who love the cities and the way most americans with us to go forward with a better to understand that we do have a common destiny and we of great injustice in the environment that we don't solve and the work we will not be about to solve it anywhere. >> this is an interesting point. when theodore roosevelt was attempting to focus on conservation i suspect that the country was more rural than it is today so the question i have from the historical perspective is the fact we are more organized country to get more difficult for us to make that connection do you see this as a larger barrier, larger challenge than perhaps president roosevelt faced? >> yes he could do things in the west because places was a territory like mexico and arizona, oklahoma, hawaii, alaska has a kind of executive power to do things but roosevelt had asthma and he associated his illness with urbanization on

with the pollution going on in the east river and the hudson river his uncle robert wrote books on and went for congress to create fish hatcheries and repopulate fish of new york so he would start as governor he needed to save the power states to protect that area in new york to keep the beautiful quips there. he wanted niagara falls and didn't get that but what roosevelt salles and where we are starting to see more and more is the importance for the city's for natural places for national-security reasons if you look at the everglades roosevelt went earlier and you saw the picture of the film that was brinton island in the louisianan, the islands off louisiana, those islands are totally eroded when roosevelt and they they were the speed bumps, the hurricane would hit and would slow it down did you would get the wetlands of

louisiana that would protect orleans. in the 50's oil and gas in the shipping industry journal and built the canal the mississippi river gulf outlet and abroad in salt water in the mississippi freshwater and killed all of the cypress trees, killed the wetlands and now every day new orleans are losing two football fields a day in louisiana and we are getting closer to destruction because what plans are about national security and we have to start thinking of some of these urban areas to be protected by nature and i think of newark and an incredible burgle area in a beautiful area where we call the jersey flacks today is like a dumping ground and creates toxins for people. we still haven't caught up with the sickness of the industrial disease and roosevelt was worried about 100 years ago of the problems of over the veto

over urbanization if you didn't build enough green zones and we call environmental bumpers owns around urban areas. >> let me ask the panel starting with you, lynne, you mentioned the fact that he wondered whether or not people know where their food comes from and appreciate that. what steps can be taken should we be taking to better connect rural and urban residents, just curious in terms of your house lots what are those important connections and how can we emphasize them and how can we sort of reeducate people about the fact that we are interconnected as the mayor indicated? >> it's very interested distorted my whole conservation voyage. i was one of those franchise that go to town and works we can have health insurance and i saw in my community there was an effort and fission process to learn how would our community was went to look like 20 years

into the future and it concerned me because i heard people talking about what we're going to do to preserve faith and i didn't hear anything about production agriculture and that concerned me because primarily agricultural communities. so i decided the only thing i could do was get involved and i didn't do it willingly. like of drug into it by some of the people in the conservation committee. we heard that in the field office in the community and we were horrified. we thought was the beginning of the end. [laughter] and jamie williams is in here. he's the one. and i give a presentation to the local cattlemen's meeting and jaime was in there and came up after me after the meeting and said we need to talk and i said i don't think i want to talk to you. [laughter] and what i realized is that i needed to get involved in my local community and because of that your local extension agent brought a group of people together that what from -- or from a diverse background of

conservationists, business community to the rangers and made us sit in a room and said we are not going to leave this room until you can agree on something because it had gotten contentious in our community and he talked about what we all wanted and what we could do to connect everyone to the land and make everybody see the same vision. and we learned quickly that what we have to do this concentrated on the value that we share, concentrate and the most exciting thing i think we learned is that we have a lot in common and we never thought we had a thing in common when we stepped into that room and we we wanted to preserve the landscape. we may have different reasons to get there but ultimately what came out of that meeting was that small course of people with a larger community vision that appreciated everything that everyone brought to that community and everyone that their contributions and what they meant and because of that we passed the farm ordnance in our community that helped instruct and educate people

about the difficult needs of agriculture and sometimes it's not pretty. it is messy and when you live next to a ranch of those are things you need to understand. he need to know the sensing laws art about. we also passed a participant development for a program where we tax ourselves where we were able to purchase easements to protect areas and ranchers and farmers in the area and then the third thing that was exciting to me as we started community non-profit cut agricultural alliance that connected the resort community to the ranching community so that they could understand how they could benefit from one another and by the really did need one another and we didn't precede each other as threats or irritations and from the initiative is how i went on to become the executive director of the killer of commons association and how i ended up in this job and i think the funniest story that i can tell is my husband and i were in a local coffee shop and one of

the past presidents of the colorado cattlemen's association named part came to the coffee shop while we were there and i had known him pretty much my whole life and he came out and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said missy i think the world of you but you are throwing dust on the river. and i sometimes didn't know which community ideal -- but i knew that we were in the late printable stewards of the land and we loved the land and you have to get involved and you have to figure out a way to get others involved because if you don't get dustin cultures of the table no solution you will come up with will be meaningful or lasting. sprick how about from your perspective? >> and idaho we live that connection every day and i will use salmon as an example because it is like the buffalo to the tribes on the lions to the complaints. the tribe has an ambitious

salmon which project and being from idaho, one of the conservative states and one it is difficult and being in environmentalists is difficult and being a democrat is difficult and an indian is difficult trying to be a samet meeting environmental democrat like me -- [laughter] [applause] it makes life pretty difficult but it shows the importance of developing collaboration. and if you think about this, where our homeland is it is right in the mountains that form the boundary between montana and idaho and if you think about the high country watersheds, and that is the dread half of clean water for the communities it is also the place where habitats are getting an endangered salmon species in the basin and if you think about we send that water down the river to those communities along the way and the salmon with them and then there comes the adult salmon and

here's where they have to travel before they get to the homeland. 470 miles of the columbia and snake river passing eight hydroelectric dams, irrigation diversions, farming and ranching comanche's, nuclear reservation in central washington, municipal cities, industrial development, residential development. landers and what secretary salazar said, congressman hastings from central washington and i can guarantee the issues we are facing their because if you don't think they are connected by managing the breadbasket of the clean water in idaho and its impact on the don river communities there is an intimate connection with the question is whether that connection is through conflict or whether it is based on trying to find a common will to solve the difficult problems. and it's interesting to define this connection in human terms of the water flows down, the river is the backbone of the regional economy and specific to

the to pacific northwest and we think about the human connections in the downstream of fact that we are all connected by river. to really think of it as a natural resource of salmon productivity and it's important to have brought large scale conservation efforts taking part in this country where we need to share the common interests because as it was stated earlier the salmon no no political boundaries. they do not know the political boundaries so how we move from the conflict the defines the relationship to one of mutual respect and common understanding. i think with the species get lifted then it becomes a natural treasure where even the one toward the right to say how the salmon are protected and managed and the pacific northwest so i hope that the connectivity and support for the salmon restoration would ring loud and clear. those are national treasures managed by the people who live in the states for the benefit of all. >> ray, i often hear when i travel around the countryside

and talk to farmers a bit of frustration that there isn't a better understanding and appreciation for what farm families do for this country in terms of food and fiber and now as you mentioned fuel. how can we in your view create a better connection and what are your thoughts about the significance of the connection? >> one of the things we have to do is farmers have to take responsibility for the shortfalls they have and i become frustrated and a lot of laws that work for hard on conservation and conservation park cars that we are making not as quick of progress as much progress as needed. in argentina we have no telling and the advanced way beyond what were at the less than one-third and what we want to talk about what a great job we are doing in the conservation you mentioned

the loss we have and the impact that we are having on the phosphate from office and the impact epoxy zone and so forth so we want to come back but we also have to take responsibility and make sure that we are moving forward as quickly as is needed and what the resources dictate. a lot of the conservation things we want a land help perpetuate wildlife populations and haunting has been the conductivity for a lot of me and my partnership partners that we have worked on. we do a lot of conservation programs that utilize the u.s. ca programs and private conservation organizations like the ducks unlimited and nature conservancy and business and we put together some really nice conservation projects. the spring the wild life to those areas and that allows you to get out and hunt and go out with a dad or on coal or rapier and get your experience. conservation, you've got to get them out there and a lot of times hunting is a great way to do it and in indiana now we have

less than 5% license sales for the state of indiana so there's a lot of people and if there is wildlife well there will never be a small boy falling down the fence row any more. so farmers, you know, to link up and be with people they've got to have clean water and help a tribute to the restoration of some of our streams and habitat along the streams. that diversity is what is going to draw people out to the landscape as we become bigger and bigger farmers and we fragment the land into the big fields. a lot of the west is protecting the streams and arteries and there we are having the opportunity to create these native prairie grass buffers and so forth so hunting for me has been a way to bring the kids to my farm. we get huge amounts of migratory third populations. people are by that. people like to come out and bird watching and waterfowl hunting

and of course the growth of other species like whitetail dear have made a lot of outdoor opportunities for young people to get out so i don't want to disavow the value of hunting and getting people out there. a lot of times you get out there and haunted and you're sitting in the tree stand gaining huge appreciation for the resource. that appreciation for the resource is what turns a young person into adult to be here today to try to make as much impact. >> hunting and fishing are 182 billion-dollar industry nationwide, close to a million people employed so it is a significant economic factor. mayor, do you think folks in your city have an appreciation for the water for the food for the of robert kennedy's the world parts of the country that representative of how can we make that closer and better connection? >> first of all i'm happy you are doing what you're doing to

protect the salmon and i glad you are where you are. if you can to new jersey as a democrat, sam and eating democrat you could be elected to and i don't want the competition. [laughter] [applause] i'm sitting here believe kosher having this perverse idea if we cut shooting 50% but now i'm thinking to myself if we really spoiled life into one of the park's maybe shoot the animals and not each other. [laughter] this might be more productive panel that i thought. [laughter] look, i praise the programs and i had some people grabbed me from the audience amazing that linkages of getting young people from communities like newark into the wild life. we have programs right now doing the same thing. they are transformed it in the open up world's to people and give people a vision as i said before that helps them rise but

there are powerful movements going on in the nation and movements going on in newark and i hope living from the movements to the revolutions to bring those realities to the city and one of the big ones we are working on now is urban gardening. i don't think we should have a nation that trucks tomatoes thousands of miles to bring them to ward new jersey when we could be taking so much of my land in newark and doing a local farming right within the city and getting my community better access to home grown food is and kids involved in that as we are finding in newark and the gardening programs try a revolution. i saw a clip of the program flipping through channels lead at might not be able to fall asleep and saw a man in a suburban classroom showing vegetables the kids couldn't even name and recognize because they were red text and forced where their food came from so when she was working in new

jersey before she got a promotion to become secretary, which always seems weird to me, but now secretary jackson, we were trying to take these contaminants out of the soil that are poisoning the kids and turning that into parks and not adding to our kids health so it is critical we have programs that link our kids the sickly lifting them and moving them to discover that the nation that i love but let's not forget the fact that by creating powerful partnerships we can create urban form land that creates jobs and healthy foods that low was obesity rates and we can create urban parks through partnerships and the last thing i will say is i got called over the bloomberg administration and mayor bloomberg to differ, a partner planting trees and giving the best political advice of my life he said you need to become a billionaire first and then the mayor. [laughter]

and we immediately took one of his programs called quote code take the field," a program going on actually for many years and said okay we are going to set out to transform the urban parks. and i got it used for the language of pink and parks in new york because i would name a park after everybody, said after you, whatever. people like to trust the republican land nobody thought we could do it but we have had a building and parks in the city of newark. the largest expansion over a century. so we need to have these incredible preserves around the country and work that so many folks are doing is so important but let's not forget that there is gold under the concrete of the city's that could become again a thriving area. the 90-year-old i talked to in the art just this week to told me she used to swim in the river, that we can actually have

that reality come back teaming up with wild life where it took place to bring the community together where we need each other whereas the force of economic development because now you have like other water forts like baltimore, business the to business springing up around and you bring them together where americans again are experiencing the soul of the nation and the beauty and the grandeur of each other by coming together to share in the nature is beauty. >> i tell you, mayor come after you are finished with this job you have an opportunity as a stand-up comedian. [laughter] you mentioned private public partnerships and we have questions from the audience and i want to ask one to the panel right now and i will start with you, ray if it's okay. what are the best inducements or incentives to involve farmers, ranchers and other landowners often we read of potential regulation into the kind of private public partnership necessary to conserve the working landscapes? >> for all the conservation projects i have done certainly

partnerships have been the cornerstone of making the project happen. while in the past and continues to be the major funds of conservation and the agriculture community are the provisions of the farm bill and they are what links most farmers to conservation that anymore as these partnerships with energy companies i've done a lot of work with energy companies because of their impact that coal burning and coal production in the area had so we've been able to do endangered species work and i have done bamboo planning for the swampy and nesting islands and so forth so partnerships with energy companies and of course energy is going to be a major part of the agricultural production and be a major part of the landscape but there will be conservation partners that are going to come forward and it's going to come

from us. there will be conservation partners that come forth from the and trust and there will be lots of people with their id is ducks unlimited and all these other partners and states of indian and our local counties. in india and our major funding for the soil and water conservation district comes from accounting funding so you have this multitude of partners that comes together on conservation programs and its these partnerships that build the confidence with the farmers that these are long-term, these are for the public good and that they can make the kind of impact that can change things on the landscape. farmers are really struggling right now because the land values are growing so high at the expense of putting up the profit so great that the risk is so much they tend to want to be focused on only how much money is likely to produce and profitability, all of these partnerships can bring together the kind of funding and the kind of confidence and knowledge and

education of our important conservation programs are. but again, the usda has to stay right there because on private farmland ownership right now, those programs are essential. a lot of times we piggyback with that is the w. r. prb crp that we use state dollars. it is that piggybacking with all of the partnerships that brings the funding that makes it so that those dollars can compete with all of production and that is what we compete with right now is should i be keeping that since roe or grow corn? should i grow corn as close to the stream as possible so that this economic pressure that is changing the environment right now and i think energy production is going to help to be a part of that tour and i think these partnerships with all these different entities that have an interest in the rural landscape is bring to make the difference.

>> jaime, the mountain west partnerships. >> i appreciate the opportunity to run for mayor. we will have to an ex dvorkin to the next preservation. [laughter] if the secretary will sign the papers we will get the work on that. again speaking from personal experience, one of the opportunities i had and actually i'm from idaho by live in st. paul minnesota but when i was at home in idaho i served on the citizen advisory committee in one of the largest for it private forest landowners in the state. certainly the tribe we had our industrial forest lands, we have a pulp and paper manufacturing that six right on one of the major contra leaders to the reservation. but again we want to define their relationship on just conflict alone or cooperation and we began to explore troubled partnerships with the company's and i felt that potlatch was a courageous organization. they were doing work with

organizations like the trust for public land on the forest legacy program to put a majority of the land in northern idaho under conservation easement to prevent them from being developed on higher development types of motives so they were providing those land and the tribe began to reach out several partnering with them bringing their expertise and restoration as well as tribal dollars and dollars able to cobble together from other funding sources that include the federal government and we began doing restoration projects on the potlatch lands, the great land is putting intense as to protect the areas. we were replacing the areas to make sure the the fish could pass through to the responding habitats to reworking to abandon the roads there were no longer using to reduce the sedimentation into the stream systems to beat the other thing we did it to the potlatch manufacturing arm and labor union is we started to get the youth involved in this effort.

the tribe that provides the san and the labor union crafted this facility started by scrap materials they had and would bring the children and from the local community and they would incubate the eggs and have classrooms come out to watch the eggs develop and when they got to a certain size they were responsible for releasing it into the river so i always thought was interesting that the pot leche cooperated in a project where we get the youth involved because this is tough work and we will not get it all done in our generation so it's important to have the u.s. somehow involved in the standiford because they will inherit these unfinished tasks and hopefully the kind of work that we develop that also inherits the spirit of the population. >> i figure my time at cattlemen's one of the most exciting projects i was involved and we got a call from a group of landowners in the corridor in

the valley right in secateurs salazar's backyard. they felt like they were being targeted by aggressive development and were concerned about what would happen to their communities. a lot of the ranchers had been there five or seven generations and was this amazingly beautiful corridor in which the headwaters, the creek that went down to the wild life preserver and had formed a lot of the water in the valley below and they had amazing population species some were found milward il's because the storch of the rangers for generations and their families and as we took our first drive with them it was incredibly beautiful but i also discovered what made the area unique is there was about 19,000 acres along the bottom of the fertile valley that surrounding it was 350,000 acres of federal land, service and bureau of land management. so we understood that this is

some potential to get to the people on board for what the ranchers with their vision was. they really wanted to preserve the valley to reduce their vision and the fri had we not waste your supplemental implement it so we started working with people, the forest service and the local county, we started working with of the nature conservancy and had a presence in that area and was one of their priority areas and it took a long time to get this vision and founding together but it was amazing and i just called the one who took my place at cattlemen and found out that now that the have preserves above the 20,008 got another 5,000 that they are waiting for the funding on and they had secured almost the entire corridor and with partnerships from the nrsc prevent the money from the great outdoors colorado funded by the state lottery and from the fish and wildlife foundation and nature conservancy from the

rocky mountain elk foundation and the decorah cheese foundation because also in this area is one of the few places in the country where it is game species that live together, elk and dear and it doesn't happen very often and it is just amazing you could go on and on about the value but what we were able to accomplish because we brought people together who had vision and reason to care about that and i just talked to the service person, the line supervisor a couple of weeks ago and they put out which i never thought would happen in the valley but the rangers were so proud of what they'd done. the with the baseline as you enter into the valley, the corridor is talking about the donation of the rancher's commitment that they've made to the future because if any of the ranch's go away it really inhibits their ability to be able to manage these public lands are around them because they generational we have grazed the valley to get their permits

and these ranchers go out of business or get developed they lose their ability to what they've done and their families for generations. it's amazing example. there is a ton you could talk about. borderlands down in the arizona border that word of an incredible things preserving entire ecosystems and working with the federal government and all the local stakeholders and there is a lot of amazing things we just want to refer a good job of talking about. >> we have about three minutes left on the panels when we to challenge all of you in 30 seconds or less to answer the following question. when we reconvene 100 years from now what you hope they would have said about this group of folks of conservation america >> i think if the times come theodore roosevelt would say we have to do this for our children's children that conservation is about the future and just as there was a ccc in

the 1930's that franklin roosevelt and company planted over a billion trees we are doing things for young people. we do have an earth day and teachers use it as a one day common kind of the arbor day of today but when i saw the u.s. fish and wildlife doing with the climate conservation corps where we get our young people engaged in the outdoors and in nature and deal with italy local government project on a local level so they can start planting the vegetable gardens but idaho can have young people work in the fish hatchery is that we are a generation of new cutting edge conservationists here in the united states. [applause] sprick i will answer it this way somebody challenged my husband saying you really ought to be doing something different with your life that you were going to

make money at and make a mark in this world, and my husband who is definitely the tall and silent type looked at me and this is a family member who set, i looked at him and said the way i look at it is i'm here for a very short span of time and what i am doing right now is an obligation and responsibility, and what i -- it is preserving this gift for the next generation. >> jaime? >> a friend of mine, charles wilkinson, once was speaking about the try get charles recognized that is the land based society and he said that there is no pain like the pain of land-based people who've lost their land. how do we keep these lands within the common ownership in the family ownership? i think one of the ways we look at it and i can see this peak back where we came from i think of the past generation and all of a sudden you see the emergence of tribes and

conservation leaders across the country. we have tribal leaders in the audience responsible for restoring wild salmon into the waters and tribal leaders banding together in an unprecedented effort in the yukon both sides of the border to us and canada working together collectively to clean up the watershed. other tribes reintroducing the side of idaho acquiring a wildlife mitigation land working with private land owners like it or get working with the r. dee address and i think when we look ahead people would say the tribes to have it right and certainly there's nothing to fear about tribal sovereignty or treaty rights but try to capable resource partners. >> conservation doesn't come easy to protect our resources and have a vision of the long-term is hard work and the president talks about that on other issues. we have to do the hard work and i told them after today's conference that we have the commitment and the long term

vision to do the difficult work and make the strides for thoughtfulness to get there in the future and the impact is measurable. >> there is a man in my city who lives in a high-rise apartment building and across the street is overrun with weeds used for serious crime for drug dealing and he got a stimulus check and mail and instead of using it like many of us might have he went out and bought at the local home depot and lawn mower and a weak record, right in the drug dealers territory and started attending to that lot and to the earth mixing his spirit with that plot of ground and the first day he almost got in trouble his neighbors were shocked what he was doing and what he was going to get in trouble because he inadvertently backed up the drug dealers negative. [laughter] every single day he was digging

up and tending to a piece of our earth. eventually the drug dealer's left. the community rejoiced and he transformed a major area of our city by getting up every day not thinking that life should be a big battle but realizing that life is about getting up and doing something you are not expected to do that is a small act of kindness. my hope is when we come back here all of us will have not only evidence of that behavior but inspired it and others and will ultimately will answer the call for children who every single day in america the nation we live in and resounds the simple words that have to be true that we are one nation under god invisible with liberty and justice for all. [applause] >> i can ask you one more time to get a round of applause for all of the panel.

thank you very much. [applause] good job. thank you. thank you. do that. thanks very much. apeciate it. a great job. thank you. lynne, thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> this year's c-span studentcam documentary competition last middle and high school students to create a five to eight minute figure dealing with one of the country's greatest strengths or challenge the country is facing. here is one of the second place winners. >> many people consider the united states to be the leader of the free world. asked leader shouldn't we have the best education system? so we can continue to make the world a better place for all. do we currently have the best education system? according to the psia tested by

the oecd we only rank as average. >> oecd come organization for economic cooperation and development for a better world economy. areas such as economics, science and technology, taxes, education, migration and growth all of the concerns of the 21st century education is the key to ensuring people everywhere have a fair chance of finding good jobs with stable futures. oecd studies education system examining what works and what. >> how does the oecd evaluate the effectiveness of the educational system? they use a program for international student assessment. >> this brings me to pisa. what is the pisa?

it is a global assessment looking at the performance of what we believe for the most essential subject areas but we don't just look at people's confidence. we are also interested in people's attitudes, their positions. we test the highest competence we also want to know whether young people see signs that will open a life opportunities for them but they understand what they learn in school relates to their life and reconnect data to the parents, schools and systems that help us understand where the education systems actually deferred. >> of the pisa surveys are given every three years beginning in the year 2000. the results of the tests may be surprising. united states has consistently performed no higher than average. these average results for the united states for in all subject testing. math, science and breeding as well as an all of the years

tested, 2000, to cause the tree and in 2006. what does this say about americans and our education system? in 2004 "the wall street journal" headline read a "economic timebomb u.s. teams are among the worst at math." over the same years other countries such as finland, canada, new zealand, japan and korea scored above average across all subjects. if education is the most powerful weapon we can used to change the world comegys speed pisa test results indicate we cannot lead the future because we are feeling a reason for generations? president obama said, quote karina's is enough. the education system is one in the of the world and that is exactly what we intend to do. that is exactly what the budget and submitting the congress has begun to achieve. >> president obama's plan requires increased spending to improve the educational system.

however, is this the answer? in 1966, james cochran, a sociological researcher conducted an extensive study on the effectiveness of our educational system. according to his research, the amount of money spent on students didn't affect their test results. instead, he found students with higher socio-economic status scored higher on tests. in addition, students who went to school with kids whose parents had a higher socio-economic status did better as well. 40 years later, things have not changed. for example, the united states outspent scurry on education, and korea consistently out scores the u.s. on pisa test scores. in florida for hillsborough county school district is taking a different approach to improve student achievement. it was selected as one of four districts receive a grant from

the bill and melinda gates foundation of $100 million over seven years. bill gates spoke about the changes needed in the educational system at the 2009 ncsl conference in philadelphia. >> when we see the power that the test scores have for the teachers we think we should identify those teachers. we should reward them. we should retain them. we should make sure they learned from them. >> regarding the grants in the school district, vicki phyllis, the foundation's education director, said it's all about the importance of teachers. it is the seven year experiment to keep the best teachers possible in the classroom. mary ellen said our ultimate goal is to dramatically increase student achievement, raise or attrition rates and inshore college and career readiness. the way to do this is to ensure

that our teachers are adept, in spite of and have the support they need. local administrators i spoke with feel that better teaching of the teachers is the key to success. >> one of the first things we do is a lot of professional development for the teachers, that means that we have teachers taking training sometimes a weekend, sometimes after school, and sometimes even during the school day where we provide a substitute so the teacher can go out and get their training. >> another administrator spoke of the cooperative learning strategy the train the teachers to use. >> dr. kagan, we use it as one of our many strategies. he said the problem is the replacement cycle. they get something new and forget everything else. you don't throw everything out because you get something new. always k