>> the fact that the center, i don't have enough programs to make sure every center has a program office. but it doesn't matter to the people of the center. it may matter to people who are looking for titles, but to the workers in that community it is

important that they get projects as it relates to that budget. projects knowing what's in 11 that we will function at this fy 20 level -- fy10 level knowing as we go into fy 12. >> i agreed. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> the gentleman from virginia, mr. rigell. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

i certainly respect your military service and your bravery to testify, and niger service with nasa. i think it's a distinguished career. in your opening statement you mentioned that there was, i think you characterized it as some concern about nasa's commitment until passion to maintain and -- to man human i would say that doesn't capture my view. i'm deeply troubled and really disturbed by. i think they figure that you referenced, you said look, we are allocating 44% of our budget to human spaceflight. i come to the exact opposite conclusion. that doesn't reinforce the idea that we are committed to human spaceflight. that number in my view indicates that we are not as committed as we were, nor are we as committed as we should be, to human spaceflight.

heisey human spaceflight really as the essential dna of nasa. and i would like for us to get back on a path of really investing in human spaceflight as quickly as we can. i think, as you said, reasonable people can disagree over these matters but i'm here today to petition you, and to move back in the direction of allocating more towards human spaceflight. we can talk about the proper allocation between commercial and actual nasa flights, but i still think we need to move in the other direction. you mentioned also in response to a question offer today, that were the savings of commercial space flight versus nasa human spaceflight, i believe. and your response was i believe was i don't know. and it seems to me that that's the things that we're going to have to deal with you on the

would you please just expand on the answer a bit? >> i'm glad you asked because it gives me and it chance to elaborate. when we talk about connecting all the aspects of nasa, the nasa portfolio, we cannot separate human spaceflight from science. our science missions may in a few to utilize the launch vehicle that we used to launch astronauts into space. today, my science budget is under attack because of the rising costs of a launch vehicle. if i can find a way to get a cheaper launch vehicle, i can fly more science. that same launch vehicle that would take humans to lower was orbit. the integrated advantage of going to commercial carriers, to adding competition to the mix were as today, if you look at orbital sciences, orbital design, the torahs to, not to take humans to orbit, they

decided to meet a market that is something there which was for medium lift rocket. they say that's where the science market is. that's the way they target it, you know, we have done a little bit of conversation and some analysis of the market. so they are very comfortable in whether they participate in human spaceflight or not, they have hit the target because that's where the market lies. if they can win in being one of the carriers for humans to low earth orbit, they have multiply magnified you know, their profit. they had decreased the cost of orbit for me because now all i do is buy service. i don't operate it. i don't carry the infrastructure cost here and there is some debate now about how much i am really spending on the kennedy space center. there's disagreement even among my own people. we spent a lot of money everyday, every month, every

year just maintaining the infrastructure of the kennedy space center whether i fly a shuttle or not. i am trying to get rid of that. >> on this point i think we're in full agreement. i think that there is a place for a commercial role here, and i think having, as a businessman who is now a represented in our drawn to the statement about competition and having companies compete here. but the question specifically is, and i think one that i asked of you, maybe circle back around and provide some more information for the committee and for me in particular, is the ability to properly develop an answer to that legitimate question of what are the relative costs of nasa putting a human in flight, versus the private sector? and i think that merits more exploration. >> i will get you the answer, and weren't you just use, that request for exploration, the reason i can give you the answer

is because exploration is just that. it is something that we pursue having no idea what we are going to find. if i looked at, putting a dollar value on the a train, it's an earth science satellite, every day. you know, what's the dollar value on having the a train there to the people in haiti who, many of whom were saved because one of the satellites revealed three areas of the country that were subject to landslides with a big earthquake that we would have never found for weeks. what value on the people of the gulf coast for what came out of the a train to help us understand the gulf oil spill? that. i appreciate your question and we'll try to get you an answer. >> my time has expired. thank you very much. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. recognize the gentleman from

alabama, ms. sewell, for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. bolden. nasa's proposed budget indicates that there will be 138 million for education initiatives, including the space grant and minority university research programs. these archival partnerships that exist in the state of alabama where i'm from for institutions such as you age and alabama a&m and uab and university of alabama. this is a decrease in the nearly 146 million for fy 2011. how will this decrease in funding impact these valuable educational initiatives? i like you am concerned about educating the next generation and would like to see those partnerships continue. >> like every other agency in the government and like every company in america, we are looking for ways to streamline the way we do business. leland melvin who is my new associate administrator for education once chaired and now

since he's the associate minute straight he oversees the work of an education design team with the nasa. we going out and have been working with professional educators, colleges and universities, secondary educators, to determine how we can better implement our education program with the nasa so that we get the same value that we get right now for less money. so, the $138 million is a significant amount of money for our education efforts. we are also trying to collaborate much more with other agencies. we are working with the first ladies, the white house initiative for things such as helping military families, and aspect of that is education for military families. we have content that we can offer that we don't spend another dime on. it's already there, whether talking to astronauts on the international space station. one of the best things i did, we used to do something called star ask we got on a hammer you and you talk to kids in schools. that's incredible. that comes out almost no cost we

are tried to find better ways that we can implement what we have at a lower cost. >> all right. the proposed budget for fy 12 also provides $1.8 billion to help develop a heavy lift vehicle. that will launch the crew. marshall space center in huntsville, alabama, will likely be a very major contributor in designing that heavy lift vehicle. and fy 12 the funding request for this project significantly, is a sufficient i would say to fully fund and develop the heavy-lift vehicle through 2016, which is the desire timetable. and are you committed to making sure that those funding levels stay about the same? >> i'm committed to try to picture the funding levels remain about the same. one of the things that you'll see in a congressional justifications is beginning in

2013, i have asked and i think i have been granted, it remains to be seen whether the congress will agree, that would put human exploration in one budget line so that as we go with the development of an evolved will heavy lift system and a multi-purpose vehicle that we can move the funds around as necessary in each successive year, so that we married is programmed up when we need them. you know, that being the 2020 timeframe is when we will need an integrated heavy lift launch vehicle and crew exploration vehicles that can go beyond low-earth orbit. there may be a payable, you know, a payable systems before that time but i don't need one for beyond low-earth orbit until 2020. >> thank you. >> yes, ma'am. >> thank you. the chair now recognizes the chairman of space and aaron not its subcommittee, mr. plaza, a gentleman from mississippi. >> thank you, mr. chairman.g thank you, mr. bolden for being here, and like my colleague,

esther mickel, thank you for your 34 years of service to the marine corps. after saying you've been in vietnam and had over 100 missions about there's much i can say or do to rile you. or shoot at you, right. absolutely. i do have some questions for you. and one is you've often made the argument that access to low earth orbit is well understood enough that we can turn this over to commercial providers. how can you be confident that the commercial crews and cargo's efficiently mature enough to justify a firm fixed contract? and if so, can you explain some of the significant delays and time and cost that are in the sierra s. program today? >> i am certain that the commercial entities can deliver because in the past, if you look at the two that i am working with right now, at least one of them has been doing it for more than 20 years. they have been delivering cargo

and other things -- not cargo, delivering satellites to orbit since their inception. if i look at just one of the rockets that they prepared for us, a government rocket that we procure and surplus and then it is given to orbital to repair. i'm not concerned about their ability to deliver. in terms of why have we had setbacks were now trying to take in some cases existing systems or emerging systems and certify them for human spaceflight. so the companies are trying to get as much information dated as they can while they're doing the crs programs that can be transferred into a commercial crew program. so it cuts down on the amount of time that they have to invest in development of techniques and procedures and the like for them. and like any development program, they experience setbacks. i gave the example of, make it

really quick, if i had had a failure or a problem like orbital had last december before they launched passionate before they launch the dragon capsule on falcon 9, were that a crack in the interim belt, i would still be sitting on the ground. we would not have launched. it took me four months to get discovery off the ground successfully after we found a small crack in some which revealed a structural problem that we had an external tank. commercial entities do what we do if they just don't have the bureaucracy that we have. so we will learn from them and will be able to speed up the time, decrease the amount of time we have when we do experience a delay. >> you know we will be watching closely so it would be nice to see if they can come in under budget or, you know, on-time and within cost. nasa has not been forthcoming with details of its acquisition strategy for commercial cargo,

and has not share their strategy for commercial crew. but the key to both husband to open with a space act agreement, avoided any meaningful checks and balances followed by an overlapping six price contract to the same contractors. it's hard to see how there can be a true, full and open competition with a fixed price?ç contracts. under theç circumstances would space act select is already under contract. why is nasa proceeding in this manner and why of which is a traditional sar acquisition process? >> we have not decided on the acquisition strategy yet. i have not approved it so it's not that we are not being forthcoming. i am pushing my people now to get to the point where we develop an acquisition strategy for commercial crew. so the holdup is us. it's not the commercial entities. they are asking for our acquisition strategy. we have given them what we call human ratings standards. we gave it to them in the draft form. to utilize that.

we now have -- now we have published our human ready standard so we are making as much as we can avail to the commercial entities as quickly as we can. >> as you know, the space and is in my district. and that's nasa moves forward with plans for both nasa and commercial activities, i want to know if it will be any impact on stennis and their leadership and rocket propulsion test? and will they remain a leader for nasa and commercial rocket propulsion? >> we made an announcement yesterday that marshall space flight center will be the home of the program office for the space launch system. a sister center of -- is to be a part of marshall and is not its own entity. stennis is the nation center for propulsion test. it is where people go and we're trying to encourage the commercial entities to come in fully utilize the facilities at stennis, much to a much greater extent than they do right now.

we are starting to get overtures from some of the commercial entities that say we really would like to come to an look at your the sulleys and perhaps use that. ideally, everyone will come to stennis to test. when i was there and you'd been there day before at stennis, i went down for the testified at the second engine for our goal. it was incredible. i mean, the morale of the people were absolutely incredible. they now have complete the test on two engines for a commercial entity that will now put those two rockets on the torahs that eventually will be orbital's entry into space. and i have one last brief question. many nasa facilities are going to require upgrades to continue, provide a mission for nasa's future. are you going to upgrade the test is to tilt is at stennis? >> i'm committed to do that. i think we talk to you about the testing. my commitment to complete the testing is an example. >> thank you, mr. bolden.

>> that you. i now recognize the gentleman from california, mr. mcnerney, for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. bolden, thanks for coming and testifying this morning. this is certainly an issue that i think everybody is interested in this country, space exploration, spaceflight and so on. i had the opportunity to visit the spacex recession here in d.c. a couple of weeks ago. apparently they sent up a vehicle that launched, orbit and reentered successfully. what's your assessment of that mission? was a very successful? >> awesome, awesome. in one word. >> you have to understand what the significance of that was. three nations up until now, only three nations up until now and are many who want to be able to do this, india is one. the three nations are china, russia and the united states that has successfully launched something from the planet, put it into orbit and then safely be orbited and recovered intact.

the fourth entity to do that became spacex in december when they launched dragon. and what you saw in -- i did not go but i understand what you saw was the dragon capsule that had been pulled out of the pacific ocean, you could tell for supple condition it was in. their intent is for it to be a reusable council. that's what it was awesome. >> i know these questions, some of these have been asked before so i will just sort of run over them. you expect this sort of mission to be more cost effective and nasa could do it for reasons as you mentioned. how about compared to russia or some of the other countries that we've heard nasa may use once the space shuttle stops operating? >> we will continue to use the spacecraft to get our spacecraft to and from the international space station as we done since the columbia accident. my hope is that as soon as possible we will finally have american-made rockets by american-made companies that

will be available to take our astronauts back and forth. do it safely and efficiently. and so that's what i made the tough decision to take some of the funding away from heavy lift and in pcb, but towards commercial developer. because i have to have a way to get my crews safely to the international space station as soon as possible. i don't think anybody on this committee wants to have to rely -- the russians are an incredible partner. they had been with us through thick and thin. they rescued us after the columbia accident and that we were flying shuttle again, they took a cruise back and forth to space and they continue to do that. i don't want to continue that forever. i want american-made rockets and american-made capsules to take our crews to low-earth orbit. and i have been ineffective in explaining the critical value of making that possible as soon as possible. i don't have enough money to get them to bring it in. i'm trying to buy down the rest on the.

every dime i can put toward that effort by stan the risk. >> i was in industry before i came here, and i understand the importance of having multiple suppliers because if you just have one, you are at their mercy. once the prospects are having multiple private companies, in this country, capable of carrying out these missions? >> i will give you my guess, and that is only a guess. with all due respect to everybody on this committee, i don't run a company. i have never run a company. but i talk to people who run companies and headboards at the have to convince it is worth the investment. and so i think some partners to back it. they will tell you. they've had to fight to convince their boards that what we are about to do is worth the risk. it is a big risk for these companies, and they have convinced their boards that they need to put assets against it. and i'm going with them. i think they could do this. >> are there foreign countries

doing the same thing? >> there are foreign companies teaming with american companies and everything we do. it is hard to find any industrial effort today when people are not teaming with international partners. the president, our own space policy, emphasizes the importance of teaming with international partners. the hubble space telescope which i helped deploy in 1990 would have never been possible without the cooperation of the european space agency as a partner. the solar rays came from the british space, you know. spent the last question i have, are they going to be restrictions on these companies in terms of carrying out commercial missions that may have some harm to our national -- >> there are always restrictions, and that's where you have to help me. i'm not sure which committees you're on, but the secretary of defense, secretary of state, the president, all of us are pleading for help from the congress and streamlining the export import laws so that we

don't continue to penalize american industry. you heard nasa because i have to rely on my industry partners, when they are held account -- when they are held to very strict standards under, you name it, they could give you a whole list of import export laws. there is a heavy medium somewhere, and we are not there right now. we have driven business offshore and we got to get it back. just having commercial launch services available is not going to bring the business back. we have got to make some changes in her export import laws. >> thank. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i thank you, and the chair recognizes now the chairman of research and science education subcommittee, mr. brooks, the gentleman from alabama for five bits. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. bolden, mr. bolden, were you aware that a couple of weeks ago when the house was debating a

continued resolution for this fiscal year that there was an amendment proposed to cut roughly $300 million from the nasa budget, and convert that to another program? >> yes, sir. i'm very much aware of that. we talked about it quite a bit. >> and what harm would be done to nasa, if any, by the diversion of the $300 billion that is left to stand in the senate? >> congressman, you know, if we talk just about that amendment to the provision and nothing else, i might be able to give you an answer but because i don't know what is going to be the final result of the c.r., it would be conjecture for me to guess. there may be some offsetting adjustments made in the final say on the put all that money back so i don't, i don't want to run the risk of guessing on something that is not there yet spent as it stands right now with the loss of that $300 billion adversely affect nasa's capability? >> i think i answered a little bit earlier, that amount of money i think what you're asking

is, that amount of money is a couple of nasa centers may be. in terms of day-to-day operations. >> i'm a freshman but that sounds pretty significant to me. would you agree that is a significant adverse affects? >> that would be, but again, i'm not going to speculate because that is a decision that has not been made by the congress yet. you know, the house has passed and the senate will still have a say. you're asking me to guess on something that the other house of the congress is going citiesñ are not asking you to guess what the senate may or may not be. i'm asking you to testify whether there is an adverse]ñ]ñ effect on what the house's position has been. and that's the loss of $309 to nasa. do you have a position to? >> sir, there's always an adverse impact about any decrease in funding. if i look at the contract, the affect on contractors, i am told

that that's about 4000 contractor jobs. so that's an adverse impact. >> given an adverse impact on nasa, what efforts did either nasa or the white house undertake to communicate that adverse impact to congressman before they voted in order to help protect the nasa budget? >> i don't know what effort the white house made. and i just know that whenever we came to the hilt and we were asked about it, we generally said it would have an adverse impact. we tried not to second-guess what the congress was going to do, as we always tried to give. >> i'm not aware of any effort by nasa or the white house to indicate any kind of adverse impact to the members of them? house of representatives from the diversion of $300 million on nasa to the local police and deputy program. are you aware of any effort by the white house or nasa tiki wiki at the house numbers before the?

>> congressman brooks, i'm not personally aware but let me take it for the record and i will get back to on any actions that our folks to because we have been a. over the last several weeks or months. and i will find out for your. >> i'm pleased to report that 70% of republicans in the house try to protect the nasa budget. unfortunately, 83% of the]ñ democrats try to undermine the programs to a local police officer program which i would submit is not an essential function of the federal government, while certainly nasa government. so i would appreciate anything you can do in the future to try to nasa centers as you just brought. moving on to a different matter, going back to april 15, 2010,

the president make public remarks at the kennedy space flight center that suggested the moon was no longer a destination for future manned missions when he said quote, the simple fact explore in the quote. however, in looking at your comments today, i'm thankful that on page two of their official statement to mention that the moon is a target. is that correct? >> sir, the moon is a continuing target for nasa. we have ongoing missions to the moon all the time. so it remains -- lunar portfolio. >> what is the target date for landing on them and? >> human planning on the mood? we don't have a targeted for human landing on the moon because at present that is not one of the missions that i think is essential for us to be able >> so if i'm clear on this we're has no plans to have any human space activity on the moon and?

>> i have no plans that i have brought forth to congress or anyone. that does not say what is going on inside the agency does not include human lunar missions. we are developing a lunar rover right now that would completely do away with any need for habitats on the surface of the moon. so we are always looking at where we can go in the future. but that's a part of being prepared to do exploration. >> my time is expired. thank you for your assistance. >> if you're short of people you want to send to the moon, i've got several in my district i would like to volunteer. [laughter] >> next we'll have the gentlelady, one of my very favorites from california. for three minutes, or five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. last week i had the privilege of attending a conference on this subject of energy security, and

it was bipartisan, bicameral. and it was clear in our discussions with scientists and experts that the decision-makers in our country, which is all of us, and others, have to come to terms with climate change. call it global warming, climate change. and so, i want to go on record, and have always been one that is willing to talk climate change, and know that we have to start addressing it and doing something about it, and i appreciate that masses of you -- that's his view is going to be very helpful in that regard. and that leads me directly to what i want to talk about. and that's about being educated

and having the right support in order to be able to do what you need to do as an agency. president obama has set a goal of recruiting 100,000 -- no, no. 10,000 teachers in the stem fields. he calls these subjects essential competing in the 21st global economy. .. the amount, the difference

between what you see in the 2012 budget and what you saw in previous budgets is actually the result of action on the part of, thankfully, on the part of the congress. the proposed amount of funding for education from this administration has been consistent and it usually is at about the $140 million level each year, give or take and that has been consistent but what happens, thankfully, is that the congress usually adds money back onto that. so when you look at, if you say that there is, that we have cut spending on education, we didn't cut it. we just didn't, we didn't add back in what the congress chose to put on in previous years, if that's, that's not too confusing. >> it is not confusing because we worked, very, very hard to get that additional funding for stem and, and chairman ford dan was a -- gordan was a leader

in it and he worked with chairman hall when they were in reverse positions and really made something positive happen for nasa and for stem programs. >> yes, ma'am. and congresswoman, as i mentioned before, our focus is on stem education. the summer of innovation targets middle schoolchildren and most importantly their teachers because we want to make, we want to make middle school teachers very comfortable with teaching, math, science. we want them not to run away from it. that pilot program last year we understand was very successful. if we can reach a thousand teachers, multiply that by number of students in a classroom. so that is our big focus. the design team we put in place as i mentioned to congresswoman sewell, i think i can do better job with $138 million than we've done in the past. we'll take the recommendations from the design team and we'll redo the way we do education in nasa. people will have to trust us though, because if everybody makes me go back to doing

education the way i've always done education, it is $138 million and we'll get -- insanity is doing the same thing over and over and assuming something is going to be different. if somebody makes me spend my $138 million exactly the same way year after year, i can't have any effect. >> one of the recommendations i would have is, in revet wag -- reevaluating your programs you put extra effort into women and minorities joining the stem fields. >> that is a point of effort and emphasis for us. we're active on the president's council on women everywhere. that is, i have three granddaughters and a daughter. i have a son too who is, but i try to take care of the women in my life. education of women and minorities is pretty important since i happen to be one. >> well, and therefore they can take care of themselves if they -- >> i want them to take care of me years from now. >> i got it. >> they need to be very

well-educated and need to be astronauts and doctors and engineers. >> thank you very much. >> i thank the lady. now recognize congressman hogren from illinois. got at chance to know randy very well with. he act companied -- accompanied to watch the discovery launch last week. thank you for that. recognize you for five minutes. >> thank you, chairman hall. administrator, thank you so much. hiding in the corner over here.t wanted to say we appreciate you being here. it really was a privilege to be down for the launch with chairman hall and other members of the committee last week and steal or borrow one of your words, it was awesome. so it was great. it was really helpful for us. everybody there was so informative and reallyñ? helping us understand the mission and was so exciting to be a part of that. thank you for your work. i want to shift gears just quickly. often times we wear different hats here and want

to get your perspective on something. i also serve on the transportation committee, aviation subcommittee. one of the areas we worked on and talked about pretty significantly is next gen, looking at, next generation air transportation system. i know nasa had a significant part along with other departments as well. i wanted briefly to get your thoughts on next gen, some of the work with key partners, faa, defense department, some other federal agencies. what does the nasa see as biggest challenges confronting next gen and from your perspective how do you feel like this multiagency collaboration is going? what can we do to improve that to make sure lower space travel is going well? >> congressman, next gen is incredibly important to this nation. i'm thankful you asked the question and i will try not to take all your time but i could talk forever about this. nasa is really, heavily involved in next gen. if you look what we've done in terms of aircraft safety

with the next generation transportation system development, if you look at constant, the constant descent and arrival profiles that are being worked on through the, with the faa and dod, we actually through langley research center and ames research center designed some of the software and programs that allow us to go through actual demonstrations of constant descent, constant climb-outs. united airlines and continental were participants in denver over the last few years. those were all proved -- we're talking about a hundreds of thousands of gallons of fueled saved. my arrow naughtics budget is -- aeronautics budget is $588 million or something like that. somebody asked them giving them cost benefit. if i look at the amount of money that airlines will save just through some of the work that came from next gen, new airplanes and

engine designs that we participated in, the estimate is, it will pay for my, 1% of the savings to the airlines will pay for my aeronautics budget. if i could find a way, you know, if you all could devise some system such that industry put money back into us when we helped them realize savings, then, all of our jobs would be a lot easier but, 1% of the projected savings from some of the work that nasa has done in next gen would fund my aeronautics budget. >> i want to thank you for that. i agree with you. i think that is part of our job to get that message out there and to see, although it was great to be down there last week, there is so much more that nasa is doing we all, appreciate and see the benefit from. many of us are frequent air travelers, coming back and forth to washington, d.c. my district is just west of chicago. so i think i've got the

highest number of folks who are helping to make sure our skies are safe, who help with air-traffic control with o'hare, one of the busiest airports in the world. i do appreciate your work there. we have to keep telling that message of the work of nasa and collaboration that is happening and savings we see and better environment we have, the cost savings that are there. and thing i'm most excited about is the safety where it's been over two years now since we've had a fatality with commercial airlines. so we need to continue that record. and i just, again, want to say thank you for the work that you're doing and hopefully we can tell the story how collaboration does make our lives better and save so much money into the future. thank you so much. >> thank you for the question and i would just ask if you would keep asking aero questions. i don't get many of them. i rellie like to tell our ae are. o story but we get caught up in human spaceflight. if we can do what you say,

aeronautics covers everything right up to the edge of the atmosphere. it is the way we get into space and the way we come back. hyper sonic aeronautics is entry. it is what space-x learned how to do to bring the dragon capsule back. everybody has to come back to earth some time. thank you. >> that is exactly five minutes. well-done. and to the very patient mr. sarbanes from maryland, recognize you for five minutes. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. thank you for being here today. and for your testimony. i'm a new member to the committee and it seems it iscom mon practice to let nasa know if you have a facility in your district. so i will present my credentials saying that i have applied physics lab in my district in howard county and they do tremendous work, particularly with respect to deep space exploration, which i know is one of the

areas that's funded by nasa. so i hope to learned more about that particular relationship. i'm also new to the, this discussion on commercial spaceflight. it's a pretty fascinating one. i understand with broad implications and with a lot of different perspectives in the mix. i had this past weekend the opportunity to spend a fair amount of time with man who founded the x prize, of course. and he really gets you going with his vision of things. he is obviously been very involved in this. i was hoping you could, and again, i apologize because i'm getting, you know, this is a curve for me but with respect to the commercial spaceflight and the costs associated with it, is there a way you could just describe kind of the baskets

those costs go into? so, in other words i understand that there's a cost associated with making certain nasa facilities available for, you know, i guess codevelopment of technologies that will help promote commercial spaceflight. i gather once those crews are in place, that nasa will have costs associated with renting space or seats. on those, on those flights and there must be other dimensions of being a partner in the development of the commercial spaceflight program that represent part of the expenditures that you lay out. was wondering if you could just talk about the broad baskets those costs go into. and then the extent which some of those represent kind of transitional costs, in effect launching the commercial spaceflight program as opposed to

ongoing costs, the nasa will incur with respect to commercial spaceflight over time. >> if i go back to the very beginning of our efforts, the cots program, commercial orbital transportation system, which is just getting cargo to orbit, that was a space act agreement with a defined amount of money. like a fixed price contract for all intents and purposes. nasa paid a certain amount. as milestones met, nasa pays a certain amount as milestones are met by the two participants. the two companies one were spacex and orbital. through the completion of the cots we will pay them a predetermined amount of money for each milestone they meet. when we work into ers, that is contractual anment and we made contractual arrangements with those two companies because again they were the winners. they get paid again as they meet certain milestones, but,

once they start delivering cargo tore a set price -- for a set price, we will buy the ride to the international space station or wherever else we take it. when you get into commercial crew, that is the area that has some vagueness right now because those price president not yet determined. there are things that need to be determined. i have to present for, to industry, a procurement strategy. that is what we talked about a little bit earlier. and that's what we, an acquisition strategy. that is what we have not fully developed yet. once we have a fully developed acquisition strategy, we can sit down with competitors and say okay, here is what we're going to do. these are the types of contracts we're going to do. whether space act agreements, fixed price contracts, cost plus, you name it. here are some of the requirements that you're going to have to meet. we can then sit down, say, okay what is nasa's percentage of investment in this enterprise? that once we decide what that is, then i will have

essentially a fixed price, a cost analysis -- >> let me ask another question. my time is about to expire. i don't want to go beyond the allotted time if i can help it. there's a lot of focus on nasa helping to support and develop commercialization with respect to human spaceflight but what are some other areas of what nasa does where you see this kind of commercial partnering effort going on that maybe don't get discussed so much? >> the ones that don't get discussed are the ones we do all the time. just before you came in we were talking with the representative from detroit, robonaut 2, r2 is a humanoid robot on the international space station. it was taken there by discovery last week. sts, 133. r2 is the result of a collaboration between space act agreement between general motors in detroit, i will get in trouble, they say general motors in

chicago or something, or general motors and automobile manufacturing arm of general motors and nasa where general motors need ad robot that could relief some of the problems they were having with injuries to workers. nasa need ad robot to help offset some of the risks to spacewalk crewmembers. things that a robot could do we wouldn't even have to send an astronaut outside to do. that is one example. there are a number of examples like that where we've done it on a shoestring because it is technology development. we turn a few guys loose in the laboratory somewhere around the country and they go off and pick an industrial partner and develop something that comes into play. how many of them are successful? i couldn't tell you. most of them don't work but that is the good part about it. scientists and engineers love it because they bring college kids in. we have something now called small sats or microsats. colleges and universities around the country, even secondary schoolkids are

getting involved in small sat or microsat. something that nasa and dod developed and now we utilize to try to reach kids and help them understand they too can participate in space exploration from their classroom. so these are all good things. >> great. thank you very much, mr. chairman. i yield back. i have no more time. so thank you. >> right on the dot. at this time recognize very, very, very patient mr. mccaul, gentleman from texas. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i've been sitting here patiently. i assure you next time i will arrive before the gavel comes down. >> when i was first up here 30 years ago. i was second one here always. i didn't want to wait until the end to talk. >> i guess i will close out the proceedings, possibly. -- plan to attend the april shuttle launch. i think that will be a historic mission. i know gabby's husband, mark will be leading that effort.

you mentioned her in your testimony very affect natalie. -- a fake shun natalie. i think look to the day she comes back on this committee. there is no better champion for the human spaceflight program than gabby. i remember working with her on reauthorization. she was obviously opposed to president's decision to cans sill the constellation program. one of the conversations i had with her, in fact the last one, we were walking on the house floor a day or two before the tragic event and she talked about nasa. she was just just a staunch advocate for the human spaceflight program. and so, as am i. i represent a district that was once held by lyndon johnson. on the houston end of my district in the suburbs i represent many johnson space center employees and

contractors. i know in our reauthorization we restored a lot of funding for human spaceflight, in spite of this administration's team to kill that and, i guess, as you present this budget, and as i go back home to my district, they will want to know, what is their future? and so i guess what i'm asking you, what am i to tell them when they ask me about contracts related to human spaceflight, about the future of human spaceflight program? i know you're, these are some of your dearest friends. but what am i to tell my constituents who are part of the johnson space center? >> congressman, you should tell them that the future of human spaceflight is bright and robust and that we need their help in rapidly developing new systems so that we can go explore. this nation has not ventured beyond the moon with humans. we've been saying we were going to do it forever.

i get chastised wanting to go to, ma. i want to go to mars. when i came into the astronaut office in 1980 i thought i would fly on shuttle a couple times and i would be among those returning to the moon and then challenger happened. and my dream of ever going to another planet went away. i don't want that for my grandkids. so, i need their help. we have got to develop commercial capability to get to lower earth orbit so we can continue to support the international space station that is your moon right now. that is where we do technology development. that is where we do medical research. that is where we do things to make life better on earth. contrary to what people think, nasa doesn't do stuff just for astronauts. most of what we do is return to earth for benefits of humankind. i can go down, you all can look at it themselves, look at emt ambulance, has developments that were put in place for the apollo

program. wireless communications. congresswoman johnson listed a whole bunch of them in her opening remarks. the nation needs to become unafraid of exploration. we need to become unafraid of taking risks. is it a risk to go with commercial entities? for me no more risk than anything else because i've always, every rocket i have flown on, i have only flown on three, four times but three, was built by a commercial entity, you know. it was rockwell when it started when i finished i think it was boeing maintained by usa, united space alliances. >> ask one last, because my time is running out. i appreciate your passion. i they you're very passionate about returning to the moon. i would hope that i could work with you in terms of restoring the morale of some of the employees at the johnson space center and assure them that there is a bright future ahead. and i think we in the congress have a responsibility to make sure you have the resources to do this. you mentioned in your

testimony, i, as i, if i'm correct, that the 2030, before we could get back to the moon. that is, it has been 42 years since we land on the moon. president kennedy set the goal by end of the decade, less than 10 years we're on the moon. in 1969, and i think a lot of people wonder why, now, it will take almost 20 years to get back to the moon? they don't, most americans, they don't understand, when we landed there, you know, so long ago, why has it taken so long to get back? because like you, i agree with the, and you're very passionate about it, with the goal eventually we are going to have to go back to the moon and beyond. so, perhaps if you could explain that to me and the american people. >> congressman, i need to correct one thing. it would not take us until 2030 to go to the moon. if we decided we wanted to go to the moon and put humans there, that potentially could be done by

the end of this present decade but that is not one of the targets that's, that has been produced either by the congress or the president. what has been set forth as targets are 2025 to an asteroid and 2030s to be able to get to mars where with a follow-on landing. the reason we have not been there is because that's not been a goal of the nation and it, you know, we were content to stay in lower earth orbit. which is hard but the nation has not, it has not been something that the nation thought was important. >> well, no the prior administration, president bush did set that as a goal, the moon, mars and beyond. i think that was at one point in time the goal for nasa. mr. chairman, i hope we can work together to perhaps, restore that vision and that goal in the congress which i think is so vitally important. i know, administrator, you agree with. with that, i yield back, thank you. >> i thank you. ranking member would have final question from the chairman, please.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. and, administrator bolden, thank you very much for your time here and your passion, your interest and your ability. it is extraordinary sitting there defending the president's budget. i think it is grossly inadequate. i hope that we can help a little bit. i know that i heard the gentleman, i think from mississippi mention that we had no aviation deaths the last two years. i know that you know why. we've got those satellites that is predicting weather and, making sure that, even farmers know when a drought's coming and for food supply and what have you. do you know the condition of those satellites? >> congresswoman, i will get back to you on specific satellites and their life expectancy. most currently on orbit are,

have out lived their planned lifetime. we 10 to not remember that, you know, our technology is such that we always build things that last a lot longer than we thought. when we ought to be thinking about onsy less ends. we're -- obsolescence. and we're behind on earth satellites that provide for weather and satellite and department of defense. you talk about trafficability. my son is a marine. if he is on the ground he needs to know what the soil will be like before he goes somewhere. that comes from satellites. we owe it to the young men and women doing things for us to provide them with the satellite systems that are reliable. and, we are behind. >> thank you. one final question, i know that nasa had something to do with helping to rescue those miners in chile.

could you explain that. >> i can explain that. i love it. it's, we had, it has nothing to do with nasa. no intent whatsoever. no one in nasa ever dreamed that we would be able to do what we did but when we learned that the chilean miners, the 33 who were trapped, were still alive, a number of our nasa employees from around the country, three doctors, and one engineer, asked if they could go down to chile and ask around, see what needed to be done. and they started finding that okay, we need to find ways to get food to these people. we need to determine what's needed to keep them alive for the months that we originally thought they were going to be down there. when we bring them back to the surface, how do we triage them? how do we get them back to normal? what we used was all the lessons we've learned from flying on mir, international space station and all the way back to skylab days. we put to work the lessons we learned next more race. things we never thought

about. one of our engineers from the langley research center who was a navy submariner, got together with a chilean submariner who happened to be an engineer on the project, and they helped design the capsule that brought all 33 miners to the surface and the five or six that went down to stablize everybody. that is one of the most phenomenal success stories that excited the president because nobody ever dreamed we would do that. same thing with the earthquake in haiti. same thing with the gulf oil spill. nasa is sort of the marine corps of the science and aeronautics community. we're the most ready when the nation is least-ready. >> thank you very much. i think the life of nasa depends on the life of our nation. thank you. >> thank you very much, ma'am. >> thank you. those are things that should be better-known to schoolchildren, everybody else that has some ill words for the work of nasa. i thank you, mr. bolden and, i, thank you for your very good testimony and, the

members of the committee will have additional questions maybe for you, and, ask you to respond to those in writing. the record will be kept open for two weeks for additional comments from members as mrs. johnson i think has suggested she has some comments she wants back. so, you're excused and, i really do thank you. we appreciate you very much. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much. and we will try to get the responses back to you in a timely manner. >> and just before i hit the gavel i want to recognize the jint man from new york, long-time chairman here. chairman bolert. >> thank you very much, mr. chair. >> with that we adjourn.

[inaudible conversations]

>> from your right. >> now national public radio president and ceo vivian schiller. we expect her to discuss the future of public radio and the achievements of npr member stations. she will also support her case for the public support for the 40-year-old media organization. the house of representatives recently voted to eliminate funding for public broadcasting in the 2011 budget. and last week senators jim demint and tom coburn introduced legislation that would end federal funding for public radio and television stations. this is live coverage here on

c-span2. >> the association of public television stations and the guest of the speaker. democracy palmer director of journalist tools design and strategy for the associated press. and paula kerger, president and ceo of pbs and a guest of the speaker. we'll skip over the podium and we next go to allison fitzgerald, she's vice chair of our press club speakers committee and she is government and enterprise reporter for bloomberg news. skipping over our speaker for just a moment, marilyn gwax is senior business editor for npr and the speaker's committee member who organized today's event. thank you, marilyn. and we have the corporation for public casting and the guest of our speaker and andrea stone is washington correspondent for aol news, te-milla bay a freelance journalist and darren gersh with the nightly business report on pbs. how about a warm applause for all of them. [applause]

>> npr usually delivers the news. but in recent months the media organization has been making news itself. last october, npr's decision to cut ties with juan williams infuriated conservative whose accused npr of left-leaning bias. now npr is in the news again because some in congress are working to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting wiping out federal financial support would be a blow to local member stations and destabilizing for npr itself which celebrates its 40th anniversary on the air next month. this federal funding battle is not the first crisis that the npr president and ceo vivian schiller has faced. when she came to npr in january, 2009, the u.s. economy was unravel as we all know painful well. companies were slashing jobs, the stock market was plunging and consumers were hunkering down. schiller had to her start her npr career just as corporate underwriting was shriveling and

programs were being cut to the bone but even as she helped npr retrench, schiller began pushing hard for excellence in our digital world. npr stabilized financially and flourished both on the air and in the mobile and digital spaces under her leadership npr has continued to haul in top awards for journalism, twice named by fast company magazine as one of the most innovative media companies. her job is to ensure the fiscal, operational and adjournlistic integrity. before joining npr schiller served as general manager of the "new york times" website, the largest newspaper website of its kind. previously, she headed up the discovery times channel and served as senior vice president of cnn productions. since coming to npr, schiller has made some controversial decisions. but one may seem particularly strange to long-time listeners.

last summer she pushed to quietly change the name, the organization itself no longer refers to radio as being known for so many years as national public radio. it is now just npr, the abbreviation. she says the media outlet delivers news to so many digital devices that the word "radio" doesn't quite fit anymore. as a personal aside i would like to note that i worked for public radio stations in early my career in lawrence kansas and buffalo new york and i remember fondly when satellite radio distribution was new and npr was on the cutting edge even back then. it was very amazing to hear the voices of the likes of bob edwards and carl castle coming into the studio as if they were in the booth next door. one of my goals this year as npc president is to use this forum, that of the luncheon series to engage in a more robust discussion about journalism. i think it's something both the public public and i know our members are eager for us to do. and i'm grateful that our guest

speaker has agreed to grace our podium once again today. please give a warm national press club welcome to vivian schiller. [applause] >> i want to begin by reading an email from npr reporter lourdes garcia navarra, lulu we call her. she sent it to her editor after she and a newspaper colleague made that i way into eastern libya. they were the second team of western journalists to make it through. she writes, we basically pushed our way in. we walked across the border and we're incredibly lucky to find people to guide us and drive us. we had an unfortunate incident at a looted army base where people were nervous about being photographed and we were surrounded and a photographer from the wall street had his camera smashed but that has proven to be the exception. she writes, everywhere else we've gone, we've been greeted with tears and shouts.

this is a country that hasn't been exposed to western media. and everyone just said they were so relieved to see us. they were desperate to have their story told. we were led to a huge hall that used to be the people's revolutionary council building where the first meeting of the new local government was being held. everyone was stunned to see us. they gave us is standing ovation and started crying. i know it's corny but i've never been prouder to be a journalist. lulu's note is a potent reminder of the meaning and impact of a free press. and it is at the core of npr's mission. powerful journalism in the public interest. this is what i'd like to talk about today. what npr and public radio stand for, how we think about our audience, the nature of our funding models and a vision for

the future. for well over a decade the media conversation has been dominated of reports of shrinking newsroom, collapsing business models, game-changing technologies. but the breathlessness over the shifting media landscape can blur what the work of journalists is really about. reporters on the ground, working sources and chasing leads to tell stories that have meeting and impact and bearing witness often at great personal risk. all good news organizations, whether public or private, share in that critical work. for those of us in public media, it is our only mission. it's been 44 years since the passage of the public broadcasting act which established the corporation for public broadcasting. for those of you too young to remember that was the time when the big three broadcast networks had foreign bureaus all over the world, not to monday morning

deep reporting staffs and slots on the nick schedule for hour-long documentaries. and yet even then there was concern that commercial interest would drive the networks away from quality news and cultural programming. and so public broadcasting was formed. i don't need to tell this audience about the changes that have happened in our industry in the last 10 years, let alone the last 40. the economics of the news business are undergoing seismic change. demand for the news has never been higher and yet mainstream news organizations continue to cut back the number of journalists available to report the news, particularly, at the local level. and so npr has worked to try to fill that void and news-gathering and we're working with our member stations who do the same. what does that look like as a? -- look like today? 17 bureaus overseas.

that is far more than any of those big three have today. we're opening new bureaus while still retaining a full-time presence, full time in iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, jerusalem, cairo, east africa, west africa, china. we actually have two bureaus in china, and other spots around the world. and over the last couple of weeks, npr journalists have been in tunisia, saudi arabia, bahrain, qatar, and as you heard a moment ago, libya, covering the world-altering events covering the east and middle east. and we may soon be algeria and yemen. closer at home we have reporters on just about every beat imaginable. race and demographics, religion, rural affairs. we have entire units dedicated to science, to the arts, to books, and to music. last year, we launched npr's

first investigative unit. it now has nine full-time staff. we stay on the story when everyone else moves on. npr's howard berkus is still reporting on the upper big branch mine of west virginia where 29 workers died nearly a year ago. npr's debbie elliott lives near the gulf of mexico and continues to follow developments since the bp disaster. danny swirling has stayed with the story of returning soldiers suffering from traumatic brain injury. we are the opposite of parachute journalism. our reporters have subject matter expertise built up over years, sometimes decades. and member stations have the same. filling the growing void in local reporting. over 900 journalists spread across nearly 800 member stations. that's in addition to npr's

journalists. they serve communities large and small and very small. in fact, one-third of the stories you hear on npr, on npr programs are produced by member station reporters. they define the very character of public radio. in nashville, wpn covers for the for the campbell and the role it has played in the iraq and afghanistan conflicts. in stillwater, oklahoma, ksau has covered on the resurgence of meth labs in the midwest, cutbacks in rural police departments and cow rustling which has made come back in this economy. frank morris in kcur in kansas city is the go-to guy for agriculture reporting on land prices, ethanol and the rivalry between family-owned and corporate forms. but stations contribute more than just reporting. they also provide critical, life-saving information in times

of disaster. on the gulf coast, tornado alley, and the land slide zones of california. this past january, a severe winter storm blanketed much of northern arizona with as much as 6 feet of snow. npr member station kuye on the he hobby reservation lost power and it was knocked off the air but, in fact, kuyi was able to continue to deliver broadcast to their audience. they stayed on the air thanks to two diesel generators that were funded with federal dollars. without it, nearly 100,000 people over four counties would not have had access to vital information on emergency relief efforts, weather and road conditions. this is just one story. there are hundreds more like it. with journalists on the ground and transmitters that reach far beyond major population centers,

they provide the kind of vital service that only free, over the air broadcasting can deliver. the result of this work is an extraordinary and deeply engaged audience. almost unique in american media. npr's audience, this is the audience for our traditional core service radio which we have not abandoned radio mark i might add. it's core to everything we do. as witnessed by the fact that the audience to radio is growing, the npr radio is growing and has been growing for the past decade. we just got our ratings for last fall and i am pleased to report they mark another all-time high in the top 50 markets. that's now four consecutive quarters of record ratings for npr. 34 million people listen to an npr-member station every week.

34 million people, and they listen on average six hours a week. in the digital arena, we now reach 17 million people a month. that is a 100% growth over the last two years. they come to us on npr.org. on the iphone, on the ipad, on the android and mobile to both read and to listen to the radio, and they connect to us on facebook where we have a larger audience than any other american news outlet. and on twitter, where we reach over 3 million. and it's not just about the numbers. but also about the impact. npr social media strategist andy carvin who is here in the audience has become something of a one-man news platform serving -- it's true. i hope you're tweeting this, andy. [laughter] >> serving as a hub for eyewitness reports out of hotspots out of libya, egypt and anywhere else that news breaks.

we are also growing in audience trust. according to a recent pew report, npr is the only national news organization to see a meaningful increase in public trust over the last decade. npr's audience is not a left and right post phenomenon. we are urban and rural, north and south, red state and blue state. our listeners are equally distributed in every part of america because of our unique network of stations rooted in their communities, locally owned, operated and staffed. these are citizens serving citizens. our listeners feel a personal connection to what we do. not long ago i was walking around a reception with npr morning edition host steve vin ski and renee mantan and as we

mingled and as we introduced ourselves i was struck by the reaction people had when they realized who he was. not merely a media celebrity but someone with whom they feel a deep personal connection. and then, of course, always the same joke. steve, i wake up with you every morning. [laughter] >> he's good sport about it. he laughs each time like it's the first time he's ever heard it. [laughter] >> and by the way, steve is heading to cairo. our listeners appreciate the reporters report. our listeners tell us they come to us for the craftsmanship, the civility of our programming and the range of stories. our coverage has its critics. we are working to expand the diversity of our audience, our

staff, sources, and stories to do a better job speaking to people across the spectrum of thought, experience and background. and we're paying aggressive attention to our ethical decision-making. the standards and practices that journalism at our level demands. in doing so, we hope to deliver an even larger following in the country and better serve our mission to enlighten and inform. let me now shift to our funding model. i do this not because i think you're so fascinated with our balance sheet but it points to the depth and variety of our public support. it is a success story so often a misunderstood one. npr is successful not because we're smarter this anyone else. we certainly aren't. nor because we have different values. we don't. and certainly not because we don't have to worry about the

bottom line, believe me as you heard in the introduction, we most certainly do. we are successful because of the investment that the american public has made in public media over 40 years. and this is critical. the way in which we have gradually been able to leverage that investment to build other sources of support. those sources include, listeners whose contributions make up the largest share of station revenue. corporate underwriters whose sport is not a transaction. they want to be associated with the credibility and the value of the npr name. we are also supported by philanthropic individuals and institutions who share our vision of an informed society. and finally, we rely on continued government funding, grants to stations from the corporation for public broadcasting represent on

average 10% of the public radio station economy. it is not the largest share of revenue, but it is a critical cornerstone of public media. this money is particularly important for stations in rural areas. their government funding can be a larger share of revenue, 30, 40, 50% or more. these are areas where listeners may have no other access to free, over the air news and information. modest as it is, government funding is critical because it allows taxpayers to leverage a small investment into a very large one. it is seed money. station managers tell me that 10% -- average of 10% again places a critical role in generating the other 90% that make their broadcast possible. the fact that we have four sources of revenue, listeners,

philanthropy, corporate and government helps ensure that public media is not beholden to any one source of revenue. indeed, it is through this diversity of funding that we are able to maintain our journalistic independence. with the nation facing continuing economic uncertainty, it is both right and necessary to scrutinize all federal spending. but if the public value for the money spent is the prism through which spending decisions are made, public broadcasting stands strong. the american people believe in federal funding for public broadcasting. a national survey conducted last month by a bipartisan polling team shows that 69% of americans oppose the elimination of federal broadcasting. at a time when our industry is

cutting back, when punditry is drowning real news and thoughtful analysis, npr is moving continuously forward with quality reporting and storytelling delivered with respect for the audience. what columnist james willcot recently called the sound of sanity. when original reporting is in increasingly short supply, we continue to build and not retreat from that 44-year investment. as guardians of the public trust, we have an obligation to address the current crisis in journalism and not simply fall victim to the turbulence of these times. i'd like to acknowledge that npr is not alone in this mission. here at the head table as you heard in the introductions are some of my colleagues he from public broadcasting, paula kerger, the president and ceo of pbs which presents programming unique in the television landscape, programming that expands the minds of children,

documentaries that open up new worlds and cultural content that exposes america to the world of music, theater, dance and art. patrick butler, the president and ceo of aptf whose job it is to advocate for public television and why it is even more vital now than 44 years ago. more recently, pat also taken on the mantel of the public media association which represents both television and radio stations. and pat harrison, the president and ceo of cpb the corporation for public broadcasting, the private corporation created by congress to serve as a steward of the federal government's investment in public media. i'd like to thank all of them as well as my other many npr and public media colleagues and my colleagues throughout journalism for joining us here today. in closing, at npr, we have charted a vision for the future,

one built around high quality journalism, radio craftsmanship and storytelling. smart use of social media, a seamless user experience across platforms. one that combines strong local national and global reporting. it is a work in progress and always will be. but our growth in audience tell us we're on the right track. i'd like to end where we started in libya. recently on all things considered, host michelle norris spoke to an entrepreneur named mohammed in the midst of a major protest in zawira outside of tripoli. throughout the conversation you could hear gunfire and chaos unfolding. it was riveting to listen to and brought the story home with clarity and immediacy. when the interview was finished, mohammed asked michelle, what radio station he was talking to. michelle told them, national public radio.

oh, said the man. npr. i listen to that station most of the time. i have it on my waking clock. [laughter] >> this is in libya. i really love that phrase, a waking clock. every day the men and women of npr get up and go out to the world to bring back news that matters to people like mohammed and people like you and me. that is both a privilege and a responsibility. and sometimes good to have a waking clock to remind us that what we do matters. thank you very much. [applause] . >> thank you, we had i don't know a good 6 months before we knew that you were coming and

we're grateful that you have and that means the comments are in my internet and we want to engage the public in a discussion of matters of import and particularly those that have to do with journalism. so as you might imagine there are some subjects that are i believe it of interest to these people who sent a number of email questions in as well as those who are in the audience and it seems the one that has garnered the most amount of traffic involved someone with whom you no longer share a professional relationship and that's juan williams. it seems if we have to get that subject dealt with before we can go on down the list and talk also about the issues of government funding and the critical issues facing journalism these days. i guess you had five months on how to reflect on how that episode transpired. it has caused, i take it, some cause for the organization in the sense it's shifted the discussion away from the important issues that you'd like to talk about as you did today. as you reflect on that episode now and you've had one key

employee who's no longer with npr ellen weiss who has suffered from that. what can you tell the way that transpired now, about how you might have done it differently and then ultimately there are a number of other questions that gets to the issue of the perception of left versus right bias within npr which we can get into after you address the first issue. >> okay. all right. thank you. we handled the situation badly. i mean, on reflection now, it's been several months, i stand by the fact that we handled the situation badly. and we acted too hastily and we made some mistakes. and i made some mistakes. and the key thing now is to reflect on those mistakes and to fix some things that some of our systems that fell down on that day and to make sure it doesn't happen again. and so that is the learning experience from the experience with juan williams. >> and so is there not a process

in place where you're reviewing that and can you tell us how that works and how ultimately either you'll be enlightened by that or perhaps even your stakeholders? >> as i said, we didn't handle it very well. there was some processes that were not really followed -- in place or followed on that day and we have success. >> so from that standpoint, the public interest notwithstanding you think that you've moved past it and you fixed whatever the issues were in place that caused that problem to occur? >> yes, the process issues are -- >> can you give an example of what the processes might have been 'cause it sounds a little hard to understand what that might be. >> well, there was just some communications and processes around the events of those couple days that didn't work quite as they should have and we've put those in place. >> okay. so, you know, obviously -- [laughter] >> a lot of ink has been spelled about this issue, so --

>> indeed. by virtue of the questions we got, either people feel as if there are some questions that linger and so this is you an opportunity to perhaps not have them linger anymore. >> right. one thing i would spend a minute talking about which is, i think, more interesting frankly than personnel processes about who calls who when is that since october, we have undertaken a thorough review of our new code of ethics. this is something any news organization should do from time to time. and it was high time for us to do that as well to make sure that our news code of ethics is clear, is up-to-date with the reality of media in 2011 and is consistently applied and our news code of ethics was implemented in 2004 but it was tweaked but it was not fully updated so we just finished a process whereby a task force of 13 people, some of them inside npr, outside npr, journalists,

citizens led by bob steel the de-paul university and there are some recommendations that are coming out of that, that task force, that i'm very excited about. we'll be making some changes to -- we're not quite done with our jousting but when we're done sometime this spring we will release that document publicly. i'll give you one example, for instance, we are going to be creating a new position at npr a standards editor. and a standards editor is on top of the other checks and balances we have at npr. we have, for instance, an ombudsman here today alicia shepherd we have editors of editors and we have a corrections policy. we have a comment section on our website and wink the addition of a news standard editor will be

yet another critical check in our process, and so look for more about that soon. >> okay. there was actually a question anticipating that issue given the well-informed nature of our audience here. it says the task force reviewing your ethical standards has called for the end of practice of allowing npr journalists to appear on other media outlets under long-term contracts and then there's a specific question and i don't think it's any of their relatives here but how will it affect nina totenberg and cokie? -- cokey roberts? >> and journalists sharing what what they learned with an even broader audience than the audience we have at npr. so we embrace the notions of reporters appearing on other media and we need to make sure that our process is in place for approvals and we're all coordinated. but indeed the task force has recommended that having a long-time -- a long-standing permanent relationship with two different news organizations can

be confusing so we're going to be taking a look at that. >> can you expand on that 'cause that's confusing to me. >> well, as you said a couple of our reporters have relationships with other news organizations that have been long term. and what -- what you will see is that we will likely not have any npr journalists have relationship -- long-standing, long-term relationships or contracts with news organizations going forward. with regard to the specific individuals, you know, they've been doing that for years and we're not really to make any specific statements about them. >> it sounds like there's a grandfather clause. >> could be. >> npr has been criticized for not having many minority voice and at the time juan williams was the only black male heard on npr. what's being done to open up npr to more diverse voices? >> well, this is a big priority for us and i'm glad you brought it up. in fact, it's true that at the time that he left the

organization, he was the only black -- not the only african-american but the only male african-american reporter on our air and it was already changing and it has indeed changed. this is a very, very big priority for us. in fact, in the room with us is keith woods, who came from formerly dena studies at the pointer institute and is head of diversity for npr and we have a number of different initiatives underway to diversify -- further diversify, excuse me, our staff, our reporters, the people that we interview on the air and, of course, our audience. we think we made some progress but it's not nearly enough. in fact, cathy times, who's the head of the nabj, the national association of black journalists who has given us an organization that has given us is very hard time in the past recently wrote a column and the title of that column was "npr's diversity better but not enough" and i

would say that exactly summarizes where we are. it's better and it's not enough and a year from now it will be better still. >> there was an entry in the national review, i think, published today from someone who tells me -- he's here in the audience from the heritage foundation addressing the question from perhaps another angle. and that is do you believe there's an imbalance at npr in terms of liberals and conservatives in the newsroom? i think i know which side they like to have better represented there. if the answer's yes, what do you propose to do about it? >> you know, every news organization -- i've worked now with three news organizations but even every other people i know from any other news organization i know gets criticized about being too liberal, about being too conservative, about being too this that and the other. it comes with the territory so certainly we do get criticized about all manner of things.

in terms of the liberal, and i will tell you it maybe doesn't get as much attention but we get a tremendous amount of criticism for being too conservative as well. you know, i would wish that those folks could be in our editorial meetings and see what goes on and the care that our reporters and our journalists and our editors take to get it right. this is incredibly crucial cornerstone of what we do, to present not journalism that is on the one hand, on the other hand. that's not very interesting storytelling but journalism that reflects no particular bias and it's not just a matter of how the stories are told. it's also the kinds of stories that we tell on npr. as you heard in my remarks, we tell stories about areas that really almost no other national news organization is covering. that are not just sort of urban phenomenon. so for those that do criticize us for being liberal, you know, i ask them when i get that personally i ask them to point

to specific stories. and when they do, we take those very seriously. have we aired, absolutely we have aired in the past but we make corrections and we always strive to do better. >> so would you say that it's a perception problem as opposed to an execution problem within the newsroom to the extent that the perception seems to exist more toward the liberal criticism than -- i didn't have any questions saying you were too conservative today. >> there's no question it's a perception issue. it's absolutely a perception issue. and like i said, all news organizations -- that happens with all news organizations. for me, the main thing is, not the general perception which is difficult to control, but the actual work that we do. let's look at stories. if somebody -- i take much more seriously when someone says, i have a problem with this story versus sort of taking a wide swath saying, i have a problem with npr because what does that mean? and often case they might not even be listeners but when we get a complaint or a criticism

about individual story or many npr editors and reporters in the room we take those very seriously. >> there's another question that's sort of along the same lines but it's asked in another way so to the extent that it does that, i'll pose it. it says what is npr doing to seek diversion talent outside of the usual j schools and ivy league and mainstream dailies? can you speak to highers of the wall street and abc news for your reporters as well as hosts of color? >> well, we have -- we have a reporting farm team represented by the 800 stations throughout public radio. and like i said, they are all over the country. they are in northernmost alaska and they are in every state, every community, just about every campus, every indian reservation and many of them have journalists. 900 journalists. and actually so, yes, while we have certainly hired people from j school and offend any

reporters from a j school but we have quite a people who have worked at npr member stations. so i feel quite fortunate that we have this incredible -- i don't think they would like me to call them the farm team because they're very proud of the important work they're doing locally. but it must be said at that there are some local station reporters who we have recruited to npr so with apologies to some of those stations. >> very good. deborah potter who's a former cnn and cbs news correspondent and i think a woman of substance, most would agree, wrote a pretty critical entry in the american journalism review in the last week and the title of that article was "slow down npr" and what she did -- and you may have seen it, in a sense linked together the juan williams incident with the episode where congresswoman gabrielle giffords was reported to have passed away after a shooting and, of course, we know that wasn't the case. and she's sort of raising the issues that maybe in the attempt to embrace change, that haste is

sometimes creating some errors. so to the specific question, we've already talked about juan williams. what can you talk about the gabrielle giffords reporting error and does that fit into your earlier comment about standards, et cetera? >> well, there's no linkage between the juan williams matter and the gabrielle giffords error. i've already addressed the juan williams matter so on gabrielle giffords, it was a mistake, plain and simple. and, you know, there's no excuse for it. we made an lore we prematurely reported her death. and it is -- we take that matter extremely seriously. and, you know, throughout the newsroom we've done a post-mortem. we have shared new information and we put new processes who checks with who in matters of magnitude in terms of breaking news. but i wouldn't say it represents anything other than the one mistake that it is. in fact, it got so much attention even though other news

organizations reported the same, i think, because we so rarely do make these kind of errors where we have, you know, mistaken breaking news reporting. i don't know the last time that it's happened. again, it's a serious mistake but i think because it's so unusual it did get that attention. >> in the same entry she says that you didn't own andards by reporting where the information came from. and that you also violated your pop music on the radio quite honestly and then i lived out of the country for many years so i was -- i came late to npr because for most of the '80s i was living abroad. in fact, i can tell you the first time that i really -- i listened to npr and i really honed in on it when i first started dating my husband who is here somewhere, i think, there

he is, and when i shortly had just previously moved back into the country, and we -- he had npr on. and that was it. i listened to that and i was hooked to npr and hooked to him. [laughter] >> so those two things are linked. wow! [laughter] >> how is that for professional. >> we hope it stays around only to keep your marriage -- to be honest to you but this is news to me, npr engineers are complained they are being made obsolete and the strength of the network sound is not what it was traditionally. that's not the only question we got along those lines. apparently, there's a feeling in some quarters that the attention to audio quality hasn't been what it has been. can you address your assessment of audio quality and whether the professional staff is as robust as it has been over the years. >> audio quality is essential to us. you know, people often tell us and i've had the same experience myself that you can -- if you are, you know, in a town or a

city and you don't know and your rental car or whatever it is you turn on the radio for npr tell us, dialing around you can tell within a nanosecond that you're listening to an npr member station. there is that unique quality that is so hard to describe and a lot of it has to do with the extraordinary rich audio. and if you listen to our reports particularly -- well, all of our reports but particularly what we're hearing coming out of the middle east and north africa, it's not just about the reporting. it's about the rich audio experience. so this is vital to us. there have been some reductions in our audio engineer as we've moved to some automated -- to some automated systems but we are not forsaking our heritage which is the rich audio experience of public radio. >> so there's no diminution of audio quality from your perspective? >> that is in the -- i guess you could say the eye of the listener. it would be in the ear of the listeners, i suppose.

but there are -- we have fewer audio engineers going to do field reporting and so not every story has a full crew. and in those cases perhaps you don't have some of the same layering and richness of sound but generally speaking we have really not heard any complaints from our listeners in any -- in any significant numbers at all about a diminution of our sound. >> okay. the question is arianna huffington got paid $300 million. couldn't npr one of the best brand names of business raise a huge amount of money running as a private company and run commercials. >> that's not who we are. we are public radio and our goal -- it's part of the very fabric of everything that we do that we are a noncommercial and not-for-profit. we do have corporate underwriting. i would be hard-pressed for anybody to listen to those 5-second, 7-second spots and

think they're anything like you hear on commercial radio. would we love to have more revenue from philanthropists from listeners and corporations,, of course, we do. we work very hard to try to increase the revenue so that we can have more money to spend on our reporting. but the fact is we're not -- we have no plans and will not have any plans to become a commercial enterprise. that's not who we are. that's not what we're chartered. we're on the free part of the radio spectrum and it's really part of the tacit pact that we have with our listeners that we are not-for-profit, noncommercial independent news information >> and to the earlier question of national public radio and npr branding. looking at the website today i looked at it for the different perspective for the purposes of this conversation it's obviously a very rich website that you have with breaking news and opportunity to catch newscasts that you might not have been able to catch as they aired.

what is your vision for that website in the future when change is so difficult and is there anything you're trying not trying to do on the website are you trying to stay away from a large offering of video packages? how do you want to identify the website going forward. >> if you don't mind i'll apply it to all our digital platforms. npr.org is a destination is just one piece of our whole digital strategy. at the end of the day, our goal for npr is very simple. which is to provide more news and information to more people in more ways. the second two pieces of that to more people in more ways speaks very much to the fact that we must be available wherever the audience is. and even though they are listening to radio, to us on radio in record numbers, broadcast over the air radio, we also know that our audience is

on other devices. they're on the web, they're on the iphone, they're on the ipad. they're listening to podcasts and what have you. and most importantly, you will see us in the next year rolling out plans to provide -- to make sure we create an entire package of tools and services and best practices -- provide that to all of our npr member stations so that every npr member station can be as relevant and robust on digital platforms as they are on the radio. so our heart and sole as a network, we're not trying to drive everything to npr. we're trying to actually push npr into the communities into the stations and so that is our broad strategy. >> so television has experienced some tension by virtue of the time shifting notion where people are watching programs on

dvr after the fact obviously you have the opportunity to present that information through podcast and other means. is there a significant downside risk for you in the way let's say a younger generation doesn't necessarily always care about catching things live as often? >> the only -- the only risk in all of this is if we ignore what the audience wants. and the fact is the audience wants to listen to live radio and the audience wants to and sometimes it's some of the same people, sometimes it's different people also want to be able to pick and choose stories and listen to it on their schedule. so our job is not to try to influence their behavior one way or the other. our job is to make sure that however they want it, wherever they want it, whenever they want it, we are there. that's the only risk is that we're not there however it is that the audience wants to consume npr public radio content. >> we talked at the outset at the tensions that were in the economy when you first took over

and part of that process involved laying off staffers. have all those positions, at least numerically speaking been restored and has the reporting suffered at all throughout the down cycle and the staffing? >> no, those positions have not all been restored. primarily, we did this actually right before i joined npr. it was the executive team that was there when i arrived. when faced with the looming deficit in our budget that was looking to expand without quick action, i think they made exactly the right decision, which is instead of, you know, cutting bits -- going around to every department, every unit, every show and saying, you know, we're going to cut 10% from everyone. the decision they made we're going to eliminate two shows from the schedules. they were shows that in some ways -- they were very good shows but they were underperforming in terms of the audience. and so by cutting the two shows and, unfortunately, having to lay off many of those staffs,

the rest of the news-gathering operation and our core programs, morning edition, all things considered and talk the nation and tell me more were not only spared we began to modestly invest in those programs and to invest in our news-gathering. so those investments have not quite reached the level of the people that were laid off from those two shows. we're not yet in a financially viable position to do that. but where we invest it will be in those areas to have more foreign correspondents, more reporters on the beat, more programs that we're working on with stations. and based on the pew report show people trust us more and more over 10 years more than any other -- a greater growth in trust than any other news organization and the fact that our audience is growing across platforms it would seem our audience has not been disappointed. >> we're almost out of time before we ask the last question, a couple of very important

matters to take care of. first of all, i want to remind everyone about upcoming speakers and the next one will also be consistent with our theme of trying to engage in more conversations about journalism. perhaps with a little more laughter, however, harry shearer the comedian among other things, the voice behind the simpson and humorous movies will talk about media myths the need for proper focus in journalism and then we'll go dead series on april 6th with the commissioner of the irs douglas shulman right ahead of the tax deadline. and then we'll have something in between april 19th, ted turner as well as t. boone pickens a proponent of natural gas, he's ceo of bp capital management they will discuss issues related to energy consumption in our country and we might even get to a question about cnn before all

that is completed. so with that, what i want to do is do something that i think you're vaguely familiar with before, and that is a truly a token of our thanks for you being here today, we would like to give you to another and perhaps to your husband who turned you on to npr. >> we'll have a pair. >> a coffee mug, so we thank you for that. [applause] >> our last question today has to do with your academic background. and people may not be familiar that you were a scholar in russian studies; correct? so what i'm wondering was were your studies at all instructive in helping you to cut through red tape? [laughter] >> i don't know that my studies were in particular but my first job -- this is why i wasn't in the country listening to npr

right out of grad school to work as a tour guide taking groups of americans abroad all over the world but i did because i spoke russian i did take quite a few groups to the -- what was then the soviet union and to many places. i learned more maybe not so much from my academics but i think everything that i learned about management and leadership i learned as a tour guide taking groups of 180 cranky americans to places where sometimes there was no hot water and flights mysteriously cancelled. yes, it was a very learning experience. >> vivian, thank you very much. >> all right. thank you. thank you very much. >> i'd like to thank all of you for coming today. i'd also like to thank our national press club staff including our library and broadcast center staffers for helping to organize today's event and again, for more information to join the npr or to acquire a copy of today's program please go to our website

at www.press.org. thank you. we're adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> the u.s. senate is about to

gavel in to start their work week. general speeches for a couple hours before work turns to three judicial nominations. votes on those and a procedural vote on the patent law overhaul are expected around 5:30 pm eastern. now live to the u.s. senate here on c-span2. the chaplain: let us pray. eternal god, known to us in countless ways and times, lead our senators in your way. lord, keep them aware that they can depend on your validation of every just cause and the

forgiveness of every sin which they, in godly sorrow, confess to you. as they follow you, may their small successes prompt them to even greater efforts for human betterment. guide then by your higher wisdom and bring them to a desired destination with hearts at peace with you. we pray in your holy name. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington d.c., march 7, 2011. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable richard blumenthal, a senator from the state of connecticut, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: daniel k. inouye, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: following leader remarks there will be a period of morning business until 4:30 today. senators will be allowed to speak up to t-plts each. -- ten minutes each. at 4:30 the senate will proceed to executive session. at 5:30 today the senate will confirm by consent the nomination of sue myerscough, a

judge for the central district of illinois. there will then be a series of up to three roll call votes, first on the confirmation of anthony j. battaglia of california to be united states district judge for the southern district of california; confirmation of the nomination of james shadid to be judge for the southern district of judge and a motion to invoke cloture on s. 23, the america invents act. filing deadline for amendments to s. 23 is 5:00 p.m. today. on friday cloture was filed on motion to proceed on h.r. 1. i hope to reach agreement to vote on h.r. 1 and the democratic alternative introduced by senator inouye by friday. there will be a vote on some of these matters tomorrow. in addition to completing action on the america invents act the senate will begin consideration on the continuing resolution to

h.r. 4, the 1099 section of the bill that we passed last year dealing with health care. mr. president, budgets and votes have something very important in common. at their heart both require and reflect tough choices. tomorrow we hope the senate will vote on a republican response to the president's budget. that's the so-called h.r. 1 that not only the united states is focused on it but the entire world. and they will vote on the democratic response. everyone's done the math and everyone knows how these votes will turn out. likely either the proposal will pass, which means neither will reach the president's desk and we'll go back to square one, back to the negotiating table.

but tomorrow's votes are still significant. just as our budget -- that is how we invest taxpayer money reflects our values -- so will the votes that are cast on these two competing measures. they will show us which senators are serious about fortifying their long-term future and which are more concerned with scoring short-term political points. these votes will show us who wants an easy applause line and who wants to strengthen our nation's bottom line. there is a fine line between a responsible budget and a reckless budget. the republican plan we'll vote on tomorrow is the same plan the tea party already pushed through the house of representatives. it's called h.r. 1. now the same tea party is trying to push it through the senate. that plan will cost 700,000 americans their jobs, and i won't support that, nor will any

other democrat that i know of here in the senate. 700,000 is not a figure picked out of the air, mr. president. economists generally agree it is a huge job loss for our country. led by mark sudan dirks who i've -- led by mark zandi who has a pretty good resume. he's a chief economist at moody's and was skwr-bg -- and was john mccain's advisor during the campaign. we're hoping the country doesn't look under the hood and see what's wrong. that's because they know that when we do, we'll see their shiny new budget is a lemon and has a badly broken engine. mr. president, i can remember i represented a number of car dealers when i practiced law. one of them was a wonderful man. his son is now running his

operations, and there was someone out picketing his place of business. he had a great big lemon. he alleged that he bought a car there, finley's automobile, and it was a lemon. as an attorney, i wanted to stop it. i was ready to go to court, get an injunction to stop that. and pete finley called me and said there's something wrong with that car and i don't want people to buy cars if there's something wrong with it. take care of it. i'll get him another car. that's what the republicans should do with the lemon they're trying to perpetuate over here. if you look under the hood of h.r. 1, you'll find it is not a good piece of legislation, and that is a gross understatement. h.r. 1 has not only a broken engine, it's a lemon in many

other respects. to pull ourselves out of a ditch, we need an engine that powers growth, innovation and our being more competitive. we need one that powers recovery. the last thing we can afford is a broken engine that will drive us right back into recession. you can't fix a broken economy with a broken engine. but that's exactly what the republican house is trying to sell us with this h.r. 1. the tea party plan will make nevada students and workers less competitive and will make nevada's families and communities even less safe. it hurts education, which of course threatens our future. there are many examples. i want to give you two or three, starting where many of our children start, in early education. head start is a successful early education program with the poorest of the poor. it's been proven 245 head start -- proven that head start students are more likely than

their peers to graduate from high school. but under h.r. 1, 200,000 head start students, including hundreds and hundreds in nevada would be basically eliminated from the school system that's a careless short-term cut with devastating long-term consequences. second, what about students who are already out of high school and go to college, thanks to pell grants? if the republican plan were to pass, those nevada undergraduates who rely on pell grants would see their tuition assistance cut by more than $600 a year. that means one of two things. these students' tuition bills will be up or they will be forced to drop out. we can't afford this, mr. president. either choice is a bad choice. and third, what about those who are already in the workforce, who are looking to join the job market? this tea party proposal would cost nevada $70 million in job

training investments. that would hurt about -- i'm sorry. that would hurt about 8,000 potential nevada workers. these cuts won't do anything to help unemployment go down or help nevada's economy get back on its feet. we all know we have to make some sacrifices. mr. president, we know there are to be cuts made, and we made them. but these republican cuts, as indicated in h.r. 1, dealing with education alone are counterproductive. we slash budget in the name of a stronger future but cut the most important way to strengthen our future. what have we really accomplished? nothing. we made things much worse. it's not just education. let's talk about a few more of these dangerous consequences the republicans' reckless budget would have on nevada. mr. president, the same would apply to connecticut. it would pull the plug on

renewable energy jobs in nevada, including 600 new jobs at the state's largest solar plant. it would fire another 600 nevadans who work at community health centers. one of the outstanding things we did in the health care bill, we put $10 billion in that bill to build 10,000 new community health centers across the country. these aren't just for poor people. it gives a place for people to go. it doesn't overrun our emergency rooms. all the economists, medical economists say it would cut down the cost of health care delivery significantly. but that is what the republicans do. they, the 600 nevadans who work at community health centers would basically be eliminated, which means fewer nevadans would have jobs and the neediest among us would have fewer places to turn when they need help getting healthy. it would cut more than $1.5

million from local law enforcement programs to help nevada prevent crime like domestic violence to, keep our neighborhoods safe from gangs. the plan would cut homeless security investments by about $1 million which puts every nevada and everyone who visits nevada at risk. some 16 million meme a year visit -- 16 million people a year visit las vegas alone. our plan, democrats know we cannot make our economy work again for the middle class unless we invest the taxpayers' money as responsibly, efficiently and transparently as possible. for anyone to say we don't think there should be cuts, we think there should be cuts. pwraoeufpb that. we've -- we've proven that. we've cut $51 billion below what the president recommended. it's easy to demonize any investments we make by calling it government spending. it's always been a political

shortcut that we slash zeros off the end of the budget. before we go on a reckless cutting spree, let's think about what these investments do, who they help and how much they mean to our future. that's what democrats have thought about as we drafted our plan. we made responsible cuts to the tune of $51 billion below president obama's budget. we made some difficult choices. where the republican plan cuts indiscriminately, we cut carefully. the republican plan is bassed on identify kwrol -- is based on ideology. ours is based on reality. eliminate public broadcast. eliminate the national endowment of the arts, national endowment of humanities. there's scores of things they've done just cutting indiscriminately. where the republicans' plan is based on ideology, ours is based on reality.

that's because we know the point is to cut in a way that strengthens our economy, not in a way that weakens it. our plan recognizes that our job isn't to cut $1 billion here and $1 billion there just to say we did. it recognizes democrats do, and we're not in a competition of who should cut the most without regard to consequences. we need to cooperate. the budget is complex. the choice is very simple, mr. president. we want to create jobs. the senate cannot pass the plan the tea party pushed through the house. we want to responsibly make the cuts, we all agree the senate should pass the democrats' proposal to bring down the deficit to keep our economy moving in the right direction. and if we want to realistically get something done before it's too late the house democrats and

senate republicans should go back to the negotiating table. the country is waiting too. time is not on our side. would the chair announce morning business. the presiding officer: under the previous order the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order the senate will be in a period of morning business until 4:30 p.m. with senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each. the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: well, i don't think the 6% reduction in spending proposed by the house is going to cause the united states government to sink into the ocean. states are making far more serious reductions in spending than that. these -- the language the majority leader's using seemed like, to me, recalls the old language in 1994, reckless republican spending cuts and

poor people are thrown into the streets and that sort of thing. but what happened in 1994? in 1994 the american people, through their newly elected congress, balanced the budget in four years. they balanced the budget when people said it couldn't be done. they said that the spending reductions were going to destroy america and growth an prosperity and everyone -- and prosperity and everyone else that they could imagine. but it didn't happen. it helped create a period of outstanding growth. tuesday, we're told, we'll have a tea vote. it's a very important vote because it deals with the level of spending this country is going to participate in. it's going to make a national decisions that really important. we passed a two-week continuing resolution that reduced spending by $4 billion over that period keeping us on track to meet the house passed goal of

a $61 billion reduction in spending this fiscal year. it was a good, small first step. but the big step will be coming up, i suppose, a week from this friday when the c.r. that we just passed will expire and we have to pass another one. at what level will we pass it? perhaps the microphone would help. at what level would we pass this c.r.? that's the question that will be before us. will we continue to trend -- the trend of reduced spending that the house started us on that the american people people started us on by the election last november just four months ago or do we continue business as usual? continue to be in denial to say no more, no mass, we can't do anymore. we give up. well, a vote for the democratic

plan that will be presented tomorrow will be a vote to do something. that's the fact. it will be a vote to say we are still in denial. it will be a vote that says deficits don't matter. we can just continue to spend, just continue to invest. it will all get better in the end. it is a vote for more investments and more spending. indeed, we have the -- in a budget committee, which i'm the ranking republican last week, testimony from the department of education. they're asking for an 11% increase when the inflation rate is 2. the department of energy asked for a 9.5% increase. amazingly the department of education came in with a 62% increase in spending. is this the way to bring this country under control?

is this what the american people expected when they voted last election and sent a new house of representatives and new senators here? i don't think so. and what do we hear? there will be another vote for fear that we can't reduce spending because the nation will sink into the ocean. i don't think so and the american people don't think so and cities and counties and states are facing these same situations and make tough decisions and being successful at it. so the decision we make on spending could well determine the fate of our nation and our economy. it's that important. it really is. 40% of every dollar we spend today is borrowed. we will spend this fiscal yea year $3.5 trillion, but we only take in $2.2 trillion. did you know that?

congress knows that. they're in denial some, but that's the fact. it's indisputable. it's in the president's budget. over the next 10 years the budget -- pursuant to the budget, the plan that the president gave us, ton the debt will go -- on the debt will go from $200 billion last year t to $844 billion in one year. we will double the entire national debt, the gross debt from $13 trillion to $26 trillion. they claim they're saving $1 trillion. i guess it would have gone to $27 trillion. how can you save $1 billion - save $1 billion -- $1 trillion when -- when the deficit's going up every single year. the lowest single year of deficit is $600 billion. the highest single deficit year president bush had, which was too high, was $450. the lowest they'll have i is $600 billion according to the

president's own numbers he sent to us. this is not an acceptable pattern. we have -- we're on the wrong road. this is a road to decline. it's the road to dependence on foreign sources of money to finance our spending spree. it's not road to prosperity and growth. we simply have to make some tough choices. we have to make this government leaner and more productive. we need to create growth and prosperity. and the growth and prosperity has to be in the private sector. that's who pace the taxes that a -- pace the taxes that a -- pays the taxes that allows us to have a healthy government. a failure to act in this point in history, after all of the discussion that we had and the debt commission has all called for substantial reduction in spending. but congress doesn't get it. so this is a demoralizing thing,

really, for our people, for our -- our government, for investors in the united states, for businesses sitting on capital and thinking about what the future's going to be like. is this not going to be a sound economy any longer? is it -- is the government of the united states incapable of altering its projectry? -- trajectory? they thought perhaps this election was that way. the house has sent a clear message. some think it could have done further. it processed a $61 billion reduction in the discretionary spending accounts. that's a 6% reduction. we've already gotten four off that so it would be $57 billion. when you take these numbers, mr. president, and the american people, i hope, will think about this. when you reduce the baseline b

by $61 billion for spending in the discretionary accounts, that is far larger than some people think. one of the things that's gotten us in trouble is the geo metric problem of increasing spending. when you increase spending for 7% a year for 10 years, double the size of government just like your bank account doubles at 7% interest compounded. but when you're reducing spending, the same thing occurs, $61 billion, a reduction in the baseline. if there were no more reductions over 10 years built into the baseline, it would result in about $850 billion in savings in 10 years, almost $1 trillion. just a $61 billion cut. it does make a difference. it does make a difference and it's significant. but president obama's plan, the

senate democratic plan do almost nothing. he proposes, as i understand it, a 6%, $6 billion cut for the rest of the fiscal year. that's just about a 1 half of 1% reduction in -- one half of 1% reduction in spending. and the senate democrat plan it appears to be me to be a $4 billion reduction, less than 1 half of 1% reduction in spending this year. those are fake cuts. they're not real cuts. this is washington talk. this is why this country's virtually broke. the president says that we -- he proposed a budget to the united states congress, as law requires him to do, and that budget would cause us to live within our means and to begin paying down the debt. that's what he said. that's what his budget director

said in testimony before the committee. what planet are they on? the lowest single annual deficit -- and if anybody on this floor wants to dispute this, i'd like to hear it -- the lowest single annual deficit is over $600 billion in its 10-year plan. and they're going up in the out years to almost $900 trillion in the tenth year of his 10-year plan. that's why experts tell us this is an unsustainable course. i -- i wish we weren't in this fix. i guess i'll have to take some of the blame too. i voted against a lot of these spending programs, but i supported them. and we've gotten ourselves in some -- and we've gotten ourselves in a fix. it's going to be hard to get out of it. not impossible. but we're going to have to take some action. it cannot be business as usual. of course not. but that's what the majority leader is proposing to do,

nothing. do nothing. let the interest on our debt go from $200 billion a year t to $844 billion. where's that money going to come from? education budget is $60 billion, highway budget $40 billion, $844 on interest. what is it going to crowd out that we'd like to spend government money on? and what if we have a debt crisis? this assumes interest rates are at 3.5%. well, a lot of people think this interest rate is not so stable. a lot of people are afraid that we could have a national or even international debt crisis, interest rates could surge. i remember when i bought my first house, the interest rate was double digits. i think it was 11.5%. you think that we can't have that happen? and then instead of $844 billion in interest, we have a trillion

and a half in interest in 10 years? crowding out all other kinds of spending. this is irresponsible. this is an irresponsible course. everyone knows it. you can't borrow your way out of debt. so what is going to snap -- going to happen? let's just pull back the curtain. let's just talk about what the plans are here. it's pretty clear if you look at it and been around this town a little bit. so the democratic leader accepted, he didn't want to have a debate, in very sort order -- short order accepted the reduction in two weeks. the american public thinks things are rolling along pretty well. at least we avoided a government shutdown and things are moving along pretty well. now we're going to have another quick vote tomorrow.

that was just decided apparently today on two different plans, the house plan, a 6% reduction, a democratic plan, basically no reduction. and then we'll vote. neither one will pass. and two weeks from this -- a week from this friday, the c.r., the two-week c.r. will expire and we'll be heading toward a government shutdown. so secret negotiations will begin and they'll all start talking. maybe the vice president will get in there and talk a little bit and they'll -- they'll move around and the special interest will be involved. the american people won't be in on the discussions. they probably won't invite me in on the discussions. i don't know who all will be there. but they'll begin to negotiate and talk and they'll seeking some toothless compromise. crocodile tears and warnings will be shed. oh, we can't have a government shutdown.

we've had a half a dozen for short periods of time and we certainly don't want one. but that's the way they'll talk about it. so we just can't cut anymore. it's going to end -- schools are going to close. health care programs are going to close. all of that -- you heard it before. every state, every city, every county that goes through this has the same political rhetoric out there. you can't do it. it just won't happen. then they're going to expect, i guess, the republicans to cave and the plan, of course, as it's been from the beginning is business as usual. business as usual. politicians win again. people lose. elections nullified.

business as usual. well, i don't think so. business as usual has put us on the road to bankruptcy. and the voters did speak, and there's a moral responsibility of this congress to respond to the legitimate cries of the american people. don't we have that responsibility? i know one senator told me that during that election, they ran every single ad that talked about reducing spending and won by a margin far more than anybody predicted. there's no doubt that the american people expect us to reduce spending. they know that there will be some people won't get as much money as they were getting before, but they know we're spending too much. that's common sensical. and a vote for the democratic

proposal truly would be a vote for the status quo. it would be a victory for the status quo. it would be seen clearly as a victory for the big spenders. it would be a continuation of the unsustainable fiscal path that we are on, the path to decline, the path to dependence, debt dependence. the whole world is watching, really, just like we watched the british, they stepped up to the plate and made cuts. the germans have criticized the united states for our excessive spending. the european union has criticized the united states for our excessive spending. canada has done a lot better than the united states has in containing spending. the world is watching. what is the united states going to do? is it going to get its house in order like the other developed nations are working to do? have they made a national decision to reform their

unsustainable actions or not? some say these $61 billion in cuts would hurt growth. i contend that absolutely is not so. in terms of the total government spending, we spend spend $3,500,000,000,000, $60 bi llion reduction in that spending total is not going to throw this economy into a -- a recession. indeed, what it would do would be send a message to the financial world that the american people have gotten it, that the congress has gotten it, and they are at last beginning to end the unsustainable trajectory that they -- this government is on. the idea that we can borrow money, pay interest on it and create jobs has not worked. if it were such a good idea, why

don't we borrow three times as much and spread around three times as much money? it's not an economically sustainable theory. it won't work, and it has not worked. so we're facing a huge national decision, and i believe many of my democratic colleagues get it. they tell me they do. they've said so publicly, many have, but talk is not enough. action will be needed. we'll begin to take action tomorrow when we cast this vote. party loyalty is fine. we all have to try to work with our leadership, and nobody complains about that to a degree, but we're not to be lemming. we do have a duty to our constituency, our country and our future to make some tough decisions.

for example, just share one more thought, and i'll wrap up. i see my colleague, senator roberts, our able senator from kansas, here. don't think that we are cutting spending, this 6% reduction from some tight base line of spending like may be so in your state, your city or your county, and the -- county. in the last two years, the nondefense discretionary spending has increased 23%, and that does not count the stimulus package money, the $850 billion, the largest expenditure ever in the history of this republic, in the history of any other nation, in the history of the world. that's on top of the 23%

spending. for example, the e.p.a. in two years got a 36% increase in base line spending in two years. they can't take a 6% reduction, plus they got an almost -- they got a 70% increase from the stimulus package, a $7 billion infusion on top of their their $10 billion budget. what about the state department? they got 1 2% increase in spending in the last two years, plus $1 billion for the stimulus package. and the education department asked for an 11% increase this year, got an 11% increase previously, and hold your hat, their budget is about about $63 billion now, they got got $97 billion out of the stimulus package, more than the

whole budget. so, mr. president, we borrow 40 cents out of every dollar we spend. our debt will soon outgrow our economy. interest on the debt under the president's budget will rise to to $844 billion a year. the question is not whether we are headed for a crisis, but whether we have time to act to prevent it. our character is tested by how we respond in times of great challenge. this week, the senate faces such a test. how do we respond to the growing fiscal crisis facing our nation that every expert, including the debt commission, has told us is real? this is a defining vote in the career of every senator and a defining vote for the senate. a .5% proposed reduction in spending by this administration

is -- is not anything, is basically doing nothing. we need every group, every concerned citizen to reach out to congress to tell congress to get off this road to fiscal calamity and to every fellow senator i say now is the time to stand and be counted. are you going to be the vote that was -- that helped us turn back from the fiscal cliff or the vote that pushed the economy that much further toward the edge? i thank the chair and would yield the floor. mr. roberts: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from kansas. mr. roberts: mr. president, i understand we're in morning business and i would be recognized for ten minutes. i ask unanimous consent i be recognized for 15 minutes, and i will try to make it short. if it goes on any further, i'll ask unanimous consent for additional time. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. roberts: mr. president, i'd like to congratulate the senator

from alabama for laying out exactly what we face when we're going to have a vote here tomorrow in regards to the future of the united states and whether we restore common sense to federal spending and prevent the chaotic situation that he has so aptly described. not only in terms of our immediate future but for our children and our grandchildren, and i think that says it all in regards to -- we had a town hall meeting, senator jerry moran, myself, congressman kevin yoder, johnson county, kansas. immediately, the first question out of about, oh, 150, 200 people, very excited. when are you going to get control of the spending? and worried not only about themselves but their kids and their grandkids. so i think the -- as usual, we're going to have to debut the watchdog of the senate which you so eloquently described exactly

what we face, and i thank you for it, sir. mr. president, i rise today to talk, speak out against what i consider to be a regulatory assault on our nation's energy sector. that's pretty strong language, but i intend it to be. the senator from alabama talked about the amount of money in terms of the increase to the e.p.a. well, the reason they need more money is because of all of the regulations that they are putting out that have been -- as far as i'm concerned, have not met any cost-benefit yardstick and yet pose a real threat to the business community and to everybody concerned. now, i listed a number of these proposed regulations in a letter i sent earlier today to president obama which i ask to be included in the record, mr. president. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. roberts: we have -- or we, myself, staff, myself, others, a lot of people i have met with in

kansas, regardless of what economic sector we're talking about, whether it is energy, which i want to talk about today, whether it's agriculture, which we talked about last week, health care is coming, and then we're going to talk about the financial sector. and so we have talked about the president's initiative. his executive order in which the president said rightly, and i applauded that statement, that we have so many regulations pouring out of washington and many -- so many regulations on the books, and we really don't have a cost-benefit yardstick -- that's my favorite term for it -- to say well, does the cost exceed the benefit, does it make sense? and the president himself said there are many that are duplicative and that are very costly and that basically are stupid. that was exactly what the president said. i said egregious, that's a senate word. the president said stupid. i think everybody understands that. so he issued an executive order, and he said to all of the agencies, the federal agencies,

please, take a look at the regulations that are on the books and all the regulations that are coming out of your agency and see if you can make sense out of it and try to separate out the ones that are duplicative, costly, and, yes, stupid and the ones that are not and that we can make some progress, and i applauded the president's effort. the problem was that it's an executive order that has no teeth. there are three exemptions, and i will get into that in my prepared remarks, but basically the independent agencies are excluded, there's a bunch of them. there is language in the bill that says if you're doing it for the public good, the secretary can say oh, well, that doesn't apply to us. how many secretaries do you think around here -- or for that matter, czars, i don't know what they really do. anyway, if there is a czar and secretary sitting there talking to our appointees, saying do you think our regulations are any good, of course they would think

that. they wouldn't have promulgated them or issued them or thought them up to begin with if they didn't think they were public good, so they're exempt. and then we have a verify that i defy anybody to understand that they could also use that in regards to dodging around the president's executive order. so the president has issued an executive order, said some very good things to the american public, but it doesn't have any teeth. i have a bill, we have 30 cosponsors, and the bill says, mr. president, you're right with your executive order. we codify his order, but we take out the exemptions. what a day that would produce in regards -- or a year, for that matter, with all of the federal agencies if they really had to adhere to the president's executive order. i hope that we can get more cosponsors and that we can actually consider it and that we could actually pass it on the floor of the united states senate. we have several areas of our economy that are affected in a

most egregious way by all of these regulations. i talked about agriculture last week. we're talking about energy today. health care is coming, and the financial institutions will be coming after that. basically, mr. president, even as the price of crude continues to climb above $100 -- and we're talking about energy now and all the regulations -- this administration continues to promote domestic energy policies that are making it more expensive for americans to put gas in their cars, heat their homes, power their businesses. just yesterday, in a town hall meeting in johnson county, in kansas, i heard complaints about the rising gas prices and our dependence on foreign oil and the need to develop our own domestic resources, all of those

resources, but this vital goal is now extremely difficult under the administration's own policies, again affecting not only energy but agriculture and our financial institutions and health care. i call them the four horsemen of regulatory stragulation. that may be a little harsh, but i don't think it is. mr. president, as i said last week when i came to the floor and highlighted a multitude of new overly burdensome and in many situations absurd e.p.a. regulations that will have a significant negative effect on the ability of our farmers and our ranchers to produce the food and the crops necessary to compete in a global market and defeat a -- and to feed a troubled and hungry world. just take a look at the coverage in regards to libya and the news blip that we saw on television where somebody was shouting and protesting and one of our news people stuck a microphone in front of his face and said are you -- are you trying to promote democracy? he said no, i just want a loaf

of bread. i will say to you that a hungry nation is a nation that does not have any possibility of economic opportunity, and then you get into a lot of problems, leading, in fact, to terrorism and all sorts of bad things happen. well, unfortunately, as we all know, the e.p.a.'s reach goes well beyond the agriculture industry. its regulations are moving to make the energy we rely on every day more expensive to produce, many times without providing any appreciable benefits to the environment. nobody wants to do anything under the banner of clean air, clean water or whatever the e.p.a. is promulgateing that would endanger the public health. but i think that we can take a good look at some of these regulations and in regards to any appreciable benefits to the environment, they are few and far between. since fiscal year 2010,

mr. president, ten new regulations promulgated by the e.p.a. have accounted for over $23 billion in new cost to the american taxpayer, costs which are even more painful for americans as our nations continue -- our nation continues to struggle with an almost 9% unemployment rate. unfortunately, with the number of proposed regulations currently, before our domestic energy producers and if we do not take action -- we, meaning the congress -- 2011 and beyond will be even costlier. now, for example, e.p.a. has proposed to amend the current national ambient air quality standards for ozone to a range of 60-70 parts per billion -- per billion. i think the current standard is 75. they want to lower it down.

every time they lower it down, it gets more stringent. a range so stringent, a recent analysis estimates that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be at risk because of city and counties inability to meet these attainment levels. now, remember some years ago, quite a few years ago, ifg tryini wastrying to find out ths that the e.p.a. was using to measure the ima ien ambient airy out by the airport, k.c.i. and it was during the summertime and it was hot. and the wind was blowing. the wind blows in kansas. and i'm sure that the ambient air quality in regards to dust particles and/or wherever the wind was blowing over weeds or a certain crop, was such that the apparatus that they used would be scoring the level above the ambient air quality standard. sure enough, it was and we found it. and it was on a three-legged stool and it had a -- it was a

canister. oh, it was about that high. i don't know what was in it. i didn't feel like it was within their purview of an individual congressman at that particular time to go over and take a look at that. but as a result of that, all of a sudden the word came that everybody in the kansas city metropolitan area could no longer use their lawn mowers. yeah, lawn mowers. lawn mowers. you couldn't mow your lawn. you couldn't start it up, mow your lawn because that one apparatus out at the kansas city airport said whoops, ambient air quality was higher -- or was higher than the standard that was proposed. i suppose that was 75 parts per billion -- per billion. i mean there's a little bit of something everywhere, in everything, with the amount of sound science that we use today. but lawn mowers? i mean, people were driving to work, people were farming. the power plants were still operating. but the average person in kansas city who wanted to use the lawn mower -- sorry, couldn't do it.

that's ridiculous. the e.p.a. itself has estimated that this new regulation would cost between $19 billion and $90 billion when fully implemented. i'm talking about the 60-70 parts per billion. it provides no rationale as to what new scientific data justifies updating a standard as recently set as 2008. let's just go back to the 2008 standard. why on earth are you going to cost people anywhere between $19 billion and $90 billion when fully implemented when you just automatically lower the standard and you don't have any scientific data that justifies that? this proposed regulation is in addition to recently enacted greenhouse gas regulations requiring application of the best available control technology. who decides that? well, that's the kansas department of health and environment with the e.p.a. looking over their shoulder. and it is the application of best available control technology for stationary sources of greenhouse gas

emissions. now, this regulation currently only affects those stationary sources of energy, the ones that are right there. emitting 75,000 or more tons of carbon per year and which are already subject to the prevention of significant deterioration -- they call them p.s.d.'s -- until you get into this and start looking at the acronyms, more acronyms you can shake a stick at. but p.s.d. stands for prevention of significant deterioration. permitting requirements for nongreenhouse gasses -- they're called ghgs -- ghgs, that's the acronym -- the only one -- i won't try to pronounce the other one. further implementations of this rule could negatively impact millions of small businesses, farms, hospitals, and community organizations with a cost of over $75 billion a year. so we're talking billions and billions and billions in regards to these regulations.

according to the affordable power alliance -- that's the civil-rights organization -- by the year 2030, greenhouse gases with regard to regulations trying to control them, specifically targeting our domestic energy producers will result in the loss of 2.5 million jobs -- 2.5 million jobs -- and a reduction of household income of $1,200 a year. now, keep in mind, these are impacts that will have the greatest negative impact on poor households, low-income households who spend a greater percentage of their income on utilities and groceries, necessities made more expensive to produce and purchase with rising energy prices. in the area of energy resign ling -- in the area of energy recycling, energy officials are preparing to release a final ruling of coal combustion byproducts.

the acronym for that is c.c.b. which i hope avoid any classification of this product as a hazardous waste. c.c.b.'s are of course an unavoidable residual of coal burning energy, which i'd like to add, is the most cost-effective form of energy available -- still -- and is responsible for providing over 70% of the energy to my state's taxpayers. 70%. classification of this by-product as a hazardous waste will restrict further beneficial use of c.c.b.'s in a multitude of industries including agriculture, portland cement, home construction, and without providing definitive benefits to the environment n. m environmen. in my home state of kansas, representatives speaking on behalf of a number of kansas energy producers, estimated costs to industry of over $300

billion over the next five years to comply with the multitude of proposed e.p.a. regulations dealing with air, water and c.c.b. management. again, coal combustion by-products. $300 billion. that -- that's just -- that's unreasonable and that's probably the mildest thing i can say. these are real numbers that will doubtlessly drive up the cost of energy that kansans rely on to heat their homes, drive our nation's agriculture industry. unfortunately, the negative impacts resulting from the multitude of new overly burdensome e.p.a. regulations don't stop with agriculture and energy. beyond affecting the way people power their homes and business businesses, the administration has even moved to regulate what cars can american drive. now, this was made evident by the e.p.a., the national highway traffic safety administratiom's decision last year to begin

mandating greater fuel economy and emission standards for all passenger vehicles and light duty trucks, something that i think a lot of americans support that. a lot of people in this body support that. recent analysis, however, has estimated this new regulation will cost the already struggling automobile industry upwards of $10.8 billion to comply and consumers up to about a thousand dollars per vehicle and higher purchase prices. they just pass the cost on so if you can buy a new pickup down the road, it's going to be a thousand dollars more. now, while e.p.a. has garnered much of the attention in my state for its efforts to make energy more expensive, from a national perspective, the department of interior shares similar responsibility for pursuing policies that not only make energy more expensive but also makes our country more reliant on foreign and oftentimes unfriendly sources of energy. for example, under the current

administration, the department of interior has canceled 77 oil development leases granted just a few years ago in utah that were located within a larger formation covering three states that the bureau of land management has estimated contains about 800 billion barrels of oil, more than three times the proven reserves in saudi arabia. why? why would we shut that down? when -- when the leases were granted just a few years -- just a few years ago? not enough environmental oversight. that question has to be -- that question has to be asked and answered. 800 billion barrels of oil -- no, we can't go do that. this, of course, is in addition to the gulf of mexico deepwater drilling moratorium imposed last summer which had a lasting negative effect on the gulf coast economies. the president said yes, you can go ahead and drill, but the seaf

safety regulations are such that a lot of companies that were drilling have left or are leaving. however, foreign competition is drilling in the same place. that just doesn't make sense. beyond the regulatory burdens, it's also essential we focus on removing redundant programs within the various federal agencies. listen up, every upset taxpayer should know this and, more importanting demand action from this -- important, demand action from this congress. last month, the administration's own government accountability office, the famous or infamous g.a.o., released a report highlighting hundreds of duplicative programs currently on the books that cost american taxpayers billions of dollars every year. now, you get into double digits when you're counting the number of programs that all of us would like to depend on and all of us think are important, but they're duplicative. we're doing the same thing.

as i say, costing american taxpayers billions of dollars every year. now, this is separate from the regulatory oversight. this study further amplifies the importance that we must take a serious look at our federal agencies and put in place appropriate oversight, review, and revocation where needed. mr. president, it is for these reasons that i believe the congress must move forward with solutions that remove overly burdensome regulations and creates an environment that doesn't hinder energy production and use of those resources to make the most economic sense while still protecting, yes, our clean water, clean air and do what we can in regards to co2 emissions. understanding this, last month i, along with 30 other senators, introduced the bill i was talking about, the regulatory responsibility for our economy act. the bill moves to codify and strengthen the president's january 18 executive order that directs agencies within the

administration to review, modify, streamline, expand, or repeal those significant regulatory actions that are duplicative, unnecessary, overly burdensome or would have significant economic impacts on americans. that's the president's wordage right there. i agree with it. i applaud the president for saying that. however, i agree in principle with president obama that we need to take that serious look at both current and proposed federal regulations, but i don't believe his executive order actually does what it purports to do. too many loopholes. no teeth. specifically, my bill moves to hold accountable independent agencies, which are exempt under his executive order -- the fdic, the s.e.c., the e.p.a. -- that resident covered under president obama's executive order. the e.p.a. came up and said, well, we're doing the public good and then they followed that crazy paragraph i'm going to read in just a minute and said,

well, we're okay, we're not issuing any regulations that hurt anybody. i just attended the commodity classic made up of all farm organizations, all commodity groups out in great bend, kansas. number-one issue -- regulations. why on earth are you putting out all these regulations that are about to put us out of business? and you just go right down the line in any group, any association, any business all throughout america -- pat, what are you doing strangling us with all these regulations? what are you guys doing? our response is, i'm an "us" guy, i'm trying to do something about it. specifically, my bill moves to hold accountable these independent agencies. it also removes from the executive order highly subjective language that directs each agency to use the best available techniques to quantify anticipated and present and future benefits and costs as accurately as possible. here it comes. here comes the paragraph that i defy you, mr. president, i defy any of our highly skilled and

educated people there on the dias, i defy this nice young whreed is taking down -- lady who is taking down my words as best she can, anybody in the galleries that i'm not supposed to mention, or anybody -- anybody -- listen to this. each agency may be -- may consider and discuss qualitatively" -- this is the way that they look at a regulation to determine whether or not they're going to issue that regulation or not. and they're going to discuss qualitatively "values that are difficult or impossible to quantify, including equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts." that statement is amorphous. it is synonymous with amorphous. i defy anybody to try to determine what that means, except what you want it to mean. so, that statement now wins the

gobbledygook award of the month. and i think i'm going to come down here every month and award a gobbledygook statement in the regulatory field that are about to drown us all, as the gobbledygook statement of the month of the and that sure hits it. it doesn't take a legislative scholar to understand that this language creates a loophole large enough to drive a grain truck through and renders it meaningless. that is why passage of my legislation is so critically important. in closing, i invite my friends on both sides of the aisle, please, to sign on as a cosponsor of my legislation, realizing the immense opportunities it creates for meaningful review, possible revocation of regulations to counter or nation's growth, along with the g.a.o. report o outlawing specific duplication of programs that defies powerpoints or charts. couldn't do t a maze of too many

programs trying to do the same thing. if we don't do this, we're going to cost the business america and all americans billions and billions of dollars and get nothing in return in regards to environmental benefits. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor, and i notice the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call: just going to make

the comment that this is a good reflection of how inept the congress is and how the administration over the years, between them and the congress, have managed to get us in this situation where we have all of these individual programs that are in effect for one particular area ofhe government. if you look at the makeup of the house of representatives, how many subcommittees arehere in existence that hold meetings and investigate and offer bills that

wind up with us in the kind of screwed up situation that we are in? guest: i think you make a very good point, first of all, in pointing out that it is both the congress and the administration and many administrationshat have created the situation. how did we get into this? the some of these programs date back decades. people see a need for government to play a role in some particular area as opposed t looking at existing programs and, can we modify the program? often, the attitude that is taken is, can we create a new program? as a result, we of 88 of

development programs, 40 or more employment and training programs, and the list goes on. i think it will take us some time to untangle this web, but one of the things that may make a difference is that we have some difficult fiscal times and that may focus attention. some of the areas in this report will have some pretty easy fixes. others will take some time. host: what are some of the easy fixes? guest: easy fixes i would say are more in best practices. for example, we use interagency contract in where a contract is available to multiple agencies. well, we have numerous contracts. each one of tho costs money to a minister. we can save money there. a cost savings area, real property. we have 45,000 buildings, excluding the post office, that are either unneeded or

underutilized. if we can find other uses for that property, either selling them or finding another use, we can save a considerable amount of money. we spend over 1.6 dot billion dollars everyear maintaining those properties. host: could morning to the next caller. caller: i want to say that you have your work cut out for you. i was really trying to get on for the last session, but you have encouraged -- i don't know. you have encouraged me that the country is going to be going back into the right direction. thank you. host: talk about the history of this. the senator coburn was an advocate for getting this

together. has anything like this been done before? guest: i am not aware of anything like this being done. there have always been efforts to try to pull this kind of information together, but i think this is the first time that everything has been -- i should not say everything. we clearly have not covered the entire government. but to bring together 80 or more areas where there is potential savings, potential ways for the government to have revenue enhancement, bringing that together and even though it is 300 or moreages, each issue we identify is very cink and pointed in our discussion of it -- very succinctly and pointed in our discussion of it. hopefully that will provide a reference for anyone interested in these types of issues who

wants to start dealing with them. you can go to one place. like i said, it is produced by gao. host: this is a press release from senator tom coburn's office. guest: dr. coburn makes some very good points there. one in particular, that we do not know what effect the programs are having.

an example would be, we talk about 18 domestic food assistance programs in the report. for 11 of them we do not have any idea how effective they are. that is something that we really need to know. if we look at these program areas, whether it is employment and training, food assistance, transportation, we need to start asking ourselves, what are -- what do we want to achieve, who we want to serve and what is the best way to do it. host: some of the discoveries in this report showed that there are 18 different programs focused on domestic food assistance. that comes to us from a recen gao report.

but go to our next call. caller: two questions, please. if senator coburn had not requested, or demanded that the gao put out this report, would the gao have submitted it on their own? and secondly, what took you so long to realize we had over 100 government agencies attempting to solve the same problem? i will take my answer on the line. thank you. guest: first, if we did not have this requirement, we probably would not have brought all of this information together in a single report. but a lot of the information in this report is, in fact, drawing upon past gao work. for example, the 80 programs in an area, we have, in many cases,

other reports discussing that issue. when you bring it together, that is where i think you get -- it has been a powerful message. host: sarah, it democratic caller in illinois. caller: when you say that we have all of these overlapping programs, are they look located in the same offices, buildings, or even the same states? if guest: ofttimes, they are not. they are scattered across multiple agencies of the government. in a few cases they are in a single agency. but most times they are scattered across the government. in the education and training area -- i should say the employment and training area, you will find the -- find that in the department of education and department of labour. food assistance, you will see that in health and human

services, agriculture department and a few other agencies. given the size of the government is hard to coordinate, but not impossible. and we do need to work othat. host: was there an agency that you found had the most overlap or duplication? guest: i would not point of one single agency. one thing we realized in putting this rort together, we touched on every single agency in the federal government. which is, you know, a powerful statement, i think. just the scope of the problem. host: let's go to kevin on the independent line. caller: i cannot believe what i am hearing, except the same thing, just from different people. i cannot vote believe we put you people in charge to do a job -- i cannot believe we put you

people in charge to do a job and your coming back saying, we have a prlem. you should have been on top of it from the beginning. i think the president was right. if we need to clean house. -- we need to clean house. i think we need to clean out a whole government of all the slackers and the people that do not know what is going on. i feel like we have no fighting on the side of the people. guest: kevin, you make some good points. what this report does, it brings a lot of information together. it did not happen overnight. it is not going to be untangled overnight. but certainly,aving informatio in a very succinct manner, hopefully will be powerful enough to get some action. host: when you look at the fence

and homeland security, the ovlap of responsibilities there, specifically in the homeland security area, you found there were duplicated efforts in securing the northern border. there were five departments, agencies and more than two dozen presidential appointees focused on by zero terrorism. -- by a terrorism. did at gao identified that as being a danger of a potentially? guest: it is a danger in that by not having clear roles you have the potential of having gaps. probably not a serious from a threat standpoints -- you have people doing the same thing and

that is not the best use of our resources. the danger comes when there are gaps between these two different -- in terms of the northern border -- there are two different coordinating mechanisms. do we really need two? that would be the question i have. host: albany, new york. caller: my first commenabout the defense, i am a republican and i'm actually not very satisfied with how the republicans are handling defense. i think we are overstretched and is causing a lot of issues with our deficit. furthermore, i'm curious how well you think the government is going to handle the layoffs from the gao report with all of the redundancies, and with the private sector in rough economic times, it takes a lot for companies to lay off individuals.

unafraid that when it comes to cutting these programs, congress is going to give us all this information about how horrible it is going to be and how many jobs are going to be lost. i wondered what you think. will congress be able to make these layoffs? guest: a couple of things have to happen first. the first, coress or the administration will have to decide what programs they want, are there other programs that can be consolidated, and deciding exactly what we want to achieve. in terms of the potential job losses, of which are probably down the road, i think we can handle, as most organizations can handle changes in mission, if there is enough time to plan

for it so you can effectively implement any change. host: james on twitter asks, why don't we just start over from scratch? guest: in some cases it may be necessary to. as i described it, is a tangled web at times. we may need to take a look at an area and ask tse basic questions -- what we want to achieve? who we want to serve? and then we find the best way to do it. host: gave in massachusetts, good morning. caller: i think this is a wonderful business exercise. any business needs to check to see how it is spending money. i applaud this effort. a couple of things that come to mind, though. one,ur political environment is very much an us against them

environment. i would hope that going forward the recommendations about what makes the most business sense, what is going to provide the best services for the people in the country and whe we can learn our lessons rather than saying, this is what this party is doing or what the other party is doing. i think we need to make sure we are very clear about positive benefits we can get out of this. something i have a question about a, one, are you going to put together a set of guidelines to assist legislators going forward to avoid creating new duplications? and two, our people aware -- our

people where that -- are people aware that in doing these consolidations, they're going to need to be layoffs? is this something anyone has begun talking about? guest: let me answer your second question is first -- second question first. in terms of layoffs, we are not there yet. we need to decide what we need to do. in terms of positive outcomes, in this report we talk about things of our relatively easy to accomplish. other things are going to take some time. some of the business practices that we can do something with sustained attention by congress and the administration, we will have positive results. other programs where we have 40

or 80 programs, it will take several years to make some progress. the import -- the important thing is to art down this road. host: that dalton has been with the gao -- pat tot dalton has been with the gao for a decade now and she was named ceo this year. -- coo this year. the recent "washington post" story that is called "vernment overlap cost taxpayers billions ," it points out that other studies have touched on this before. in 2006 democrats a unified medical command was recommended.

but nothing came of it. guest: the medical command report, we took some stuff to try to unify the medical command. host: so, it is not fair to say nothincome -- came of it. guest: yes, something came of . here in the washingtonrea we are unified in our hospitals with walter reed and because the naval hospital, combining. there are similar efforts in san antonio. but there is certainly more toward -- more that can be done. hopefully, with further attention, looking at it, revisiting it, there may be addional steps. there is no one right answer in any of these areas. the question that the defense department in this case and the

administration and congress have to decide is, how far do we want to go? host: and his recent gao report loed at federal programs in defense and did find there was no central command for the military guest: definitely, and these are areas that i think really need some attention now. we have so many entities and there was an effort to combine it in a single organization, but the services continue to work on .heir own to deal with ied's it would of the big issues this

that sometimes the right hand does not know what -- one of the big issues is that sometimes the reihan does not know what the left hand is doing. we can be doing the same thing, but doing it twice, and we only really need to do it once. host: let's go to jane, independent collar. caller: this dalton, are with like to ask you, what do you think would happen if the gao were given auditing powe like the irs, especially with government subcontractors? guest: we are an audit organization for the congress. we do not usually do this subcontracting audit. we are usually looking at the contract in system and try to make recommendations there. there are a lot of other auditors in the federal government that do, in fact, look at the contractors and subcontractors and, hopefully, and sure that we are getting

good value of four the money that we are spending. host: the obama administration did put into place a chief officer appointed to the opposition and his goal iso lead the president's effort to overhaul federal trade isss and reducing the government's real estate portfolio. there are others in the obama administration that are also trying to do this streamlining. did you also touched on their role? guest: we actually did. one of the areas that they are focusing on his real property. i mentioned earlier that we have so many underutilized or unneeded buildings the obama administration has a goal for eliminating, disposing of those buildings or finding alternative uses for many of them. i think that is an important

step. first, deciding what we are going to try to achieve, developing the plan, and continuing to monitor to be sure that we do achieve our goals. we are dealing with the real property issue. we also talk about some of the in -- the investment issues for i.t. and contract in, and the fact that there are those issues in the executive branch is a very positive step. what would be important is that the administration develops an implementation plan and that there is monitoring and oversight to ensure that we actually execute those plans as designed. and the oversight needs to come, i believe, from both the executive bran and the congress. host: the "washington post" says a white house spokeswoman is saying --

bill writes to us on twitter, that gao does good wo. talk to us more about what congress does next. guest: we have already have one congressional hearing on this report. there are more scheduled. hopefully, each one of the areas that we have identified, we have identified over 80 areas of duplication or potential cost savings. if there are, in fact, hearings on many, if not all, of these areas of, the agencies involved in those areas will also be at those hearings so we can begin a discussion and try to make sense out of what is sometimes a tangled web. host: in e "new york times" section review yesterday it has

comedic moments ended quotes jalon know as saying -- guest: [laughter] host: how you, this idea that it's combats the action? guest: he has touchedn aood point. there will be another study. this report that we produced -- we are required now to produce this report every year. come next february or march, there will be your two of this report. -- a year two of this report. we will continue reporting on this.

we expect we will expand the areas that we are looking at. as i said this year, we talked about 80 or more. we have other areas of the government. we certainly have not covered it all. we will be reporting on what has happened with these that we have reported on this year, and also reporting on new ones. host: in pennsylvania, steven is on our republican line. caller: you have politicians lately spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get elected to a post that pays maybe $100,000 per year. could you investigate to find out how much of that is family and friends pain -- and friends patronage? secondly, are you going to kick the can down the road because the unemploynt figures are so high that if you clean house is

going to make you look worse for the president? guest: at gao we do not look at the political campaign. and we look at the government, so i don't want to comment on the political campaigns. and in terms of kicking this down the road, the big thing that has happened now is that we are in a very fiscally constrained situation at the federal governmt. the deficit keeps growing and that trip focus attention -- that should focus attention on looking for opportunities where we can be more efficient and also leader maintain or increase our effectiveness. if we look back at how we have been doi business and institutes of better business practice we have an opportunity -- institute some better business practices, we have an opportunity to be more

efficient and effective. host: let's go to maryland. good morning. caller: i have worked in the government a long time ago. i am elderly now. i know some of these overlaps -- could it be because some of the different agencies deal with different parts? like, we would get food from all over the world. and certain commerce --may deal with china and someone else may deal with somewhere else and some may deal with inspectors. it is not just all waste. it there could be a reason -- there could be a reason for the overlaps because the agencies handle different things and whatever comes under their agency, the dea with that part of it. guest: you are very right.

there are agencies that do work may be serving different people. they are performing different functions. but i think the important thing is that they know of the other programs and -- or the other functions tt an agency is doing and, hopefully, can leverage the work that they are doing. there may be very good reasons to have multiple programs, but you want to know that -- what those reasons are as you are designing the matrix of programs that you are delivering. ho: president obama, during his state of the union speech, reference this idea of overlap in different agencies. you talk about salmon. people may remember that. npr did a store looking into what the president had said. the interior department is in charge of the salmon when they

are fresh water, but the commerce department is in charge when they are in salt water. it may get even more complicated when they are smoking. but the truth may be getting in the way of a good joke. both departments put out a statement clarifying their roles. departmentltural cultur regulates salmon, i guess you could say. is there a department that regulates fishing as a

duplication? guest: there definitely is. the justice department is regulating it. host: do you find areas where there are duplications or agmentations here? guest: i would not say there was any less than feared. you bring up eight. that duplication may, in fact, be important in certain cases where you do want to have the redundancy. that is why it is not easy to deal with these issues. you could say there are 40 employment and training programs. we may need and multiple programs. host: jim rappaport, who ran the agriculture department under the

clinton administration said that coordination is better than duplication. guest: it can be. is there a clear definition of roles? do all the people involved in an area know what their role is versus another agency? that helps in trying to orchestrate how we are going to duplicate a service. host: let's go to sharon. caller: i am very frustrated with the federal gao. i advocate for people who have been made yield from water damage buildings -- to have been made ill from water damaged buildings. the u.s. chamber of commerce and the medical trade association the right policy foreveral states, the american college of

occupational and environmental medicine, last market it to the courts and u.s. health policy the water damaged buildings do not harm healthy people. there was misinformation to stave off liability for stakeholders. in 2006, i was able to get the late senator edward kennedy to do a deerow audit for may -- a o audit for me. this came out in 2008 and the federal interagency on indoor air quality is trying to oversee and is working very hard to get different government agencies to join together to try to send this messaging. but the problem is that nobody

ever funded this gao audit that desperately needs to be implemented. we have a lot of wonderful people in our government in these various agencies that are practically volunteering their time because they know how important this is. another problem is, while the gao audit itself has helped, specifically deleted from the audit was looking into have the conflicts of interest that mass marketed the infirm -- the misinformation in the first place. this is still causing an extreme problem in the private sector because the u.s. chamber is still greatly influencing this issue. we are wasting billions of dollars and the information from the federal government is not getting to the private sector positions. what does the federal gao do to look at audits that they have done in the past and then follow

up and see if they are being implemented to the best use of our tax dollars? host: let's get an answer. guest: with all of the repts that we issue and the recommendations in them, we regularly follow up on those recommendations with the agency's to see what the status is. if we do a follow-up audit at the request of congress, then we willlso include in that report the status of the prior recommendation. what our role is at gao is to provide information to the congress and the administration with specific recommendations as appropriate to their action. we do not have the power to implement them. we deliver the information. for this particular report we would be following up with the

environmental protection agency to see what the recommendation status was and then reporting it to the appropriate congressional committees. host: let's go to charles. hong caller: good -- caller: good morning. will the gao offer an overlapping list of the programs on their web site so we can watch the year after year? guest: we are still working out the mechanisms for that, but i suspect we will have that on our website. as i said, will be issuing a report every year. i expect that we will update the stat of each of the areas that we have talked about this year and be adding new ones. it will be in a single place on our website. if youave checked our website, you will also see that we have published this report in an electronic format so that for

each one of the issue areas that we have talked about you can actually drill down into all of our work about that issue. and for each one of the areas we have issued multiple reports over the years. host: and that is gao.gov and the report can be found on line there. guest: guess. host: -- yes. host: and final thoughts. it would be success here? -- what would be successful here? guest: i think success would be that we actually tackled some of these areas and that we can see improvement, that we are not reporting the same thing year after year. hopefully, next year at this time we will be talking about some of the successes and accomplishments that have occurred, at least in some of

the areas. i do not think it will be in all, but definitely some.

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. mcconnell: as we reengage in the ongoing debate over government spending, it's worth noting that some on the other side have already decided to fold up their tents. last week republicans showed we could change the status quo in washington by cutting government spending. it was a small step, but a step in the right direction. and some of us were hopeful

momentum was finally building for the kind of bipartisan consensus that would enable us to cut even more government red ink this week. unfortunately, the assistant majority leader seems to have have enough. yesterday he said that cutting $6 billion pushes limits of what's needed to live within our means. plp, this is ludicrous. ludicrous. so far this fiscal year, washington has spent nearly $650 billion more than it's taken in. this year. that's a little more than $4 billion a day that washington is spending over and above what it has to spend. and senator durbin thinks democrats in congress have pushed the limits of responsibility by agreeing to cut $6 billion more this year. imagine, if every american had the same approach to their credit card bills.

imagine calling up your credit card company and asking first if you could just freeze your out-of-control spending habits in place. just freeze them in place. then when they say "no," imagine telling them you don't want to cut down your monthly spending because you prefer living outside your means. this is the logic of our friends on the other side. now, according to this logic, they'd rather draw a line in the sand than agree to cut another dime in spending at a time when washington is spending about $4 billion more every day -- every single day -- than it is taking in. republicans have been hopeful that we could make progress and reach a bipartisan solution on this issue. so it's my hope that the assistant majority leader was speaking for him sieved and not for his entire side. this of course is the debate that most people in washington will continue to be focused on this week. and it's an important debate.

but focusing on day-to-day expenses threatens to obscure an even larger threat, and here i'm talking of course of entitlement programs like social security, exphair medicare, and medicaid. anyone who has looked at these programs closely knows they're becoming unaffordable. that doing nothing risks not only the future of these programs ourselves, but our nation's future as well. anyone who looks at history also knows that the best time to address a crisis like this is a time like right now, when two parties share power in washington. this is the time, mr. president. i made the case for action publicly and in private conversations with the white house. as republican leader, i put this issue front and center my first day on the job. four years ago i came to the floor and said that the

demographic changes taking place in america made it incumbent upon us as a body to reform social security. two years later when the american people put a democrat in the white house, i renewed my call for action. i said that republicans ready to work with the president on entitlement reform, and i repeated that call again four months ago when the voters decided to put republicans in charge of the house of representatives. throughout this time i've held out hope that our friends on the other side would rise to the occasion. if not when republicans controlled the white house, at least when they did. i was encouraged further when president obama said repeatedly back in 2009 that his administration would seek to work with us on serious entitlement reform that preserves the safety net for our seniors, for people with disabilities and which also puts on a firmer, stable footing for generations to come. so the president has acknowledged the seriousness of the problem.

he has noted himself that calls are escalating even as the population is getting older, creating the perfect storm for a fiscal crisis that dwarfs even today's budget crisis, as urgent as it is. if both parties agree on all of this, i thought, then there's no reason we can't do this for the good of the country. the urgency for action is only intensified in recent months as we've seen an uproar in a number of state capitals. every state is different, but the problems in every one of them can be summed up pretty easily. lawmakers from new jersey to california and just about everywhere in between made promises they couldn't keep. but the promises lawmakers in washington have made puts the states to shame. if you add up the unfunded liabilities in all 50 states, you get by one estimate about $3 trillion total. add up washington's promises on social security and medicare

alone, and it's over $50 trillion. $50 trillion that we promised to the american people that we don't know how we're going to pay for. something must be done, and now is the time to do it. republicans are ready and willing. where is the president? suddenly at the moment when we can actually do something about this, he's silent. as one columnist in "the washington post" put it, for a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, the president can be a strangely passive president. one of the greatest -- on the greatest fiscal challenge of the day, he appears at least so far to have taken a pass. this is obviously deeply disappointing to me personally given my repeatedly raising of this issue. but more importantly, it should

be deeply disappointing to every american who had reason to hope that we could tackle these issues in a moment of divided government. and it should be disappointing to all of those who believe this president when he pledged he would shake up the status quo in washington. past presidents had the foresight to seize the moment, reach across party lines to solve an earlier funding problem with social security, in the case of president reagan; and welfare reform in the case of president clinton. so it's not a question of whether it's possible, but a question of whether the president has the courage to step up to the challenges that we face. in this case one can't help but wonder if the president who came into office promising change has been changed by the office instead. i hope i'm wrong about all of this, but all the signs point toward inaction on the part of the white house. and, in my view, this would be a tragic failure of leadership.

mr. durbin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: mr. president, i ask consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: mr. president, there was an interesting letter to the editor in "the new york times" over the weekend and it was sent by two minnesota state representatives. and i apologize for not having their names immediately at my fingertips but i'm going to include them in the record when we have a chance to insert them here. but a democrat and republican minnesota state representative wrote a letter to the editor. it was in response to an article written by david brooks. and brooks, whom i respect very much, is a conservative but a very thoughtful man that i read with a lot of interest. and brooks had written about what to do with the state and federal challenges when it came to budget deficits. what these two minnesota state representatives said, democrat and a republican, is that we acknowledge in our state and

nation what we face. we face a situation where we have a weak economy and we face a situation where the debts that are being incurred by our levels of government are going up too fast. and so having acknowledged that, we've got to find a solution. i'm going to probably not say this as accurately, but i thought they said it so well. they said we've come to the conclusion that we just can't cut our way out of the problem and we can't tax our way out of the problem. we've got to think our way out of the problem. we can't lurch from one budget battle to another budget battle without looking at the fact that our challenge is a structural long-term challenge. it doesn't relate to the immediate budget but to a lot of things that are happening over a long period of time. and i reflected on that for a minute, and i thought i think there's real wisdom in what they say, because if you look at what we face at the federal level, there are reasons why we're running into these budget problems, not the least of which, as senator mcconnell

mentioned earlier, is the fact that the population of america is changing. baby boomers are going to reach a point where they'll be drawing on government benefits they paid for over a lifetime. as more and more of them draw on these benefits, there's an obvious question as to whether the reserves are there to take care of them. how do we deal with that? let me speak to two issues senator mcconnell raised. the first is social security. social security, is there a program that is more important to america? i can't think of one. that is the starting point of the new deal. when president roosevelt said we have got to give seniors in america some peace of mind that when retirement rolls around and their senior years roll around that they will in fact have enough money to live on. not in a luxurious way, but the basics. there was a time, i can remember in my family and in many american families where grandparents moved back in with the kids because there was no place to go. they could no longer work and they can no longer afford their

homes, and they became part of the larger family. it happened in my family. it happened in others. then came social security. and with a little planning and a little saving and social security checks, senior citizens had independence. it was a critically important thing. it was an insurance plan, not a welfare plan, an insurance plan that virtually every american paid into and drew from. so where are we today? i arrived in congress in 1983 -- brand-new member of the house from illinois -- and they said welcome to washington, social security's broke. i said great. i thought i'd get a little breathing space here, but in fact there was none. and so, president ronald reagan and house speaker tip o'neill -- a political odd couple if you have ever seen one -- got together and hammered out an agreement. the agreement we reached and voted for in 1983 resulted in social security remaining

solvent from then until 2037. we wanted to buy 75 years of solvency but we bought over 50. so those who say today that social security is in trouble, i would remind them, untouched with no action by congress, social security will make every payment it has promised to every social security recipient with a cost-of-living adjustment every month of every year until 2037. there aren't many things you can say that about in washington, that for over 25 years this program is financially sound. but the bad news is in 2037 things change dramatically. untouched at that point, social security benefits will go down 22%. now that's a heavy hit on lower-income retirees and middle-income retirees. and so we know that looming 25 years over the horizon is a terrific challenge.

president obama created a deficit commission. senator harry reid was kind enough -- i guess kind is a word -- was nice enough to appoint me to this commission and i spent ten months listening and then voted for the final commission product. it went into social security, and it suggested some things that are inherently controversial. for example, if you're going to give social security a longer life, what's the mix? what will you cut in benefits? how much will you increase revenue? those are the two things. i said social security is basically arithmetic. medicare is advanced calculus. social security is basically arithmetic although those basic decisions get to the heart of when you retire, how much you receive when you retire, and how much you pay in your payroll deductions each month. so the commission reached an agreement, and there were parts of it i didn't like, but it did buy 75 years of solvency for social security. it is interesting that we brought it up then as part of

the deficit commission because literally social security does not add to the deficit. currently there is a surplus in the social security trust fund, and that trust fund is being invested in government securities and being paid interest, but it does not add to the deficit. and so many of my colleagues argued why are we debating social security as part of deficit reduction if it doesn't have a direct connection? and that's a legitimate point. i've raised the same point myself. i think we should look at it. we should do it in a separate and parallel track to deficit reduction. and i welcome what senator mcconnell said. let's have that conversation. but i don't think that it needs to be the necessary starting point for deficit reduction because there is no connection between the two. then i heard senator mcconnell say that the president has not shown leadership on medicare. i respectfully disagree with senator mcconnell. the whole debate about health care reform was lowering the cost of health care.

you cannot balance the budget of america with 13 million people unemployed and without addressing the skyrocketing costs of health care. and so president obama worked with congress, house and the senate, to reduce the growth in the cost of health care. one area was in medicare. and time and again the senator from kentucky and his colleagues came to the floor and gave critical speeches saying -- quote -- "the obama plan is going to take $500 billion out of medicare." day after day after day, $500 billion out of medicare. well, if we are seriously talking about budget deficit reform, if we're talking about medicare reform, we are talking about reducing the anticipated expense of medicare and reducing at least $500 billion in costs. what will that mean to the medicare recipients across america? does it mean less coverage, less care? it doesn't have to. i always use as an illustration the average cost per medicare

beneficiary in my hometown of springfield, illinois, the average annual cost is between $7,000 and $8,000. you go up to chicago, more specialty hospitals, higher cost of living, it is $8,000 to $10,000 a year for the average medicare beneficiary. then you go down to miami and the number is $14,000 to $15,000. why the dramatic difference between chicago and miami? that's a question we ought to ask. is there better care in florida or just more expensive care? can we bring the cost of that care down and not compromise the quality of the care? hard questions but the only questions that count if you want to have reform in medicare that doesn't sacrifice the basic benefits. what i would say to senator mcconnell is this: yesterday he quoted me earlier in a statement. i wasn't on the floor. yesterday i said that i was supporting not the house republican budget, but the budget proposed by senator inouye. this budget for the remainder of this year, the next six and a

half months, would cut about $10 billion more out of spending. we would have cut $51 billion below what president obama asked for this year. so in the senate we will have reached $51 billion. in the house they went $100 billion below what the president asked. i think there is a qualitative, not just quantative but qualitative difference in the approach. i think the house republican budget went too far. i just don't believe that we need to cut the basics in education for the lower-income families across america. and that's exactly what the house republican budget does. let me give you an illustration. they reduce dramatically the amount of money that's going to be spent on head start. i don't know how many members have had a chance to visit head start programs. i did a couple weeks ago in chicago. these are kids from the lowest-income families in chicago. these are kids who are most likely to drop out without some intervention, most likely to struggle in pre-k and

kindergarten and most likely to have a difficult time learning. so they bring them into head start at an early age and they learn. and the one that i visited in chicago was nothing short of amazing. they were teaching these little kids, and they were so impressive, chinese as well as nigerian lie electriniger dialee chattering away. this cannot help but prepare these kids for a classroom setting. the house republican budget dramatically cuts the head start programs. these kids and the teachers and staff that support them will be gone under their proposal. what will happen to those kids? i'm not sure. i don't know if there will be a baby sitter down the street or whether someone else will intervene. it is possible without early intervening and early training that these kids will show up in a year or two for kinder are

garten and prekindergarten will not be along as far as they should be. the second area that the house republican budget cuts is the money to school districts in the poor parts of america. now, in my home state, there are plenty of those. my hometown in east st. louis, illinois, for example to cut back on federal assistance to that poor community at this moment in time, i think, would really be a mistake. we need to make sure that these young people have good teachers and good resources and can learn even though they live in a town that is economically poor. the house republican budget cuts the money and cuts the teachers for these school districts and cuts the money for pell grants. pell grants are the college-aid grants given to students from lower-income families. many of them don't have a chance to go to school unless they get a grant to proceed with their education. the house republican budget cu

cuts $150,000 a year out of the pell grants for students from lower-income families. that, unfortunately, will mean that many of them will drop out. when i went to visit with the president of a private lutheran college in the qaw qawd city ara they predicted they would lose students. when we have high unemployment in a recession students are dropping out of college because of house republican budget cuts, obvious question, does that make america's workforce any better. are we in a better position to compete with china or other countries in the world or will we sacrifice our advantage because students have to drop out of school? i think the answer's obvious. that's why the house republican budget which some support i think goes too far. it cuts to too much in educatio. it would cut dramatically in medical research. what were they thinking that we

would cut the medical research in critical areas, alzheimer's, lou gerhig's disease, cancer, at a time we know that research and innovation are critical for america's success, why would the house republican budget cut back to dramatically in areas that we know would pay off? i think they made some poor choices. that's why i support the senate democratic approach, $10 billion in cuts, but preserving in education, working trainer, education research, innovation, and infrastructure, the investments we need at this moment in our history with the recession that we face and 13 million americans out of work. that, to me, is why the difference is so stark and contrast. president mcconnell -- pardon me, senator mcconnell spoke with the president and said that he needed to show more leadership. i know where the president is on this. he wants us to reach an agreement in terms of the -- the decisions which we need to make to move us toward a balanced budget. but we need to do in a

thoughtful way. first, coming out of this recession making america's workforce stronger for the future, helping small businesses create jobs and investing in infrastructure which creates good-paying jobs right here in america. i'm going to ask now, mr. president, that i understand that we're going to go into executive session. and i've got to pause at that time and ask that if the chair's ready to report executive session so that i can discuss two judicial nominations? the presiding officer: morning business is closed. and under the previous order the senate will now proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations which the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, anthony j. battaglia of california to be united states district judge. sue e. myerscough of illinois to be united states district judge. james e. shadid of new york to be united states district judge. the presiding officer: under the

previous order there will now be one hour for debate with respect to these nominations with the time equally divided in the usual form. mr. durbin: mr. president, i rise in support of two of the nominees. i rise in support of two of the nominees, sue myerscough and james shadid to be u.s. district judges for the central district of illinois. these are nominees which i presented to the president and passed through the review not only by the white house but through the senate judiciary committee and now come before us to be considered before the united states senate. this day has come not a moment too soon for central district of illinois which i call home. it includes 46 counties. since last august the central district of illinois has handled one -- had only one district court judge out of four. there's supposed to be four and unfortunately three seats have

been vacant. they have been judicial -- the only active judge, mike mikuski has done an an amazing job keeping the judicial system running for the past seven months. mike in years gone by had had some health issues and i asked him whether there was anything they could do to leave the stress he was facing being the only judge out of four in the district and he said only the senate can relieve this stress. so today mike, we're going to do our best to relieve that stress and send two excellent new district court judges. it hasn't been easy. right now there are no active status judges in the federal courses in stringfield and peoria. judge mikoski is based in your banna and -- urbana. i salute him for his dedicated service and i want to salute judges mike mim, harold baker

and richard mills who helped out in the district despite personal challenges, family and health challenges, they stepped in even though they are on senior status to make sure that the district is served. i'm pleased today that help is on the way to the central district of illinois. and i want to thank my colleague, senator mark kirk, who has joined me in presenting these nominees to the senate. first, i want to mention is a friend of mine for many years, sue myerscough. she has been prominent on the legal landscape of springfield for many years. she has 23 years of judicial district. serves on the illinois fourth district appellate court. she has been nominated to fill the vacancy of judge gene scott. justice myerscough is a springfield native. she earned her bachelor's and law degree from southern

illinois university. she began her legal career as a law clerk for harold baker and following her clerkship she worked for six years in private practice. judge myerscough was appointed as an associate judge of the senate circuit in springfield in 1987, in 1990 ring lectd as circuit judge for that court. during her 11 years as a trial judge she presided over bench an jury trials including complex murder trials. in 1988 she was elected to her current seat on the illinois appellate court. during her years on the appellate court she authored over 1,200 decisions on a wide range of issues. justice myerscough has worked to promote legal education for school children and since 2001 she served on the board of visitors for the southern illinois university law school. she is an excellent judge. she's an excellent lawyer. she has a great family.

and i'm just proud that the president presented her name in the senate -- and the senate will have a chance to vote on her today. jim shadid currently serves as judge in the tenth judicial circuit in peoria. he will fill a judgeship vacated when judge mimm took senior status. he was born in peoria and received his undergraduate degree from bradley university. he was a baseball player for the bradley braves and was a two-time m.v.p. after graduation he played a season of minor league. he won retention elections in 2002 and 2008. he has presided over approximately 300 trials and thousands of additional pleas and sentencing. prior to his service on the state bench, judge shadid worked as a part-time peoria county

public defender, and as assistant attorney general in illinois. in addition to his broad legal experience, judge shadid has an impressive record of service to the peoria community. judge shadid was the first arab american to serve as state judge in illinois. upon his confirmation, he will be the only arab american federal judge in the state and one of only a handful nationwide. there is a large arab community in peoria including my friend the transportation secretary ray lahood. i know this community and all of illinois will be so proud of judge shadid. justice myerscough and judge shadid were unanimously reported by the judiciary committee. i hope my colleagues will agree the people of illinois will be well served with these two fine individuals on the bench. we'll still have one vacancy when these two are approved and

fortunately president obama has nominated another excellent candidate to fill that vacancy. i look forward to working with my colleague senator kirk to consider her nomination in an expedited fashion. i also am working with senator kirk to fill all vacancies. senator kirk is alonging to fill one of the vacancies in the northern district of illinois. last year the senate confirmed three excellent judges, judge fireman, judge coleman and judge chang. judge chang was recommended by the republican senate committee the year before and i found him to be an excellent candidate. party aside, he is going to serve very well and is now serving on the northern district. senator kirk and i will continue to work together to find excellent yudges. in conclusion as we proceed

toward this evening's vote i support judge myerscough and judge shadid. i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. durbin: mr. president until. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: i ask consent that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i ask that the time under the quorum call be equally divided between the republican and democratic sides. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: