the money is impossible, but it is a lot more challenging than it used to be. and i do want to slightly rebut some of the election lawyers i talked to on the eve of citizens united because i would raise questions around transparency, and i was frequently told, well, super pacs disclose everything. i'm here to say, you know, conventional political action committee, every dollar in and every dollar out if you're a journalist, you can go and look at. and that's just not the case with super pacs, at least not now. so with that, i'll pass it on to mimi. >> great. hello. again, apologies -- >> mimi, the mic. >> thank you. and so, obviously, most of our conversation today is forward-looking as we grapple with the very important questions that super pacs have raised about how they should be, whether they should be regulated, how they should be

regulated and, in fact, um, whether basic assumptions underlying our campaign finance system make any sense. .. and there are three points that are particularly important for the instant obsession. first, the buckley court found because money is needed in most

forms of mass communication, restrictions on political spending should be totally scrutinized just like restrictions on pure speech. the point is this is not actually the same thing as saying money is speech although that is the shorthand that has come to them. but it has the same practical effect. meaning that the government must have a very, very good reason to regulate political spending. the court in buckley zimlin decided that preventing corruption is the only good reason the government can limit political spending. the court decided without citing any evidence or really talking much about the reality of political campaigns the buckley court decided that direct contribution to candidates pose

a much greater risk of political corruption than independent spending that is meant to benefit the candidates. the court specifically said -- i will quote buckley decision for a second -- then the absence of prearrangement and coronation of an expenditure with the candidates not only undermines the value of the expenditure to the candidate but also alleviates the danger that expenditures will be given as a quid pro quo for improper commitment from the candidate. so with that reasoning of the buckley court upheld contribution limits on direct contributions to candidates but struck down limits on how much individual could spend to benefit a candidate. fast-forward to 2010 and the citizens united decision. as everyone surely knows, that is known for his holding, that

it is unconstitutional to prohibit corporations from using general treasury fund for a hearing. the port, however, discussed independent spending and an aspect of the decision that is more frequently overlooked. in the tips and united court expanded the logic of buckley profoundly and without looking at any factual evidence, that truly non coordinated expenditures, quote, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. in other words, to give a concrete example, this is the same as saying that a multimillion-dollar campaign ad blitz funded by let's say bp oil could benefit members of the energy and commerce committee does not pose any sort of threat of political corruption so long

as bp decides to spend that money without consulting with the candidates. with this, however, the court assumed there was robust transparency because that would also act as the mechanism to prevent corruption. after citizens united -- two months after citizens united was decided the pc court of appeals decided a case called speech now. i promise i am getting to the point. here's the big question was presented. plaintiff in that case said i am pac, i only wanted to spend money on independent expenditures. i'm not going to court made under the campaign finance rules for any particular candidate. therefore it is unconstitutional for the government to restructure the money coming into my organization.

there is no way answer so the argument goes, no anti-corruption benefit to restrict the money coming in if the money good coming out is not correct. the court agreed and tossed the limits on contributions to these types of pacs aside. from this decision the sec created a new category you might have heard of already, i want to say it. be independent expenditure only multi candidate not connected pac which obviously is a mouthful. it was real cool and has the super pac. i don't know who came up with this term. and so let us move on to our other panelists. but from that, that creation

story as it is legal want to underscore the troubling assumption super pacs are -- this idea that independent expenditures are known corrupted. this notion is quite frankly ludicrous to anybody who has ever dealt with the realities of our political system. defies all logic to think an individual could give $5 million to mar mostly affiliated super pac. i know all about it. that infusion of money is given to me at a critical moment in my campaign and necessary for me to achieve a key win. crazy to think i will not get it to that individual in some way. the second fallacy is this notion that the coordination

rules are sufficient to prevent true coordination the way you and i understand coordination and we will talk about that. they are not sufficient. finally as eliza newlin carney violated the current disclosure regime is sufficient to capture the new influx of political money. i will end illustrating that, have you talked about steven colbert? as many of you know, this comedian and a genius has been illustrating -- kind of ridiculous aspect of the current regime by creating a super pac and created an affiliated 501 c 4 for the purpose of accepting donations that never have to be disclosed and can be shifted to

the superpack. with that said tale i will turn it to somebody else to offer a ray of hope. >> hopefully i can offer a ray of hope and explain the concerns here and maybe we should note that steven colbert no longer have the super pac. >> definitely not coordinating the steven colbert super pac. >> i will talk about the broader legal concerns that play when you talk about disclosure and transparency. as mimi and eliza explain the major thing out of this decision is a declaration by the supreme court by five justices that independent expenditures don't corrupt or can't corrupt. one of the promises made by the court plead for one of the suggestions made by eight of the

members was disclosure and transparency would be an antidote to any potential corruption from this flood of corporate and by extension union money coming to the election system. eight of the court's 9 justices signed to a section of the opinion that stated for example campaign finance system that compares corporate expenditures with effective disclosure has not existed before today. later in the same paragraph they went on to write with the advent of the internet prompt disclosure of expenditures provide shareholders and citizens with information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters and skipping ahead to the end of the same paragraph the court concluded first amendment protect political speech and disclosure permit citizens and shareholders to react to the speech with corporate entities and this transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and a proper way to different speakers and messages.

eight of the justices stood behind disclosure. this wasn't the first time. eight of a court's nine justices have been behind disclosure and all of the disclosure related decisions. and it upheld the bi-partisan campaign reform act. the only justice on the court that has not receded disclosure is just as common as. recently in a case in the state of washington called bill be read which the not pertain to the -- they signed petitions, and stood behind disclosure. a short passage from justice scalia's opinion because it is the most strongly worded

endorsement of disclosure, and there are laws against threats of intimidation and harsh criticism short of unlawful action, it is self governance. the political acts -- without which our democracy is doomed. for my part i don't purport a society which thanks to the supreme court campaign anonymously and exercises direct democracy initiative and referendum from public scrutiny and protected from accountability of criticism. this is not remember the home of the brave. the consistent eight justice majority on the supreme court. very -- eliza explained we have a major deficit disclosure. eliza touched on the main points. it is true that super pacs have

to disclose all the money the entire universe of possible and legal donors changed with citizens united and speech now or a couple months later, for the first time it decades, they make unlimited contributions to super pacs. what we may see when most of the super pacs created for this election cycle filed for a comprehensive report, filing of reports that said a superpack receive $1 million, americans for apple pie. prior to these cases, corporate entities, hypothetical 501c4 would-be illegal -- now they can contribute and that is all that will have to be disclosed by the super pac because 501c4 as eliza display and they don't have to

disclose where they get their money unless the donor is foolish enough to specifically designate their contribution to that for the purpose of making independent expenditures. this particular deficit and disclosure, the fact that 501c4s only have to disclose to donors if their donors designate for communication that is the creation of a very dysfunctional and completely gridlock federal elections commission. there are a couple players in this game that got us to this point. the sec played a big role in the supreme court despite its promises that we will have disclosure and that will prevent corruption and allow voters to make informed decision in the voting booth and allow voters to hold corporations accountable. i don't think we have that much information in this coming election about the true source of money going to these super pacs even though they nominally

disclose all the money they spend. just want to mention a couple of ways to get at this problem. before doing so i will mention there's a counterdaleing interest that i am confident allen will talk more about. it is indeed true the supreme court has said over the decades, if a particular donor would suffer threats legal harassment or reprisal, they should be exempt from having their names disclosed but this is an exemption from disclosure involved in the context of the socialist workers party, the naacp, these people being victims of extreme violence and often discrimination, with reprisals at the hands of government itself. brief mention of some of the

ways the new super pac disclosure act that the sunlight foundation has announced last week very similar to provisions in the disclose act that passed the house and failed the cloture votes in the senate in 2010. one way to get what they might refer to as the russian doll is super pacs said disclosing and we get money from another group, this new model, in the disclose act, failed to pass enactment, the new concept that would be in the near future, do what we love them to do, embedded into the law. billing presumptions that if someone gives money to the center and the spender solicits the money specifically telling the donor they would use it to make independent expenditures or

election communication that donors should be disclosed. the spender and the donor, the true source of funds about the fact, election -- the election may be disclosed. that donors should be disclosed and finally, if the recipient -- if they had made substantial expenditures in past elections cycles that would put the donor on notice that the money would be used again for expenditures, some of the concepts that are not in the law, and putting into our disclosure laws out there. >> thank you so much. it was a totally different perspective. >> this is why i went to law school.

i will use this one. i will playing the role of the loyal opposition today. socialist workers is one of my favorite cases. it bears mentioning that neither majority of the supreme court nor those of less on a broadly defined right with a corrupt government more than anyone else does and we don't have a particular problem with disclosure. eight of nine justices agree disclosures good. the difference is we think there's already so much of it. i have a half page of notes why that is the case but thankfully my coat analysts have already demonstrated super pacs have the same reporting requirements as do normal pacs which is fairly substantial. i wasn't going to discuss that for but that is the direction of the conversation. i will briefly push back. we haven't yet seen the russian doll problem. it might be the end of this month we find out there are hundreds of millions of dollars swirling out there. i find that extremely unlikely for a few reasons. mostly just economic.

the fact is 501c4 can spend money on political advocacy which means a minimum they can't spend more than 50% of what they are taking in on ads and donation and things of that nature. anyone who wants anonymity badly enough to take a 50% cut right off the top of their contribution, i don't see that happening. second of all any of the money that has been spent actually is taxed. the money that goes -- handled by at sea for, might be under a gift tax. if spending 49% which is the worst-case scenario of your donations as political advocacy money, all of that is tackled and another hair cut coming of of the top of your contribution. it is an extraordinarily efficient way of influencing politics that you are trying to do. i shall also point a lot of the

c4s -- people think of them as shadow organizations like americans for apple pie or terrible people it is a lot of groups like the nra and the sierra club and most of the people you think of as major advocacy organizations or c4s. there is interested in participating in politics but keep in mind a couple things. a lot of the ones you heard of don't make fortunes of of billionaire contributions. they take in large amounts of small donations from large numbers of people and reflect a reasonable sort of grass-roots approach to particular issues. painting c4s as the enemy is a mistake. i may be proved wrong because there is a much disclosure but sitting here today it is unlikely we will see all of this filing of money through c4s. people can rebut me. let me give you my overall view

of how of this should work. i think this is what the supreme court had in mind. i tend to take issue with the idea that the supreme court said here is our ruling on a major first amendment case but we don't know what we're talking about on disclosure. citizens united as the mixed brief from everybody and their mother. and roughly a tenth of american lawyers are engaged in this case. was ridiculous. i don't think the supreme court was uninformed when talking about disclosure and they didn't pick up disclosure or suggest future cases would turn and i am not sure that impact the constitutionality of legislation. i would tend to think and i am sure you would agree that most of the disclosure sort of suggestions brought to congress were probably not passing constitutional muster. that doesn't make it a good idea. i don't think we should read the supreme court's opinion as saying you need to have

disclosure. i read this case as saying there is a lot of disclosure of there and that is the way congress deals with personal problems. an alternative view. question of who should be disclosing the contributions, the person who control the content. this idea that whoever at any point change the funding might have given a dollar is dangerous. a lot of people will say the chamber of commerce spent $30 million in the 2010 election and we want to know precisely who their membership was and gave them the money. if you are going to go that direction you have to be consistent and say the nra spent money and we need their membership list. that sort of approach would pose a grave constitutional problems and i think that -- i would look forward to litigating against anyone at this table. as far as what should be disclosed, this is a related issue. colleague of mine had a good idea on the view, take the

downward standard of evidence and use that as a starting point. with that -- what that says bradley and i will get into the details is information is brought in as expert testimony. if it is an lightning to the jury, that is a reasonable standard. there's a danger of jump disclosure we're giving all sorts of information which no one is ever going to look up which isn't relevant to anyone's vote which is a burden on people. right now the pac/super pac limit is $200. i don't understand how $200 can be considered a corrupting amount of money given the scale of policy in this country and i am not sure who has ever benefited from being able to look of the name and address and employer of someone who gets $200. that is junk that is out there in the world. it doesn't actually move any thing. doesn't change any votes.

not relevant. as for -- this is the toughest one from my side. i do see the point too. we have an election in iowa and we won't reduce funding until after the primary. that is a fair point. i wonder how many people who say we need disclosure actually work for political committee or political campaign. i am in a roomful of politician types. coo here has worked on a campaign? how many did filing work? none of you. that is not helpful to me. it really is an extremely difficult and burdensome process and the reasonableness of the 24 or 48 hour window is -- i am not entirely clear on how you would go about getting around the

problem to spend money or take in money the day before the election. and then turn around in five minutes. doesn't strike me as a way to run a business organization. similarly, this is almost as important -- you are not only disclosing donors but spending. you disclose your spending in order to become an obligation so if you bought an ad and it will air the day before the election you disclosed in the day you bought it. not the day before the election. that will end up on a report. if someone gives money to your organization the day before the election that money didn't go for the ad. the error that they. that money was always going to go into another election continuing a fund. in practice that is less of a concern than people think it is. the spending is picked up more than the rhetoric but i am sure we will discuss that in some detail. finally the question of where

you disclose, i am all for online disclosure. not having searchable databases and terrible pd f is a horrid. there's no excuse for that. given the size of the economy and the amount we spend on things. i definitely think that is common ground. where we are not going to agree -- this came up in the disclose act and in the bill that is currently considered by the sunlight foundation is the idea that you are putting the advertisement itself. usually you stand by your ad in languages where i am running for dog catcher of d.c. and i approve this message. maybe that has a certain role. in the area of independent expenditures less helpful. a few reasons. one is saying i am the candidate and i approve this whatever that has content, saying i am crossroads gps and i approve this doesn't tell anyone anything. which is what the next step is doesn't tell you anything so you

include that and this is an example from massachusetts. here is the organization who approved it. i am the general counsel or chief executive officer or president or whatever and this is my name and i approved it and here are the top five donors. i don't know how to fit that into a f-15 seconds radio ad or anything else. at the micro machines got to shop and say it fast or none of that information but what you are doing is taking half of your air time that you paid for as a protected person or activity and taking it off the top because you put in all this information that won't changes single person's mind and i very much look forward to the constitutional challenge in a lot of other localities. and the federal standard would immediately make the case before the d.c. circuit and it would tie up a lot of people's hard earned money. i am sure -- i have an entire

page of commons but i will wait. >> thank you so much. auld four of you have interesting issues and we will place u.s. much as we can and get questions from the audience as well but first i want to take one thing allen was saying which is with the information that is not being disclosed does anybody look at it? is invaluable or just a burden? we start with a line from a reporter's perspective. you're going through this information looking for stories. who would it be useful to have more? >> i spend a lot more time than i should looking for the campaign finance documents. i do want to acknowledge allen's point about non-profits and it would be wrong to say i think nonprofits are the enemy. simply a statement of fact that there is a disclosure process.

to talk about disclosure have to acknowledge that and also think allen touched on the important point that when you go into acquiring disclosure from nonprofits you are in difficult and controversial area. there may be an argument that what we need to do is get the irs to be more aggressive about saying to nonprofits if you spend your money on campaigns you are not a tax-exempt group anymore. to go to the question of disclosure, why is useful to people like me. i don't think it is junk disclosure. he would be amazed how useful it is. to look at these reports and see who the treasurer is and call the treasurer and the donor. the disclosure that is there is not that comprehensive. amazing number of campaign finance reports with 000, there is no money there and, the

public record from the sec, the junk disclosure in the sense that it is not actual disclosure but in the internet age i am hard pressed to see why it is so hard. i want to say clearly, to endorse legislation, to report upon it. we are not here to take position, and on the legislative front if it isn't broken don't try to fix it. the current disclosure regime actually for political action committees, people who knock themselves out to avoid disclosure and there will always be people like that but there is an amazing number of players who wants to play by the rules. shareholding is tell me what the rules are and let me follow them.

if you are going to write legislation i think there's a strong argument for keeping it pretty simple and i think one of the reasons last year's disclose act ran into trouble is it was a pretty complicated bill. so keep it simple. a simple vehicle for people who don't feel like using non-profits and the super pac or any new vehicle and i want campaign money the old-fashioned way--that is one of thing i would not get rid of and is not junk disclosure. >> an additional point is one question raised with what is going on at the state level. something you can talk to in terms of how to deal with this closure. >> sure. that is an incredibly hard answer because the states are all over the map. to tell you the truth it can be wildly difficult. i am sitting as an attorney with calls from state advocates

around the country, state lawmakers asking questions about policy and for me it is extremely complicated to get through the web of laws and all the different states and i understand it is complicated for groups that are on the ground. the remaining trends we are seeing and recommendations, trends, many states found themselves flatfooted after citizens united. not everywhere but there is a perception among many state lawmakers that the rules of the game >> reporter:. there's a lot more money coming in and new ways and their disclosure regime is not equipped at all. some of that is a correct perception. some of it is actually just

evolution in political campaigning leaders believe natural course but regardless there has been a sense of urgency in many states through an act, new disclosure regimes and strengthening laws. there has also been a push in a lot of places to bring things online which i agree with everybody's opinion that that is a great goal. in the situation of campaign finance and many other areas, automating processes and getting things online tend to be most efficient and all sorts of benefits. a recommendation, this goes to eliza's point, i struggle with lawmakers that the state level have campaign finance disclosure bills that are quite frankly extremely complicated and usually called together from existing state law and federal

law and some water from a neighboring state. it is difficult to know what to do about that because i understand many people are working fast and they are not experts in the field and there are a lot of barriers. i do completely agree with what many people said that one of the best things you can do have a policymaker is think about ways to achieve your policy goals that are straight forward and have clear-cut rules that are easy for everybody to understand and also have some sort of robust enforcement mechanism which people tend to disclose. >> i would like to ask the two gentlemen, one of the issues that was raised a couple times particularly in the opening remarks had to do with coordination and the appearance or a quality of corruption. election law saying the greatest

danger of super pac is they may skew the legislative process in the next congress in favor of the interests of large super pac contributors. he essentially was arguing the independent spending can corrupt and create the actual alan bean or the appearance of corruption, that they may feel indebted to the people who are making the donations and at the same time we see from the super pac side that many of them are being run by close associates of current candidates. i will give two examples. to be even-handed. there's a major super pac for mitt romney that is run by three former aides from the 2008 campaign. looking at newt gingrich is former spokesman rick tyler is helping run -- he said, quote, we are newt gingrich's super pac. we take our marching orders to the media for newt gingrich and do what he tells me through the media within the confines of the

law. certainly from -- coordination going on there is information going back and forth. it seems it creates the appearance of a quid pro quo. is something you could address. wasn't the coordination rules are real or obstruction or appearance of corruption is real and the answer to the question, what is the appropriate response? allen the deegan would you like to look at that? >> sure. if you go back and read citizens united incase you got 12 extra hours on your hand, one of the things the court is concerned about is the fact that you need a bright line rule. you don't save these people speak and these people don't, two things happen. one is everyone goes around being scared to death of a federal investigation where they have to hire one of us and pay

an unreasonable amount of money. >> speak for yourself on that point. >> this sort of -- don't worry. an unreasonable amount of money. have to worry about these intensive inquiries. this is in question of a nice binary thing where right now the pool is did you contribute to super pac, take out an expenditure? if the answer is yes which is relatively straightforward and of the current law in my view then you are done. pack up and go home. if the standard is something like how close is too close for the candidate? is his father too close? is newt gingrich's campaign manager too close? is the treasury secretary too close? where is the line? you don't have it getting out with the fed but taking your e-mails and your associates and subpoenaing stocks with $7 million in legal fees later and turns out you didn't break

the law. that show the enormous amount of speech and something citizens united majority was not worried about. part of what i am saying is i don't know. there is a nice bright line under current law that says the law does not coordinate and coordinating the means in the expense of the spending of money you didn't discuss x and while. >> let me press you on that. there's a recent supreme court decision at the sec which upheld the government's power for contributions from nonresident aliens. broad smith said the decision is essentially that decision was the find you can distinguish between people who are domestic or foreign but you have foreign corporations or corporations that empower domestic corporations and this bright line rule is really being helpful and gets smeared all over the table.

it is a question of what congress should be doing and a bright light will is this is where it is further and that determination as opposed to saying it is too much or too close or not close enough. that is why you have a regulatory process to make the decision in the first place so people know what they're supposed to do. >> that is why i think the sec's rulemaking is broken. when you are talking about corporations, the c c p debate is interesting and ten people will get tenure on it. i do see a difference. i concur with brad not because i work for him. there is this idea -- everyone points to citizens united and say american citizens have a right to be informed by the broader range of views including corporations which are part of the economy and employs a lot of them. a lot of people's a fine. what is the difference -- of the right is held by the american

people as voters then why shouldn't they be interested in the opinion of the chinese government? they take the quote out of context. what it actually says is you have a right to have the views of the community heard and right to hear from everyone else who reside in the community. that is the language they use. this is a very old idea. we all sit and talk among ourselves and come to opinions as a community. in that sense i don't find the concept weird that we are excluding the views of the chinese or russian government or saudi princes. on to your point about corporate governance. that is tricky. all issues of corporate governance are tricky. not the idea -- as a corporation or subsidiary controlled from abroad is not a new question. we do this all the time whether or not you have to file with the sec but do it for tax or custom purposes.

do it for whether or not your ip address falls under the jurisdiction of a particular federal agency. these are questions which very smart people who make more in an election lawyers have been fighting over for decades. if you went to any reviewable law firm and said we need to know whether we are controlled from abroad we're going to get a pretty solid answer. i take your point esther lee on we need a bright line will but what about this? at that point you are not asking about election law the corporate law. there is an answer in corporate law. >> the want to -- >> one of the things i found to be infinitely frustrating since the birth of the super pacs is a myth reporting, consistent and persistent myth reporting in the press of some notion that creating the impression that super -- super pacs have to be independent from candidates. allen alluded to this in his remarks.

no law says super pacs have to be independent of candidates. some some restrictions they super pacs kenna coordinate brief and specific expenditures with candidates. that rule in my view is riddled with pretty sizable holes and there's another area of federal law that says super pacs cannot solicit a limited contribution -- candidate cannot solicit unlimited contributions from super pacs. for reasons i will get into a second, very weak and modest provision but the only two provisions i know of in federal law that can strain the relationship between super pacs and candidate. they cannot coordinate specific expenditures. that terrified weekly and they cannot solicit unlimited contributions under rule is pretty weak. why is the solicitation week? the federal election commission ruled in an advisory opinion last year that a candidate attending speaking and being a featured guest at super pac fund-raising event does not constitute solicitation.

it is perfectly legal. we have seen mitt romney showing a pet the fund-raising events for restore our future. this notion is built in, don't worry, it will be done independently of candidates of a canned tour of those candidates and any time mitt romney appears at a fund-raising event at super pac raising million dollar contributions or larger, making comments to the press that he perceives those contributions as being made to him which is another anecdote against the notion that we don't have a russian doll problem yet but before i tell you that very brief anecdotes i want to talk about court nation rules. solicitation rules, the ban on candidate solicitation of a limited contribution is weak because they can still go to the fund-raiser. the coordination rules are weak because for example while there is a blackout period of 120 days for a former employer of a candidate who goes to work for super pac before being involved

in that super-creation of independent expenditure that provision of the law does not apply if or unless that individual conveys to the super pac information that is material to the creation of the specific act and that information is not obtained from a publicly available source like a candidate's web site. at some degree to some degree there is a revolving door provision but it is very modest in its application. allen made a remark we don't have a russian doll problem that ties into comments mitt romney has made to the press about $1 million donor from one of his friends. there were few super pacs in existence in the 2012 cycle when the last comprehensive reports were due to be filed on july 31st of 2011 but restore our future was one of them and what did journalists find? three separate $1 million corporation donations that no one ever heard of. they started building. one was w. spawn.

it was created last spring and made at $1 million to restore our future and was dissolved in july before the report was filed. the reporter the in and found out it was associated -- the reporter couldn't find any information really other than a manhattan address that as shared with the same building as bain capital office. we file a complaint with the federal election commission early on saying we don't know what is going on here but this looks shady and may violate another provision of federal law that prohibits making a contribution in the name of another and what we speculated was there was that human out there, several humans behind this corporate shell and they made at $1 million contribution in the name of this corporate shell. classic russian doll problem may or may not be prosecuted as a violation of the law and the sec has very weak track record in enforcing federal law as does the justice department would comes to campaign finance laws.

friday afternoon i wake up on saturday morning and some time friday night or saturday a human being came forward and said oh oh, sorry, that was me. i believe it was the next day that mitt romney was on the campaign trail and was asked about this and he said no foul. he is an old friend of mine. he gave me $1 million. moving on. he hadn't given $1 million to mitt romney bucci gave $1 million to restore our future and had given it publicly in his own name but through a shell company he set a. that is a russian doll problem and a bigger russian doll problem if the sec doesn't crack down on that money laundering through corporate entities. that demonstrates there is a russian doll problem and these candidates who are supposed to be living and existing independently of these super pacs perceive them as costs of money. mitt romney gave me $1 million. that is a big problem that poses just as much of a threat to our

democracy as if it were legal for not only add canard but an actual business corporation that will direct you to an individual who may be the next president. >> i want to dovetail on that to go back to what allen said about the c4s. it is true that c4s are not the enemy and there are many fabulous 501c4s. everything from the nra to planned parenting. pick your favorite. many of them are funded by small donations. that is not necessarily the problem and the don't think many of us would claim that to be the problem. the bigger problem is when c4s are used to shield corporate entities or other rich individuals and the chamber of

commerce was actually 501c4-6 because they spend a huge amount to influence elections and we understand, we the community understand they represent, quote, business interests but we have no way to know in any given circumstance if they are getting $5 million donation from walmart to target a very small election to blow out of water some person who is against changing the zoning laws to allow walmart in. that is a huge problem as is the problem -- [talking over each other] >> it goes back to -- it is only earmarked if you're stupid enough to say it is earmarked. there are lots of ways to convey -- we are all human beings. you can they would you want someone to do without running afoul of legal rules.

there's also a problem that people use these c4s as pure shell organizations. that is more of an enforcement problem but we haven't seen any enforcement from the sec or the irs or the justice department. can't think of another entity that would have jurisdiction but the resolve, there is a very real ability to create 501c4 organization for the very purpose of funneling money to a super pac or other sort of political entity, dissolved it and the american people don't really know what hit us. i just want to wonderscore that. >> i will say briefly about citizens united v. federal election commission the speewun group for any nonprofit, absolutely. mimi is right that the vast majority of these groups are the salt of the earth groups that you guys contribute money to and this is one of the reasons it is

very challenging to regulate in this area but i do think it is worth saying that the irs has a reputation for not having the necessary resources to make sure non-profit groups actually are serving a purpose and social welfare as opposed to campaigns. i think to say i don't really think we are going to have to abuses by nonprofits is really naive. i am sorry if you look at groups like swiss foods, veterans for truth, influential in the 2004 election when that group at the airwaves. nobody knew what they were about. groups like watch out organizations or organizations like the new york times dug around and found that information but especially at a time we have an economic downturn and news industry going through great change and tightening its belt i don't think we can count on investigative reporters like woodward and bernstein to go out and get the story they did in

the watergate era. >> i would love to make another point about these c4s. this 50% reduction in the efficiency was to paraphrase you if you give money to at c4 your efficiency will influence election because c4s cannot have as primary activity get involved in elections. i don't agree your cutting your efficiency in half. i agree there is an irs rule saying election influencing cannot be the primary activity sets -- go to the web site of crossroads gps which was set up by karl rove. this is on both sides of the political aisle. democratic and republican groups. carl rove said of america crossroads as super pac. he said openly to the press and his donors if you're willing to be disclosed give to my super pac because we're pretty much in agreement here if individuals give to my super pac we will get this vote. you don't want to be disclosed make your check to my c4,

crossroads gps. is in a 50% reduction in effectiveness when crossroads gps is using 49% of their budgets that say vote for candidate x or against candidate y and spend the other 52% running ads saying candidate x will raise your taxes and candidate x wants to tax you in your grave and call him and tell you what you think. they're running issue at close to elections in battleground states using broadcast media. southern lee appears as though their principal goal is to affect elections even with the 51% of their money they are spending on so-called issue ads particularly when you look at battleground states targeting. they have good lawyers who know what the irs rules are and will be track record of enforcement and they know how to write some hard-hitting issue at the. go to the gps web site and check out their ads. their lawyers say these are issued as legal not candidate ads and ask if this is a major

50% reduction in efficiency of our electoral influencing dollars? i don't think so. >> you were first out of your chair. >> usually you get reserve time for rebuttal in court. where to start? i take your point -- everyone at this table and many people know there has been a long debate about what exactly an issue at is and we're back to the line problem. people can definitely look at this and say it looks like an electoral communication or the functional equivalent or any of these phrases the supreme court came up with but you have to understand why they have those phrases. back to the bright line issue. you have to differentiate -- maybe you don't which is a different question. but if you're going to regulate campaign speech differently from other types you have to distinguish between the nra saying we need our gun rights and please don't put in this

landfill and vote to defeat senator so and so. every single time the court has tried to do this over the last 30 years they end up in a morass because people are smart. the nice thing is you don't get to be smart with them. as a result we have jurisprudence that says this is an electoral communication in the business. i understand people may not be comfortable with that but we're a nation of laws with predictability. this is where i think the supreme court gets more flak than they deserve. this is a tough question and they had to draw the line somewhere and it protects the maximum amount of speech. depending on your views on the first amendment that is possible. not fair to call it a sham issue ad. >> congress did address the bright line problem with the election communications definition was precisely tailored to get at this issue and said if you run a broadcast table or sunlight ad within a 30

days of the primary or 60 days of the general targeted to the relevant electorate to spend more than 10 grand you have to file a disclosure report. the c4s are filing their report filing x dollars. of the bipartisan campaign reform act, anyone who spends including an organization or c4 that spends $10,000 on that type of ad the delete key to know whether you are inside or outside, has to disclose all contributors who contributed more than one thousand dollars to that and it is the sec after that law was held up, the sec passed a regulation with very little notice -- the only time you have to tell us where you got your money, we won't make you reveal the names of all contributors who contribute $1,000 more but only make you disclose the names of contributors who gave you $1,000 or more for the purpose of

furthering that specific and that gave you that money designated for running that ad. it is the sec that gutted a statute passed by congress but congress effectively dealt with the bright line issue. >> on that, are have one more question. questions from the audience also rethinking decisions that you would like us to address. everything from the price of anonymity which could be 50% or nothing, questions around the naacp which had to do with why associations are particularly protected in terms of having to disclose the membership that has to do with the ku klux klan and things in the south or the russian doll question but what i would like to ask about up here is there has been a number of different attempts and venues people are trying to address this issue. you heard about the sec and disclose act, the fcc has a piece of this as well.

we have alphabet soup going on here. if anyone has an effort to deal with this to condemn or praise, the focus here, you can go through. >> i will highlight one effort that i don't think has been raised yet and that is the sec, securities and exchange commission, there has been a petition and much talk that would require publicly earned companies to disclose the money they spend on political advertising. this would have to be disclosed to the sec in the public record and variations of it but one variation would have to be disclosed from shareholders. one variation you could actually tell these companies they have to get shareholders, owners of the company and shareholders

would have to give approval to the corporation before they would be able to spend money in that manner. that is something to keep your eye on. >> there's only one bill i am willing to say or legislative proposal i am willing to say that i like right now are and that is the one that has to do with the federal communications commission because the fcc to some degree tells us what is being spent and that is a great way for reporters such as myself to know what is being spent and one of the reasons we can save 30 plus million dollars is spent by super pac because there are groups like fema or can't armenia that protect spending and that is a simple or not intrusive way to say here are the number of ads and here is who bought them. this would be pre easy and pretty illustrative and helpful to think getting a grip on what is being spent and by whom. i will be provocative and i am going to say that i think the --

such a difficult area to legislate for constitutional and free speech reasons that i advocate a correction by a culture change. i think non-profit organizations should voluntarily disclose their donors and there should be growing public pressure on groups to voluntarily disclose their donors and i think groups that don't disclose should be embarrassed and that is the only way that we are going to fully correct this problem. i do want to say to the degree that disclosure rules are challenging or perceive to be impossible or ineffective there is a surprising mall out there which is, a lobbying disclosure laws. a lot of people say those are incomplete and not enough lobbyists are captured and lobbyists say they need to be fixed but interestingly enough they don't seem to be that burdensome to lobbyists. very very are -- very illustrative and shed light on

the industry. remarkable amount of self correction within the lobby industry due in part to the jack abrams of scandal which i don't think would come to light without lobbying disclosure laws we have in place. i think simple basic disclosure laws that require reporting in a way that is not hard to understand that draws bright lines and debt-burdened people unnecessarily. if it is not broken, don't fix it. those things work for pac and lobbyists. let's keep the model and not mess up and may be expanded a little and give the irs a little extra money to decide who is really a nonprofit. that wouldn't hurt either. >> i have to say three things. because communications director will beat me if i don't. which is the sunlight foundation has its own draft -- i work a lobbying disclosure. has its own draft disclosure rules called the super pac act

which is open for public markups that work. the second is the committee on transparency held an event last year on lobbying reform. it is worth looking at. you can watch the video transparency caucus.org and the sunlight foundation discloses all of its contributions and expenditures to other entities we funds that are available at some lightfoundation.com. we encourage other organizations to do a better won't put anyone on the spot. the disclosure -- there are a lot of holes that are formulated and looking more deeply into. >> in terms of legislation there is really good content in super pac acts that daniel just mentioned. it is similar to the disclose

act, without many of the bells and whistles that got hung undisclosed act. some legislation introduced this year that is a more streamlined version of the disclose act without a lot of the bells and whistles. the sec is what i spent most of my professional time monitoring and engaging with. i don't have a lot of hope for the federal election commission. three times in 2011 the federal election commission deadlocked 3-3 on a document that would begin rulemaking to undo the commission in 2007 and are explaining a couple minutes ago the one that says you don't have to disclose your contributors but only the ones that give you the money for the purpose of furthering -- three time in 2011 they deadlocked on party lines. three democrat commissioners one of whom was there in 2007 and voted for the rule in 2010 and regrets her vote and two colleagues saying let's open up

for public comment and revisiting it and three democrat commissioners who voted against doing so three times in 2011 and five of the current federal election commissioners serving in expired terms. five could be replaced by the president whenever you wants and he has completely failed on this front. he failed to exercise the initiative necessary to overhaul the sec and turn it into a functioning federal -- campaign agency. one final vote is the lawsuit -- part of the legal team representing representative holland who has sued the federal election commission about this rule passed in 2007. there were all oral arguments in district courts. we are waiting and seeing and the best case scenario which unfortunately isn't a superstrong posture which is the federal election commission to revisit this tool and conduct rulemaking and consider whether this group created in 2007 was a good thing.

we have our fingers crossed and have this decision in the van holland case but that is all we got. >> i will agree with the rest of the panel. i completely agree on the culture shift. a lot of us on my side of the spectrum don't have a problem with disclosure as long as it is voluntary. our fear is the federal investigation and $7 million in fees. to the extent that any group that finds itself and controversial ken duke that, sure. obviously -- for the other groups. i also agree that i don't have a lot of hope -- to encapsulate the problem at the fcc for you. go to website and look up super pac rules. there aren't any. unless i am wrong. i also looked. there is not a single fcc regulation that notices the fact that super pacs exist because the fcc has not been able to

write up a tree to paragraph regulation that says we noted the supreme court of the united states and federal district court in columbia said something about the constitution. that is no word there. you take a regular pack form -- take regular pac form and fill it out and write up a nice letter that says by the way we are actually super pac and staple it. that is how we're doing these things. until the fcc can handle easy questions i don't have faith in their ability to handle large ones. where i disagree, full disclosure, i am a corporate litigator. but i disagree with you on the sec initiative. there haven't been any rulemaking on it you are aware. the problem is this. it is true that shareholders -- there is a lot of questions on this -- own the company or the residual value or however you want to characterize it.

the thing is citizens united talks about shareholder democracy as a way of handling these things. and in shareholder democracy there have been 25 elections last year where shareholders were asked would you like us to disclose our political spending? every single one of those elections failed. i think that is the problem with the sec coming in. the shareholders can't take care of their own interests so we will force disclosure. the shareholders don't want disclosure. they don't want it for couple obvious reasons. one is it basically means every annual meeting turned into a referendum on the sort of political rule being taken by the corporate world generally and obviously that is a distraction. it is not good for shareholder value and shareholders don't want it and secondly to the extent of this creates transaction costs for spending of political money by corporations whether directly or through pacs, it is essentially

a sort of unilateral political disarmament by the business community and i am not necessarily taking an enormous position on this but to the extent that shareholders don't want this information and turn their annual meetings into a circus the sec has a responsibility to respect that. is an end run around shareholder issues. >> i think that it is extremely disingenuous to say shareholders are not interested. the fact of the matter is most of us don't know where our shares are. investing in mutual funds. i am not a corporate litigator. you understand the structure of these investment vehicles much better than i do. you have a pension being invested on your behalf. all sorts of ways that money that could be yours is invested in corporations and you don't know -- i am not saying it

change the fcc rules would be the silver bullet nor do i think that is the only change that come about. i do think that that strikes me as extremely low hanging fruit. publicly owned corporations are transparent in many ways. i could understand the debate about having to vote on specific expenditures. but making these corporations disclose their political spending and giving shareholders the ability once a year to say i am comfortable with my money being used for political purposes or i am not comfortable with my money being used for political purposes, that baseline is hard not to support in my opinion nor do i think it is a silver bullet. >> 30 seconds. this is a courtroom.

>> i am not going to use the word disingenuous but i do think it is fair to draw the line with his political. talk about corporate budget. defect that can thousand dollars in direct political spending should be disclosed to shareholders and a multimillion dollar negotiation with a union or decision to build a plant in a particular place isn't. that is a weird line. all the time its hugely politically risky. to the extent question of what political risk shareholders are willing to take on, you have to have those for everything else but that is no way around a corporation so we don't do it that way. >> open to questions. of my colleagues is running around with a microphone or will be running around with a microphone in a moment. and we will -- sometimes you need guys in the back of your

head. over there with the gentleman with a sweater. i couldn't tell. tough to tell. >> if we could move beyond theory for a second we have a primary in florida for eight days. how do you crack at that when you move beyond the big guys in restore our future. given a lot of success with this one. >> i want to comment briefly because the topic of this forum is will super pacs serve in the 2010 election? i will give you my answer which is i do not think super pacs will determine the presidential outcome. to the degree they played a role that accelerating existing trends but are not going to be definitive. i do think where super pacs could play an important role is in close house and senate races and if you talk to any member of the house or senate candidates who lost in 2010 quite a number of them will point to super pac expenditures in large amounts

that have the effect of swamping their own expenditures sometimes at the last minute. many of them are very shocked. i think super pacs are important but i would say keep an eye out for other vehicles that will be utilized shortly. >> i think we saw -- here it is. in the 2010 elections 80 super citizens united v. federal election commission 1 -- 80 super pacs and although there are large number of super pacs only a handful were particularly active with a were putting in millions of dollars. does anyone else want the next one? >> i want to comment briefly you can go to the sec web site and see the disclosure reports to the discrete expenditures but the rule whether or not they have to tell who gave them the money bleep of whether the donor gave them the money for the purpose of furthering -- the subject of that disclosure report. you will get dollar amounts for

how much each super pac is spending but not on the donor until at best the end of this month when they have to file the first report -- >> coincides with the date of the florida primary. >> no good information where the money is coming from. slightly better information going forward. >> taking all these points, this is a whimsical observation. i think when that information comes out no one will be surprised. that is part of what is funny about this debate. everyone is oh my god, who put a ton of money into rick santorum's super pac so he could be competitive? it will be supporters of bricks and form. hate to break it to you. i saw an exchange on tv a week ago where someone said what is in there that will change anyone's vote? the guy said what did big oil give a bunch of money to rick santorum? no one voted for rick santorum

is bothered by big oil. i am not saying necessarily even separates anything but at the end of the day it is not going to be that surprising. >> is that the case? it may be noncontroversial but it begs the question why these groups at the last minute change their reporting so they don't have to report it? if it isn't a big deal that's a where the money came from. >> in the blue shirt. >> sam garrett from exceptional research service. to be done to address this earlier but i wondered about 527 as most people understand the term. super pacs are 527 for tax purposes but some speculation that super pacs yesterday's 527. i am wondering if now that super pacs are available as an option for unlimited contributions, does the panel have any thoughts whether 527s as most people

understand them as america and coming together will those now or essentially go away or be less prominent in favor of groups like super pacs? >> thank you for the question. it has been helpful in preparing -- part of your cheat sheet in front of me to keep these entities straight, mimi, do you want to take it? >> i will let paul jump in if i get my roles confused. the very odd answer to your question is 527, super pacs are one and the same. super pacs and pac in general refers to and sec label. essentials easy if ec 6 the label on you if your primary purpose -- don't know the exact words -- primary purpose is to influence election results.

>> major purpose. the f e c tests its major purpose and primary activity. >> very confusing thing is you still have to organize your organization under some of red of the tax code. most of them organize 527s with the purpose of influencing elections. so super pacs haven't changed much. what has changed is with swift boats and earlier elections we saw 527 resisting being labeled as pac. that was significant because by resisting being labeled pac, they were resisting contribution limits that largely don't exist anymore and source limits on prohibiting them from taking money from corporations that don't exist anymore and the disclosure rules.

>> do you want -- >> the simple answer is yes to your question. super pacs taking the place of 527 groups. it is referring to the small subset that did not show up at the registered declining to register pac to leave a contribution limit to enforce restrictions on corporate union money and that is now legal. no more incentive. the 527 groups. ville some got in big trouble. the fcc concluded the big players in 2004 violated campaign finance law. they didn't announce that in 2006 through 2007 but now that activity is illegal. there is no more incentive to stay away from the f e c. >> you have seen a shift to the 501c4 because if they are skirting the line on the primary purpose and can hold on to the c4 designation norplant to dissolve before the irs can

investigate they can do the same thing but a full disclosure on top of it. >> debating 527s is interesting because that is a term that referred to certain groups that were political organizations as defined by the internal revenue service but not political action committees defined by the ftc and they did that by not using terms like vote for and vote against. the 527 organizations were different from super pacs in the sense they didn't engage in explicit campaign messages. they did disclose expenditures to the internal revenue service and actually think they are a great example when you talk about disclosure or one way to approach disclosure because initially they didn't disclose and members of congress like john mccain said we want these groups disclosed and we will do it for the irs and a lot of reporters like myself said no because the sec for all the problems has a reputation for making public records available

to journalists and helping them sift through them and the irs is not. the irs does not have a tradition of disclosure probably for good reason because they don't want people in your personal tax records. but having said that, after the fines were imposed against a lot of leading 527 organizations including the swift boat group and american coming together a lot of donors said we won't play this game anymore. they didn't think it was effective. they moved away from 527s anyway and now that there is super pac option i don't think you will see people spending their money in that way. there is an alternative to the super pac, it will probably be social welfare or trade association. organization. >> there was a question on this side. i am getting the impression that investigations don't seem to be

that likely at least through the f e c. is that accurate or are they willing to investigate in this behavior? >> the first step in launching an investigation is getting four votes among six commissioners to find reason to believe the law was broken. you file a complaint and a staff identifies what may be a violation and the commissioners themselves say the four of you vote yes to start an investigation and that has happened with less and less frequency in the last few years and we have seen increasing deadlock. >> very similar to the lobbying rules where nobody gets prosecuted all phone not quite as extreme. >> my question is mainly about what mr. dickerson was saying about 15% efficiency in political contributions. even and that were potentially the case from my perspective it seems there is still quite an investment in political

contributions. potentially high rates of return given the federal government as a whole controls--can influence your profit margin by hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and number 2 the fact that because of inordinate 12 concentration there's not much of a risk and a donor for newt gingrich was a drop in the bucket. i'm curious about your perspective as to how good of an investment is donating to these independent expenditures. >> trying to figure out which way to address that. it is a fascinating question. i am going to zoom out a little bit in answering it. feel free to draw me back in if i am being unfair. a lot of the confusion is about this concept of corruption. when the supreme court talk about corruption they're talking about something very specific

that was alluded to by everyone on the panel which is we are talking specifically about a quid pro quo agreement where i am giving a contribution or doing something for you when you do something in return. a lot of that is covered by bribery statutes but the reason there's a prophylactic rules surrounding this is the supreme court recognized probably fairly that there are ways to hide them so we decided to draw bright line will contributions. what i run into trouble -- more of a philosophy discussion and should be -- it is not about whether someone feels they owe you a fair election or someone feels a certain amount of gratitude for your support. it is about whether there was an actual corrupt bargain. i know that sounds like i am splitting hairs but think about it. at the end of the day all democratic politics involved certain amount of trading of

support. it is unquestionable when george pataki was elected governor of new york three times with the support of major unions that never supported republicans before that he felt a lot of sort of obligation or support or gratitude to towards those unions. i am sure it is not when -- when john boehner was elected speaker, he felt certain gratitude toward people who helped fund the majority. that is politics. we are trying -- if you try to make that illegal you destroy the ability of people to have a functioning democracy. maybe that is too far out and if you dig down you could find a fair rule that distinguishs between actual corruption that you approve my walmart in your home town which we all agree is massively illegal and people should go to jail for and the bigger question that george

pataki was -- for governor then the republican party was used to. i don't know how to draw the line. i don't know if that answers your question. >> can i put you on that? isn't the phrase corruption or the appearance of corruption just about doing wrong, about giving people a reason not to trust the democratic system? >> that is an extremely fair point. this is a bit of a hobbyhorse for me but a lot of the problems in this area of the law is this stuff goes up on preliminary injunction or someone waves an affidavit that is three pages long and my constitutional rights and rule of law so the supreme court has never been asked to pass on the question of what constitutes appearance of corruption. with academic work has been done which i would be the last to suggest a ten year peace should be fine the constitution for us but academic work has suggested that there is this worry about corruption but when you drill

down the amounts of money people are talking about generally not the $500 -- >> let me push you again on that. these decisions are not made by academics but congress makes a number of findings and make a determination about the law and pass the law and they give difference depending on how they feel to the determination made by congress. this is the role of congress to do the investigation to find out where the lines are and they are most susceptible to these pressures and the way. >> notice often times this was basically the debate over part of the challenge to all these laws has generally been going down to buckley, the question is the contribution limit too low? is that corrupting? the court has occasionally hinted it might not be. probably true that $1,000 doesn't buy any one. thank god.

we don't have a scalpel to probe -- you can probe $5,000 or $10,000 as appropriate. there is different to that idea. but i also think the appearance of corruption when talking about not measured public opinion is a dangerous way -- [talking over each other] >> it is undoubtedly the case -- might be a touch too strong but five justices on this supreme court would agree with alan -- with allen's definition of corruption. that is not the case in 2003 when in the mcconnell decision they did not define corruption as more expansively to mean corruption or appearance of corruption but also said undue access and influence that results from making of state contributions creates corruption. that is corrupt. they referred to the definition of corruption that allen articulated as a crass few of

corruption. what changed was justice o'connor retired and justice paulino join the court and in citizens united you see a narrowing of what as recently as 2003 was defined as corruption meaning and to access and influence as well as actual quid pro quo. now it has been narrowed as allen indicated but that is a recent development. >> i was going to say i completely agree our democratic system is premised on individuals trying to influence other individuals to push policy in some direction. clearly we will always be probably more willing to listen to our friends and our enemies. i do think there's a huge difference when you're talking about spending money to influence election results. the for profit corporation is extremely different than you and

i. you and i are complex creatures with all sorts of motivations. we also have kind of larger senses of wanting to make our community and country a better place. a for profit corporation by law has one goal, and that is to make money. that is a huge part of our country. i don't think that goal should be confused with making policy. that is an extremely dangerous situation in the end. >> two brief comments. one is the contribution limit is $2,500, not 1,000 as indexed for inflation which i think is one of the good things that happened with the mccain feingold law with the effect of bringing more regulated money into the system. it should be noted the same lawyers and advocates who endorsed citizens united are pushing for a whole new set of

changes in the law and challenging the existing contribution limits to candidates. mitt romney has been candid about this. at least super pacs have this power and money and i want that power and money too. that is the solution to level the playing field. that really will put it to the high court whether they want to go against what the buckley court said in 1976 after the watergate scandal. the supreme court said we believe there is sufficient public argument in favor of limiting contributions to candidates and parties that we are going to let these laws stand. and i am not sure whether from a constitutional perspective this court would approve or disapprove or even should approve or disapprove contribution limits for parties but based on reaction to citizens united i would be very surprised if this nation accepted that. i think there is a limit to how

much voters will swallow. i don't think the voters want us to go that far. i see a lot of dissatisfaction with citizens united already and i think if you try to get rid of contribution limits to candidates and parties that members of congress would hear such an earful from constituents that they wouldn't accept that. >> there's a survey that came out by the pew research center on january 17th that said 54% of registered voters are aware of the supreme court decision allowing unlimited independent spending on political ads. of those voters 65% think the changes in the rules are having a negative effect on the 2012 presidential campaign. with that we are out of time. i would like to thank all four of our panelists for doing a fantastic job today. i should thank steven colbert for bringing attention to this issue. i would like to say the next event is scheduled for march 12th and will focus on

legislative data. more information about this event on c-span's website and transparencycaucus.org. thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] ..

>> he spoke for about 10 minutes. >> thank you very much. thank you. let me say thanks to john for the very generous introduction. let me say thanks to all of you for taking the time out of your productive lives and running of businesses. to come to washington to play a role in your government. it's important that the voices of the people of our country, to washington, talk to their members of congress about the important work that you do in your communities. as john pointed out, you know, i

used to run a small business myself. the last thing i ever thought i would ever do would be involved in politics. but after my business was up and running, i got involved in my neighborhood homeowners association. [laughter] >> and ended up in the united states congress, and i tell people this, too, could happen to you. [laughter] but i never thought i would do this. i come from a family, there's 12 of us, and i grew up working with my dad, but i had the same kind of opportunity that all of you in this room have had. and opportunity to get a good job, to start a business, to grow a business, and live the american dream. , and i got involved in this for one simple reason. i thought government was getting in the way of those opportunities that would be

available for our kids and our grandkids. it's as simple as that. and i believe that someone from the real world, somebody from the private sector, ought to take a more active role in our government. and that's what's probably a. and i can tell you that it's an honor to be chosen by your 434 colleagues as the speaker of the house. but i don't feel one bit differently today than the first day i came here 21 years ago. i'm still fighting for a smaller, less costly or and more accountable federal government here in washington, d.c. [applause] you know, last night we heard from the president. and let's understand that i get along with the president fun. i've got a good relationship with them.

he is a likable person. the american people like you. so the fights that we have are not about personality. it's about the policies that we are dealing with. and the president acted like, last night like it was his first year in office. somehow thinking that over the last three years maybe was backpacking around europe. [laughter] [applause] so we've got a litany of new proposals but it really boils down to theirs. the president is going to double down on the same policies that haven't worked. more spending, more taxes, more regulation. the idea that government knows best and that government can always do better than the people of america. now, i know that if i listen to the present speech lastly, it was another litany of failed policies, not only have his policies not help our economy, i

would argue they've actually hurt our recovery. and this election coming up this year will be rough on the economics policy. there's no other way around it. but as i listen to the president, i thought to myself, you know, i reached out my hand, i've tried to work with the president, but at some point the president has some responsibility to actually work with us. [applause] it was the president who ran on the thing is going to be the great uniter, not the great divider. but as we saw last night the president's speech, the politics of dividing america, the politics of envy are central to what he is trying to do in this campaign. if i had the president's economic record i would be looking for something else to talk about this year than those

policies. but that is not, that's does not help our country. and while i'm trying to reach out and work with the president i can play it for the last four months, since last labor day, the president has been in campaign mode every day. someone in the press asked me yesterday morgan when was the last time you talked to the president? i have to think about it, it happened to be on december 23 as we're coming together to finish the payroll tax agreement. there's no reason why there should be this much separation. the president said last night he truly wanted to work with us. i'm here to say to say i'm always ready to work with the president of the united states to do what we could do to help our country, to help our economy, get the american people back to work. [applause] the president wants to act like

the congress hasn't done anything. i can tell you on the outside without a plan for americans jobs created since last may. we have spent our central focus all of last year and we passed 30 bills that we believe will help our economy and to put americans back to work. and all 30 of these bills have passed with bipartisan support in the u.s. house of representatives. 27 of these bills still sit in the united states senate. where they get no opportunity for debate and no opportunity for a vote. so the first place we can start with maybe the present can call harry reid. maybe the president can urge to reread to at least give us a debate and give us a vote, because i believed that many of these bills will get bipartisan approval in the united states senate. [applause] you know, there's been a lot

written about the difficulty of my job. let me tell you what's tough. my job every day is, i've got 242 republicans and the house, i've got to 218 votes to pass anything. so as i like to describe, what i've got to do every day is getting 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow and keep them there long enough to pass the bills. [applause] but it is possible. it certainly is possible. but as i look where our economy is and the difficulties that businesspeople around the country are facing, i was there. i have done this but i don't think there's anyone on the presence economic team who's ever had a real job. but i know what our economy needs. it needs more certainty. it needs a fair tax system. it needs, it needs a health care

system that empowers patients rather than empowering our government. [applause] next week we are going to repeal the class act. this was the long-term care proposal. [applause] this was part of the president's health care plan, the president and his administration couldn't get how to invalids so they decided they weren't going to implement. and i believe there are other parts of this law that are facing the same types of impossibilities. but widely this on the books if it's not going to be implemented? let's just go ahead and get it off the books and take this threat from the private sector a way. but when you look at the rest of the presidents health care plan, i think it's the wrong prescription and is exactly what they reckon people didn't want. they want to be empowered to go see their own doctor. they want to be empowered to

take care of their health care. they don't want big brother in washington, d.c. making every decision about our health care system, which is exactly what will happen with the president's health care plan. you saw this week was the secretary of hhs has come out and ordered that every new health insurance policy is going to contain all types of mandates over what types of contraceptives have to be offered in every plan, whether you want them or not. whether your 60s -- 60 years old or not, you're going to pay for it. and in the conscious protections have been part of the law for the last 50 years, all gets stripped away, putting many religious organizations in a very difficult position. but in my view the president's health care plan will not only ruin the best health care delivery system in the world,

but i believe it will bankrupt our country. [applause] i know when i ran my business i offered a health care package to my employees. i needed professionals like you to help shape a plan that would work for my employees, and work for our business. i remember when i was back running my business, i had a pension plan from a profit sharing plan, that a fully funded on behalf of my employees. again, offered by professionals and put together by professionals to help meet our needs. someone who has been in virtually every corner of every state in our country, i know how wide and how diverse our country is. and whenever the federal government does something by its very nature it became a one size fits all approach for the entire country. and invariably it never works.

when you look beyond health care issue and you look at the costs that are associated with, i am mostly concerned, deeply concerned about the crushing debt that hangs over our economy and hangs over the american people. today, some $15.2 trillion of debt, no one can quite get their arms around the $15.2 trillion. other than we know it's approaching the entire size of our economy. we know that we can't continue to spend money that we don't have. we know, we come is our responsibility. for those of us in washington, and, frankly, those of us in our generation, it's our responsibility to take on this burden and to solve this problem. and if there's one thing, just one thing that the president could do to help make our country more secure, to feel better about our future, it's to work with us in a bipartisan way to tackle this crushing debt

burden that is facing our country. [applause] well, i'm going to get out of here and let you all go home. sorry i was late, sorry for the confusion. today is gabby giffords last day in congress. we had a ceremony. [applause] we had a very nice bipartisan ceremony on the floor, went a lot longer than i would have expected. but i want to thank you for doing what you do. thank you for being involved in your community. thank you more the thousands and thousands of people that you higher to help make our economy grow. because our job is to leave our country in better shape our kids and our grandkids. god bless you, and god bless the united states of america. thank you.

[applause] >> shortly were planning live coverage of vice president joe biden. is at the house democrats' retreat on the maryland eastern shore. later today we're also expecting about some president obama from the same meeting. live coverage of that is scheduled for 1:20 p.m. eastern here on this never. we plan to have vice president biden and just among. right now comments from former congressional budget office director douglas holtz akin is has the nation's health care law will be more expensive than what the cbo projected. he called the affordable care act today, many of its regulations need to be shed. he speaks for just under 25 minutes. >> i want to thank everyone, and to spend a little time talking about the costs associated with the affordable care act, and

close with a little bit of speculation about how it might involve overtime, and then answer a few questions if the audience might have. i warn you in advance that discussing the cost of the affordable care act is not really suitable for my company, and i'm also the former director of congressional budget office and it's my job to stand up and talk about apocalyptic things, so this bit and entirely depressing presentation. [laughter] there are really four kinds of costs that are associated with the act. the first are the budget cost and we walk through those, talk about the job ceo was burdened with and i think about this going of the affordable care act. but past that i think there's some significant costs that are not often recognized that there's some cause that i think have had missed opportunity constantly with the bill. disingenuous economic policy issues and economic costs are going to burden the united states him is the bill continues in its current form and then

there's been some severe political fallout. and i think an unmistakable implication for political future and i want to touch on each of those and then close with answers to your question. the first question always comes up, sort of, you know, is this really going to close the budget deficit by 1.4 been over the next 10 years or not. and i want to say just as good as i can, at the outset that the cbo has received an enormous amount of criticism, conservatives in america, about this group and i think they did an absolutely superb job. i think they conducted themselves in exactly the fashion they were ask you, and, unfortunately, the cbo in analog before looking at everything else operates with some golden handcuffs. and those golden handcuffs say that the cbo is not allowed to ever say two things about a piece of legislation. it cannot by law ever say that's not a good idea, and they cannot ever say that's never going to happen. and so it is not allowed to ever

judge a future congressman whether you get to something a blogger what they want to take the law at face value and they're not allow to abide with some is a good or bad idea. and many other holes that transform the affordable care act and something that that is on paper, powerless to continue to something in my view is going to widen the already fighting deficits we face, come from the fact that the bill contained literally a menu of budget gimmicks, private five single budget came gimmicks i've ever seen. congress is killed that budget gimmicks. they have brought all their expertise to this bill, include things like the class act which canada premium payments in during the budget window and ignored all the spending that would happen after that, thus providing some cushion in the budget. it rolls student loan savings, always a center discussion, health policy into the bill. it counted on cutting about $470 billion out of medicaid

over, out of medicare over the next 10 years. these take two forms. one of which is cuts to medicare advantage, which we can debate over the policy of that, and particularly a program that is disproportional use by low-income and minority seniors, why is it wise to cut off that option but also pure provider cuts. we seen the movie on provider cuts before which is that congress is this is to expensive, we're not going to do it, it infringes on the -- congress rethinks that, usually while a flood of phone calls hit their home office, and they put the money back in. the cbo can't say it's impossible that you're going to take $500 billion out of medicare. they came to a point, rick foster's as if we do this as it is written will see hospitals closing all over america. instead have to pretend is cuts take place. you will see an explosion of costs in the bill. the cbo can't say yes. that cadillac tax that you claim

you're going to impose, well, we saw that worked out during the legislative debate every time you said you want to do, the union said don't you dare. they kept pushing it further out and making it look less important or it may never happen but if so, what happens to the deficit? so there's a whole bunch of reasons to believe that the bill as written will not actually execute and will instead see something that instead of having $500 billion in cuts and $500 billion in taxes to pay for $1 trillion with the spending, will not get those cuts, not get those taxes. and even worse, the one place where i would disagree on a professional level with the cbo's analysis of the bill, i find it implausible that we will see only a tiny number of americans end up in the federally subsidized exchanges. it will be the case that people making as much as $70,000 will be eligible for subsidies of $7000, 10% of their income.

and there will be so much money on the table that basic arithmetic will say you as employer can stop providing insurance, give the employee a raise, that employee can take their after-tax raise and the subsidies and but insurance that is more generous than that which their employer had been providing them. they will be better off. the employer having done all that can pay a penalty and still be better off. and us, both employer and employee will be a head of the game. they'll end up in exchange is as a matter of economic arithmetic that the only loser there will be the american taxpayer because if you end up with me as 35 minute americans in those exchanges the cost of this bill explode. there are many centers by which that could happen. it could be pure employer dropped. it could be some employers never get into the insurance business. it could be as we were finding out that employers don't offer family couch anymore. they will simply offer their employee coverage and the spouse and children will be left to

find exchanges and get insurance on their own. but one way or another if you put enough taxpayer dollars on the table, people show up and to use it and this will be will be far more expensive than this ago in vision. it's my deepest concern about the future of informal care ask at a time there nation's history when we need to spend less, control our debt more, we're going the wrong direction and i think that's a central cause of the bill and i want to come back and belabor that point and tell you passed out in exhaustion. [laughter] that's point number one, the budget cost are not as they appear. whenever do is there are severe opportunity costs. in my view health care reform should have begun with medicare and medicaid reform. that was the agenda for this -- [applause] by using medicare as a financing mechanism, by using medicaid as the mechanism for expansion of coverage, the bill so intertwined as programs that it takes off the table in any reasonably sensible reforms to

to programs that are demonstrably broken. the medicare program right now runs a gap between premiums and payroll taxes in, and spending going out of $280 billion. it is the fiscal cancer. and that program will not survive for the next generation of seniors to use it as the key part of the safety net. it is a disgrace for a country of this greatest of the program in such disrepair and to leave it unmanned it for extended present time, and if that is what we are going to do. [applause] medicaid as this group does medicaid is probably worse to me other than to not seek primary care physicians. they end up in the emergency rooms, disproportionate rate it above those of the uninsured. medicaid is a tax on the federal budget and certainly a big attacks in state budget. we have two key arguments of our

social safety net which are broken, will not survive to the next generation of seniors and low-income americans from and we're not fixing them. that's a real cost to the affordable care act. when we did a, we didn't take on the one from ago and agreed we need to take on, which is what's the cost of health care in america, what does it cost to action to produce, consume and deliver a better quality of life to americans? insurance, and i'm talking to an insurance card, and i'm not just playing to the house, insurance is a sideshow in the american health care system from the insurance is fun. our problem is the bill is too big. [applause] so this is why they hate the policy guys in the political world. it's just like that's not our problem, to do that, go away, doug. [laughter] and so we missed that. we missed a chance to take on bend the cost curve and we are now still burdened with funding from which is that spending

grows faster than the economy, and we haven't taken that on at all, and all if there is laid on interest margaret hoover is unlikely to see and make health insurance more expensive, less flexible, and in the end less quality for america. it's a real cost. that's all the good news. [laughter] here's what i'm really worried about, which is this economy is struggling along, and if you pretend there wasn't this debate over health care and health insurance got a just ask yourself, is this good economic policy but it is really hard to imagine that this is what we need to put americans back to work and to deliver to our children the same things that we inherited, an economy that is the largest and strongest on earth. it is a bill which has in it hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes to it is a bill that has two new entitlement

programs, the insurance subsidies and a class act which as with the speaker say, an entirely timely demise in the near future. at a time when we already had an entitlement spending problem. you can look at the research from around the globe at countries that have our problem to our problem is slow growth, high debt, debt to gdp is one of% of projected to explode over the next decade. we're dual problem, bad girl, bad debt problem. what's the recipe? keep taxes low and reformed them if at all possible, pro-growth, and cut spending. but all spending is created equal. you need to preserve the core function of the government, national security companies and research infrastructure, education, those things which have been around since the founders of this republic and you need to take on the scale of government employment and unnecessary transfer progress. this bill from the perspective

of doing that goes in the exactly wrong direction. it sets a new transfer programs which will not survive an assessment new taxes which include taxes on so-called medicare tax, on net investment income, the kind of saving investment in new technologies and human capital and fiscal capital we need to get has an enormous regulatory push that is simply almost impossible to fathom. and here i want to just take a second of shameless self-promotion it i am now president of the think tank american action for. we have a website, american action forum.org. one of the things we do and that is where the health care reform peacefully also a regulatory reform peace. we have a fat its website that tracks the cost of informal care act. is one of the most depressing thing you'll ever have to see in your entire life it is such an enormous burden between the mo our, the sort of basic benefit package is, the affordable, the

care organizations, the list of kinds of regulatory intrusions, federal rate review. this is a recipe for bad economic performance in the insurance sector. it will mean higher costs. employers will bear the entire cost but we know how this works. ultimately, workers pay for those higher cost. they don't get the raise the otherwise would. they don't get the jobs they otherwise need. and beyond the employer community, the economy as a whole will continue to burdened with debt, sound with high taxes and taxes that do not promote growth but inhibits. so this is from economic policy point of view exactly the wrong medicine at exactly the wrong time, and this country spent 15 months doing this instead of solving its fundamental problems with growth which should've been the fastest route to getting people more health insurance, give them a job. so i -- [applause]

i want to close with three points. there's a subtle pieces of is that we do not yet understand how they will play out. subtleties no one is i worry about what it does to the qualities of innovation in the medical sciences, and the devices, in the pharmaceuticals, in almost every aspect what if in some of the most vibrant and internationally successful aspects of our economy. an example of this but not the exclusive problem is the so-called independent payment advisory board. think about the job they were given and let's not denigrate the polity of the tomato may not hold my serve on this, the job that was given was find something we can do in a year that will bring medicare payments down to a target relative to the con because when addressing the basically in one year what we did hit the target. no matter who they are, no matter how well-intentioned they

might be, there are none and leverages you can pull that one year hit the budget cost of the typical one will be, when i going to cover it all, and the things most likely to get singled out for reduce reimbursement or no reimbursement whatsoever will be the expensive things. that will be the newest most innovative technologies and therapies that are hitting the medicare population. they will be deemed on the portal and taken off the table. if you're an innovative and if you're developing a device, therapy, drug, biologic and you have at the end of all your hard work a pair who is basic approaches to randomly action at exorbitant high rates or cut you off entirely, that's not a super innovation incentives. and i worry that what this bill will do, taken as a whole given heavy regulatory burden, the heavy tax burden and the subtle innovation incentives is it will actually harm core reason that we've been so successful. we have had greater innovation,

greater technology, greater productivity than any other large developed country and this is the kind of policy that undercuts that. that's my deepest concern from an economic point of view. the second thing i worry about is what is centaur politics. the united states, if you roll the clock back, everyone recognizes the united states desperately need health care reform. it needed a way to make patients the center of the care. it needed a way to get them high quality insurance options, affordable costs. there was no disagreement about that. instead what we got was a bill which meets my definition of a bad bill because the policy was bad and the politics were worse. >> we will be these remarks at this point to hear from vice president joe biden. you speak at house democrats strategy retreat in maryland. members of the house democratic leadership are in attendance. most of the members are -- and so are most of the members of the house. [applause]

>> ladies and gentlemen, i know that our members from maryland, from our whip, steny hoyer, to each and every one of our delegations, proud delegation from maryland would like to send a warm welcome to the vice president for once again joining us at our issues conference. and mr. vice president, i think you find yourself among not just friends, but we would say family here, because you have been very gracious to always accept our invitation to come and not just address the members of the house democratic caucus, but to listen and to work with us. in fact, i think most of us would say that, mr. vice president, every time we've asked you have had our back. you not only have had our back, but you've been gracious to invite others to join you, not just at the white house but in

your home. with mrs. biden, to talk, not just policy, but about the things that make america tick. and for that we thank you. we thank you as well for your service. you are among the 15 or 20 longest serving u.s. senators in u.s. history. [laughter] still very young. loss of hair on their still. and as well, it's important to note that the biden's have served, your son, beau, gave service to this country in iraq. he served as an his back on and we thank the lord for that. and he is now -- [applause] now the attorney general of your state of delaware, and so the biden's have served, and they continue to serve. and we are very fortunate to have as the vice president, the

47th vice president of the united states, a man who has proven to be not just our friend, not just a member of our family, not just a man who served in the u.s. senate and to make sure his family services country with pride, but we have with us someone who has been a great leader in the history of the united states of america, and so i would like to introduce to you again one of our family members, the vice president, joe biden. [cheers and applause] >> thank you, guys. thank you. thank you very much, and happy birthday by the way. i think i've told the speaker before that when i was elected with barack obama as vice president, i was also elected

that year in the senate for the seventh time. and i got sworn in the seventh time because you may remember, we had some those early on in january, and so the day i had, i apologize for my cold, the day i had to make the choice, which everybody thought was easy, it wasn't that easy in one sense but i didn't want to leave the senate. i loved the senate. the day i left the senate for days before i was sworn in, and i'm sure you all do in your caucuses, the senate historian came in and was trying to think of something to say nice about senator biden who is was leaving to become vice president biden. and he said, he said the caucus should know, only 13 people in history of the united states ever serve as long as senator joe biden.

all i can think of was my father saying, that's the definition of a misspent adulthood. [laughter] but i loved serving in the congress, and i know an awful lot of you very, very well. and i don't think you doubt for a second that i mean what i'm about to see. i admire you. i admire the work you do and i admire the circumstances with which you are doing it. and i am one person who has not forgotten there are three equal branches of government, and quite frankly, i continue to think that congress is in essence the most important one because you are the ones who are there every day back home. and so, it's a great honor to be back with nancy, who i think is not going to be remembered just for being the first woman speaker. she's going to be removed for being being the second woman speaker. [laughter] [applause]

but i century mean this when i say, steny hoyer survey said, and everyone i've worked with over the last three years in this capacity know i have said and i meant it, and you know it. i think maybe, you're going to go down as the most significant speaker in history of the united states of america. you are -- [applause] several years, skinny will extend but the truth of the matter is, you are among the most active people i have dealt with the kind of anti-but until i saw it up close, there's not a single solitary thing on our agenda that would have gotten done without your leadership and i mean that sincerely. and by the way, all of you, and a lot of people who are not here today, i think it was over 75 house races in the circle.

[applause] i didn't sit for that reason to a lot of people are not here, should be here. it was a really, really tough year. but it's because they took some really, really tough votes. and you know, folks, that old expression, approved in the pudding is in eating people, the proof of the pudding is becoming clear to the american people. those decisions you made, the risk you took, the losses we incurred really did save this country. the american people are beginning to figure it out. the american people are focusing on it more and more. i have a great speech here for you, but because i'm late and because you have just eaten, i'm going to, i'm going to shorten it. i'm just going to talk from a few notes year. if anybody wants a copy of the speech, the press wants a copy, i would be happy to give it to you. look, the front end of this is, to me, it's in a sense pretty

simple. it's becoming absolutely clear that decisions that we made, and you implemented, are actually working. the public is beginning to understand that it's working. and they are also understanding another thing. you know, i'd love, you know, john boehner, but and john is a good guy. i sincerely like him, personally, but john, when asked about how from i said, i go, i reject the word. well, guess what? the american people are figuring out they reject the word. they reject the notion of compromise. i thought it was pretty start an observable, the different mood this state of being, not just the quality of the state of being at the different mood on the floor this time out. because i think it's become clear to every republican on the

floor that the folks have figured out that they reject the notion of compromise. and i think the american public understands, we have never been able to move this country long without compromise. you can compromise and be true to your principles. they are not inconsistent. leader cantor, when it came up to the debt ceiling vote, called it in a minute because i was doing at negotiation with steny, and others know trying to deal with the debt ceiling. he said, and he was honest about it, he said this is a leverage moment. a leverage moment. a leverage moment where in which they were using may be the second most significant thing we inherited from our forefathers, which was a goldplated, and actually goldplated reputation

around the world that there was never a doubt my america's commitment to honor its debts. and it was used as a leverage moment. and i think the public saw it. and mitch mcconnell who i work with for years, and still work with, mitch was straightforward. he said the single most important thing we want to achieve is for president obama to be a one-term president. so the generic point i want to make here is, i think a lot of things are becoming clear to the american people. that's not the way they want us to do business and that's not the way we did business, when it was reversed. we had our strong disagreements. for years, i was chairman of the judiciary committee, and clearly contentious committee, as my friends on the house judiciary committee can tell you, with both reagan and with both bushes. truth of the matter is, we never

took the position that our fundamental objective is to defeat the incumbent president obviously we wanted to win. tom davis, retired tom davis, republican tom davis, said just this week and he said, and i'm quoting, for democrats to take 25 seats they will need a wave, and he continued, continued polarization of obstruction can create that wave. that wasn't our tom davis. that was their time davis. these guys know it. but i'm afraid they just can't help themselves. and right now i don't see any change at in this policy of political strategy of obstruction and division. i think the people me straight

in them out for us. we are not going to straighten them out, but the american people may straighten them out between now and november. not on perpetuating but cooperating and compromising. that's why by 12-point margin americans trust us, and you, over republicans in congress to quote develop solutions that the economy needs and challenges. last september that was a tie. between republicans in congress and you all. boehner, cantor, mcconnell, they made it clear. it's about obstructing the presence agenda. it's about defeating barack obama. but i think that mitt romney and new gamers, and i'm not trying to be funny, i'm being deadly honest here, i think they are slightly different. i think it's more than about

obstructionism. i think they actually believe what they are saying. i think they actually believe when these guys out there say lead detroit go bankrupt, that's the front and, it gets worse. led foreclosures process run its course and hit bottom. where poor people have no habit of working and nobody around them works, but barack obama is the food stamp president. i think it's not just political theater. i really think they believe it. i think they are committed to it. [applause] and the reason i say that is, and i don't want to get going on this, guys, it's not appropriate, but i don't want to begin, but i know where it ends. i think it ends with, on january 20 of next year. barack and i once again standing with a majority of -- [applause]

[inaudible] >> folks, i talk about this a leader, but you are lucky to have steve do the job he has. stephen i are meeting -- [applause] stephen i have re talked. we have a meeting to get down to brass tacks next week. i really do think we are going to win back the house but i think you're going to win back the house. [applause] the presidents always giving me, and you're going to hear from him shortly, he is, and he gives me credit from the quote, it's not michael, it's kevin white school. he says as joe biden said, don't compare me with the almighty. compare me to the alternative. last night it was kevin white, former mayor of boston who said

that. but that's exactly where this ends up, guys. i think we will win based purely on the merits of our position. i will define that in just a second. but i also think like every election, the comparison is to the alternative. and these are to come in view, i mean this sincerely, these guys come i don't think they are bad guys. but i think they really believe, they really believe as strongly as we do the direction they want to take the country. i think that, i was thinking that whoever was talking to mike donahue as i think is one of the smartest guys in politics, mike is riding with me and we were talking and the big difference between us and them, i think can be distilled to a phrase. the difference between us and them is we are strongly supportive of the private

sector. they are strongly supportive of the privileged sector. i think that we, what we will be able to show and the americans are beginning to figure out, that we are committed to bring back the private sector. because we know that's the engine. we don't create jobs. we create opportunities for people to create jobs. they create jobs. the private sector. we are committed to bring it back, and i think they are determined, determined to preserve the privileged sector. because again, i think they really believe that what i would refer to as the privileged sector, wall street to the super wealthy who are not prepared to contribute. and i could go on with a whole range of other identification, what i refer to as the privileged sector, but, you

know, america is going to get an absolutely clear comparison this year. i've been doing this as has been born out by other poetic as i look, a longtime, i've been as many election as almost all of you, except the dean and john conyers and a few others. but i've been in a lot of elections. and i can honestly say, to my memory, this is the first election where the opposition is not trying to hide the ball. no, i mean this exhibit. i am being deadly earnest. usually every race i have run since getting elected in 1970 to local office in the senate in 72, every election, and it was a different republican party admitted as a, but every religion the republican party was either, remember barbara, i'm writing up to do and

economic forum. we were talking about the history of the social policies of this country related to economic and social security, et cetera. i remember them saying, the republican party has been me too, just not as much, me too, just rsr. me too, just not as bold. and then we went through a period where they gave up on the need to because they didn't mean me to anymore. and they would say what we really want to do is we want to extend medicare, preserve social security, compassionate conservative. well, folks, the good thing about this election, and they need this century, not just politically but it's good debate for america finally have a mean for this to run out. we need a national debate on. their vision of america versus

ours, and they're being unvarnished about it now. they are making no bones about it. they are not trying to hide the ball. they're not trying to pretend. not only in their rhetoric, but in their actions, how they felt, what they propose, but their budgets. it's a start, star trek, stark contrast. i respectfully suggest and it's even a stark contrast in the traditional republican party of the '50s, the sixth in the '70s, '80s and '90s. it really is fundamentally different. now, i know there are some can even among the leadership in republican party come in the house and senate who still are the party of the '70s but they can't control, or the '90s. but they can't control their party. i was asked at a function, and are going to get criticized for saying this from the press here, but was asked by group of people looked we do to help? and i said kidney republican party. i'm not being facetious.

names he can tell you. a lot of you guys, people love tasha i happen to person like cancer that has never missed wide -- misled me. jim, you industries. he never, there was never anything about it. when kanter walked out of those talks and he didn't walk a. you come the uganda digital into joe, i can't get it done. i can't come back. now, whatever his motive combining, whatever his policy is, it's fundamentally different than ours. but the truth of the matter is, who do you make a deal with? who can you reach out and shake hands with and say, we have a bargain? that's the way this country has always functioned. right now, and the public saw it in the debate over the extension of the payroll tax. when "the wall street journal" had to come in to say to the republicans basically what are you doing, so, the fact of the

matter is, the number of things that are clear as well. the way i kind of divide this up, guys, i can't think of what's clear, what's new and what is at stake. to me, what's clear is, and it's clear to the american people now, we inherited an awful lot. you know, the metaphor that was used, the line that is not attributable to me but osama bin laden is dead and -- to sum up where we are? is a metaphor for a life. it's a metaphor for a life. what's clear is we inherited a world where we had 160,000 combat troops fighting in iraq, no political solution in sight. and no way out. no clear path. what is clear is we kept our commitment to the american people. one of the greatest honors i

had, nancy and i called the president from baghdad. i got to stand there in one of those dodgy houses of saddam hussein come with a president and prime minister of iraq, with a chief of staff of the iraqi army the chief of staff, our commander of iraqi forces them american, assembled in front of me. and i got to say, mr. president, america is leading, having kept our commitment, we're going home, and we completely, and the tradition of all american soldiers, we are leaving with nothing but our honor and our dignity. that was the most important, significant moment -- [applause] -- of my career. it was clear, it was clear and we were engaged in war in afghanistan but that having any

notion what our objectives were. literally. what was our objective? we state what our objective was and we've come a long way to accomplish it. that is to curtail eventually, eliminate and decimate al qaeda, the single threat to u.s. homeland that existed in the region. well, through the president's actions, and you know, we are have all been committees, we've all been in groups, and we all, when something goes welcome we all sometimes deserve all of it of the credit, but is usually somebody, i just want to tell you, this has a backbone like a ramrod. for about four weeks, only six of us knew the possibility where bin laden was but as he got expanded, about a month later, the final call came, because literally as you know, colonel,

you end up having to make decisions literally taste on the moon. will there be enough light? and we had to make a decision. the president, he went around the table with all the senior people, the chiefs of staff, and he said i have to make a decision, what is your opinion gretzky started with a national security advisor, secretary of state, and ended with me. every single person in that room hedged their bets, except leon panetta. leon said go. everyone else said 49, 51 this. it got to me and said joe, what do you think? and i said you know, i did know with so many economists around the table. we all demand a direct answer. mr. president, my suggestion is don't go. we have to do two more things to see if he is there. he walked out and said i would give you my decision. the next morning he came down to the diplomatic entrance, getting

an helicopter i believe to go to michigan, i'm not positive of that. he turned to tom donilon and said go. knowing that as little as if it is around that table, when pressed and books are written later, woods said i didn't tell them to do. i hope no one would have done that. but not knowing that the people around that table said yes, mr. president, go. he knew what is at stake, not just in the lives of those brave warriors, but literally the presidency. and he pulled the trigger. and that's clear to the american people. it says less about bin laden as it does about character your about this guy leading from behind. this guy doesn't lead from behind. he just leaves. and that's clear that we inherited a world where we were not feared by our foes and not

respected by our friends. literally. we are not the most respected nation in the world again, leading -- [applause] leading not just by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. the american people know it. it's clear we inherited an economy that was in freefall as the president pointed out, and you'll know because you've lived it every single day the last three years where we lost over 8 million jobs before, before our first bill was passed that you all got done force in the recovery act. it's also clear now that we've added over 3 million jobs, 23 straight months. you know, it's interesting to i don't know if i have a care. i had a chart, we do this with focus group and the say that's good, and then you show them the

charts, when we passed recovery act what happened to jobs what happened to the stock market. people go oh, they are beginning, they understand that because they're beginning to feel it. it's clear when we took office that we weren't talking about reorganizing the automobile industry. we're talking about liquidating two pieces of it, the biggest piece and the smallest piece. is clear that after, with your help, and i know it is weeping, even among a few of our democratic funds -- friends, we insisted on reorganization. sander can tell us, instead of losing 400,000 jobs in the six months before, it would be a year before this bankruptcy, came out of bankruptcy, we have now gained 176,000 jobs that pay people real wages.

[applause] i can go on but i won't. the bottom line is you have been educated. when i was here last year to messages for me. today back to the president. mitt's -- steny's message, make it in america, and everyone else's message of get tough with these guys. enough is enough. let's just lay down our cards and state that. well, the message was heard, folks. the message was heard. and i think we have delivered on that message since then. with your help. most interesting conference i've attended since i've been a vice president was two weeks ago in the white house, a conference call, insourcing. and advanced conference was chairman of the board of all these companies, ceos and other president.

dupont, four, master lock, rolls-royce, siemens, chesapeake bay, candles, a medium-sized company, et cetera. do you know what they wanted to talk about what they wanted to talk about why they are coming back home. it's not because of the democrats per se. it's not because of barack obama and joe biden. it's because of america's incredible underpinning of strength and resilience and the productivity of our workers. i'm going to send a copy of, you may jimenez seems, some of you may have seen it. there's a study done by a boston group that these guys hired, pointing out why people are coming back, why it's economically sound to bring manufacture back to america but it ranges from everything from escalating wages and costs of factory space per square footage in china can in vietnam and the rest, for example, 10, 25 prescriber along the coast in

china, $1.75 in alabama, $70 in upper midwest state. it is literally takes no sense to come back. it's because nobody steals your ip here in this country but it's because your trademarks to get so that it's because you don't have -- is because it makes no sense they figured it out not to separate the factory floor from innovation and research and development department, making 10,000 miles away. the list goes on and on and on, that it is coming back. it really is. it's not a joke. it's not a joke. it is coming back. and we're in a position now, with your help and your leadership, the stuff you've already done, to reward companies that come back and not reward them for leaving. for that is not to punish anybody but why reward? is there another country can think of that rewards their copies to come to united states? i'm being deadly earnest. talk about them is there any

other company -- country, you know, we pay your moving expenses to lead. we don't pay your moving expenses to come back. we let you deduct the interest on the corporate bond to build a new plant without, not against your current income budget and come back here because you don't have to bring your income home from abroad, but the company that does their past two deducted in the late to get the to tell terry of the property which is less consequential. why do we do those things? so there's a whole lot of things we can do as, we are in a position of what's new is, what's new is we've gotten the message, and your leadership in the house particularly on being made in america, you can make it in america without violating any, any international standards. [applause] you can make it in america now, because it's economically more feasible to make feasible to make it in america. and i'll summarize this whole

conference. they said if you're going to build a factory, the cost of building the factory has to be amortized and you have to look at it over 30 years, and they point out within five years even a wage advantage that exist in going to china will be less than 5%. by the way, the other thing we've got to do, and you guys have been doing it all along, we've got to convince the american people the truth, the facts. everybody think to a lot of folks out there think the chinese have already eaten our lunch but i want to china economy continued to grow. it's an interest rate a marketer i wanted to grow. i wanted to grow for stability but let's put this in perspective, folks. we are to a half times as large as they are because the region -- a reason they keep buying our bonds. there's no place else to go pick with the most reliable nation in the world. we are in a situation where they make up 19 points six or set of manufacturing value added worldwide. do you cup in the middle of recession?

19.4%. now, without any change. [applause] so this idea that somehow we have to yield to the inevitable i find offensive and historically and practically inaccurate, where is it written that says we will not be the manufacturing capital of the world of the 21st century? where does it say that? i'm serious. [applause] how many lectures had heard from economists, even liberal economists say we have to talk about owning a service economy. will no be able to do that again. what we're doing, what's new is your out there and say guess what, we, with all those jobs having gone about the last 30 years, outsourcing, now they are coming back, now that is making sense to be here. guess what? we lack of skilled workers that were driving up to and die makers but what i've enough, and you go on and on. what are we doing? we are coming along with your help and you will pass a force. will come along and silica we will make a deal direct correlation between the official help we give community college and partnering with major

corporation. i when i start to neighbor district as i have a son of you who, in fact, are already doing that in your districts, create jobs, providing talent for the new investments that are great in the states of america. because where the most productive workers. you know, folks, what's new is we decided not to accept romney's advice and figure out you can help people who are in trouble in the housing. and there's an easy way to do that. okay, i know people don't want to help a guy who took a mortgage out of his own and bought a boat and now he's underwater and cause the guy down the block because of his foreclosure to lose the value in the guess what? there's 40 million americans out there, 14 million families who never missed a mortgage payment, never missed a mortgage payment, and those 14 million people are paying summer between 6.1 and 7.2% in their mortgages and mortgage rates between depending on which we are between 3.5 and a maximum 4%.

they can save an average 3000 bucks you. the neighborhood i come from, that make the difference between whether or not you can for your automobile insurance. that makes a difference between whether or not you can keep your kid in a community college. the neighborhood i come from that's a difference between what you can keep the heat at 69 instead of 65. it makes a big difference for people. a big difference. [applause] and guess what. guess what, folks? we can do that without costing taxpayers money. when the president said in his speech that now the banks are going to have an opportunity to make a contribution to the trust deficit, what he was talking about can you explain when he gets year in a little more detail my guess is, is simple. if you take banks, banks that have a minimum of $50 for financial institutions and the name of $50 billion in assets, and charge them pennies, pennies on $100, you can come up with the fund that is 9 billion bucks

sitting over here which, the experts tell us if you took a chance on all 14 million hosting refinanced, the maximum prospect of possibility of foreclosure and exposure to the small banks would be $9 billion. we have a fun over there. when you go to the local bank in wilmington, delaware, court in oakland, california, or in des moines, iowa, the banker can't say to you i can't take a chance because although you never missed a payment you are not under water. you are under water. yeah, i'm underwater. help me out. guess what? now they will do it without a single penny to the taxpayers. what's new is a lot that what we are proposing in the generic what i want to make without going through the rest of it is this. it also is commonsense. not only have the american people figured out that what we did, which was complicated, is bearing fruit, which gives them more willingness to accept that what we are proposing may work,

but things are proposing are nonideological. what is ideological about the american people having bailed out institutions at $50 billion more. they are not bad guys. i'm not making them demons. but what's the big deal. for them to come along now, for pennies on $100, their assets. and make sure that the very people who bailed them out, get above the water have a chance. this is commonsense people. so folks, as i said, the other thing going for us, these guys are helping us. they are helping us by saying what they believe. last point i want to make is this. what is at stake here, as you know, because i know so many of you so well, what's at stake here is literally about restoring the bargain.

this is not a political slogan for us but restoring the bargain with the middle class. it really isn't. what these guys don't get, in my opinion, again, i don't think they get it. you know, you hear the analysis that it may be cheaper, it may make more sense long-term for people to rent rather than own. you know those studies you have been getting, not so bad but made available to us. [laughter] we also, we also are told that you know what, it may be that we don't have to send, you know, kids who qualify for college, it's not that important, they all go to college because it costs a lot of money to the americans dash at the present have a lot to say when he gets your. but folks, the particular kit, you get, gym, but all the rest of you get, is you know, it's

about as connective tissue that holds this country together. what is it? my dad used to have an expression that he said joe, the job is a lot more than about a paycheck. i mean this in three. it's about your dignity. it's about your respect. it's about the placement in community. [applause] and a home is a lot more than about whether or not it's cheaper or better or more rational to own or rent. when you owned a home, it matters to you whether there is a little league team. when you own a home it matters whether you show up at the fire department to volunteer. when you own a home, you want to make sure the street looks really good. that doesn't mean renters don't care, but they psychologically are not as invested. what is it that makes community in this country? i would argue the two central elements of what has been the middle-class dream, this is just pure biden, no study about this -- [laughter] it's just me. and it's simple, to me. the way i grew up, and all the

people around me, what are the two dreams? you get to own a home educator send your kids to college. you take both of those pieces out and you put it on a purely, a purely flat economic scale and say this is just more efficient to do it otherwise. you take part of, part of it we're about as the country. you take the piece of community and the sense that i can be, mike you can do something better than me. i remember my dad, my dad was a graceful, decent man who was well read, a high school educated guy, and my dad ran an automobile agency. he never owned, he ranted. and one of the great things about that all my prom date, i got a new car. [laughter] not a joke. not a joke. and i would literally go down to

the proms. i would drive debt in my 51 plymouth, this is a 1961, and i would ride down and i pull up in the lot and my dad would have the nicest, have been simon eyes, remember simon eyes? [laughter] it was simon iced. and it would be a car on the used car lot that i could have it for the night i remember my baseball game -- some of you know this, claim until is right on the pennsylvania delaware, 19 miles south. we had a baseball game where i went to school and claim a. i was to him again for. took office back and put on my sneakers, flew down the highway to get down to my dad's place to trade cards. to take my girlfriend who's a gene in high school to her junior prom. i walked in, the secretary was therecontrary to what his dad? out on the sidelines. this is what these guys don't get everything is all about

college, only about the cake and what he gets to college. it's about more than the kid. i walked out and my dad as i said was a graceful, proud and. he was pacing back and forth and you look at me and said joe, he had a worried look in his face. my word as a biden. and he said chile, i'm so damned sorry. and i thought gosh, some have to my mom or something for real. and he said chile, i said dad, what's but said he said honey, i went to the farmers bank today. that was a state bank at the time. i asked if i could borrow some money to send you to school. dammit, joy, they won't let me the money, i'm so ashamed. i'm so ashamed. how many mothers and fathers today, what is the most damaging thing that can happen to a parent, in my view? to look at their beautiful

talented kid and know there's not a damn thing they can do to help them. this is about more. this is about more than the money. this is about who we are. this is about whether or not we really mean what we say when we say we value family. we value community. we value neighborhood. we value. the core of it is the middle-class and those people aspiring to get into it. guys, that's what's at stake. and the president needs a by the way. that was not a political line in his state of union. i know this guy. i spent four to six hours a day with him when we're both in the country. in washington. guys, these guys are not bad. they don't get that part of it. they don't get that part of it. the other thing i think, the

simple gesture of whether or not we have met the test, at least barack and i come and we literally talk about, whether not we met the test of bringing this economy back. is for me the test, and they use all the time, and he doesn't disagree, it's us changing the economic environment so ordinary people can turn and look at their kid and said honey, it's going to be okay. whatever it is, it's going to be okay. a lot of you guys came apart than i did, and i didn't, part. typical middle-class kid. when things got really bad in my family, my dad would look at us and said honey, it's going to be okay. because he believed it would be. go back to your old neighborhoods. literally, go back to your old neighborhoods.

go to your old friends. ask them whether they are confident they can turn to their kids and said honey, it's going to be okay. this is a test. that's what this is about. it's not about whether daschle 50,117 or 49,800. it's about honey, it's going to be okay. and i'm absolutely convinced it's going to be okay. the reason i am is because i think the american people are tired of being tired. i know that is a biden -ism, but i believe. i don't any better way to express it. i think they are tired of being tired. i think i like my dad would say, just get up, just get up. all they need, and we've given it to them, and will give a much more come is a glimmer of a possibility, get up. summit is not going to hold them

up, but somebody is not going to push them back down. [applause] look, we know what they're going to say, the opposition. they are going to say, i found it stands i don't nobody seems like seems like a reasonable guy. mitch daniels talked about trickle-down government. i started thinking about that. iser think about how they keep talking to us about how we are big government, trickle-down government, and they are free enterprise. i started thinking, remember, nancy, when i don't know whether it was you or us or who came up with the idea, we said you know, we are paying base, going to pay banks $60 billion the next 10 years to process loans to send kids to college. all our friends taught that was free enterprise. it was taxpayers money but that was free enterprise.

that was the market. so we came along and said well, why not use taxpayers money even more directly, why not take and put it did -- george, george miller, are you? you did a hell of a deal. let's go ahead and give it directly. what was that? that's trickle-down government, man. no, no, no. i'm sorry. think about it. just try to be completely logical about their arguments. my recollection is we didn't get one republican vote. we may have. they may have. they may have been wanted to. i don't think without a single republican vote because they are for free enterprise. they will spend $60 billion of your money to some as long as it goes to the banks, and banks are not bad. but if you can take it and put $40 billion to send a poor kid to school through pell grants, that is trickle-down government. ladies and gentlemen, i could give you, and you could think

of, 50 different examples of that. the one that you just did was the payroll tax. the first thing when a race that, and i know some of you are mad at me when i negotiated a peace two years ago, i remember that, we all felt we needed a payroll tax extended. what's the first thing our guys said, the opposition said? they said you're going to do anyway, we've got to pay for it. okay, we will pay for it. and they said the way you pay for issue take with things the same middle-class people need and that's how you're going to pay for it. now remember, i will not embarrass, maybe you and bears, i will not mention the republican caucus that i was talking about. i said let me get this straight, you want to extend the bush tax that cost $800 billion, how are you going to pay for it? what do you mean? no-no. tell me, charlie, how are you

going to pay for it? we don't have to pay for the. these are job creators. you know what is one man's meat is another man's poison the going thing we got to make clear to the american people is what's the need and what's the poison. and guess what? they are helping us a great deal. sulleys and gentlemen i am absolutely convinced -- [applause] that we're going to do just fine this year, as we work as hard as we can. as i said last time i went into 70 some of your braces, i've been beating and will meet a little bit with steve, and i'm willing to do whatever you want me to deal. i have been, i have been given five states to focus. i will be and a lot of states that five, six. pennsylvania, ohio, michigan, iowa, new hampshire and florida is were i'm going to be spent most of my time. but coincidentally, that's where

a lot of your targeted seats are. so as jim even said to me in 1978 when i was running for election, he said he never called me senator or joe. he always called me, he always called me young man. and he says young man, he said what would jim before you in delaware? i said well, i said mr. chairman, some places you would help in some places you would hurt. and he looked at me, all kidding aside, and said i will come to go and campaign for you or against you, son, whichever will help you the most. [laughter] i'm prepared to go with steve anywhere to campaign for you, and i will campaign if it helps to be against you, of the attention. if it helps to before you of be be 40 but because we cannot succeed unless y'all come back. thank you all very much. [applause]

>> ladies and gentlemen, we have the vice president for a few minutes before -- [inaudible] >> vice president joe biden at the democrat strategy retreat in maryland. president obama will be there this afternoon and we are planning live coverage starting at 1:20 p.m. eastern. remarks now from attorney general eric holder and a number of other officials. talking about new administration initiatives to invest to have toxic mortgage-backed securities figured into the financial crisis and the market collapse. president obama talked about this during tuesday's state of the union address. shortly we're expecting

questions from reporters. >> signed up for this effort. and beau biden of delaware for quite some time. what happened on tuesday when the president announced his working group essentially was what -- that was a sign of approval that we are going to be able to go forward with the broadest, deepest investigation that has yet taken place. we need three things to address an issue. we need resources. we need jurisdiction. and in the days and wasted, i think you will see the attorney general holder has are restated that we both have the resources to undertake this, the groups that are involved, namely the

part of this working group collectively where jurisdiction to go after every aspect -- [inaudible] whether it is issues related to abuses of the tax law, issues relating to securities fraud, issues that relate to the area that the attorney general and i have been working on, the vehicles are every mortgage-backed security issued over the last for all new york or delaware trust. we have jurisdiction over everything. we have the resources. we have the will but as the president said, he will want to hold people accountability. [inaudible] this administration and every member of this working group is committed to it. i am honored to be here to be a part of it. i am even more excited about the

fact that as soon as we get out of here we're going into a meeting to do work in the investigator i do want to note, that we started having members who are standing today and a few other to start having conversations a few months ago about the possibility of joining forces to ensure that we have the resources and the collective jurisdiction to really pursue everything we need to pursue. and it didn't take long for us to realize this was the only way we were really going to restore the public's confidence in the financial industry's industry, and that we're going to get the economy moving again. the president -- [inaudible] he decided he was going to have a working group directives to go forward, that's what you are on tuesday night. i am honored to be a part of the. i'm confident that you will see

action in the weeks and days ahead, that would demonstrate that this is going to be a very aggressive effort. and with the will and the jurisdiction and the resources, confident of our ultimate success. i would invite up attorney general holder in case anyone has any questions. >> yes. in the press release you talked about how it's going to provide relief for home owners but no one, how is attacking the mortgage-backed securities going to reach the individual homeowners? and also, is this going into the whole mortgage service? >> on your second part of the question of around servicing, to be very clear, i think as you heard, the focus he really is on securitization related origination conduct. and i guess the way i would describe it is when you think about the action that really led

to the devastating impact on homeowners, our neighbors, on the entire world economy in fact, we really want the origination and securitization of these products that created those devastating problems. the servicing problems that we have investigated are contributed to that, they were some of those problems, but, frankly, they did not fundamentally create these problems. and so i would say those servicing problems we have been looking at separately are a small part of the over all set of causes of this crisis. and again, really compounded in rather than creating it. so the focus here is on that original conduct that led to the inflation of the bubble and crash afterwards, not the servicing. and in terms of the way the connection between those can

work, the fundamental problem, as i said earlier, is that there is a risk here that tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars are paid to private investors. we have many states attorneys general that have state pension funds that were hurt dramatically by purchasing these private-label securities. they have been harmed. the people of the states have been harmed. they need to make recovery. but fundamentally, as those recoveries are become as payments are made to investors, to law enforcement agencies for accountability, we need to make sure that at the same time, if the payment are being made, that there is also relief that happens for the homeowners within the securities. those loans that underlie those securities. it would be a tragedy if the investors were made whole, but homeowners who were wronged as

well as its intrepid and i i believe, we've already begun the beginning of the discussion of this if we can provide a structure where simultaneously with those payments being made, there are benefits that are provided to homeowners in the underlying structure. that is a goal that is very much in achievable by this task force. and will have more to say about that as we go forward, but that is a fundamental principle, and why not only through fha come but as a housing secretary i feel very, very optimistic about this work going forward. >> we are three years away from the meltdown. and some skeptical voters out there are saying why are you doing this now? has the quality of the witness recollection get me better? why should people of suspect more this time when we haven't

seen -- [inaudible] >> let's deal with that year define major case of exhibit i guess 2100 or so related matters that we brought here in the nics department of justice. our state county -- counterparties have a friday. is a troublesome little thing called back. and beyond that we're here today to work together to figure out ways to streamline our efforts more efficiently to more effectively. and i'm confident of the attorney general's that with a will and with the resources will come up with results that will deal with to hold people accountable. we will get people who were harmed. we will turn the page. ..