acknowledge is that we can cut some money from the military. the other side the liberals must also compromise that theyon can cut some money from drastic spending. freezing domestic spending so in 2010 levels as the president proposed in his state of the union does almost nothing. i in fact it freezes in inflatedno spending levels and will do a nothing to avoid a crisis. .. grows perilously large. as long as i sit at henry clay's desk, i will remember his lifelong desire to forge agreement, but i will also keep close to my heart the principled stand of his cousin, cassius clay who refused to forsake the life of any human simply to find agreement. madam president i thank

effort to repeal the new health care law failed in the senate today. a procedural vote capped the republican proposal to repeal the law from advancing. this hourlong portion of the debate begins with new york senator, charles schumer. >> thank you mr. president, and i rise and strong and vehement veh opposition to the amendment ofd -- offered by the minority leader senator mcconnell to repeal the r health care reform law and first i would say to my goodood friend from nevada yes, we wouldes we like to work together to furtherther reduce costs but this bill does reduce costs significantly.. has s the cboai has said in no uncertain the terms that repeal would ruin the d deficit by 230 billion in the first decade and more than a trillion in the second decade a

good deal of the waste, inefficiency duplication thatthe d we'll all know is part of our system and that's the place we have to continue to work the wor together. 's a our counlstry delivers the best health care in the world but it's also the most m ineffic inefficient. heal we spend 17% of gdp on health care. the next highest spending unde country isr t only 10%. n t under the reform law we will begin the first large step in keeping quality care but getting the cost under control. colleags on now if my colleagues on the other side of the nile said you have know, you're right, we have to reduce cost, we have a better way and the offer a bill on theaybe floor, well then maybe we could take alook look at but they are silenced they are easy to sit put there and say repeal. what would youan put in its place? e the reason the amendment will be

defeated today is because the budget point of order which says if you're going to raise the30 billionn the deficit $230 billion in the you first decade, and a trillion t dollars in the second, you better find out where the money is coming from and the otherhe side o is silenced, not a peep a about where the money would comeould come from. so that makes one feel this is sort of for show like wave the flag for some of our hard-core supporters who definitely wantfinitelyt repeal but there is nothing inits its place. theld the old mantra that the other side seems to have some of them retial and replace is gone. we it's now repeal and we have nothing to replace it with.f that doesn't meet the fever of the american people. are in fact, the numbers against gwing. repeal is growing. about a only about one-fifth of those sayhey who say they want to see the lawhanged changed want the full repealed.

only 20% of the public want full repeal. if those if those numbers are correct and i believe they are that an means almost certainly a mes tha t majority of republican votersers don don't want full repeal. in thisrea the bottom line, mr. president particularly in this area of health care, talking about deficit reduction is a lotact easier than doing it.denced that fact is evidenced by the amendment, my friend, the leader from kentucky will offer. orde i that is why a budget point of order is the appropriate response, and that is why this defeated will be defeated rather handily. later in later days maybe my colleague will come up with parts of thechange. bill they wish to change. we will be open to it. change senator stabenow is offering an amendment to change the 1099 section of the law. she has worked with people on both sides t of the ogle. been i know senator johanns has been're gointo a leader republican from nebraska.

we are going to pass that today. to change the idea that a we are not willing to change any part of the law is here belied by what we are doing here on the floor. we want to work together. but somehow when we get a repeal amendment, repeal the whole thing, no substitute, no answerhe to how to deal with the debt one wonders what this repeal is an f all about.ne o and furthermore what is one of am the reasons -- one is the american public becoming more favorable to the small as we go through this debate that is what the polling dataow has shown. t, well i would give two reasons. first, many of the horrors that were being cheated out as fill was all was being put together, be proving not to be true.i'll never i will never forget in the summer last summer someone came gen

over to me a gentleman from long island said senatorvoted for schumer, i'm a democrat. election i voted for you in, every election but i'm not going to why ? vote for you again and i said why? sd, i hate the health care law. i'm going to lose my health benefits on labor day. i said what is your profession? he said on the new york city cy firefighter. he lived on long island but he island, was a new york city firefighter. even anyone who knows a littleefight about the health care bill knowse health that a new york city c firefighter firef will not lose their benefits on labor day or any time off under this provision. but this poor man who listened to some talk radio and convinced them it was going to lose itsll benefits. but that is fading. h i haven't spoken to the gentleman since. i d i don't know his name i just met i just him at the summer street fair but he found his benefits are he -- just as good today as they were street on the day before labor day.

it's pretty logical to suppose that he would have set repealedny the law a year ago but would he a say so today? is another reason and probably iortant even more important reason why law the mall is gaining support asas people learn about it and we o know some thanks to ourepubli republicanca colleagues because they habeve given a second chancecond chanc to make a first impression.d lt close to looked last year said rightly the messaging right or wrong false or true was done better by th the the opponents than the proponents of the law. but now as people get all theyearn are learning so many ingood things in the bill. i and i dare say most of my the ais colleagues on the other side of those the ogle want to keep those. i would be quite certain that the vast majority of americans would want to keep those things and the polling data backs that up. so when you just use a hatchet not a scalpel you lose all the good things many of which weree and are in effect today. y.

so i would ask my colleagues on the other side of the ogle whohe support repeal do you support s increasing prescriptionup drug costs for the nation's senior the squawks fix to this law the so-calledso-calle doughnut hole which was created in the prescription bush, plan of 2003 under george bush will be fixed. when seniors in this donut hole which u've pai is when your idncome when you paid about $2,500 for drugs the government will help you no longer will now get 50% discount on their medications. age this will amount to the averagewhen you a senior saving $550 when you are a senior and a fixed-income $550of is a nice amount of change and will help a whole lot of people. every yea the discount keeps increasing every year until last crumb of is the doughnut hole is gone. i will admit that is a mixed

metaphor because a doughnut hole by definition fhas no crumbs. [laughter] but could try staff, excellentany work. crumbs. [laughter] in any case, sounded very good to me too but in these times,ngs aren these savings are not exactly chicken feed.r they will make a huge difference when for seniors. doughnut hol the average senior when the doughnut hole was eliminated comes a in all will save more than $2,000 a year. how about the provision that helps young people? everyone of us knows of instances where young men andnd women get out of co llege or getf high sch and out of high school and go into the job market and oftentimeshat the new jobs they are seeking doesn't provide health care. o that has happened quite often. it's a new job low-paying job they are just starting out buteople i know i have spoken to many their young people like this and their parents. there's a lot ofdoes anguish.

does that young person who maybe has a job that pays 25 or $30,000 a year pay a thousand dollars a month for health care for himself or herself? t they can't afford that. n to on the other hand not to goung and with healthcare is they are young and healthy, but god forbid they have an accident, go to the hospital, come up withexpense some unusual and expensive to gng seize what are they going to? this keeps lots of people of that might read these bills solve that problem. uil because health care should you have it until you're 26.rce a by then you're in the labour force a little bit longer and o the likelihood of your employers giving you health care is somewhat greater will do mys on the colleagues on the oversight of the call i will want to take are you that away? t if so what are youo going to put you in its place?l what are you going to tell the a young people 22 23 24 25 26

but they are going to do? anoth and there's another provision think that i think is really worth ke ep keeping.we all khat preventive medicine. we all know that one of the big problems with our health care hers in system is supposed to some of the others in the other western countries is we don't do enough inst prevention. and so instead of the disease being that in the but making hlthier a the patient healthy year and costing the the s system less it waits and waits and waits.th those who put this health care e tha bill together realize that it d set early detection saves not but only lives but billions of bill, dollars.medi so now in this healthcare care bill fre medicare will provide a friednce a wellness check out once a year for every senior citizen. if there's a little bit of it in illness they committed in the tect but. o we know the earlier you detect cancer or heart disease or or diabetes or emphysema the better

chance of curing, the lesso expensive to cure so this will dolla save billions of dollars just giving certain text as the che wellness checkups will saveve people themselves money but more important importantly, save the medicare system a lot of money. it's important to save thele to save people to save money, too of course. of and it makes a great deal ofeast sense. aca mammography can find breast cancer before anesthetizes. a blood test can find prostate can cancer before it spreads. other se of the a what are likely senator side of the ogle going to to say toyoing seniors? what are they going to say to medicare s theys medicare system which is effec ti trying to get more effective by in getting involved in the earlydetection detection and prevention? when for did it?or that's what you're doing when

you vote for repeal. you have nothing in its place.s however out the small businesscredit? tax credit? my dad was a small businessman.xterminating he had an exterminatingnow business. buss i know how small businessmenather t struggled. my father tdi bdecn't truly think happy until he left the business. is now praise god he's 87 and is a happier guy at 87 than he was 60 b struggling in that business. one of the dust the small is the business people face is the high cost of health care for their to pro employees. they want to provide because they want their employees to bee mos healthy and because they like thei most of yourr employees and seewhere else because they want to keep the employees from going somewhere else if they are good but it costs so much. t well here is what is in the bill. ma if you are a small business that makes less than $1.2 million than 25 and you have fewer than 25 employees i think it's 25 or g

fewer employees, you get a 35% credit. in given that 50% in 2014.o smal huge help to small businesses that are already providing health care for their workers and a great incentive for small businesses that are not all ready to do so. hundreds of thousands of small businesses in my state alone this. will benefit from this.riends what, my friends on the otherai side of the aisle, are you are saying to those small t businesses. what are you saying to the want workers? goodlatte this alone because you want to repeal what, but you to have nothing nothing to replace a. and there's one more provisional to speak of. so many good things in this bill no matter how much you don't like the bad provisions, and i know that is genuinely held by many of my colleagues to repeal to just it and get rid of the good stuff all makes no sense in my judgment.t.

we have all heard the horrorstories stories of insurance companies when you go to them after you your spouse, your kid has anou illness and you say thank god i have have insurance.pany the insurance company or m deliberately or maybe not but the y anyway, they say mr. smith you didn't check off that little box t on 17 you're not covered for what could with. we know the intent was to cover and we all know that thes happy to insurance company was happy to emiums take the premiums even without that dotted i or tea or chipwhen theily was box.hy when the family was healthy and money wasy was coming in. but now all of a sudden they say th bye-bye. tt this bill doesn't allow that to happen. of the kinds of rescissions' that i just talked about are banned.

what are we seeing not just to not the families have experienced this, but to every americano every family with insurance that iurance worries about this what are we saying to them? i we have nothing in its place are because you are great healing not replacing even though people have said early on that that's not what they are doing. c on so i would say in conclusion or just one more point before i to conclude. we are willing to work with you.of the the stabenow amendment on the floor of the senate shows just i that. i would have drafted a differente way and there will be an i amendment that i would prefer. way but either way we are going to ma people address the 1099 issue. osle, man people many people on your side of the on all that was a mistake.ut not every bill is perfect, but a we are not digging in saying we have to have the build exactlyctly as written and as drafted but

if you're saying we have to havef no part of this bill because if you want to retain parts of it you would have had an amendmentse parts o on the floor saying take these parts out and keep these parts in buts you're not. a why? your guess is as good as mine but it's a lot easier to just as tear down and create as weid learned when we did the healthyave care bill. but you really have anou belie obligation unless you believe there shouldn't be a health care system we ought to go back totem the system without any changes in all that we had which nobodyr. liked. it's not fair.ion so, in conclusion number one this bill reduces the deficit, t the repeal increases the deficit and there is no money to make up for those funds that the bill

would bring in.ost by cost-cutting and fees could half. th in second, there are lots of good things in the bill but probably my colleagues would support but they just get rid of them withnt no replacement.he nothing. nothing for the seniors, nothing for the 21 to 26-year-olds were the people treated poorly byies. their insurance companies. work th and third, we want to work withome cha you. there are some changes we could work together in the ballan. walkg down not only the 1099 the further walking down the road of syste the reducing the inefficiencies ints the system. the high cost the waist, while still preserving good care for tha the people who get it. that's something that would lend itselfti in these times of high and worki deficits the bipartisan support and working together. real but today simple repeal. may

again, it may feed some red meat ts to the minority in this countryit's small minority if you believe w the polling who say just repealer you at, but a responsible job of the or legislator whether you agree th with this bill or disagree with bl this bill is not to repeal, butng to improve. that isn't happening today. flr. mr. president, i yield the floor. >> senator from alabama. senor >> i rise in support of senator repeal mcconnell's ability to repeal the health care reform law as s now constituted and will support replacing it with reform truly provide americans with access, quality affordable health carekyrocking reduced skyrocketing health care

costs and o put our nation on a more sustainable fiscal path.ed but the goals can be achieved, but the current bill does not do.ast the joann amendment right to become a reference and was and donehe twice lester and when thegnifican major it democrats got significant majority they voted it downn. after the new members had been added many of them elective on a promise to repeal this bill ever every one virtually. now we now have the agreement to is change the 1099, which is about 1,000 of 1% of what is significant about the i legislation in deed as senator scott brown had been elected a month or so sooner the bill wouldn't have passed as it didecembe on december 24th.

the day before christmas. the american people have never supported this bill.polling n the numbers show they still do not support this bill.slation wa the democratic health care legislation was sold as a package that would reduce insurance premiums by $2,500 per family we were told that r repeatedly. it would trim the federalcit, rede the deficit, reduce the deficit, and 400 immediately create 400,000 new the jobs. none of these prohamises have been met. th they were all false. floor they were attached on the floor by peopleby who were sophisticatedt h and they pointed out how the go matters were not born to be ha achieved and theyve have none. they were false then and they care are false now read the new health care law will cause health care spending to riseext over the next decade. americans will see dramatic increases in their premiums. defic

that is a fact.ill the federal deficit will increase by an additional r $700 billion. this bill does not reduce the deficit, and the law's expense of mandates, penalty and tax losses hikes would lead to job lossesl and layoffs will damage our economy to be the last thing we n need to do now is to have employers lay people off because care of the surging health care cost as it is happening.our talk to small businesses in your communities. as f the nation's reckless fiscalus policy and surging debt brings us ever closer to the tipping point, a debt crisis that couldountry damage our country substantially as it has others around worldssed t respectedhe economists have stressed the need for congress fedal to reduce federal spending and

containing health care losses. these but rather than tackle the our problems that threaten the long-term stability of the new nation, new health care lawyers exacerbate our fiscal crisis by byreating creating a new open-endedmonumental new entitlement, a monumental new entitlement program introducingspending. to $.6 trillion in new spending. tell me how we can spend our $2.6 trillion did not increase spending in our country. our entitlements today are hammering our budget. defic they are searching our deficits.angerous entitlements are dangerous. to the last thing we need to do is t going create a new entitlement that's not going to be contained in itsspenng. spending.g to the according to the congressional budget office, our officials analysts, the new health care

c.b. law, our owno. group, the cbo, appointed by the democratic majority says that the health care law will cause insurance premiums in the individual markets to soar by ten to 13% for american families translating at 212100-dollarsing heaare increase in the cost for purchasing health care coverage by 2016. that's a huge. that another $2100. exact that is a stunning development and is the opposite of the bill. promises of the bill. care cbo scored that pitted the total health care spending in the united states consume alreadyt w 17.3%as of gdp, and we felt that was too high.f it's the largest of any industrialized nation in theew l world. but under this new law theing national health care spending th will approach 20% of gdp by the end of this decade. t

that is a budget committee scoring chaired by the the democratic majority in theontinueo congress. savvy many supporters of the health care law continue to wou perpetuateld th e myth that repeal law would increase the deficit.repeal my friend senator schumer said repeal the law and the deficit willnd go up.ulls back a thorough examination of pulls deptive back the curtain to expose the gimmic deceptive budget gimmicks on how that is stated and reveal the true cost. a democratic colleagues double s counted $390 billion in medicare costs and taxes. 29 billion social security taxes 70 billion in the new long-term health care premiums to pay for the new health care spending. double counted the money.. it's the largest falseistory o t accounting scheme i suppose in

th the history of the world. you think i'm a saturating?is december 23rd, the night before this budget, this health care bill was finally passed 60-40 60 democrats, 40 republicans.ic i called the congressional budget officeme mr. elmendorf, goodbye democratic colleagues to he be the budget director and this is what he said. the key point is that savings to the hospital insurance trust fund of medicare under theealth health care bill would be received by the government only aside t once so they can now be set aside to pay for future medicareurrent spending, and at the same timeng on the pay for current spending on on other o parts of the legislationrams." or of the programs.

this this money was cutting medicare benefits, raising medicareefits, taxes. they didn't use the money tomedicareaxes strengthen medicare which iso heading to insolvency.ich was they took the money and spend ithe mon on aey new program. mo actually, they borrowed the money from medicare and that'sasn't t how they got it. o it was in the treasury's money program to spend on the new programs. do and the way that they stored it th it double counted the money.y're count that's hoinw if the money they are counting to say that this bills aurplus actually creates the surplus.lus without this money there is no into surplus. defi since medicareci is going into the deficit they are going to call the the debt instruments, the bondgo io from the treasury as the going u.s. to the deficit.st by the way, the u.s. treasury the pays medicare interest on the money they borrow from them tosoont m start thison new program and soon that money is going to be gone. and we are going to have too fund

borrow money t on the open market to fund this new entitlement, and if a new entitlement is cos t going to cost far more than it is currently estimated.the congreional bu overdg the tenure budget window the congressional budget office says the new law -- the congressional budget office report points out how the law was doctored to start certain enhance revenuement enhancements, texas and so forth now but only starting the expenditure programs in well 2014. why is that important? cost ove they got a score of cbo wouldnd cost of for tenures so you getlooks income from ten and expenditures from six and they look prettyounting

good.he mon that's the double counting ofeyer the money and several otherurplus genex.. that's how they say this is. creating a surplus.ng member it's not a surplus. i as a ranking member of the budget committee, i am stunnedtuatio identicnal and how challengings the current financial situationo somet about is. it. we've got to do something about it. we need the president to help us and he is not doing so so itdeal looks like congress may be having to deal with it. the former director of the cbo douglas walz bacon an economist who understands budget has seen the emco wrote an article in "the wall street journal" in january that eliminates any confusion about the impact. i am disappointed the members of t the senate are still coming down hereo to suggest the repeal ofl of thi l aw the law is going to adverselyue to impact our deficit and limestone that would continue to be this

is what mr. holt's aiken, aespectedndividua highly respected individual said a wall street journal in january the the healthcare repeal will add to the deficit. ishe he said repeal is the logical first step towards restoringal fiscal sanity.ow fiscal sanity. he goes on and how then does the affordable care act and should mag we convert $1 trillion of new painless def spending and to pay most deficit-reduction.boutudge it's all about budget gimmicks deceptive accounting and implausible assumptions used tompression create the false o impression ofrepeal fiscal i discipline.us te repeal is not a budget buster. keeping the affordable care act is. mr. holt's again former director of the congressionalut budget office.

there is no question about that.t' and this is stunning.ion a poll by the kaiser foundation reveaat t and harvard university released last week revehealed eth areat the seein american people are seeing from these. they've heard the talks before. they are not buying it. they'r not 60% of the country believes the health care law would increase nt the deficit over the next ten years by 11% think it will lower the deficit. aak so give us a break would you? the american people are not this going to buy this argument. but the president continues to say it himself. showed that clearly the american people once again show that they are wiser than the government leaders in instan manyce instances. make a the final point i would like to make about health care law this is the debilitating impact onensive jobs the mandates included in

the health care law coupled with facin rising costs of insurance facing families and businesses costing us jobs right now for half and i wo they will doul so in the future. now i would just add i had meetings with small business alama, a nd groups and in jasper alabama tene or 15 individuals every one of them told me without question t this health care law would cause employment them to reduce employment.employme. we do not need to be reducing employment we need to be increasing employment. this is a job killer if pag es indisputable. over 6,000 pages of legislation and regulation added to that economic estimates indicate that repeal a law that threatens our economic recovery would save

700,000 jobs.ative it's imperative that congress law . does repeal the small. onngs yes, we need to start and on, continue to work on things we already agreed on like co pre-existing illness, interstate competition of health premiums. w a lot of films we agree on and could agree on to make health on those care better. feder that's not a massive federald by entitlement program funded by dubious genex imposed on the american people against their damag will damaging to the americanand i will economy. we cannot do that and will be repealed.ustonclud e mr. president, i know my time is up. i would conclude by saying we'vea got a new election to lead a lot to t ame of people took that issue to the.

american people. i think of their voice was clear not happy with, chris who didn't again listen to them and pass the bill against their wishes and they expect the congress to or reconsider it and change and legisla eliminated and start over. that wha t the message is clear and that is what we need to do and i urge my sena colleagues to support senatori would yld mcconnell's legislation and i yield the floor. >> the senator from vermont to the estimate mr. president, it is hard for me to understand howhe anyone could be voting to repeal the entire health care billther because when you do that among thewh other things, what you are saying is we will continue the practice of denying health care by insurance companies to people who have pre-existing conditions y

now for eight years undernd president bush, more and more t people lost their health a insurance. the cost of health care sword, v and our republican friends haveirare virtually nothing to say on health care. now that a bill has been passed, which i am the first to agree is- a nd not the best bill we could have passed and i will tell you why.hare it has its share of problems which should be b remedied. but to say right now whaturance 50 million americans have no l over health t insurance when the states all over the country are rustling with huge budget deficits, which no doubt will result in a millions more being thrown off of health insurance to say we should retreat to where we were is beyond all comprehension. second of all for my republican let's

friends to singlets repeallions health care there are millions able of families that are now beginning to be able to include within o their own health care plans their sons and daughters of to the age of 26. furthermore, in a nation which ends up spending more on healthd to care almost double per person compared to every other nation on earth we have put in the billions o f health care reform bill billionsti of dollars for disease very prevention.n we are as a nation very weak in to terms of trying to keep people healthy, trying to keep them outospital. of hospital. we spent a fortune on people after their second in this bill signific we have made some significant steps forward in terms of disease prevention wellness, -effec which is very very

cost-effective in terms of health care dollars, not to mention human pain and have w or suffering.be in rth oat fregard, i am proud to have worked with a number of other senators and doubling the proving number of community health centers in america which is effect providing the most care cost-effective primary health care that is provided in this country, keeping people of emergency rooms, keeping peopleth all the hospitals, giving them access to primary health care prescrip dru dentalgs care will cost prescription drugs and mental health the counseling.f in the midst of an extraordinary crisis in terms of primary't health care where everybodyr recognizes we don't have enough primary health care doctors or nitions - nurses were- technicians we the trouble funding for the national alrea health service corps and it is already working effectively in getting doctors and dentists and nurses and other practitioners int

intoo the armed desert areas. would all of that would be undone, and i think that makes no sense whatsoever. now, to my mind what we have to to do is not repeal this bill but ver make it better and i will give you one very specific suggestion that i have worked on now for over a year. senator wyden has worked on this say and others have worked on it and that is to say if a state inf this country, the state of vermont alaska, any other state can maintain the high standards c for quality health care and coverage that the national health care bill did, in that state should be given do significant flexibility to own perhaps do it in their own whey and more cost effectively in one shouldin the tell you, mr. president,r i in the state of vermont and our new governor is a supporter of a

medicare for all single-payer that to program. there are other states that wantdirectn, m to move in a differentrent direction, maintaining high standards but doing it perhaps in a different way than has been thight proposed by the national legislation. in my view, they should havef that right, and if vermont is effective in doing what i o believe we could provide quality health care to all of our people othertates in a cost-effective way i suspect other states are not the country can learn from vermont's experience. i think that is a positive step forward. the beauty of our federalisteralist system, 50 states, every state has a good idea and i find that if we maintain standards that are high and give states the he al flexibility, this can improve the health care reform that we no sen passed but killing the whole a ll bill makes no sense to me at w all. mr. president, i also wanted to say a word on an issue which is

d that getting more and more attention and that is social security.ecurit in my view social security has succes proven a self to be the mostam successful social program in america history over a 75 year period and this isake extraordinary. we take it for granted but it is an extraordinary success story. times in good times and bad times s social security is paid out every nickel owed to every doe eligible american and it does that and a minimal administrative cost. mr. president, despite its strong record of success over the last 75 years, social security now faces unprecedented fro attacks from wall street for many of my republican friends some democrats, and i have to bee very clear that if the american people are not prepared to stand

up and fight back we could begin to see the dismantling of social security this very year to meet mr. president, let me just cite the facts with regard, t i know that when we watch tv tonight there will be a guy of has gone their singing social security has gone bankrupt. social security is collapsingntrue. and that is absolutely not true. there has been a significant surity. balance of misstatements nobody regarding social security. here are the facts nobody one denies.o number one, according to the t latest report of the social security administration social out security will be able to pay outrican 100% of benefits owed to every ne eligible american for the next 26 years. going you tell me how the system has a lot of gone bankrupt. we have a lot of problems innment, this government and our country faces enormous problems. eve ry

if we compete to every american to every for the e next 26 years, do not 26 tell me that this is a program and crisis were going bankrupt s and after 2037 social security will be able to pay out 70% of. with that do we have to deal with that of the next 26 years? yes we do. do but is our crisis and the oppos senator will do everything he can to oppose any efforts or privatization, any effort toort to raise the retirement age rai any effort to lower benefits. point: second point. everybody has concerns about the deficit crisis that we face $14 trillion national debt. and how much of social security and contributed to the deficit in the national debt? how n much?not one hf not 1 penny not one half a penny. social secuparity isyroll funded by the payroll tax. social security has to

$.6 trillion surplus. the surplus will go up and to attack social security because of the deficit crisis is grossly unfair. you want to know why the deficit went up in the middle of a we fght t recession?tan we fought two wars in afghanistan and iraq further togot pay to for them and gave hundreds of billions of dollars of taxax break s breaks to the wealthy, bailout will street, medicare part don drug program written by the insurance companies all unfunded.fund those are the reasoedns you have. a deficit. social security is nothing to dot. it. so i would suggest in the midst of all of this financialinstabily tha instability that's out there with the middle class shrinkinginking and poverty increasing if people really worry about the years, e of retirement years one of the most that significant things that we caness can do is stand up and say we are

going to protect social security, we're not going to cutwe ain't goi it and we are going to make it strong verso while that has done a great job the last 75 years it g j will continue to be good job the next 75 years. g with that,ood mr. president i would yield the floor. >> the senator from louisiana. the pres >> thank you.mr. vitt: thank mr. president, i rise in strong i support of the mcconnell amendment number four team thatuld would completely repeal president obama's in my viewll. of unconstitutional health care bill. of course i was an activeate in participant in the tv to in the last congress about obamacare and soft that to faint mail the day after it passed into law on the interstate freestanding measure to repeal it completely. the first day of the new congress like a final bills i for reintroduced that measure and of course for all those reasonst certainly support this amendment that accomplishes that important r

es goal. let me begin by responding to myleague distinguished colleagues fromeal vermont suggestion.ding everybody who wants to repeal will wall including me we don't sdn 't want to do away with the idea off that you shouldn't be shoved off insurance because ofyou shoun't pre-existing conditions. you shouldn't be able to meet those obligations.nk tha we don't think that at all. we are however for complete v repeal for a very simple reason. b what's wrong with this bill what's wrong with obamacare one isn't one detail here and one there. peripry of it isn't at the periphery of the it's plan. the it's at the heart of the plan it's the core of the plan. we can and should and must passprotection f significant reforms like with protection for individuals with pre-existing conditions. measure

that's why we've introduced the t measures.s we have advocated those measures and d it's hard as that was thatould doesn't mean that we can or should or must preserve the holder of obamacare which has significant problems at the core of this gargantuan bill. let me mention four of those bi. core problems from my point of view.s maybe first is may be most mos fundamental, most basic that is there are important elements of the core of obamacare that are flat out unconstitutional, and the even if they were not unconstitutional, they would be are unwise because the dramaticatic exp of t expansion of the power and and authority in the federal obvus government. the most obvious is an absolute mandate in the bill a mandatery from your federal government n, and that every man woman and child inst the united states must buy

health insurance.nprecede this is unprecedented.een a there has never been a mandate t like that from the federal there' government or any level of this government. there has never been this forced purchasing of a product in the private marketplace. with car some people bring up the thas comparison with car insurance but that's not a close th comparison at all because of theorced state level that isn't a forest saying mandateif that is simply saying if o you want the right and privilege of driving a car which is not a constitutionally guaranteed right been part of the deal is you have to cover the damages from any accident so that's not this a good comparison. man so this absolute mandate that thunited every man woman and child in rchase the united states come out and purchase health insurance purchase a product in the private marketplace is reat unprecedented and for that it's

reason it is unconstitutional unpre and an unprecedented expansion of the power and the role and authority of the federal few government. the last few days quietly to thehour b there hour there have been hearings in the senate and the committee about the constitutionality or and constitutionality oftral obamacare.ion of course this central questionnd came up. i found the response some of thenesses athe witnesses of the hearings who favor obamacare were at tickets pretty startling on this point. one senator asked them if we can mandate constitutionally thatoman every american man woman andt we pa child by health insurance why says can't we passed the law that says obesity is a problem in this country, which it is, and therefore we are going to mandate that every man, woman and child in america eat certainbles

and vegetables and certain healthy foods every day. the response was from the of advocate of obamacare i don'they think you can mandate that they eat the food you can only mandate that the by the food. real reassuring to me that's not for an argument for the cutionality o constitutionality of obamacare. that is a argument in danger ofof the obamacare federal power.reach. there are many other aspects of ob car obamacare which also pose serious constitutional problems.ig my point is that these are big problems and they are not minorweak details which we can tweak with amendments. this it goes to the heart of this gargantuan bill. the similarly is the dramatic cost

expansion of government in the cost of t that expansion. instead of controlling of lowering health care costs obamacare is expanding the government and expanding health care costs in fact the summit budget committee estimates the bill will cost $2.6 billion to the first ten years of the for i implementation. all of that new spending doesn't new lower health care costs and there are multiple sources affirming that.ma continues yet president obama continues toquote -- claim the act will slow thes." mayb rising costs. maybe you didn't see the chief actuarych richard foster who said overall national health insurance expenditures will increase by a total of next $311 billion over the next ten years under the law.irectl y when the actuary was asked toa's healare wreck the president obama's

health care bill would hold down unsustainable medical costs just last week that actuary replied, quote, i would say false. last year the cbo come from our concerns about the bill's inability to contain cost and in h the cbo judgment the health earlier legislation enacted earlier this year does not substantially diminish that pressure coupled.nd prese the increased cost in government su and future taxpayers health insurance premiums will increase ame for americans and their ested families. thoug the cd in the casino estimated 2100 even though can't eight obama promised premiums by $2,500 per family so that big expansion of government and costs of health care costs including taxes and health care

premiums is another big problem iums again this isn't a minor detail which we can fix with ahich we protecting a cmendment, which withix with a few tweaks to the bill thishe goes to the core of the entire plan. another fundamental issue that goes to the core of the entires plan is the fact in a think it welta is a well-established fact that the obamacare plan will cost us money not just money or increased taxes, not increased health insurance premiums where cost is w jobs and should be worrisome and parcularl particularly worrisome as we stand here today and the date of this in a horrible economy as wes we'reryin are trying to comeg out of worst e g recession since the great depression of the 1930's. again, this isn't just any time period of time this is a time of prolonged historic employment

and this bill costs us jobs and absolutely decimates. taxes and the burdens more jobn creation. for instance the nationalederatio federation of independent business representing thousands of american small businesses including many in louisiana whene -- "if new a state said that "if the new taxes, mandates and government programs in the ppaca remain the intact the law will stifle the ability to hire grow and invest come into court. a sit-in monday night to word might refer business the bill also includes a pay or play mandate on job creators.ty this complicated new tax penalty imposes a tax on businesses with more than 50 workers if they do notff offer coverage or to offer wor coverage of the workers elect to

decline that benefit. yet again this is a fundamental that problem with the bill that goes to the heart of the bill, not this the periphery this is many dire t consequences. the penalty for not offering off insurance is less than the $6,100 average employer benefit contbution b contribution businesses are actually given an incentive to drop coverage. so there's a concrete money busine incentive, major money incentivee for businesses to drop coverage and actually push workers off good coverage many have rightsecond busines now. businesses that are able to grow and hire workers choose not to under create jobs and to stay under the 50 employees threshold to

avoid the disincentives and the difficulties.npartisacong the nonpartisan congressional budget office concluded that the e bill, quote will encourage some o people to work fewer hours to mar withdraw from the labour market end of quote, and it said the quote on net it will reduce the in amount of labor used in the economy. now, is that what we want to encourage? and in the economy buty particularly in a horrible downout of the economy to come out of the worst recession since the great depression and do we want to ecomy reduce labor opportunity in our economy? th these are stunning conclusions that so many of us warned conc against during the debateity inclusions that the majority of americans fear taxing american job creation sticking businesse with more government compliance

requirements and cost is pa absolutely thert wrong approach particularly in a down economy. ather finally, madam president that there's another core concern i wio many share with so many others in the this body that goes to the heart of the bill. it's not a minor detail. d it's not something we can solve with a perfecting amendment.at it's not at the periphery it's not changing a comma or sentence, it's at the heart of bil the bill, and that is that thet it s bill contains at its heart over $500 billion in medicare cost. over half a trillion dollar cut these to medicare and these cuts are not invested back in medicare. they don't help medicare stayson't solvent. they don't help medicare survivelvent solvent for longer. don't

they don't help fix the loomingth medicare challenge fata. they have stolen from thepa medicare to pay for planned new stuff for other people in directl obamacare. the medicare cuts directly impact seniors and m that shows the massive cuts to medicare advantage will hit louisianaloui si seniors particularly hard. founda a study by the heritage in foundation shows that louisiana seniors enrolled in medicare advantage lose more than any other state in the nation because of the obama health bill.je the reportcted says that the projected enrollment in medicare drop advantage will drop by over cut 125,000, 62%. benefits will be cut by $5,000 per beneficiary. so this bill takes away benefits s and choices for seniors not torve fix medicare, not to preserve medicare, not to preserve its longer, solvency for longer, but steals

it from medicare from seniors bra or brandnd new purposes for of your folks.the pr and this directly contradicts the president's promise that quote, if you like what you had you can keep it. no you can't mr. president. thousands of louisiana seniors c.m.s.' can't. in fact the cms chief actuary also verified the promise will confi be broken, confirming thatheir americans may lose their current health care coverage regardless if they want to keep it or not. to some of the president, i respond directly to my friends and colleaguescoll from vermont byepeal saying we want full repeal of simple obamacare for a very simple pro reason. the the big problems with the bill the the big problems with the planargin, are not at the margins, they are at the core. and the big problems can't be fixed with a protecting amendment, the changing of a p

comma, changing punctuation resizing one or two or five or ten sentences. the big problems are at the core of the plan, starting with the vernme mandate from the federal government and president of the in every man, woman and child in america needs to go into the market and buy a particular we product.epeal. that's why we demand repeal. we'll that's why we will continue to pursue repeal of to what happens, and that is why we will replace this huge burdensome bill with targeted reforms like wit protecting folks with pre-existing conditions, like r free importation, generics reform and other measures to lik reduce prescription and drug citizen prices like allowing american h citizens to shop for health insurance across state lines andll busesses, pull together through theirough small businesses through other thank means through association health chair.

plans. thank you madame chair.colleaes to with that, i urge all of my colleagues to come together. let's repeal this problem not plan and start a new focus american peo targeted reform that theg american people have been asking for. madam president, i yield the floor. ..

>> the american people understand fully this issue. they know for sure where republicans and democrats are. this is an issue bon which we're not likely to achieve any degree of corporation with the administration. i must say whether there's a victory today that we celebrate, and that's senator johann's amendment to get rid of the 1099 requirement. it passed. it was offered by a democrat, but essentially identical to the amendments offered on several occasions. we at least rolled back one the egregious figures of many in the several pages of law.

i'd like to call up mike to talk about the 1099. mike? >> leader, thank you very much. good evening, everyone. today was a victory. it's not so much a victory for me or for really anyone else in the senate of the it's a victory for about 40 million businesses that are across this country who are literally facing a mountain, a mountain of paperwork if this 1099 would stay as the law of the land. we started this journey as you know many many months ago. we put the first bill in, and it got something like 41 votes. we tried again and it got more votes. it got 61, but we needed 67 because of some procedural issues, and then right after we came back from the recess around the holiday we started

picking up supporters in a sorpt of gang buster fashion. as of yesterday, we picked up 61 very very bipartisan republican and democrat and let there be no confusion, this really was the 1099 bill i put in some time ago. i think there was a change of about six words, and as a matter of fact, it's the same. the senate has stood up and said let's get rid of this. i might add in a very, very significant way, 81 to 17 was the vote today. i could not be happier for all of those in the business community who are worried about this from the very, very smallest to the largest. let me wrap up lest we forget. this not only applied to businesses. it applied to your local church. it applied to nonprofit

organizations, state and local government. it's just a massive, massive mountain of paper work, so i appreciate my colleagues stepping up to this issue. we have taken a very very important first stepment we're not done yet but because we have to sync up if you will with the house, but we can look forward to the day this is off the books and should have never been passed in the first place. leader, thank you. >> that 1099 vote was very, very important because basically, i've had democrats come up to me and say we know that the bill is not there and there's a lot of things to be changed, and there are some things good in the bill, and republicans would admit that. if they came together with us and worked with us, we would have a health insurance bill that the vast majority would support. it's pretty impressive, and i'm going to thank senator for his

excellence leadership on this in the way he handled this. this is a budget heaven busting $2.6 trillion bill that we're trying to work on. yes, we were unsuccessful today. it increases costs, raises taxes, and threatens the liberty all in the name of one the greatest expansions of federal power in our nation's history. i'm disappointed that our friends on the other side of the aisle are not willing to start over in a collaborative manner with redoing costs without undoing us between us and the doctors, patients and their doctors. democrats are fooling themselves if they think fixing their small business crushes 1099 amendment is all they need to do to satisfy the american people, it's not even though that's a wonderful move and shows one the major points we've made through the years. this loss has smelled from the

start to the finish. the american people are going to demand that it's repealed in its entirety, and then they will expect republicans and democrats to sit down together and not do this on a partisan basis because it's too important for every american citizen. it's not too late to start overment we can and should repeal this law, and ultimately we will, maybe not today or tomorrow but we will defeat the law, and we can come up with a health care bill everybody can be proud off to maximize federalism in our society and that kept the country the greatest country in the world. >> i too want to congratulate mike on what was a great success in this. he has bb a tenacious advocate fiercely fighting for small businesses in this country which by the irs's own admission 40

million businesses would be impacted by this provision. he did small businesses a great favor and those who are job creators in our economy a great favor with the success of this amendment today, and also say that, you know, we've made some aheadway. a year ago we got 40 votes. today we got 47 votes. election have consequences, and i think the democrats are still in denial about what the public believers about this. the american public made their minds up a long time ago this bill is a loser. the reason they have that conclusion is because it fails on three fundamental issues. the american people are concerned about job spending and debt. this will destroy jobs. the spending as already been mentionedded $#.6 trillion is the exact opposite of what the american people said in the election. they want spending brought under control. they don't want government

expanded in the way this massive new entitlement will, and the largest expansion of government in the last half century and fails the test of what did will do to impact the debt that we all know that $14.3 trillion and growing but a trillion dollars a year with explode mountain outyears when the bills come home for the new health care entitlement program, this was a good strong vote. it makes very clear where we stand. we stand ready and willing to work with the administration if they are willing to work with us and throw this version out and start over and focus on measures that actually do lower cost for americans and continue to provide the highest quality health care that i think americans expect. >> there's a narrative that i saw and read that this is somehow a feudal act because

americans didn't have the act to refuse obama care. these are the first steps in a long road to culminate in 2012 where we expose the flaws and weaknesses in this legislation, and two most recently just this last week have found the health care mandate unconstitutional. we know that path at least through the judicial branch will end up in the judicial supreme court, but the problem of the bill is that this massive budget busting job killing bill has a lot of provisions that people just don't know about because it was jammed through in such great haste on christmas eve just a year ago. senator johanns pointed out one plow, but there's many more to be exposed in going through the process. let me conclude in saying that i hope many of you had a chance to watch the hearing this morning

in the judiciary committee which unbelievably was on the question is obamacare unconstitutional? you would have thought we would have had that hearing before the bill was jammed through but no, we didn't. we still i think, learned a lot and that is that the theory upon which the federal government's authority to impose an individual mandate requirement or penalize you if you don't buy government approved health care is really unprecedented in constitutional law, and this very same legal expert that say you can do that, well, you can make people buy vegetables because it's good for them but you can't make them eat it because it intrudes on individual liberty. that's an absurd argument that defies common sense, and i feel confident going forward and continuing to expose the flaws in this legislation and as courts review the decisions on the two federal judges that found the bill unconstitutional,

that we will prevail. repeal and replace this bill that bends the cost curve and makes health care more affordable and accessible to the american people. >> well i want to congratulate the senator for his leadership on this issue. you know nancy pelosi said first you have to pass the law before you get to find out what's in it and this was just one of the things the atrocious things that was in the health care law, and as new regulations come out in the weeks and years ahead, we're going to continue to see things that the american people are going to not want any part of at all. somebody's who's practiced medicine for 25 years in wyoming, what i wanted as a doctor for my patients and family, you want people to get the care they need from the doctor that they want, at the cost they can afford. this health care bill does not provide any of those three things. that's why i continue to say this health care law is bad for patients. it's bad for providers, the

doctors and nurses who take care of the patients, and it's bad for the taxpayers. we are working hard as a party as conservatives, as republicans to make it cheaper and easier to create private sector jobs in this country, and this health care law with its mandates and expenses are actually making it more expensive and harder to create private sector jobs in this country. the -- it is astonishing to see that 2.2 million americans have waivers so that obamacare doesn't apply to them. granted by the secretary of health and human services. many of the people are union employees who lobbied for the law, and don't want it to apply to them now. i don't think this law should apply to anyone, that every american should get that waiver. yesterday, i answered to the bill, the state's health care choice act with senator lindsay graham as a cosponsor to opt

out. this will happen at every state to let people make decisions locally. when washington has a one size fits all approach, it doesn't work anywhere in this country. we need to have patient-centered health care without a washington bureaucrat or an insurance company bureaucrat standing between a patient and their doctor. >> simply what is the measure -- [inaudible] [inaudible] >> we this this is just the beginning. this issue is still ahead of us and we will be going back at it in a variety of different ways some of which you heard

described here tonight. there are also funding issues, you may recall that when we passed the contending resolution to march 4th, we deleted funding for additional bureaucrats to ramp up enforcement of obama obamacare. hopefully our friends on the other side of the aisle will have other ideas in addition to the 1099 requirement. they may conclude there's other things that ought to be fixed. yeah? >> how would you confront it -- [inaudible] >> nothing's had a bigger impact on slowing our effort to get out of this stagnant economy we've been on than health care. every meeting i've had, and i expect the folks behind me would

support this is one reason they are not expanding is the certainty and uncertainty of what's in the health care bill. this is a job crushing measure. one of the single most significant things we can do to get this economy going again is to pass this amendment this afternoon. >> me or somebody else? >> [inaudible] >> yeah, it is. really, it's the same amendment, and here's what i would say. i don't get too spun up about that sort of thing and i'm actually kind of flattered. keep in mind when i first walked in with this amendment, i don't think it was really taken very seriously by the other side. i did not get a lot of votes for

what i was trying to do. we kept building the support for it, and i suspected a couple of things happened. one is the president mentioned it in the state of the union. i sure did appreciate that. the second thing that happened is that i suspect people were home over the holidays and got another ear full from their small businesses about how this was just going to hammer them so we got up to 61 supporters very, very quickly, and i think my friends on the other side of the aisle saw that the handwriting was on the wall. they couldn't let the train leave the station if you will and so senator and for whatever reason was picked to kind of go to the floor, call up really my amendment but i was very, very happy to vote for my amendment and vote yes and see 81 votes for it whether it had her name on it or my name on it.

>> some of your critics have said it's easy to tear things down. will the republicans have any job creation packages to put forth to replace what you call job crushing health care bill? >> the private sector is being crushed by excessive government spending. we've added $3 trillion to our debt in the last two years. at the same time, we lost 3 million jobs. one of the most important things we could do to get the private sector going again is quit doing what we did the last congress, and we're hoping to take the country at a different direction. the president is at least rhetorically pivoting on a lot of these issues. now we'll see if he'll back that up with real action, and if he's willing to come our direction on trade agreements lowering the

corporate tax rate, on doing something about this mounting spending and debt he's going to find a willing partner. >> sir, how soon do you expect the house will vote -- [inaudible] >> you know, i'll let you know. [laughter] thanks, everybody. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> in a few moments a nasa briefing to find the planets that may support life. in less than an hour and and a half the british inquiry into the iraq war. after that, we reair the senate debate to repeal the health care law.

>> nays sigh identified more than 50 plant ets ma may support life. scientists found a star with an entire planetary system. this is a little more than an

hour and 15 minutes. >> additionally, we are detecting planets and can dates with a wide arrange of sizes and distances that we must better understand our galaxy. you can find out more information at www.nasa www.nasa.gov/kepler. we will open the phone lines and floor for questions and answers. first, we have douglas hudgens national head quarters in washington. next bill, principle science investigator at california. jack, and debra fisher, professor in connecticut. with that i'll handle the discussion to doug.

>> thank you, jack. hello there. on behalf of the astrophysics division, i'd like to welcome everybody here as we have the second annual release and announce the discovery of more planets than any other system discovered before all clustered around their star in or bits smaller than the or bit of planet venus. kepler 1 the first -- is the first space telescope looking for other stars. that means that the milestones that kepler achieves with each and every discovery shape the course of all future exo planet missions. they have been in operation for a year and a half now continuously monitoring the brightness of more than 150,000 stars in a single sky near the

constellation. we all know that the holy grail of the kepler mission is the discovery of an earth-sized planet orbiting in the zone of our own sun, and believe me, no one is more eager to get to that point than this team. however, that's going to take time. kepler's been in operation for a year and a half, and it will require three years of data as well as pain staking observations from some of the world's largest ground based telescopes before those planets will begin to emerge from the data. however, in the meantime, kepler is absolutely revolutionizing our understanding of systems and exoplanets of all sizes. think about it. the first 15 years of exoplanet searches from the ground turned

up a little more than 500 extra solar planets. last june, we announced the discovery of more than 700 candidates in just the first half of mission data. today, when you add the next three months of data released this morning, the number of candidates jumps to 1200. now you might imagine that with more than 1200 candidates, the -- well, the key thing is to remember -- you'll notice i take about candidates rather than just excoplanets. every time we see in the data the evidence of some sort of a signal, that requires analysis and follow-up observations to confirm that that refers to a

planet. now, you might imagine with more than 1200 candidates at this appointment, the kepler science team is trying to drink out of a fire hose. we are pleased to release this data at this time to harness the hours power of the entire community. now, you didn't come here to here a nasa guy bylaw -- blah, blah blah end leslie. i'll conclude and the results that you'll hear today of tireless work by scientists engineers chief cooks and bottle washers at the research center jet proportion laboratory, and institutions across the country and around the world, the success of the kepler mission is a tribute to

those people, and i tip my hat to each and every one of them. i'll turn it over to bill now. >> thank you, doug. what i'd like to present today is the results of the first four months of science operations of the kepler mission. doug has, i think has well described the mission and its objective is to find earth-sized planets in the inhabitable zone of stars. can i have the first figure, please? this is a sketch of the spacecraft itself in orbit looking at a transplanetting star, and that's how we study we look for dimming of a star. the data that talk about is the 155,000 stars we monitor for four months. it's of the 1235 candidates we found. i'll describe those as well. i'd like to start out first with

a family portrait of what we're coming from. can i have the next figure? this basically shows you our confirmed planet discoveries. they are not candidates, but confirmed. in the first season we found the top row there for planets bigger than jupiter and spared to jupiter there and planets the size of neptune, that's the green object in the bottom line. the giant planets were a surprise. we didn't think we would find that many. certainly the ones on the far left was an even bigger surprise. it's the planet with the lowest densities ever found. this enormous planet bigger than jupiter has the density of foam. surprising. it's hot and you would think that would expand it. that's not the case.

another surprise. last year, one of the things that we were able to confirm was the star with three transiting planets shown in the bottom row. two of the planets, 9b and c are planets the size of sat turn. one of them that blue object is 1.6 times the size of earth. we're down in the superearth size. a few weeks ago the start of 2011, we had another announcement. that is the first -- kepler's first rocky planet. a planet 1.4 the size of the earth with a density greater than that of the earth. it's obviously a rocky planet of types. we are moving in the direction from the bigger easier planets to the smaller planets that might harbor life. let's talk about not what we found up to today, but look at the data itself that we released last night. next figure, please. well we started out with our field of view.

that covers 100 square degrees of sky. there's three yellow points. these are planets that were known before we launched. they were in our field of view. of course, we made measurements of them but let's look at the same field of view. after looking at four months of kepler data. next figure, please. now, this are those 1200 candidates. we covered the field review with all sorts of candidates. let's look at the next figure. we measured the size of these objects. we can tell you which are earth's size, which are neptune's size and superearth size. you see that in color. the blue dots a earth-sized. they are candidates. the green and yellow are superearth twice the size of earth, but planets that can have a solid surface to walk on. then we have the neptune size and the giant star size.

it's a huge array of planets throughout this field of view. next figure. this gives you the numbers of what we have found. 68 earth-sized candidates. can dates up to 1.25 the size. some of these candidates are smaller, considerably smaller than the earth. here's the 288 candidates that are somewhat bigger than the earth. 662 662 neptune-sized candidates. as doug mentioned earlier in the 15 years of observation the total number of known planets that have been discovered is like 520. just this group alone of candidates exceeds that. there's an e enormous number of candidates we're finding 165 jupiter-sized objects. some are bigger than jupiter. we don't know what they are.

there's 19 of those as well. go to the next figure, please. one of the things we want to do when we find these candidates is find can cats in particular -- candidates in particular around stars like the sun. there's all sorts of stars out there. giant stars planets, various you know, stars that are burned out. we would like to find candidates around stars like our own. this figure shows that if you look at the earth-sized candidates and supersized and neap tune size, they are centered around the temperature of our sun so these stars are very much like our sun. there's a variety that you see there but most of them are around stars like the sun. of course that didn't happen by accident. it happened because before we launched that mission, our coinvestigators led by dave at the smithsonian observatory used

ground-based instruments to observe 4.4 million stars, and that allows us to view the stars that absorb isn't. we -- sunlight. we had good measurements to find the stars with. next figure please. when looking at the candidates, broken into four groups. the blue group is earth-sized, then superearth and neptune-sized, and jupiter size. there's the number of orbital period in days. it gets fewer and fewer to larger and larger orbital periods. this occurs because it's harder to see planets further out. the chance of seeing them of the diameter of the star it gets more and more difficult to see

fewer and fewer of the candidates and planets. it gets more difficult as you look for planets towards the habitual zone. the other thing i notice it the peak. the peak here is between two and four days occurring for every one of the groups. what's happening is that when planets form, they form an acreation disk. that acreation disk peaks on energy from these planets and spiral towards their star. so if they come spiraling in and they orbital period masters the rotation period of the star, tides rise on a star and on the planet such that the star can transfer momentum to the planet and stop the planet from crashing into the star. it's a storage bin of the planets. we see that very very clearly in this day that. -- data. then you see there's a big dip for the periods shorter than three or four days.

clearly, it's easy to see short period planets because we have transits. more transits, the easier it is to take text from. this is real. the implication here is that some of the planets that spiral didn't come in with sink newsed ora of the star. on the other hand, we see some that are still there, and that might mean they were lucky. they came in towards the star and the star lit up blew away the acreation disk, and now they are safe. maybe they are not safe. there's tides on the planets, and they may be on their way into the star yet. many areas of investigation scientists will look at in the coming months and years. next figure please. we started out, people had found planets around other stars, and people found them with a

transsilt technique that we used, and here's an example of the size of the planets they found relative to the earth so one is earth-sized, four is neptune-sized, and you can see the sketches of the planets along the edges there. the dots basically show what was being found from planets larger than jupiter with short orbital periods. we really want to observe not in the upper left corner, but the lower right corner where there's small planets at cool temperatures. let's look at what kepler's contributed last june. next figure please. you can see all these purple dots and you can see most of them are smaller than jupiter. most of them are the earth's -- between earth's size and neptune's size. further, they are not at the shorter periods, but longer periods. a movement towards the lower right hand corner. next figure, please. this is what we released

yesterday. this is all the data from those 1235 candidates, those 150,000 stars shown here, and now you see again many more planetary candidates closer to the size of the earth. in fact if you look a lot of them are below the size of the earth. these objects are getting down towards mar's size, in fact. we are seeing smaller candidates. they are moving to the right to longer orbital periods. you can still see a little gap there that we want to go to in the lower right hand corner. we ought to talk about the temperatures of these candidates. if they are too hot for lifer, we want to know that. are they cool enough to have liquid water on the surface? could they have an ocean and an atmosphere? we're going to change the horizontal axis. it's no longer the orbital period, but the temperature we use to calculate the

candidates. next figure. temperatures here now are in fahrenheit. what we see again the size relative to the earth. we see what we saw before, some smaller than the earth many between the earth's size and neptune's size. some are bigger than jupiter. the temperature is 1000 degree, twice as hot as a pizza oven. they are molten iran -- iron orla that. let's expand that lower left. next figure, please. we're going to take this portion of that group of 1200 candidates and expand that out so you kepler mission see in -- see in detail what those look like. next figure please. this is that expanded area. you see the temperatures are not in thousands but temperatures

we experience from 0 fahrenheit up to 200 -- i'm sorry to 200 fahrenheit. these are colder temperatures as well. this is the region where we could have liquid water. at minus 50 fahrenheit, you have ice, but if there's an atmosphere, the temperatures come up. now we're seeing inhabittal areas of the stars. 54 candidates, one of which you can see that is smaller than earth, four of larger than earth, superearth size. there's many and some are even greater than jupiter. that's rather interesting. jupiter's big enough that you can have earth-like moons orbiting moons. those moons are also inhabittal zones. all the moons of jupiter are inhabittal zones. some what are earth-sized could

have atmosphere and they are close to each other. you can go from one moon to another and have a vacation on a different moon. it doesn't happen every day, but it's conceivable. once inhabittal zone candidates for us to follow-up on. clearly areas to work hard on in the next months and years to confirm. next figure please. one of the great things that happened earlier this year was the confirmation of earth's -- of kepler's first rocky planet. the rocky planet is 1.4 times the size of the earth. we were able to detect get the epoc, but you want to confirm it some other method to prove this is indeed a planet. the rate of velocity works here by a number of team members and other observers and telescopes,

wind telescopes allowed us to confirm this as a rocky planet of greater density. as we talk about the planets we're interested in, the signal for radio velocity is very small. it takes a lot of time. this is in an orbital period of one day. it's year is less than one day. the signal is still large. moving out, 30 days, 50 days 300 days the signal is so small we cannot do that for many, if any, of these small planets. instead we need a method that supplements it. next figure. the accept leaptal -- supplemental figure is a method we have proved works. it was released last year, and what we have here is a planetary system with three planets. they orbit the same star and

when they are close together and pass each other, they cause changes in the orbital period. when seeing when the transit occurs, we can deduce from the transit timing changes the mass of these objects. we don't need rood velocity. it is helpful, but in this case we get the masses very well by simply watching these changes. that means we ought to be able to at least for some of the earth-sized planets to get at their masses even if we can't get at them with the rate of velocity. what you need is multisystems. in fact, we now see in the data that we released 170 stars that have these multiplanet systems or candidate systems. sometimes with two sometimes with three, sometimes with four. as many as six transiting

candidates around these. that will be enormously helpful of the not -- not only can we get masses but we can look at the systems and not the individual planets. a great deal of progress and encouragement. next figure, please. this is a summary, of course, of what we have found to be explicit. we do and have released the data to the public as the space telescope science institute is for everyone who wants to use it or get at it, data for 155,000 stars. 135 candidates with each of the transits, and their properties of each of the stars. we see 68 earth-sized, we're seeing 662 neptune sizes, 54

candidates of habitable zones, and systems. kepler is making good progress towards its gales. can i have the animation, please? this is a field of view of kepler in the sky about the 50 candidates in the habitual zone. you can imagine then we found 1200 candidates in the single field view. imagine that we had the field of view covering the sky, keep leer looks at a 400th of the sky. if we had 400th of the review, we would see 400 times that number of candidates. we would see 400,000 candidates. what that's telling you is the stars around us, that surround us have huge number of planets and candidates for us to look at. if we find that earth's are

common or habitual zones of stars, it's likely that means life is common around these stars, and, in fact, kepler is the first step or a step in that man and science exploration of the surrounding galaxy to find life and the extent of life in our galaxy. jack is going to tell us about these very valuable systems of our stars that help us understand where the earth's are. jack? >> well, thank you bill. so bill mentioned towards the end of his talk kepler-9. it is a system with three confirmed transiting planets. it is the only star known to have more than one transiting planet. transiting planets are very

very valuable because that's the way we can get sizes of the planets, and all the other hundred transiting confirmed planets prior to today were orbiting one per star. kepler-9 had three. now, if we can have my first slide? this emphasizes the 170 candidate multiple planet systems that kepler has identified. the small dots are the stars with one candidate. the small blue circles and there are over 100 of them, are the targets with two planetary candidates. the green -- the red try angle

-- triangles, 45 of them -- excuse me, the 135 red triangles represent the 45 targets with three transiting candidates. the 32 pink squares represent the candidates around the eight targets that have four candidates. we've got a lot of stars with two, three and even four candidates. if you look over towards the lower left, you'll see five pentagons. they represent the five candidates around one star which has five transiting planet

candidates. towards the center and a little off to the right in the figure representing mid-sized planets at medium to long periods among our sample that stand out are the green hexagons. the only target that we see six signals and those are no longer just candidates. we have confirmed that all six of them are indeed planets orbiting the same star which we've named kepler-11. now, in the next slide that shows the position of kepler-11, this is a sun-like star. it's in the constellation and

it's approximately 2,000 light years from earth, so the light that kepler is seeing from this star left the star around the time caesar was making his conquest. now, if we could have the video. this is a kepler view of the system to begin. we see this target dimming like clock work, but like a very special clock, one with six hands moving at six different rates and we interpret this as six planets orbiting very near the same plane. now, looking at it face on, and these are very close in especially the inner five very close to one another, the most compact system of planets ever

discovered by any technique anywhere. if i can have the next slide. we see these planets on the occasions when they transit the star. most of the time none are transiting sometimes one is transiting occasionally two, and one time last summer we observed the signature of three planets transiting at the same time which is illustrated in this graphic. now i've said that this is a very, very flat planetary system. it doesn't look so flat in this graphic, but that's because the planet orbits are much much bigger than the size of the star itself so although they're not exactly in the same plain, when

they go in front of the star, they look very similar to in the same plain and, in fact, if we had a scale model of just the inner five closely spaced planets around this star, it would be as flat as a compact disk. now, the six planet is orbiting significantly further out. if we had a scale model that included the 6th planet that could go into the attic to find this. it would be like one of these old vinyl records. let's move on to the next slide, please. this shows the kepler-11 system at the same scale as the inner part of our own solar system. the five inner planets, the ones

that are closely spaced to one another are all closer to the star than any planet is to our sun. this despite the fact that these planets are, well, they're not huge, they are not jupiter-sized, but they are not tiny either. they range in size from about twice the radius of the earth to a bit over four times the radius of the earth. that 6th planet is a little further out, but if it were placed in our solar system it would be between mercury and venus. well, i've been talking about this as a system, and it is an amazing system. these planets are close in. we never thought we'd see this many planets that aren't real real tiny this close to one another, and the fact that they are close to one another means

that they are tugging on each other's orbits and we use the same technique that you use to measure two of the masses on kepler nine to measure the five inner planets in the kepler 11 system. if i could have my next slide? this diagram is a little more complicated, but it's really important. what we have here on the vertical axis is the size of the planet, and the horizontal axis is the mass. we've observed the size by the amount of dimming that each planet causes when it transits in front of its star. we measured the masses, we've weighed, in other words the inner five bodies by the amount that they tug on one another's

or orbits retarding or advancing the transit times of another by 10-20 minutes relative to their orbital periods which are between 10-47 days. now, we estimate the planetary radius and we're not exact really we're not exact because we know that the radius released relative to the star very well, but we have an uncertainty of the radius of the star. in terms of the masses of the planets, there's an estimate on the amount they tug, but these are very small variations so there's a bit of uncertainty so these ellipses for the extra solar planets both the five that are around kepler-11 that are labeled, that are in blue and labeled by the letters which

designate the particular planets, and the three around other stars which are ellipses of a different collar have uncertainty and cover a different range, but they still constrain both the mass and the size of the stars and -- planets excuse me. we compare them to four of the planets most like them in our solar system, venus and earth on the small side neptune on the large size. these are an intermediate class of planet, and of these eight that we have that we know in this range five are around the star that we call kepler-11, they're the ones we're

announcing today. that little red one is in the bottom is kepler-10 that we announced last month and bill mentioned as a rocky planet. now, the ones we found in kepler-11 that we're announcing today they are all higher up on this graph than the rocky planet. the rocky planet is really, really really close to the star and really hot. these planettings are kind of close to the star and they are warm but not nearly as hot. we find that these are bigger for the same amount of mass which means they must be made of lighter material. they are not superearths. they are not big rocks. the innermost two, c and b they

might be mixtures of rock and water or they maybe mixtures of rock, water, and gas, or even just rock and gas. we know the three more distant of the fivesome called d, e, and f are so big for their mass that the substantial fraction of their volume must be made of the two lightest elements hydrogen and heel lee up gases. not only is kepler-11 telling us about planetary systems of a type that we had no idea existed but right now, it's providing our best clues on the compositions of these planets as individual worlds.

if we can move on to my next slide in this is the family portrait, and we see the cousins that were found previously and bill showed you in the earlier slide. on the top two row and the new set of six siblings of the family, the long lost cousins we found and are announcing today around kepler-11 in the bottom row. if we can go to the next slide, i want to wrap up. kepler-11 is a surprisingly flat and compact system of six transiting planets. the five inner planets are especially close together something that we didn't think would happen for worlds of this

size, and really forces us to go back and look at formation models of planets and it also means that the planets are perturbing one another significantly enough that we can weigh the planets. we find out that they are low density. they are fluffy. they are sort of like marshmellows, but they are not all gasment they got to have -- they got to have something a little heavier there. maybe a marshmellow with a little hard candy at the core. [laughter] now, we really were just amazed at this gift that nature, not the magazine, but nature has

given us, and with six transiting planets, five so close to their star, and getting the size and masses of these five fairly small worlds there's only one word that i can think of that adequately describes the new finding we're announcing today. the kepler-11 system of six transiting planets is spectacular. with that, i'll hand things over to deborah. we'll give you the outside expert's view on what we've been announcing today. ..ll, folks, this, of course is an amazing era of discovery for

astronomy, but for exoplanets in particular. and there's no doubt that the search r planets is motivated by se for life. humans are interested in whether or not life evolves on other planets. 'd especially like to find communicating technological life and we look around ourwn solar system and we see of all the planets there's only one that's inhabited and natully

amazed to sit here today and see that kepler is reaching the miles to discover these faster certainly banaa i anticipated. kepler has blown the lid off everything we know about the solar panel and that's and this week to me feels different than last week did and i will tell you summarized the three reasons that i say that so first of all from the planet surface we could see the gas giant planets like jupiter were less common than the planets we could see on the mountainous rise towards the smaller and smaller were lower and lower planets but our detection technique was through the wall just because of the precision of our measurement

and so we were at the point we were pounding away right now trying to shake out a few planets that are to come to become four, five times the mass of the tariff but the statistics are not so good and so what kepler has done is it is extended the bridge that crosses the gap in the knowledge of what kind of small planets formed. still, the amazing thing to remember is that the detection of large planets or massive planets is always sweet be easier and the detection of the small guys and so what that means is the statistics kepler has gained even on the planet candidates maybe 20% of the candidates won't pan out but statistically we can see that the -- we understand the fraction, the rate of occurrence of the massive planets from jupiter all the way back to neptune. those numbers are solid. we can take them to the bank.amazig.

that's pretty amazing. it's impressive that the number of small planets is growing. region in a region of perimeter space a that theoreticians actually a predicted might be a planetmazing th desert. is the second amazing thing is that there really is difficult to untangle this exit polls from the multiple planas systems.worth so it is worth reemphasizing shows that kepler now shows something almo like almost one in five of their stars of transiting planets posts at least one other planet kepler-11 that was just an presented today and is absolutely staggering result.in with five low mass planets in discove the system this discovery is as momentous as 1995. it shows the planetary systems witheral s with several small planets like our own seem to be common.lly rehing

in the thi ord point is that kepler isin rtoeaching out into a different part of the milky way o galaxy. they the are more of serving with a chn iq doppler technique, our own athink it nearby neighborhood and i thinkhe it shows that to the adjacent neighborhoods in the galaxy lookke a lot like our own neighborhood and that is encouraging and tr yi important if we are trying toextra make extrapolations about the of pl formation of planets elsewhere and perhaps life.id so i cane actually provide some insight about the enthusiasm of the public for the data. saw at yale university we were excited when we saw that we team with the up with the citizens science alliance who hosts milky way galaxy zoo among other universe projects to let the publ isc to let the public participate in discovering planets at theplaneunter. planet hunters got word.tarted the when we started the project we discussedd among ourselves and wewe

really thought there was about a chancet 50/50 chance the project was completely floored becausetures that galaxies zeus shows beautiful pictures people get to look at. we are showing brightnesseasuremen measurementsts of stars. but in just a few short weeks we have over 16,000 dedicated users and they send theirssia greetings from turkey, russia, poland, spain the canary islands, brazil chile, oneanothe country after another. it's amazing. mor they have made more than first 1.3 million classifications just 35 using the first release of 35 days of public release data. they've identified hundreds of solid transiting candidates and a binary system that were not, of coue, they' publishedre before so they are the li eager to see the list that could be coming out and see if they have any matches. excited we are really excited and nasa appreciative that 12 hours ago

nasa and the mission has poured the social the quadrupled the am amount of publico relief tava on an excellent its visual. this is really wonderful. u we are hearing from teacher's daughter using kepler data for the the interface and the schoolir curriculum from students who areare havingfun s having fun searching for thisystack, needle in a haystack justayoff because they know the payoff is go to be going to be so enormous.rs i had one of the planet hunters e-mail me yesterday and he or know, she said that they had fought for planets and they felt so were proud. back to another person commented they've see were going back to school nown an that the haved the seen the data and want to learn more and more. the dominant recurring theme wey're think off from the public is to they are excited because theyres get to contribute to realthey' research and they have a sensestor thaty. they are a part of history.

the understand the importance of the data and i want to echo that and say that also i feel this is an incredible historical histor moment and i want to thank the entire kepler team for the data want that they have provided. >> thank you very much. okay.ided. let's check into the question and answer session a reminderstion-and-swer for everyone in the audience towe get a wait until you have a microphonen there said the two of them andr please s identify yourself and and your affiliation before u.s. your question.ect yo quest try to direct your question to panelists and help avoid confusion and for those joining can you can push the star one key on the the telephone and a understand we have one question in thece. audience. estimate the american geophysical union. can i wonder of the panelists canesults comment on how the results might e influence the emergingme researcheffor efforts for instance change whatkepler

is us researchers areed looking for how kepler is used etc.. >> basically one of the things we are doing bethell to determine the frequency of the type of stores because therefoll will be followed on missions and fall and along missions need this design kind of i.nformation for the design.esig the designs of their onens is a graphic approach and the other half different areas of application and so one of the things we are doing is providinghe information required for the future missions that will go out ne and find the planets in the ell a nearest stars as well as going out and finding the composition of the atmosphere of the ou planets, and that is another step towards our exploration of the galaxy. c >> let me just do a quick check.

it looks like we have one morehere. here. >> hello peter ayaan witha ge canadian telneevision. a general question first of all bri how much did this bring us tre's closer to discover whether there how was alien life and second how out i do you know find out of the five planets in the habitable so do have life? >> patients. that's how it's done, and lots of money. that's the reality. this mission is designed to do something and do it as well asirst step. can be for this first step. it finds the frequency of ther objects and theib distribution. the but you must through the otheruild steps in some sense build then's cathedral. the first generation to build aoi foundation the next is to build a wall. third the third generation to the ceiling and the fourth on generation will initially it is we are sometimes the firstit. generation. the second generation is goingcond g to build instruments far more complex than what we have to gocomplexi

than wha and find these nearby ones and demandsill be even greater demand will be made at to find the atmosphere is on thethen, ourse, planets. and of course having done thaten wil our grandchildren have to decide what is the next step.th to we want to go there and send sys a robotic system?this isnly this is only one step. 's an it is an important step there are other steps that must the follow.on >> i would like to go to theeselve phones no.ress i believe that sf is on from the yes associated press. go ahead. is is >> thank you for doing this. this is more for the bill. in the 54 candidates in thene a habitable so and i think you size said one was smaller than the earth and four were super earth. th does that mean essentially the are other 49 are more candidates of the satellites for the moons or group is there a group that is sort of in the range that might be

rocky? the other question is by no for definitions for the habitable at i zones very. tem what is your temperature to definition? is it zero to 100 or slightly bigger? thank you. rge th >> the temperature range wethe consider part of the habitable zone is extended and that clearly if you extend it down below the freezing point ofthat's water that is what we calculate is if the planet has theif the atmosphere. of the oepslanet does have an atmosphere the temperature is will going to be warmer. it may have liquid surface. its the habitable zone is a veryfuzzy conc fuzzyep concept certainly othereated b moons are heated by the internal energy of the moon's. fe there's a possibility of life there as well which is trying to pick a region that has a higher

probability of having a wife who is sort of a start in the search. does that answer your question? o >> you asked about the other ones as well. we have these five that are small. the earth up to twice as fast. the group and a small number ofize half a dozen that are hit of tos jupiter sized and clearly all of those arewe interesting to us. f we want to urexplore them further but we don't know much about them and we have told you at at this point we have a lot of work o to do to better understand them and to confirm them. >> let's go back to the phones this time of the san franciscoom chronicle. go ahead.a >> thank you very much. i have a question for dale and iu guess and that is how do you define a candidate and when does be a candidate not be a candidate anymore when becoming confirmed?

>> that is a tough question in that of course when we see a series of transports what you the would like to say is that is a plan that.t. more than likely it is an eclipsing binary or something that hits your detector or a lot of other phenomena. one of the ones that have theph most troublesome are thewith eclipsing binary stars. eclipsing when we look at the galaxy we see of the stars in the back route lots of these doors thatnd are everywhere. se the the instrument seeks a great gre deal of effort for each of thesesting, objects that looked interesting that are the analysis pipelinell provides beautiful look sampleevents, of all the threshold that have a big enough signal to be interesting. it looks at these and asks is a

there a secondary eclipse. a warni right that is a warning right away. it looks at the shape and it's a warning right away that there is an eclipse that by mary.y. so the pipeline that the team has put together has built aystem tha system that eliminates most of these these false positives and somey've of the work they've done iselega. absolutely public. nevertheless after the process the data performance it comes toence te ba the science team basically of all the servers and others, and we look at these and ask which of these can we go to the c telescope with and have a chanceheir of proving?opes and are we look at the ground based telescope and ask are there other stars that could explainco this? we do their reconnaissance spectrum with observers to s ee what the characteristics of the stars are. o if you look at the size of theize of store and the size of the planet get so we make an effort to get to

the size of the start to thespectra. reconnaissance spectrum and if it is as good we want to confirmit it we go to the biggest telescopes in the world and the optical telescopes and going and arctic measure the rate of the velocity fluctuations. so it is a series of steps that a se generally triakes from when the data comes out to when we havececraft an announcement.e generally of the order of a e year. of that is the kind of time that isble t required to deal to prove something is a plan -- planet. >> i would like to jump in and say you listen to both descriptions and should give you the a better understanding of the just fact of just how much work goesking into taking something from thendidate t planet candidate to ranle exoplanet. everybody wants to be able to you know just go through andbut ea rollout hundreds of planets.ese but each and every one of these requires this sort of you know, througnd

painstaking work to go through and not and confirm they actually arere planets and not something to they're trying to trick us into thinking it's planet.cripti build a good description to come to thin k about that it is an amazing amount of work by a lot lot of people coming into this. >> i would like to add bill did ste an excellent description, and in all of the steps before the last basically doing for everyre candidate before we even consider calling it a planet. are t but there are free different last steps because of those radio velocities, the doppler if the it works for a big enough planets around bright stars. but for kepler-11. they are not super close and

they are around a faint star so mhod the second method is one that has only been used twice for kepler-9 and kepler-11 and that is as bill mentioned in his talk the transit timing variation to see what they areth exerting on one another, and you can't have that in the triple star system because they would say the stars are much more massive. so that's the second way which like the radio velocity and if it also gives the mass. the but it's only on systems where the planets are big enough or that it's psible. close enough that it's possible. so the third method we just used on a couple objects the third

planet around kepler-9, the sixth planet around kepler-11 is fieldight to look painstakingly yet the field right part of the start and look at it characterized asas much far as muc h as we can and will at get the details of the shape of the planet and showed that theill shape and the details just don't make sense for any falsereasable ch positive model of any reasonable chance of occurring and we're therefore we are more than 99%l it a certain of the planet and we call the planet and that is better than the rights of things that have been called planets of the past so we think that's pretty good. it's not at 99% at least. it's it's still just a candidate.now we >> anything else to add?

we have one more question on the we'll come phone. ck to the let me take that and then come a back tou the audience and to the check to see if there's anything further. kelly, scotty and telescope. go ahead. >> caller: thank you very much. concding jack, assuming in concluding that some of these half i atmosphere is as understand youy havebeen basically been working on the model of their density when you measure the transepts iftim there are atmosphere's how do they affect the diameter thatrivedn you tonight?es do the atmosphere's cause you to come up with a diameter that is artificially larger than the planet is all? >> you have a good question of what is the size of the planet? for her if you generally consider the size of the surface because then the atmosphere is just so much more tenuous.ant

but for the joint plans in our say solar system, we have to see we want what is the size where we want to cut things of? these and we have to say that for these planets too.urns and it turns out that the size which at which the altitude, the in the density and the atmosphere that causes the transnet is a little bit less dense or less higher,er so did a little larger than what we would clall the measurement of the sizes of jupiter, saturn or neptune but by less than 1%, itit may b may be a elittle more in these ca cases but it is a pretty small difference.audienc see spinet what we do a quick check y from the audience a fndur see if there are more questions. we will go to the phone line. fro npr, go ahead. >> caller:

>> do we have him on the line? do okay let me just do one more th check and seeer if there are anyright, i more questions? a i know we have a question from te the ames research center.ead, go ahead. >> caller: okay, hello. [inaudible] international television. could you elaborate a bit more on the five of the in habitable? what can the stars and how far what m away are they? what might they look white? wt furthermore these earth like mean, planets, i mean what is the definition of these first likeli planets and when might theseanets

poup, woul planets pop-up when they exist?n. >> that's a very very hardre these question. detec we can measure these and we have yet to prove they are planets. many of these are small so we we haven't confirmed any but it'stainly g certainly going to be something that we will investigate in thecoming coming months and years.y but at this point i can't tell y you much about him other than the stars when they or that are stars quite a bit smaller than the sun in the order of sometimes half the size of the temperares sun. ve the temperatures are very much i lower. the sun is about 5800. t these stars or almost half the of temperature in the order of some 3,000, 3500. s i think some of the slightly bigger objects are again cooler -- than the earth but the temperatures i think from aboutin

44 to 4800 so they would be considered intermediate between the small cool stars and the hotter stars like the sun but weabout tm as don't know much more about him as of yet.er we have discovered them ofy, very course only very recently. it takes a great deal of work to find them to make sure that weersta little understand a little bit about the s the starst themselves. it's not -- it is difficult ton get the information on the start, how big is it what is s the compensation comes of the and the reconnaissance spectrum and theerpretatn interpretation of the reconnaissance spectra. the understanding of how old the stars might be which tells a little bit about how the mass t and size vary for the stars i think we still have in and out can't of work to do so i am afraid i other an can't give too much information around other than many of them are around the cooler stars smaller

than the son. spinach is to add a couple and tey things, if they are planets and they are in the habitable zone then a star of the sea in the sky is more red than habable the sun the reason to the smalllanet and habitable planet candidatesseeing now we are seeing now are only around these smaller stores isme. that we just haven't had enough are time. we are searching for planets true eah that are true earth analogs around stars like the sun but a that's going to take a few moref years of data to find them. go ahead okay.

we have another question. yo've had >> caller: you had four months of recorded observations out of i think it is a three year mission so you are really just ting to get getting started. i am trying to get an idea ofou the results that you expect. you do you expect that they could be t a linear in the sense of you have 1,203,500 candidate planets now or will your earlyted to observations where you start tocandidatethat n see enough of the candidatese that now you are getting into the falling grain detail and we won't see the results stepping forward as great as these have that been. you go fu >> i mentioned in my talk as youto go further and further to the larger or middle distance in theperio larger. it's the chance of getting the ali alignment falls dramatically. so, we see this huge number of

candidates but if we look at eect s the following years we don'tkind expect to see anywhere near thate wi kind of increase. what we will see is fewer but more interesting. ones they will be the ones further out that are cooler. the other aspect is happening on here is as we go on the analysis to correct -- the stars are no ar n easier than we expected so it is harder to find this all signals, and we have a group of that work people at nasa ames that work thin like hard to correct the glitches and and things like the data and as they do so the analysis pipelineore becomes more and more capable ofobjects. finding these small or objects so we are going to find in the year is going on that we are're ale to able to find even in the data data that we are producing right now ller more planets but smaller planets.cality or so it's a capable the leader of the mathematical analysis that

allows us to find the small objects but we do not expect to not see the kind of a plethorahora increase that we see now.will b there will be many fewer as the years go on. ers >> quality is coming up, notp, n quantity.ay, let go okay let's go back to the phones and try now greenfield at npr. go ahead. >> can you hear me this time?yes w >> caller: tecum >> >> this weekend. ok gtch >> caller: sorry about before. ding thanks for taking my question. to do and to set the first habie confirmed planet in the habitable zone will be one ofi me thesean, candidates? you do you feel it is in the data waiting to be confirmed? and i know you talked about thequired steps required for the confirmation that just to at reiterate how long do you think the confirmation will take? >> i guess i can speak to that.

again, no i wouldn't expect the holy grail to use the term that used, t io used to be in this set because gr again, the holy grail in thebitablene earth's size planets are in the inhabitable zone and around the sun like a star.ut a obviously the orval period would be about a year. if you so in fact you would only come in if you were far away in the plan orbit of the earth orbit looking at the transit across the sun you would only see the transit by that planet once every year so in fact it would take threel, fir years, welcome a first would you t take you two years before to e even small a second blip thatthat, you sort of stood out in the k middle mi of nowhere a year after the the f first oneir came along and would along be a third before you came along a and we seem to be getting this wo every year and that period so atriod. in this point with only a year andf a half worth of data we wouldn't

have enough yet to identify it as a recurring event. so in that instance, no i would uld say j say just on that standpoint the c planet candidate that could be, if u our earth like planet if you ear-size will, or the earth size planet to be more precise wouldn't have emerged from the data.n b >> okay. on we have allan boyle. go ahead. >> caller: hi. candidate there were some candidates that were held back for confirmation by the team 400. i wonder if there are with a no. number of candidates being held back for similar reasons. t >> no, there are not. all of the data in addition to the 400 targets of the team hadave

a extended exclusive use so they season could have a full follow-up observation were released actually just a few hours before all of the data of the 156000 for the second three months of th the mission so all of the datare. is out there and there are no targets that have been held back at this point. was >> we had an opportunity to take a look at those and candidates that were held back over the summer by the reconnaissance spectra of the thousands.e had we don't some of those that we those t have released and reserved false positives that work by an areaupst or whatever. that is all that we have a released malae and much more heavily studded we have a better re good understanding these are good obser

candidates and we are gratifiedets, planets and we haven't released all the data for this for d months. the date after the period of time but we don't have anyandida tes candidates that we can show you. to >> okay.l let's move on to mike at the state stockholm. go ahead. >> caller: a little press release that in kepler went intoi was j safe mode and i was just you wondering if you could just tellproblemwas what the problem was and if it's if it'serious serious or if everything is going to be okay going forward with the telescope. >> yes. in fact the kepler did turn out in a safe mode at the normalact. contact and the team is currently working the issue. to it appears to be at this point, preli and this is preliminary be information, it appears to be ate

fault with one of the star sme th trackers which is something we the data have experienced before. the data shows it is in fineghtut shape. in fact it's been broughoft out ofnd probly e a seafood and is in standby modee, t and even aste we speak they are doing a full download and a picture than what is going on and find a -- if we can design a way to a void this problem in the fau future but this does appear to be a fault that we experienced and we do not believe it represents a serious threat tot's g the mission. >> let's go back to sethahead, borkenstein, associated press. i >> yes, thanks, i want to if we the s can focus on the smallest of the firs planets first what is the smallest size in looking at the one the earth sized candidate in the potential that is on the sixth earth radii and i'm

wondering how secure are youare you about that and because it is so small would eliminate usingity their radio velocity to get into ar actua wonder how overall how many have found that are smaller than earthquakes >> thank you. islamic mabey deborah can talk about controlling the smallking objects working on a system that may represent a significant step forward in the ability of thel rate of the velocity systems toat the look at the smaller objects. >> i can certainly, it is extraordinarily difficult the ur detections our measurements errors right right now about 1 meter per second and we are to fight andalogwe woul earth analog we would need to beto able to measure and amplitude of t the reflex velocity if th 10 centimeters per second so that means we have to shrinkecon

meter by a factor of ten. we have at yale a doppleroppl diagnostics facility where we are setting the procession as alocity figure on the merits and reallyit trying to hammer down on the resources we canon a think of but we ay are a ways away. maybe the best strategy we have now right now is if our errors are big random and not systematic, thanway one way that we can shrink is by ob s taking many observations, to one one measurement you get 1 meter persec second to take 100 reduce that improv precision or improve it by the square root of the number of nmber of observations come so that's how you can get from one down to ten. the problem is it doestnhe't really really go down that just because it isn't completely or normally distributed so it is a focus off

work, and i think likeike evething everything in this field we have to go one step at a time andtoo it's too bad b we can't just sortap of leap to the end and see theers, b w answers but we are all doing theard groun hard ground wodwrk right now to make that happen. that >> i would like to add that if l we get lucky and we find some habitae zone earth sized candidates in the inhabitable zone of stars with more than one candidate and ifaft's the spacecraft is healthy stayshy healthy, the funding stays healthy and we can have ane extended mission maybe we will be able to observe long enoughbe that we will be able to see transit tiny variations that one planet causes of the other and that confirm it that way even if thety radio velocity confirmation isplanet.

impossible for such a small plant at. islamic we are going to take the last question and this is back d av at the san francisco chronicle. go ahead david. >> thanks very much and i have to try to follow up before bill, i am still not clear as to how the you define what is a definition of a candidate. dalia understand how you confirm the the dewaal were very helpful on that subject but how do you mak actually did find a candidateyo that makes you then go and attempt to confirm that.is >> okay, let's talk about that from moment. we have a pipeline that goes through the data in an automatedsthat fashion and it finds any set of signa transit's that have n a ratio likesomethg l i seven. the probative getting something ndom like that of random data is one

and 100 billion so the pipeline li produces and it gives you a list thi of these things. this has such and such ev threshold defense but thisd, period this amplitude and itme makes some checks and spits itits t out fatherhood gives us a team report and it is a threshold even crossing looks at the result of the computer output and thenthis w begins to think about it themselves. do they really think this is the event candidate? is the threshold crossing theat candidate? if the team says yes it is ahey ma candidate bkeecause they say it isa g a candidate they make that decision, a group of about eightnerally oce a or ten people meet generallyhat once a week to make that decision and it's that group rank that often puts the priority t rank on these and sends it to the group of people called the

fall along of serving program ok group who look at what has been to given to them and say here isat what they want us to look at and they look and they decide fromteles the available telescopes andthese instruments which of these is the most practical to do and they go forward with the validation procedures that we talked about. a but the conversion of aeven thresholdt crossing even to a candidate is tom bye at team, bi week team members meeting in a group once a week to make thatking at th decision by looking at the data. >> bill has described as something becomes a candidate caidate and is as a candidate until eithe it's leader it's confirmed as a plan that or we showed that it is a false positive.edia confence.

>> okay. with that we will and today's meeting conference. just as a remiinndeder you can findr,out mo info out morerm information aboutunce today's announcement and keep up with a fully leasednasa.gov/kr. nasa.gov/kepler debate i would like to thank the panelists andme all of you for joining us.r joining have a great day. before

the british inquiry into the iraq war continued wednesday with more testimony from former foreign secretary jack straw. recently released a document suggesting that mr. straw poll ( minister tony blair there was an alternative to the invasion. mr. straw was asked to clarify his previous testimony. this portion of the hearing is two and a half hours.

>> good morning, everyone. i'm sorry we started a few minutes late this morning. it is because of a technical problem that we are now ready to start the hearing. we should be hearing this morning from the honorable jack straw who served as foreign secretary from june, 2001 until may, 2006. we heard evidence from mr. straw and january and february last year and he also said the inquiry written statements in advance of each of those hearings. in preparation for this morning's hearings we asked mr. straw to produce a further statement in response to a number of particular questions from the inquiry and we are grateful for that. it is now being published on our website. we are also publishing a number of other documents, including some which are relevant to mr. straw's estimate for this morning's hearing. now this morning we shall concentrate only on those areas where there are specific points we wish to explore with mr. straw. we are not addressing all the

areas he was responsible as foreign secretary and we may wish to address in our report. as i say on each occasion we've recognized that witnesses give evidence based on their recollection of events, and we of course check what we hear against the papers to which we have access and which we are still receiving. finally, i would remind each witness on each occasion he will later be asked to sign the transcript of his evidence to the effect of the evidence given his truthful, fair and accurate. with those preliminaries out of the way i will turn to search roderic lyne. >> has said, we don't need to repeat our earlier discussions but i would like to seek clarification on a few specific points as the strategy towards iraq and evolved after the ninth of september, 2001. now, last year we discussed the policy of containment in some detail. and as you say in your latest statement this was a policy the was difficult to sustain.

is it right that as we have heard from other witnesses, containment remained the government officially stated policy at least until september of 2002? >> well it's right that in a sense depending what you mean exactly by containment, but if you mean by containment as i set out in my latest statement, containing and of removing the problem of saddam hussein's failure to comply with the united nations obligations, then containment remained the overall strategy of the government right up to the time when we took the decision to use military action because in a sense 1441 was a continuation of a series of policies by the united nations security council to secure the compliance of saddam hussein and to ensure that all his wmd had been removed, his programs and

capabilities had been broken up. as i said repeatedly, and it was absolutely exquisite the time if saddam hussein had done that then he would have stayed in the post. the regime change regime was never an objective of the british government, and if the 4041 had been complied with which was my hope then in a sense containment issues within four to 41 would have been a successful policy. >> i think we will come back to one aspect of that later on. very soon after 9/11 there was talk in the united states him quite a lot of speculation in the british media that there would be a phase two of the war of terror and that the fees to might include as a priority

target military action of some kind against some hussein's regime. on the 26 of november, 2001 president bush and a press conference made some remarks about iraq which boosted that speculation and then there was quite a lot of speculation following on from that in the of the british press about whether the military action against iraq was being contemplated. in his recent evidence to us the lord wilson who was the cabinet secretary at the time has richard nixon told us mr. blair had played an important part of the 9/11 in dissuading the americans from taking action against iraq at that time or from thinking of it and indeed on the 27th of november, to those of one, the minister brad shaw told the house of commons that it was in the policy of the government to extend the military action to other states and that there was

no evidence of the involvement of the state's other than afghanistan in 9/11. so is it right to think that in the autumn of 2001, and indeed come into the early part of 2002 that the government was seeking to dissuade the a united states administration from targeting iraq in the second phase of the war against her? >> was certainly the case that at that period we were seeking to persuade the united states government to put off any significant consideration of the issue, because in november 2001, we were completely immersed in afghanistan. i mean that was the overriding preoccupation for the british government and indeed for the americans. there was and remained a serious problem in iraq, but it was not one that we have to deal with

that day, that week or that month, and that indeed eventually became the case. then if i can just explain and to some extent this is brought out by richard willson's evidence, we have afghanistan going on. them on december 13th 2001 there was the attack by islamic terrorists against the lok sabha in delhi. that led to a series of events which over the following months led to a mobilization of conventional forces by india and pakistan and the possibility that they might begin to threaten each other with their nuclear forces. i got completely immersed in that. with colin powell, with his deputy, with david manning we were dhaka were sued for words to india and pakistan throughout the period to persuade and

cultural the indians and pakistanis to pull back from a military confrontation. so that was our preoccupation. yes, iraq was there, but if you are asking me sir rod when iraq really started to come right to the surface, i can tell you exactly as far as i was concerned, and that was the day that president bush gave his state of the union speech which was on the 23rd, 24, towards the end of january 2002. i happened to be in washington that the day and could sense the sort of came change that his statement led to. you made it clear in your evidence to us last year that you thought that patrician made what he called a profound mistake in the state of the union speech by linking together three separate countries, which you did not see as being linked.

so in this period ought to at least the state of the union the axis of evil speech, we are saying to the americans the priorities are afghanistan, this very serious situation in india. iraq is not implicated either and 9/11 for of course in the attack of the lok sabha we're seeing that is not the priority right now. that is correct is it for the record? >> yes, if i could put it in a slightly different way we are saying it is a priority but we don't have -- we have to consider it now. we have much more -- >> like north korea? >> we have to deal with this, but we don't -- but there is an issue of capacity apart from

anything else. from my point of view it wasn't really possible to deal with them because we were dealing with afghanistan and we were dealing hour by hour with the india pakistan issue to demonstrate what i mean by hour by hour, is a matter of the family record now that i was supposed to be cooking the sunday lunch -- the christmas lunch and i served the first course on christmas day and the rest of the time was spent on the telephone talking to colin powell and others about the indian pakistan thing. so this was completely dominant. iraq was a problem, but it was a problem we didn't have to deal with there and then. >> may i sort of just if i may respectfully pick you up on one thing that you said i said about the access of evil speech? i had no difficulty about president bush highlighting the problems of iraq and north

korea, although i wouldn't have used the axis of evil analogy because i didn't eat it was an access. i have profound objections to him bracketing iran with iraq and north korea because i didn't think it was justified, and because it undermined the reformist president khatami's efforts to reach out to the west it profoundly damaged his standing within his own country. >> what you said to us last year was exactly that. you said i was concerned about the way that he had sought to link these three very different problems together. so they are problems. iraq is a problem, north korea is a problem and iran is a problem and they are not the problem some like the one interrupting your christmas dinner. there are other ones you have to deal with that particular moment. now, on the third of december in a letter that he was quoted in your latest statement to us and

which is being classified call your office, you told us previously that he personally approved this briefing to the prime minister, your office replied to a request from the prime minister for a note of the options for dealing with iraq and if i can to doubt four points from the advice that he gave in that letter your letter said, your private secretary's letter said there are no interest grounds for the military actions against iraq. it said a strategy to deal with the wmd thread will require gracia to of containment and is a military intervention for the purpose of the regime change would be equal and of course you have consistently argued as you did last year the regime change couldn't be an objective of the u.k. foreign policy.

finally it concluded we should find out what the americans had in mind and test the viability of any plans. so you saw sir david manning's mission he was about to go to washington with sir richard as being an exploratory mission rather than one in which we were certainly are giving for the regime change, which you said was illegal. were you aware that around the same time that you were offering that advice that jonathan paul was riding the pie minister anno about encouraging people in iraq to resist that and i know he described in his evidence. >> i don't think i was aware of that note to self because the private sector and jonathan powell are sufficient were entitled to their own private

boats. my private secretaries did to me sending the murder of the office -- sending them devotee office. i don't think that is necessarily inconsistent with a clear policy and legal requirement that the british government couldn't be committed to the regime change as an objective and i don't like this regime if there had been a magic wand by which it could have been removed or replaced by democracy so you can have the wish and the desire to see a regime change may also within clear limits wish to encourage that but it couldn't be and it actually wasn't an objective of the british government policy, and that particular briefing went to

david manning on the third of december was obviously to get him back crowd, but also to set up what i saw it as the paralysis of any overall strategy and i actually think the deduce brothers stood the test of time. >> you were of course aware that number ten also commissioned a briefing in parallel at the same time of the secret intelligence service, and you saw the peter's or use of the two papers that they sent to number ten. these papers of course have not been declassified, but they have been described to us and evidence sessions, transcript, of which have been published. the first paper that sis ret for number ten began what can be done about iraq if the u.s. heads for the direct action have we any ideas that could divert them from an alternative course?

and that paper warned of the hazards, and as described to us it argued for caution, circumspection and awareness of what they have the matter iraq could prove to be. then there was a second paper from the same source from the same author which pointed in the opposite direction, at the same time or within days of each other sent to you at the same time under the same covering letter. the second paper discussed, and i quote how could we come upon an objective of regime change in baghdad with the need to protect important regional interests? that second paper put a much broader case for the regime change than dealing with the threat of wmd. hope your office received the speakers and said he wrote to number ten if the papers or

perceptive and that you hope the prime minister would read them. were you concerned that number ten was seeking advice of this kind from the sis? >> i think number ten were fully entitled to -- >> policy advice is that normally what sis this? >> rac. sorry. >> this is not intelligence. >> welcome if you asked me was i surprised, no i wasn't, we were in a position where we were seeking the best advice that was available in respect of an issue which prior to my 11 -- 9/11 haven't had the attention that it should have been. so it was getting people to think about the "what ifs" of