on a temporary agency exemption from the qualified mortgage general 43% debt-to-income ratio requirement for loans that meet the of the requirements of gses. we really appreciate that as well. and however, we remain concerned there may be instances where higher debt-to-income ratio may be appropriate for certain borrowers, especially with us as we deal with our own members and what the credit unions do and what did you for the members. so we will be closely reviewing this aspect of the final rule. the rulemaking set a penny at the agency we wanted to reinforce our members concerns and again urge the agency to do all it can to contain new regulatory requirements for credit unions. some of the issues stressed by the committee bankers as you well know are the same issues that we have, especially with some of our smaller credit unions as being able to adapt to the myriad of regulations that will be thrown their way. cuna commits the efforts of the

bureau and the work of the credit unions that you, director cordray and your staff continue to prep it were greatly appreciate the time that you spent with us and your willingness to listen to how we do business and how we can help our members. nonetheless, credit unions remain very concerned about the barrage of regulatory actions that come the way and we've had discussions with those and a very well aware of those. that is cuna spar. a quick little mention that when you talk about no-doc, low doc, interest only, negative amortization, hybrid option adjustable, we didn't do any of those. we never did and we never planned to do any of those. so as we move forward on lot of what you're suggesting that we been doing overtime anyway. we just want to make sure that there's ample time to make sure we've got all in place that works effectively for our members and for us. and if congressman cummings were here and senator cardin were here, they mentioned about the steering's -- not students, but the outreach sessions that help.

do you know what our members needed during this crisis? all the have to do is pick up the phone and call us and we would work through the situation with them. we didn't need to be told what to do in those cases. as a matter fact we have a program in our newsletter that said talk to us if you're having issues because we will work with you. that's how much we care about our members. lastly, director cordray, last night you made a call to bill cheney, talk to them about this. we really appreciate again. that call and the cooperation you've shown to us. as we try to work through all this. the last thing is, will this be published this afternoon, the final rule? [laughter] >> we are very hopeful it will be published this afternoon. >> heads are nodding. >> thank you. mary hunter.

joe rogers? ed? >> good afternoon. it is indeed a pleasure to be here. my name is ed brown and am represent the maryland state naacp, and i would like to say on behalf of our membership, that the mortgage issue very adversely impacted our community. similar to congressman cummings, we had a number of workshops and hearings around the state, and i can't tell you how many stories i could relate to you about horror stories about people experience. so we appreciate his first that you are taking to make improvements in the status quo, but while the bright lights are shining and everybody is here, everything is well and good, but this is the first step.

it's not a last step, and we are looking to improve the process as we move forward. i've been involved with other regulatory processes. and again, this -- there's always attorneys can associations, et cetera. they will find the holes in the fence and let's make sure that this isn't like a one time thing over the next two or three years. i'd like to mention a couple other things. one is information. the information is power and organizations like the naacp and other community organizations need to get this information on the front end, not the backing. also partnerships. my colleague who just spoke a little bit earlier made a few comments. and one thing that i would like to say, there's been a very severe breach of trust. so we have a number of consumers do even if you call them up or reach out to them, they don't trust you. so we have to rehabilitate and build that trust backup. but again, i just want to thank you for this opportunity to speak. but again, a beginning, not an

end. >> thank you, mr. brown. we agree with that. robert kerwin? reverend gloria -- great. >> [inaudible] >> thank you very much. my name is pastor gloria jones swearengin. i'm co-chair of communities united of greater washington. i'm also a city commissioner on the commission for persons with disabilities, for the county of things george maryland. and i also -- prince george maryland and also want to commend you for your very important first step towards

resolving a very egregious problem with regard to predatory lending. i myself am a predatory lending survivor. however, i am very concerned as to whether or not the protections built into your effort are adequate enough for people who are particularly vulnerable, that folks like myself, who are truly disabled, one of the things i would really like to happen is to get a copy of your proposal in some audio form. i do not have immediate computer access, and unless god changes his mind, i'm not going to be able to read the printed page. but one concern that i do have

is a safe harbor for borrowers. and i have used myself as an example. my predatory lender has been an enthusiastic violation of a modification contract signed in october '07, for quite a few years. i'm paying almost $200 outside the agreed upon some. i have just learned a couple of months ago that my predatory lender is in india, and that they don't even have a standing office in america, that they have abandoned this country taking might insurance coverage with it. i use that as an example, because if i were a lone ranger, that would be beyond egregious. at as a member of the national home defenders league, i can tell you that there are no lone

ranger. our people whose disability is, i'm 75, there are people whose disability is lack of information. so my point of encouragement, the bank already has more protection than we do. in every single hopeful sign, when it finally blossoms into reality the bank is better protected than the borrower. at some point we have to arrive at a situation where somebody who is going through the types of experience i'm having, and i'm in a discussion with your organization, has somewhere to go. with totally agree just predatory, criminal, literally

extortionist activity when you're talking about the roof over your head. can be adequately addressed. so in a safe harbor concept, we need to be a safe harbor that adequately extends access to sufficient protection over the borrower, or down the road we're going to find the foxes back in the henhouse. we will be hemorrhaging houses again, and neighborhood, families, and societies will again be experiencing the trauma of a housing shortage. thank you. >> thank you, reverend. crisp, can you please get her contact information so that we can be responsive to a request? 90, reverend, for the work you do in baltimore. it's important work, and we hope that you continue to be able to carry it out for many, many, many years to come.

douglas kraus? robin aiello? ryan -- there we are, robin aiello. >> hi. i'm robin with baltimore neighborhoods, and i want to know what would be done, are we even sure that, that borrowers will not be, will be able to get loans? in the future.

and low interest loans, those that deserve low interest loans your. >> would any of the staff -- >> to the underserved borrowers. >> so, today's rule should both increased confidence in the mortgage markets so that lenders feel more ability to lend, and consumers can feel more ability to look for loans and go to the closing table without being setup to fail. in both of those respects, having a stronger market that has better consumer protections, really as mike said, on the panel, is good for lenders and for borrowers, and should be good for the market. in terms of how the market will evolve over time, we're just going to have to see. we don't control all those details. we cannot mandate that a lender landed to any particular consumer. we can just set up the right framework so that we think we

can root out the kind of reckless lending abuses that were so intimate before the crisis. and we think that having done so we are going to open space for the kind of responsible community banks and credit unions lenders that we talked about, some of the of the programs were talking about, some of the nonprofit groups and others, and the main sending community to be more confident about their ability to lend home owners and that the market will support that and that they will have to compete against some of the bottom of barrel descent of abusive misleading types of loans that they were competing against. and then we're just going to to see how the market evolves from here. >> thank you. ryan cusick? terry hunt? >> good afternoon.

my name is terry hunt and i'm the vice president of regulatory affairs for the national association of federal credit unions, i hope that some federal credit union members here today, yes, no? actually. as you know, credit unions are charged with providing credit to this country. some of that converse -- has told us that we need to do, and i think that is a shared goal that we have with the cfpb. i want to thank director cordray and all the cfpb staffer all the hard work that you've all done in this rule. specifically, my job is to make sure that our credit union members have rules that they can live with, that they can work with, that really helps them do their job in lending to consumers. and as i've worked with your staff, we've expressed concern,

tried to relate -- really express why we need a rulemaking that is effective. i hope that as we move forward we really can take a hard look at the regime that's been created. and if it looks like that credit unions can't lend, that rules are too restrictive, that really consumers who qualify, who have the ability to repay loans aren't getting them, that we take a second look at what this country is doing. and i would certainly hope that cfpb would partner with us and work to make sure this doesn't happen. we really appreciate that you've asked for comments on credit unions and small banks to make sure that we can lend, and hopefully we will continue to do what we do best and look forward to what credit unions really want to do. >> thank you.

kathleen schoo? >> thank you for taking my comments. those of you who know me, know that i usually don't need a microphone. but very glad to cfpb here in the baltimore community. i am a practicing attorney in maryland. i have represented homeowners in foreclosure defense and mortgage related claims for a dozen years, and have recently retired from legal aid. i was also privileged to be a part of the governor's task force that resulted in significant homeowner protections in the statutory foreclosure process. i also was privileged to sit on the committee that revised the court rules. i'd really like to comment on my concerns over the safe harbor, and specifically, join the

reverend in her concern. we are told here today at the safe harbor is necessary as an incentive to sort of kick start operate open, if you will, the credit access that is so bottled up. we also heard that this is a result, that the whole meltdown was the result of some reckless assumptions, and so when. it was really the result of fraud and mind-boggling manipulation of the global financial markets. it really was, and we all know this. what borrowers did had very little to do with where we ended up. we are very glad to see that we're finally getting some regulation related to this. back when the earth was going i was a security broker, back when 60 million shares was a big day. and securitization actually made

sense. what i would like to express is my concern and attention of my colleagues who practice in this area, that if there's a safe harbor such as being detailed in this rule, that is the subject the simple rebuttal. the rebuttable presumption limited to the subprime borrowers really makes no sense, and all borrowers are entitled to affordable mortgages. and a mortgage bank affordable should be subject simply to a broad rebuttable presumption, not a merely absolute presumption. by the way, maryland has an affordability statute, and consumers did not have, and borrowers did not have to relinquish their rights for total unfettered access to the court system to get that affordability requirement.

so we'd like to see that broadened to the greek -- rebuttable presumption broadened to all borrowers. >> thank you for your comments. john sullivan? >> good afternoon, and thank you very much for the opportunity. i'm john sullivan from a buyer's edge and former president of the national association of exclusive buyer agents. my question to mr. cordray is, in your prepared remarks you refer to the true essence of responsible lending. and i applaud you for your efforts on instituting regulation. you also refer to reckless lending practices because the housing foreclosure crisis. but the vast majority of those cases, as a real estate agent who knew or should have known that the homebuyer did have the ability to meet his/her

financial commitments. a real estate agent or broker, like the lender, like the lenders loan officer, got a commission and hasn't been seen since. unfortunately, the dodd-frank bill which created your bureau, the same osha prohibit you from any enforcement action against any real estate agent or broker's. my question to you, sir, is there anybody at your bureau who has enough wherewithal to stand up to the lobbying efforts of nar to ask congress to eliminate those provisions of the dodd-frank bill and require the real estate community to make consumers aware of the agency choices when selecting the agent to guide the consumer through the maze of home buying? at the present time there are 50 state regulations. none of them alike. some of them caught the same type of agency a different name. we need some regulation at a

national level on agency disclosure to make sure that the consumer is protected when they are buying, making the biggest purchase of their life. >> thank you. >> allison wang? >> hi. i'm an interested consumer, and i'd like to know, the unemployment market is increasing percentage of the population whose income mimics the self-employed whether they are hourly workers or independent contractors, or freelancers. what protections does the rule offer to ensure full access to the credit markets in light of the burden of proof of ability to repay for those workers who may not fit the traditional model of 40 hour workweek, salaried employee or tenured employee? >> do you want to take a crack

at the? >> so, the new rule does provide provision requires to verifying and consider income, to verifying income documentation is a very critical part of this will. making sure that verified information is used in any debt to income ratio determination. as you point out, self-employed borrowers are a big segment in the market, and the rules do provide guidance for how self-employed borrowers should be considered. they should not be locked out of the markets as a result of this will. they are factored into the guidance we provide both with the ability to repay standard and as well as within a qualified mortgage standard. >> thank you. vikki? >> i was not in washington when dodd-frank was fiercely lobbied over. i know was that there were a number of extensions written into the law, although to the

extent entities are providing financial qualities for services to consumers, those exemptions are somewhat complex. i'm sure down the road there will be further consideration in congress about all the actors are playing at the i want to .1 important feature that is new, is that the consumer. is now in place to oversee not only financial institutions that have a charter banks and thrift and savings and loans, as was true before dodd-frank, but also non-bank mortgage lenders and others who purchase of in this market it's very important because you can't have a satisfactory or successful regulatory scheme that covers part of the market and leaves the rest uncovered. what you find is what i see, karen noted, people going down the street and getting a responsible loans for people who are not subject to any standards, and that cutting into the market for more responsible lending. the fact that this rule is now in place and that it covers the

entirety for the most part of the mortgage lending market i think is a very notable step forward. >> thanks for the comments. mr. cordray. our last audience participant is vikki. >> thank you all for joining us today in baltimore. the cfpb field hearing, the ability to repay and qualified mortgage will. what we hear from you all, the wide array of interest represent here is very important to we listen very carefully, so we thank you for taking time from your day to talk to us. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] >> hollywood's most famous movi/ stars leave the film capital to help the government sell war bonds. irene dunne, ronald goldman, hedy lamarr, all part of a contingent of some 50 screen celebrities getting the time and talent to raise the national war effort. >> what we want to look at today is how popular, how was the were represented from the 1940s? how was it presented in comic books from the 1940s? how was it presented in athletic

events from the 1930s and 1940s? how was it presented in an can alley in music from the music from 1940? >> this weekend on american history tv, popular culture and world war ii with purdue university professor randy roberts. lectures in history saturday night at eight and 10 eastern on c-span3. >> you are watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs. weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. i nights watch key public policy events. and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our website and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. >> now a look at new york city's welfare program. at the manhattan institute, new york city human resources administration commissioner robert door talks about efforts

to move welfare recipients into the workforce. this is 40 minutes. >> thank you, peter. i want to especially thank you for your joke because it provided the humor for our speech today, and i especially like your reference to my position as a relatively obscure a public official. [laughter] you are correct about that. and thank you also to the manhattan institute. not only for this honor but also for all that you've done for our city. the list of important thinkers and writers at the institute have positively influenced public policy in new york is long. so long that i hesitate to mention any. except perhaps heather macdonald, k., and howard, and e.g. and mira, larry, and nicole. i said the list was long. i have known the manhattan

institute a long time and have greatly benefited from the inside and contributions. i also want to sell grateful i am to mayor bloomberg. at no time in these patches have ever doubted that mayor bloomberg supported workspace welfare policy and that he wanted me to stand strong in defense of policies that reduce our welfare cases by more than 700,000 in the city. increase work rates for single mothers and reduced poverty. and i want to credit and thank deputy mayor linda gibbs for her steadfast support from a work in maintaining these publishers while at the same time always pushing me and everyone in city government to do still more to raise the economic prospects of low income new yorkers. finally, i need to let you know that i represent a large, 14,000 person agency. and one of the remarkable and underappreciated aspects of welfare reform in new york city is the extent to which our employees have accepted and

endorsed and acted on the personal responsibility emphas emphasis, and workforces of welfare reform. it is a little-known fact that the best place and the quickest way to find an ardent welfare reformer is on the frontlines of our city welfare agency. we could accomplish all that we have without our workforce accepting and acting on the challenge. i hope you don't mind if i begin today with a little bit about how it got into this welfare reform business in the first place. i was very lucky to be asked to join the pataki administration in the fall of 1985 at present work on a congressional campaign with the "washington monthly" and even ran for state assembly myself. at every stoplight advocate a policy that would reform welfare, and ask for personal responsibility from recipients. and emphasize work and family, for the path out of poverty. not government assistance, not welfare right or entitlement.

my first exposure, didn't do anything about these concerns, came when governor pataki asked me to be the director of the state child enforcement program. and to tell you the truth when i was asked by a friend how i got the job, i used to reply well, it turns out that when republicans are in charge, the line for jobs to social services is very short. created by a federal statute during the ford administration, and nations child support enforcement program was supposed to do something about absent fathers of children on welfare. it was supposed to make deadbeat dads pay for the care of their children. care that the state was providing to the old welfare program. a lofty and given the circumstances large goal, but at least in new york child support enforcement was the backwater, the bastard child of social services one county assistant told me. its goal of enforcing parents personal responsibility to provide financial support for children had been out of step

since and ariel cuomo administration for its methods of using law enforcement techniques to track and absent fathers were an embarrassment. the state was only in the business at all because it's a federal requirement. needless to say, in the first year of the pataki administration, it was a great place to work. there is nothing like being given a job where the only path is up. so i was lucky and that's also fortunate to have the total support of governor pataki. as i said, child support enforcement was a great personal responsibility issue which the governor cared about a lot. and even better perhaps it was also a great women's issue. we were trying to help was almost always the mother and by the political push for greater child support selection rarely came from the poverty fighting groups, they were quite happy that the government was taking care of the children's health is a real grassroots lower middle

class group of women who were not receiving welfare but to my been frustrated and abuse as traditional court processes for divorce. these women were to panic that we a better job for them. as well as for the women on welfare. but my purpose today is not to talk about child support enforcement. i promise i'm going to get to welfare reform in a minute, but all i will all i was a further is that we shamelessly stole from other states innovations. we promote personal, the personal responsibility message of the program, and collections rose dramatically. more than $1.5 billion collected statewide in 2006. so i was again lucky to be working in social services when computing before the passage of the well -- mayor giuliani began to work requirements and personal responsibility requirements and expectations to welfare policy here in new york city. governor pataki and mayor giuliani may have had their disagreements.

but as the person responsible for communicating the states position to city officials, i never saw it. in fact, lost in a state oversight agencies the message from the governor's office was always clear. make sure you help the mayor. there are five key elements to welfare reform in new york city. they were essential in the early years and have remain essential and mayor bloomberg administration. let's take them one at a time. work first over education. offering adult welfare recipients education and training may sound nice, but study after study has shown it doesn't work. the key to spend to acquire 100% engagement in work or work like activity. in force consequences for families who comply. in order to receive the government's cash assistance, welfare applicants or recipients have got to show up and shows that they are actually engaged in work, or getting work. we will vigorously monitor that.

strong anti-fraud measures. welfare programs cannot be naïve about the capacity of citizens to deceive or try to get over on the system. we are not afraid to check assets and income and residencies and identity to be sure taxpayer funded benefits of going to those who legitimately qualify. and performance-based contracts. we pay our not-for-profit and private sector vendors for accomplishment. hra was when the first social service agencies that use 100% of performance these contracts to provide employment services to welfare recipients, and we continue to do so today. there is another element of our success that i wanted to give additional attention do. we strongly endorsed work support to shore up wages for low income families. let me repeat. i.t. to the success of welfare reform in new york city was a significant investment income

for work support for working families. these are the aspects of health at nyu professor is talking about when he always refers to welfare reform as being a combination of hassles and no. what are the supports for which and families? one is child support enforcement. 1997 that program collected $300 million in new city for new york city families that many of whom were formally on welfare. and 2012, we collected more than $739 million to another public health insurance, medicaid. i have great concern about the way the state manages the medicaid program. how health care providers are monitored, cost and controls. governor pataki and mayors giuliani and bloomberg have all been clear, the problem of medicaid is not that we enrolled to me people. governor pataki expand health insurance, public health insurance. mayor giuliani may be providing health insurance, something of a

personal crusade. and mayor bloomberg has made clear it is better to people insured and not. and the result of this motion, public health insurance, the effort to make it reach as many new yorkers as possible is that more than 95% of new york city's children have either public or private health insurance. our uninsured rate for children is less than 5%, virtually universal coverage. the best it's ever been and country in. the earned income tax credit is another important work. we have the most generous in the country. we had a stay credit and a secret. this tax credit is a classic transfer program that provides far more than the amount needed to refund payroll taxes, and it's expensive. but probably most important of the earned income tax credit helps low-skilled new yorkers working. then there are food stamp benefits. hear the level of support have been more uneven than ambivalent.

one of the differences between the bloomberg administration and its predecessor, mayor bloomberg so long as we can expect recipients to work, and there are adequate fraud prevention's, believes the food stamp benefits are another important proponent of our efforts to increase the economic strength of low income working families. pushed by federal and state policies which we are required, and by her own desire to make the application process simpler for recipients and our workers. the program has grown dramatically from 789,000 recipients in 2002, to more than 1.8 million new yorkers on food stamps and 2012. so what we have now is not an entitlement this welfare system, but a workspace system. if you're able-bodied and you can work, you must in addition to receiving assistance, and if you do, we will make your earnings work go farther. if there's an aspect of her work support system that makes you

uncomfortable, it is the diminish coal of self-sufficiency. in the early years of welfare reform, messages were important. we emphasize personal responsibility, self-sufficiency, and time-limited assistance. we spoke against government. the focus was the individual, not the government. but in our drive to provide and promote work support, a word we have lost, we found in welfare reform the messaging matters and we need clear messaging from all of our leaders. while the government can and should provide support, the responsibility for one's economic success and prosperity lies with the individual and the family. president obama's second inaugural address coming up soon, it will be a good time for him to remind the country that our government is dependent on the people, not the other way around. we also need more clarity and discussion from all leaders. despite the widespread excesses

that children do better to parents married household. despite what we know about the ability of the financial hardship caused by single parents, single parents trying to raise children on their own, and despite statistics about the worst educational game, greater criminal justice involvement among single parents hammes. despite all of this our leaders, our universities, our media, our religious institutions and the leaders of the group with the problem of single parenthood is most severe, both the african-american and hispanic communities, refuse to take this issue on aggressively or deal with it in any meaningful way. this problem is particularly glaring in the recording of most of -- which to its sometimes credit to both great efforts to chronicling in remarkable detail the difficulties of the poor, but can't seem to ask the subject of the story a simple question. where's the father? and then there's -- there could

be no better voice on the important issue of families and the role, and the role fathers play in the lives of children and the president of the united states. with the first lady, the city absolutely correct example, an example so. but he says it's a little bit and he almost never turns his hypercritical i on important issues but he's very good at describing under the shortcomings, but not this one. the most eloquent expression of the role of a married father during the most recent presidential campaign came from the first lady during her democratic national convention speech. michelle obama described her disabled father rising every morning to head off to work. she recounted how she and her brothers fulfilled their father's dream by going to college, to which her father proudly helped to pay. you see, so the first lady, for my dad, that's what it meant to be a man.

it won't happen, it surely won't happen, but it would be nice if president obama uses second inaugural address to refrain president kennedy's call to ask not what your country can do, not to a new age of public service, but to remind americans, strong individuals and families, are still the essential prerequisite for a successful america. now, i begin this afternoon by thanking various leaders and government agents for their help in changing welfare. before and i need to say that the biggest key to success at all is the recipients themselves. we in government, and press releases and promotional material like to say that we place people in jobs, or cut jobs for the number of people. but anyone who actually does that work knows that the person who gets the job is the person who gets the job. and that act, thousand and

thousands of times every year by former or perspective our current welfare recipients of getting a job and earning a wage is what made welfare reform a success, and proved that poor new yorkers, even poor single mothers, could and would choose responsibility and greater independence, if only they were asked. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you so much, commissioner doar. if i might start the questions. i'm really struck by your comments about the decline and emphasis on self-sufficiency and how complicated that is, because we want to support work but at the same time there is potential to that. i was wondering if you feel that

that implies the likelihood of an increased kind of in journalism? here's what i'm talking about the what is the most interesting thing she tried to do was to limit the use of food stamps for sugar drinks. and the washington wouldn't do that. they said no. i know that mayor bloomberg definitely wants you to move with that. i want to ask you, do you think that that's the future, that is, if we're going to be supporting people with the earned income tax credit and all those other work programs, is it inevitable that we will also be seeking to influence their behavior? and is that a good thing? >> well, i think the analogy to the food stamp issue that we pursued with the obama administration where we asked him to test and expand the project where we limited use of the food stamp benefits for

products that were clearly unhealthy and contributed the obesity problem and contributed to higher health care costs, was really more about health care and more about a health problem than about a sort of concerted and premeditated desire to influence people's behavior. the mayor is very devoted and very committed to policy that improves the health outcomes for families and people in the city of new. this is something that he absolutely believed in and fought hard for. fortunately, the president, secretary of agriculture said no, it wasn't something they wanted to test. or even experiment with to be able to work. but i don't know that, at least from the bloomberg administration, that that carries for to many, many other ways. we definitely want to encourage work. we think work is a key part of an individuals life and livelihood in the city and they ought to be a prerequisite to receiving public assistance. and we wanted to take a program, the food stamp program is now

called the supplemental nutrition assistance program. supplemental nutrition assistance, and the use of the food stamp benefit to purchase products include unhealthy seem to us just like why don't we try, limiting that and sending a message to recipients that they should buy products that are more appropriate for their health. so i don't know that -- i do think that it is a lot about messaging. i think, with regard to the messages about self-sufficiency and dependency come get it, it's different political world we are in. we have a democratic governor and a democratic president, and they are more interested in government sponsored solutions and less interested in talking the independent self-sufficiency speaks i think that's part of the problem. but so, there's my answer. >> let me open it up to questions from the floor.

[inaudible] larry from nyu. >> robert, i wanted to comment about the marriage problem. i think since we making progress, raising work levels among people on welfare, it shifts a priority towards addressing the problems on non-marriage and so on. i agree with you that this is a very sensitive issue that people find really part-time addressi addressing. and from your comments, i had a sense that maybe you think that the best way we can promote marriage is actually just to stop accepting non-marriage. to have children outside marriage, this is not a good idea to go back to policy, that we know from various agencies that the public is an easy about

that. they don't want to stigmatize single mothers. so what's the answer your? isn't red or? is there some practical thing we can do at a policy level that will promote family? >> well, as someone in the practical world, policy and public agency work, i have struggled with this immensely. it is very hard. a policy objective to promote marriage. so we all sort of default to honestly is public relations campaign, promotion and send the message. that's all we have left to what others have to say today is why today is why not even trying to talk about that. and there is just this great discomfort, but, so i, that's

the only answer i have on that issue. we know lots of single parents are doing very well and to raise children, and we certainly don't want, i think would be going too far to deny assistance or turn our backs on them. but clearly it is a part of a significant part of the problem. >> [inaudible] >> they are all coming from the head table. >> assembly who admires your work, robert, knowing how challenging it is. i've had the job before, here's my question. i think you're the first commissioner that served three consecutive terms. is very difficult to serve one term without getting fired. >> waiting minute, jason. i've not worked for mayor bloomberg for 11 is. i just want to make that clear

eyed mac. [laughter] spent three bloomberg terms for which you serve the majority. what's your key to success? >> well, what i used to say, i worked for trying to write to the last day. it was december 2006, and i remember when left the office, i had my then nine year old or eight year old son, and he insisted on leaving a note on the chair for the next occupant. and i picked him up and the first one said boo, eliot spitzer. [laughter] and i said, because i don't know if that's the right message. and i'm sorry, governor spitzer. so i am, i wanted, i was not, and then what happened was i, mayor bloomberg and pick me up on waivers, you know. current commission was going to leave and he saw, i'd work with the city so aggressively and so much and i think i've been

supported. it offered me the job. the key to staying successful, oregon successful in city government is, first of all, focus on your employees. focus on the people that are in your team. be a good interim leader first, because i talked about the importance of each of our employees in the speech, but could public managers have to keep their team together and onboard. and when you watch commissioners that fail, in any administration, if you pull the string you often find in, some of the came from their own internal management problems. not necessarily public or. secondly, i always felt that in the city of new york our number i wrote this one application to job, the key to being a good welfare commission in new york city was to not letting, not worrying about what the new time said, ever. and that, that, the mayor likes

that and uncomfortable with th that. and, so that's work. then the other is, has to do with the obscure issue. i'm not a big self promoter. i just do a job and focus on outcomes and the numbers. sometimes that's been successful and we got and numbers we wanted to work on, but we been honest about it and talked about and returned every single countless phone call within a couple of days. we go to testify before the city council. we take a battering and we just keep at it. i think, you know, their security go in the bloomberg administration. we're all -- maybe people are counting. third terms are tough, but my view is that at this point let's see it through to the end. >> michael myers, director of new york civil rights coalition

to i wonder, commissioner, if you would comment, a change and progress and welfare reform policies. that no man in the home rule, -- [inaudible] because the mother and the children needed a system. so now in your current policy, you are encouraging -- [inaudible] what respect they change in social values? no more is there a father in the home. now families. so you can have a situation where you are defining parents of parenting and family such as depositing of head of the household. cycle that want you to talk about the requirements and context of mass unemployment. >> i will do both of those. first, i'm glad you raised the issue about father in the household.

because the other way that we sort of try to tackle the single parent family issue is that we can see a little bit on marriage and say, well, let's work with the dead, with employment programs, programs that make enforcement program a little more forgiving and understanding so that we bring them into the system. we promote, we find parenting programs. so the idea is we can get better outcomes for children, not married families versus nonmarried families, but married families versus non-mary families with active and financially contributing parents. married or not. and then there's those were the father is not involved at all. that's our hope. because we know we're going to continue to be frustrated, relating to marriage and child. so what we're trying to do, and the mayor started in ytd dads initiative. we have a father coordinator at city hall who is focusing on this.

we're trying, taking the compromise position. we can get -- let's at least give both parents involved. that's what we're trying. a lot of people, including myself, who have hope for the. larry mead talked about this as well. but the results are not in yet. we don't know yet whether that is working but we do know that if a parent is paying, supporting them financially, they're more likely to be active, and we do know the households that have child support collection do better because both parents are contributing. so we are going after. with regards to the unemployment issue, we have greatly benefited in new york city because even drink recession, this enormous array of opportunity for unskilled or low skilled new yorkers has remained in place but we have those vibrant tourist industry. we have a vibrant retail industry. we have opportunity, and it's never been very hard even during

the recession for us to find equal jobs in new city. i don't know whether that's true around the country, but that has been key. and i have to say that when it comes to the wages, we are at, i guess the governor or post ago to $8.75. not very many people believe welfare or we please people do people get jobs or less than $8.75, just to let you know. new york city wages are generally higher than that. so as a sort of economic theorist, minimum-wage legislation makes me a little nervous but i don't think about the effect will be severe as it might be fun. maybe for teenagers. i think of farm workers are workers upstate where wages are even lower is a problem. but in new york, uncomfortable that we can address that. but the issue, one who's worried about works, has to ask themselves, are our work support in some way not just good for the employee, but also good for

the employer. are we up on employers to be able to have workers they might not ordinarily have that add value to their business, and allow them to compete in an international market or against other ways people can use the money, and make their business more vibrant or competitive, businesses where wages are lower. and i think there's some truth to that. i believe that. so i've always thought, particularly public health insurance. now, what obamacare can do is a whole nother question, and i'm not sure what's going to happen then with mandates and requirements, employers who didn't realize that they face penalties if they don't have enough workers or if they have workers working to meet our than enough providing them health insurance. that's a wildcard. one of the thing i want to mention and wasn't asked but i do want to mention one thing. when people worried about the cost of these new work supports,

you really need to divide them between health care related costs, health insurance related costs and the rest. in new york city will spend about $35 billion on medicaid. food stamps is free. cash welfare is less than one. the childcare credits our, you, hundreds of millions. so i do worry that those who are concerned about the over abundance of work support may lose, lose focus on the real problem and our government spending, which is health care, retirees, entitlement benefits. and think that we will solve the deficit problem if we just turn those work supports back. it won't work. you won't get the money, and i don't think you will be doing the right thing. so is very important to remember that while i work for the, and for the government and the sponsor and support spending and government for people who are

poor, i'm also conscious -- conscious of the fact we make commitments in a country that are beyond what we can pull. but those commitments are not related except for medicare and medicaid to these programs to a are not related to the earned income tax credit or to even put stamp benefits. [applause] >> john? >> that table again. >> here's a man who knows how to wait for the mic. >> when you say you testified order people testified before the city council and you get battered, what do they complain about? [laughter] >> [inaudible] different than it is in other parts of the country. certainly different than was in albany, although not that much different. there is a strong perception

among folks that i -- that we should not ask anything and should not require anything. we should require documentation. we shouldn't expect anybody to do anything. we should just provide struggling people with the minimum level of support, and then be done with it. and that didn't work. it doesn't work. and the mayor doesn't support that. so often -- why didn't you get the benefit to these people as fast as possible, and why are you asking them to make sure we checked identity and to abuse our system by having people take advantage of it. it's always about increasing the transfer of money from government to populations. that's what it is always about.

>> michael from the "new york post." commissioner, i'd like to go back to the issue about out of wedlock births. as i recall statistics, there were roughly 50,000 children born each year in new your city out of wedlock. so in mayor bloomberg's roughly 10 years, half a million kids now born out of wedlock, and if we were to see this as a public health crisis whether it's obesity or crime or poor educational outcomes, why couldn't it be attacked or approached in the same way as obesity, the public service announcements, about the value of marriage and the horrors of out of wedlock birth? and now ask you to sort of be created about this because you could design a public service campaign to encourage marriage. ..

i always worry they get the sense or have the belief that somehow or another, the government will resolve or overcome for them, and they will be able to resolve or overcome the problem of the fact that there isn't a second parent in the household for their child, that it will work out or you will take care of me or

something will work out. the statistics are so clear that we think the better way to do it is to try to trim the conversation not about the mom and dad about the potential outcome for the children. and try to get the young people and people who are considering having children before they are prepared to consider the likelihood that their child will do well in school or succeed economically. that's one way. that's something we are working with, trying to think it through, but that's the way we are working it through in the government coming and i have to say it's not resolved because we will have to talk to a lot of people in test groups and in our own agencies to see if we can resolve the discomfort even that will cause for people that just don't like talking about this issue. >> only 360 days to go.

>> yeah. >> one last question. >> he had his hand up the whole time. go ahead. >> ed thompson, ayn rand institute. the discussion so far pertains to either white block or single-parent families, but it all begins before that. having children out of wedlock in the first place and that goes back basically i would say to high school. but in a program in high school teaching responsibility of parental guidance, i don't know, however you want to label let -- >> and we do that. it is done. i mean, the department of health -- i remember when i worked at the state we produced a curriculum for the responsibilities of young high

school boys that they need to be aware of what the child support enforcement was about and their responsibility for their children should they have them would go for 21 years. we have said that curriculum out. the schools talk about this and then there is of course contraceptives, so we do that, too. to be fair, the teen birth rate is down dramatically from where it used to be. it's down in the city and around the country and teen pregnancy rates are down. so we are making progress on that. at the 50,000 number that michael mentioned could be much higher. >> if you are telling children given is we have a program now you see where i'm going. what about a program that says

don't have babies out of wedlock, wait to get married and so forth. [laughter] >> weisel such as in trustees six -- sufficient studies have shown the child support programs reduce teen pregnancy. so if you are sending a message that we are not going to make life easy and simple for you but just because you have an effect has brought impact on policy around the country and that is why we've stuck with our work requirements and set up the work requirements involving single moms with very young children, and we don't give in on that. even here in new york city. and i think hasn't had an impact, there isn't any question about that.

>> please join me in congratulating the 2012 commissioner robert doar petraeus too west virginia senator jay rockefeller says he is retiring at the end of his term in 2014.

>> he could read the president's mood unlike anyone else. he came as close as anyone to gaining admittance into what robert called roosevelt's heavily forested interior. he, unlike mrs. roosevelt, she knew when to press him or back off and tell a joke.

after he won the election, wendell willkie, fuji beach, was in the office and they remained friends. he said to the president why do you keep that man so close to you, that man being hopkins. wilkie didn't like hopkins and roosevelt said you know, you may be in this office some day and you'll understand. but he asks for nothing except to serve me. now to the university of alabama law school in tuscaloosa for a discussion of labor and employment law. civil rights leaders and retired federal judge u.w. clemon spoke to students about the history of title seven of the civil rights act. this is about an hour.

>> on behalf of the society and the american constitutional society, we'd like to welcome you all today to a remarkable speaker, the honorable u.w. clemon. the former chief judge of the united states district court for the northern district of alabama. long before his notable career on the federal bench, justice u.w. clemon distinguished himself as a civil rights activist, lawyer and alabama state senator. as a student educated in the segregated public schools of jefferson county, he decided to become a civil rights leader at the age of 13. his commitment to equal rights deep and while he was in college where he boycotted birmingham, downtown stores in 1962 and fought the segregation of the birmingham public library. he graduated from columbia law school in 1968 and worked as a young lawyer as a prominent civil rights and alabama.

in 1974 he became one of the first black elected on the senate for reconstruction. in his two terms he chaired the rules committee and judiciary committee where he challenged capital punishment and vigorously opposed george wallace on racial policies. in 1980, president jimmy carter appointed judge clemon as the first black federal judge. he was chief judge from 1999 to 2006. under his administration, the court adopted plans and increased minority presence in the work force of the court. he's also the trial judge in the ledbetter versus goodyear case. in 2009 he retired from the federal case. please join me in welcoming the honorable judge clemon. [applause] >> i am indebted for the kind

words of introduction. i count it a blessing to be here at alabama law school, and particularly in this room because much of my legal and judicial career interacted with judge lynn and it's a certain comfort level to be here in the room which bears his name. i sometimes participant on american constitution society is in the district of columbia, and i am extremely happy to see a chapter here in tuscaloosa. it's my first time, as professor hawken knows, the first time i've addressed this body.

but each time, there's a certain amount of education i get out of it. the poet archibald once wrote america promises. he would write to the rest of the world our nation is many bright and shining promised of unlimited opportunities. another commentator, james adams, describes our country as a dream. a dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with equal

opportunity for each. it is a dream of a social order in which each man and woman should be able to obtain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable. and it is one in which each individual is recognized for what he or she is regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of their birth for position. implicit in this whole idea of the american dream is a playing field that the equal that isn't full of peaks, it is a level field where valleys have been

insulted, mountains and hills made low to the common point that they can emerge as a plain. the commitment to a level playing field for all americans wasn't in the mind set of our founding fathers. thomas jefferson's declaration of the self-evident truth that all men are created equal was not so evident that one-quarter of the population which slaves. neither was it so evident to women, by its very words the declaration included men only. but the genius of the founding fathers was their establishment

of three separate and coequal branches of government. the legislative branch, executive branch to execute the law, and a judicial branch to interpret fall into disputes other than under the constitution. in my remarks here today i will focus largely on that third branch of government, the judicial branch. we have sometimes more equal than the other two. for without the treasury, without an army to enforce its decisions, it shapes our lives in so many untold ways. it gets to decide most

importantly what the constitution means in any given context. and as chief justice once wrote the constitution means whatever a majority of the five justices say that it means. there is no appeal. you do the two options. it would overturn that decision. that's very unlikely. and you hold out until one or

more of a justices share their call from this house of tabernacle. even with respect to the law enacted by congress and they have the last word in telling the nation what congress intended, but it meant when it had a particular law. they're again, by the very nature of the process that it be a legislative override of the court decision is often far-fetched. but as i point out before this discussion is over, it is known to happen. on the interpretation of the

statutes, it's been a principal of the statutory construction over 100 years the statutes should be strictly construed. the remedial statutes, bill all that is enacted to mediate the problem should be broadly construed so that the evil of the problems can be achieved and the intent of the congress enacting that remedial statute will not be frustrated.

for the first three-quarters of the nation's first century, there was no dreaming of a level playing field. they were in the workplace or out of it, they were like sheep and cattle, property to be used as the owner soft and sold to the highest bid, no remedial statute. the united states supreme court in 1857 long after the amendment had been ratified spoke to the question of states' rights.

in the name of states' rights, chief justice held that congress lacked the power to prevent the spread of slavery into the states created of the new territories. slave owners of a particular state had the right to take their property including slaves into free states. he went on to hold that a black person could never be a citizen of the united states. they had no rights which the man was bound to respect. now most of us thought that the civil war settled the states' rights issue.

it didn't. in the year following the end of the civil war, the congress enacted a 13th amendment to the constitution with its vestiges and that same year if enacted an old employment statute. the civil rights act of 1866 which gave to all citizens the right among others to contract by the same basis, and as you know, the employment contract is a contractual relationship and what is now title 42, section 1981 was a reaction that

expressly for their white persons from entering into labor contracts with any slave or free person of color. in a marvelous 14th amendment enacted two years later, the congress defined citizenship and extended it to all persons born or naturalized in the united states and subject to the jurisdictions. for its time it was a remarkable development and many places in the world is still is. but we focus on the article to which gives all citizens of the

united states and the states in which they reside due process of law and the equal protection of the law. well, that same congress that enacted the 14th amendment also enacted several affirmative action programs like the bureau, the donation to former black slaves confiscated confederate lands, the creation of a university. each of these civil war

amendments has a cost giving for the other way congress should be given special difference and it enacts legislation in the furtherance of blah, blah -- the law that they could come into for the supreme and to the two supreme court got into the act and in 1983, it limited the 14th amendment to state action, and that decision, those decisions had the effect of playing the on equal playing

field in the workplace and that went on for another four generations, racial and sexual discrimination and employment year and alabama and the rest of the south was the order of the day. the exception was the rise of the labor movement was gained the right to engage in the collective activities and to join or not to join unions. there was a landmark case in birmingham in 1982 and the railroad in which the supreme

court held the white union to represent the black workers in the bargaining unit even if the union itself does not accept the members. they remain pretty much the same until 49 years ago in the demonstrations in birmingham in which they participated and the public facilities, the public accommodations but also with job opportunities and the dust from the demonstrations settled, we had a agreement, three of those dealt with john issues.

-- job issues. a year later the congress enacted the civil rights act of 1964. the most important provisions for the purposes are -- the most important provision is title seven. title vii, as you know, guarantees equality in the workplace without regards to race, sex, national origin. this was the first time in the history of the country that the legislative branch of government had committed the nation to a level playing field in the workplace and in the ensuing years congress extended the this right or guaranteed to the older employees, state employees and disabled individuals.

it was now up to the second and third branches to move ahead to the fulfillment of the dream. the executive branch responded favorably and the equal employment opportunity commission set up by title seven and through the litigation of the pattern and practice by the justice department putative victims of discrimination and acting as private attorneys general filed various federal individual and class actions to remove the barriers from the workplace. likewise, for the first two decades, following the enactment of title seven, the third branch of government faithfully

followed the applicable standard for statutory interpretation of the remedial statutes. the interpreted title vii. it believe this new life into section 1981 by holding that that section and the companion section 1982 dealing with housing apply to private conduct and therefore was actionable in court. in section 1981 there for covers an employer with only one employee. title vii you have to have at least 15.

now, the court handed down one of the most important titles seven cases in the power company in which it held the title seven procedures covered not only the overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form but discriminatory in operation. good intent or the absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem testing mechanisms and that are unrelated to measuring job capabilities. in other words, where an employment practice has an adverse impact on others the

employer must justify it by business necessity and the business necessity is comparable to strike through the needs and the constitutional arena. i was a part of and professor hopkins was a part of the administration back in the 60's in which the largest public and private employers and alabama were brought into court and many of their operational employment practices and came to an end and the playing field was level.

i refer you to the huge operation at the constitution and the law is precisely what the justices in court say they need. and with the dissention of william rehnquist to the position of justice in 1986 a wrecking ball would become the new judicial approach to equality in the workplace. the first five years or 20 years or so in the court, the supreme moved mightily to undo much of what had been done by the court.

first the rehnquist court tried to put section 1981 back to sleep again by holding the grain credit union case the law only applied to the initial hiring decision but it offered no protection for discrimination in promotions, working conditions discharge. the supreme court virtually overruled the power case by eliminating the business necessity requirement which that case in post. similar adverse decisions from the court followed. in fact, it got to be so outrageous that congress decided

to put an end to it and in 1981 and president bush signed it into law. conagra said to the court know -- congress said to the court we don't mean what you say we mean. we mean that section 1981 covers that aspect of the relationship. we mean that an employer must prove business necessity when adverse impact is shown. and for sweetness, the congress included in that act the right of women to connect compensatory damages and the punitive damages for the first time.

but the congress could do nothing about the supreme court's decision in the city of richmond case where the minority set aside or struck. that downward trend is pretty much where we are in the job discrimination and the circuit for example there was a case at tyson foods and which the 11th circuit held that it's not enough for the female or black plaintiff to prove that he or she held qualifications equal to those or better than those other white or male competitive.

their qualifications must be so far superior that they jump off the page and slap you in the face. well, there was a visitation by the supreme court on that issue and even this hostile supreme court -- it is as a formula so e are going to send it back to you and that you reconsider at. so the case can beckon to the 11th circuit panel says we looked at it and why we are not going to use the formula

statement anymore, the standard is the same. and this time the supreme court denies where the 11th circuit had a jury verdict to claim to the white supervisor who didn't end the division had referred to him as boy on the job and in the presence of his wife. the 11th circuit initially held the board of reference could not be used as a racial element in the there was a nationwide cry. i was on the brief and briefing all over the country and they

concluded the use of that word in that context and the evidence of racial animus. so the highly publicized case of my tenure as a federal judge was of course the lily ledbetter case, also a case. they're the jury in the division of the northern district found that over time they had been paid much less than half the male comparative for similar work and even after some of them came to the party to these good apartment long after she had been there. because of the common policy not to discuss this it is a remarkable that she didn't know

for most the time that she was there that the men who were making much more than a sheet. there were some rumors about it, but she had no hard and fast evidence. in the last year of employment, she got information from a co-worker about this growth disparity so within 180 days if of of attaining that information, she filed a lawsuit in court on the run of the statute of limitation she hadn't filed within 180 days of the occurrence. the statute of limitations defense went to the jury, and the jury didn't like the

evidence that goodyear presented. they found from ms. ledbetter half a trillion dollars of back pay and damages and was so outraged by the conduct that it awarded $3.2 million in punitive damages. i reduced the award to 300,000 which is the maximum allowed for emotional type damages. but they set the verdict aside. now ordinarily that would have been the end, but the supreme wanted to weigh in on it to teach every other circuit in the

country that the if 100 of a limitation must be strictly construed if so they granted a five period four decision of the fairly new roberts court and of the 11th circuit. and that was the end of the judicial proceeding. the decision was written by justice alito and justice ginsburg took the unusual step of reading her dissent from the bench in which she justified the award and invited congress to overturn the supreme court decision. and as you know, that is precisely what happened. the first act signed into law by

the new president obama was bill lee ledbetter fair pay act and under title seven, the last paycheck issued to a victim of discrimination begins the running of the statute of limitations. and though lee ledbetter experience shows if congress is persistent in correcting the supreme court, what it misinterprets is congressional intent there is yet open. as you probably know, her name and face came up more than a few times in the most recent presidential election. the intrigue of the case is well described in a recent book by

jeffrey toobin, the obama white house and the supreme court, it is a must read but for those of you interested in this area of the law. the prospect of the judicial enforcement involves the playing field isn't very encouraging today. they are generally hostile to the title seven plaintiff. she has a host of kernels that she must survive. first the court has reversed to basically the old common law, something which i thought had been largely abandoned by the time i graduated from law school 45 years ago but now it's back to the effect of many cases on

the basis of this ashcroft case working to dismiss. it's happened to me. then when you survive, the motion to dismiss at the end of the discovery period judge's order to avoid the high court's now to devote extreme attention

and the judges do and therefore and to dismiss it is usually dismissed on some. for the fortunate one that survives against the jury verdict there is the usual motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and fairly often they are granted. for the extremely who survives the general, the employer then appeals to the circuit and the circuit sets aside the verdict

as that is what happened in ledbetter. on my knee conclusion as a judge there is empirical evidence confirming what i just said. years ago there was a study of statistics of the administrative office of courts, and was publishing the harvard law review, and what it found is that, quote, some of the courts disfavor the plaintiff employment discrimination lawyers who are now forswearing the use of the federal courts. plaintiffs filed far fewer discrimination lawsuits than they did 20 years ago. these cases proceed and terminate less favorably for

plaintiffs than any other kind of case. it is again far more remarkably set in the court of appeal for the employment case is about 10.5%. they conclude that there could be a growing awareness especially with the prolonged lack of success on appeal and the employment discrimination plaintiffs. it isn't three square years this is no time for surrender.

the level playing field in the workplace must remain our goal. it is a struggle we cannot afford to lose. notwithstanding the regrettable fact the nation we once considered our wall against the flood is now the flood itself. five justices of the supreme court to can put on the brakes but the american people over a period of time can unleash the brakes. thank you for the opportunity to be here and i will take your questions. [applause]

>> well i'm glad that i was so crystal clear. [laughter] >> if we were to see an expansion of the capability to unveil these suits aren't you worried that perhaps there would be a shift of capital overseas to avoid the lawsuits because it's cheaper to the jurisdiction overseas like in china or india that doesn't have these expansions built into the cost of employment? >> no, that does not concern in the least because the justice

should triumph and where there are longstanding and workplace, the interpretation by the supreme court of the nation's law designed to correct the wrongs will result in a better country. yes, sir. >> the leal lead a better case was of course a civil case and the civil statutes should be considered very broadly, but criminal statutes should be

narrowly construed and i want to ask you about another high-profile case, the u.s. versus seaglman case. they took the most expansive view of the federal bribery statute that any court in the country were taken and of course that's been in the supreme court case in the middle district the chimed in and had difficulty comes during the president did in your opinion on the trial that came before you it may be helpful to the people and deutsch and voice your opinion if you want. if you can develop an opinion on the more recent trial. >> look, my feeling is the conviction was erroneous.

essentially found guilty of accepting a campaign contribution the campaign contribution of which he received not 1 penny for its personal benefit. in the time for the campaign, the education lottery come in return for the campaign contribution, he is alleged to have promised a seat on the board. a seat already held who had made contributions to the republicans to put him on that board.

so i think this was again a transgression of the general principle of the statutory constructions that should be strictly construed. >> the struggle in the employment context this occurs over time. discrimination in the workplace becomes hidden and harder to target. you talked about lily ledbetter fair pay act and the problems that were faced with equal pay. one thing the women also face is caregiver discrimination requires more time after

maternity leave and it's more subjective and harder to pinpoint when they make that kind of decision because technically it is applied across the board. if people only get a certain amount of time, so i guess if it is particularly opportunities to leave and caregiver dissemination how we fight this kind of objective discrimination now? >> well, part of it i think relates to these practices that are fair on their face but discriminatory in operation, and i'm afraid there are far too

many employers in 2012 to think the proper place for a woman is in a home, and it is a very troublesome undertaking for the plaintiff to prevail in court that some of us have a feeling that there is a higher bid, and sometimes, sometimes things do turn out right in federal court for the plaintiff whose right, so women should continue the charges in coming into court, and there is a chance albeit

slightly the right thing will be done. >> in class he talks about the sectional pherae being african-american are being disabled, how one plaintiff has all or some of those streets together or different traits, a different religion or want to protect statices house on courts, i believe few have become the watch for the notion that this intersection of the theory basically says that somebody can be different who

has multiple traits as opposed to just one of them and the law should take that into account. do you have an opinion on that? >> i suppose we are talking about mixed motives? >> it's sort of like that, but just opposed to an african-american male how they might have a different experience because of the streets together. >> but if the differential experience is reflected in the paycheck, and the objective qualifications and performance are the same, then of course it can't be a double recovery but the plant should recover.

i think that is part of the civil-rights restoration act of 91. congress had the principle that the mixed motives causation is subject to atcausation is subject to attack under the law of title seven. >> could you tell us a little bit about what led you to make the decision to go to law school and corresponding do you have any advice for the students today?

>> in another century when i was 13-years-old -- the made immunity on himself and this was two years after brown with a good marshall amol local lawyers who defended the police brutality. i decided that i wanted to -- i have also seen a lot of perry

mason. i decided when i wanted to be a lawyer to address those kinds of issues to represent a few of corporate crimes, but i was impressed even then with the ability of the law and lawyers to right the wrongs. ..

so what i would ask you is ask questions at 11:40 usual routine state your name and affiliation and do a question and then i follow on so mr. secretary over over to euphoria marks. >> good morning, all. thanks for being here. the chief and i thought this would be a valuable opportunity to begin the new year by sitting down with you to discuss the state of our air force and some of the issues and challenges we expect to address in the year ahead and beyond. to start i would like to thank the house in the senate for approving the conference report to the fy13 national defense authorization act. and to thank the president for signing the bill into law. this important legislation

provides the authorities and policy guidance that enable dod to support our warfighters, to provide for our airmen and their families and to protect the american people. the enhancement of the ndaa is a significant achievement and demonstrated strong bipartisan commitment to national security. we hope their success may spur progress on critical issues that still remain. those issues include efforts to develop a balanced deficit reduction plan to prevent the arbitrary sequestration cuts required by the budget control act, a final fy13 appropriaappropria tion bill to replace the current continuing resolution, and the upcoming consideration of the president's fy14 budget. congresses recent decision to delay pulling the trigger on sequestration for two months was a positive step and although we welcome the delay, we are still

deeply concerned about what may happen should we fail to reach deficit reduction agreement by the end of february. our nation's ongoing budget gymnastics insert costly consequences upon the air force and our sister services and create an atmosphere of unease among many of our uniformed and civilian airmen. failure to enact a settled budget leads to repeated budget iterations which along with the overhanging threat of large and largely arbitrary cuts creates wasteful -- given that we are now into the second quarter of fiscal year 13, we can no longer live under the uncertainty of sequestration in the continuing resolution without taking action now. as secretary panetta described yesterday, even though we are not presuming this worst case will occur, prudent planning for

the third and fourth quarters is required. we have received a secretary's guidance to begin implementing prudent measures that will help mitigate our budget risks to ensure these measures are reversible and recoverable and to the extent feasible minimize any harmful effects on readiness. the air force is currently turning the secretary's guidance into direction to our major commands, which we expect to issue in the next few days. impacts to the air force will be in the same category outlined by the secretary yesterday. civilian hiring restrictions, curtailing on readiness or mission essential flying and travel, curtailing or stopping minor purchases such as furniture and i.t. refreshments and differing nonemergency facility sustainment, restoration and modernization.

to be clear, these near-term actions cannot cannot fully mitigate the impacts of sequestration, should that occur. if we do not have resolution by march, sequestration will have immediate and negative impacts on air force readiness ,-com,-com ma specifically flying hours and maintenance. as secretary panetta has reiterated, the focus now must be on taking the threat of sequestration off the table and enacting a budget agreement that will stabilize defense planning for the remainder of fy13 and the years i had. looking ahead our air force will continue to balance competing defense needs among the size of our force structure and today's readiness and modernization for the future. from previous defense drawdowns, we have learned during periods of austerity tough decisions have to be made to avoid a

hollow military, one that looks good on paper but has more units and equipment then it can support, lacks the resources to man ,-com,-com ma train and maintain them or keep up with advancing technologies. to avoid the perils of a hollow air force we believe the best path oradist to become smaller in order to protect a high-quality and ready force that will improve capabilities over time. more than two decades of war and other operations have had an impact on our readiness, is straining our airmen and their families come covered using opportunities for training and taking a toll on equipment. the need for modernization is pervasive across our air force. while service life extension programs and modifications have largely kept our inventories up to date, the cost of maintenance and sustainment is rising as budgets are flattening and new

threats and technologies required new investments. like the other services the air force will work with, our defense leadership to fine-tune our plans and programs as we confront both a dynamic security environment and the nation's fiscal challenges as well. we will adjust and compromise as necessary but we will need broad consensus with congress on the way forward to avoid a hollow military. this must be our priority. nevertheless, despite enduring challenges i'm pleased to note that air force has made progress in many areas and can point to a number of accomplishments -- accomplishments during the past calendar year. it worked for the active component and reserve component force structure challenges that were part of the fy13 residents budget proposal to produce a compromise which congress passed

on freezing previously approved force structure changes. we confronted the problem of sexual assaults and unprofessional relationships that basic military training and have convicted defenders. we are strengthening our sexual assault prevention efforts and recent initiatives include the air force wide health and welfare inspection and the establishment of the special victims counsel program. with regard to space launch, the air force completed nine secession will space launch campaigns in the e. l. d. program and this makes 55 consecutive successful launches to date and 90 consecutive successful national security space missions. missions. we have implemented a new acquisition strategy to efficiently purchase of 236 course while introducing the competitive environment for up to 14 cores from new entrants starting as early as fy13.

this for the first time is a new entrance of a clear path for national security space missions. our procurement strategy is driving down satellite costs resulting in savings of more than a billion dollars on the advanced extremely high frequency satellites and savings projected of more than $500 billion for the program. we have have her salt is this we know how the previously unexplained hypoxia incidents in the m. 22 and put this critical aircraft on the path from return to flight to full operationoperation al capabilities. the f-35 continues to mature and with the completion of our operations evaluation training at eglin air force base will begin this month. although combat operations in iraq are complete, missions continue in afghanistan and we remained a nation at war.

over the holidays chief master sergeant and air force jim roy and i had an opportunity to visit air force commanders and airmen throughout the centcom and we found that despite challenges in deployment, the morale of our airmen is high. american airmen are focused on their mission and they demonstrate every day what it means to be members of the worlds finest air force. thousands more uniformed and civilian airmen in the u.s. and around the world work to support our airmen downrange and these total first airmen active-duty guard, reserve and civilian are the reason i can say without reservation that the state of our air force remains strong. general welsh and die in the entire air force leadership team are committed to doing all we can to ensure that the air force stays that way, cut strong, ready and capable of delivering airpower whenever and wherever

the nation calls. another major milestone this year was the arrival of our 20 new chief of staff, general mark welsh who has brought new energy, tremendoutremendou s insight and inspirational leadership to the top of our air force team. so before we take your questions i will ask general welsh to make a few remarks. >> appreciated and good morning ladies and gentlemen. thank you for taking the time to be here. i apologize for my extra hardware this morning. actually, it's ugly in the sequestration piece and although we are struggling for resources, think it was the first time i realized just how big -- is. yesterday we released an updated vision for the united states air force. is focused on airmen airmen mission in innovation and the intent is to capture what today's air force is all about as well as to point out the areas we think we should be focused on in the future.

is the source of our strength of the service and outline the enduring contributions that will continue as we move forward no matter what happens with the fiscal realities in the future. they will be our contributions to nation's defense and the air force is calling cards. division embraces -- and i believe that's true. in order for us to be successfusuccessfu l this feature. it takes about three minutes to read and less can get you a copy if you haven't seen it if you would like to take a look. the bottom line is we intend to remain the world's greatest air force fueled by innovation. that is what the vision says. i guess it's not news we have budgetary uncertainties as the boss mentioned. i think we can be confident the defense budgets will shrink but how far remains to be seen. secretary donley has made tough budget decisions that are now reflected in the fy13 national defense authorization act and those decisions translate into an active-duty air force for 329,000 airmen.

about the same as when we became a separate service in 1947. in just the last 10 years we retired in 1900 airplanes. we have separated, not separated but dropped 30,000 active duty billets and are active component and known of those things is inherently bad by the way. they're they're simply reflected that today strategic environment. i will echo the secretary's message and tell you what it means to us is that it we have moved toward a smaller and more capable and ready force we have to be careful to protect our core missions and we have to be able to execute those enduring contributions i mentioned before he cuts up we don't the entire joint force is impacted and impacted in a significant way. the director of international guard the chief of the air force received and i have spent time and energy lately focused on medication court nation between our three components and general frank grass the chief of the national euro and i have with the same efforts toward

communication between the air force and the national guard bureau. obviously the force structure is a mix between the active and reserve components of the air force is a contentious issue and has been for the last six to eight months clearly. it continues to be. i characterize her court nation with the group i just mentioned as energetic and improving. but we are absolutely committed. everybody in the group i just mention is committed to ensuring that in the future when we come forthwith force structure mixed recommendations to the secretary, the secretary of defense and the president congress that we speak with one voice. we will do everything we can to get there. the first memory i have of my grandfathers him pulling up in front of our house in his 53 chevy convertible. the reason why, it was this week are. if we were at my not we could take you to the flight line and i could show you a bunch of sweet d50 to zen in 20208 woman delivered the last casey 46 tanker we will still have 200 sweet kc casey 135's on the ramp

and they will be about the same age then, 60 yes my grandfathers car would be today. the difference as differences my granddad's car has an empty auto plate on it. in 20208, your kids will be flying those casey 135's and contingency zones around the world. modernization is an option. doesn't matter big or small we have to figure out how to make modernization happened. we have a pretty good track right now with their fighter bomber programs and their space programs that do exactly that. it's a good start but it's just a start. we have to figure out how to keep it going. the boss talked about readiness. we have been flying combat sorties since 1991 nonstop. decreasing force structure increasing ops tempo after 9/11 combined to create a readiness problem that started to show itself in 2003 and a readiness has been declining steadily ever since. we been forced to put full

training full spectrum training on the back earner in order to vacate take care of the current five. that has had an impact on us and what makes any air force but in particular our air force an asymmetric advantage for america is our global range are speed, and our precise strength. that is what air force does. it's not always a pretty business but that is what we do. strategic ability require a high state of readiness from airmen equipment and sacrificing that readiness can really sacrifice as many strategic advantages and i believe that is always a bad idea. so that is in the background as we look to the future and put our plans together. as america responsibly draws down from afghanisafghanis tan and free balances in the pacific the demand for airpower will likely remain about the same. i don't think it's going to change significant way. the air force will haul troops car door humanitarian supplies in a different direction. we will continue to fly sorties

filling the needs of the combatant commanders who haven't had the support they would like over the last 20 years. we will build partner capacity and stand in their launch and stay ready for the next call to action because i'm pretty confident that there is one coming. secretary donley and i will work hard to make sure whatever resources we do have are used responsibly to obtain the best balance of four sized modernization readiness as possible. that's her job and we will do it to the best of our ability. we are looking that effort because we have a secret weapon. we have 700,000 unbelievably dedicated talented men and women in our air force components to help us do it every day. we are privileged. let me close by announcing two of them quickly before we get to your questions. at the end of this month a couple of greater maneri tiring. one of them is the director of the international guard. he now in association with me

throughout his entire tenure he is a great airmen and a great officer and a great leader. to me he is a role model, a mentor and a great friend. as he and nancy move on to the next chapter in life, the entire air force is going to miss him. also our chief surgeon of air force jim rowan and ms. paula will retire and move to south carolina to begin their next adventure. the chief and i unbelievably well. he's a special human being and if he has been the backbone of our air force for the last three and half years, paul has been the heart. every airmen, every airman is going to miss them and we wish them success and happiness in the future. tanks for listening. thanks for taking your time to be here and we are ready for some questions. >> thanks very much. under this curtailment that the secretary announced yesterday, what is going to take a hit immediately?

is yes r&d on the table? do you see that going down and over the long-term are you copying you will be able to build a long-range omers that beer force does moving forward? >> the secretary's guidance asks us to focus on adjustments and spending patterns that are reversible and recoverable to the extent possible. so i think while it will affect all parts of our air force, we are focused on the operation and maintenance parts of our air force which few of the day-to-day operations in the air force. those are the areas that i think will have sort of an immediate impact. we have talked about -- i talked about facility sustainment and restoration. i think that is a large part of our operation and maintenance

funding, to support all the facilities and buildings that we maintain so i think that is a particular area. we do have to address the civilian personnel aspects and we talked about civilian hiring constraints and perhaps freezes in some particular areas. because civilian pay is about 40% of our operation and maintenance budget, so it's a significant piece and we can't ignore it going forward so we have to do prudent personnel planning. long term, we committed to the long-range strike bomber which you reference. we are going to keep programs like that on track but every program would be affected in sequestration ahead. let's go in the back here. >> i wanted to ask about flying hours and if you expect the numbers to go down this year

lacks. >> we are going to try to protect readiness related training as far into the gear as we possibly can, so the curtailments we are looking at now relate to non-mission essential or non-readiness related flying and we will let the commanders make the individual calls on how best to do that. again, cut this is a large expense for the air force broadly. it's a big chunk of operation and maintenance funding, that we are trying to protect the readiness impacts from flying our reductions as long as possible. but to come back to the basic point here, the measures we are taking now are the prudent things we can do to mitigate risks if sequestration hits and the multibillion-dollar reductions fall in the last two quarters of the fiscal fiscal year, cut there is no way not to impact training, flying hours

and maintenance, which are things right now we are trying to protect as long as we can. >> hi. question. the memo by secretary carter talks about the possibility of canceling third and fourth quarter shift maintenance in aviation and ground level maintenance activities. i want to know how specifically will this affect the air force and also general welsh what happened to your arm? >> well, on the first part of that, as i mentioned we are trying to take prudent actions now that are as reversible and recoverable as possible. we are trying to protect maintenance for aircraft and weapons systems sustainability as long as we can into the fiscal year. we will have to look at what the third and fourth quarter

execution will look like as we go week by week into assessing how many inductions of aircraft that we take into our debt bows and what the expected output is, and what has the most or least impact on readiness. so our lifecycle management commands and those that work in these areas will be assessing by every aircraft type sort of what the workloads will be, try to figure out how to minimize readiness impacts but again, if these cuts fall on the third and fourth quarters there is no question it will be -- >> secretary donley is not nearly as nice as he appears in public. the truth is really kind of embarrassing. the truth is about a year ago my wife and i went with my oldest

son and her grandkids. my wife is a good water skier and i never tried wakeboarding and she immediately jumped on a white board and was incredibly good. which of course meant that i had to be better, and being the guy was important for me to show her up. about 10 face plans later in a torn up shoulder i can see that once again my wife is better than me at everything. now i get to have the depot repair before sequestration. [laughter] >> thank you general. i am curious, given the trend going on about the f-35 program does the air force have a passing can you articulate it to us, to understand more fully what the sustainment cost will be for the aircraft and to bring that data into a system at the outcome of which will decide how many you can afford and when he

will bring them into the suite and let them make mince will be. >> i know the secretary hasn't been on this one. let me tell you what the effort has been in the last six months or so. that lockheed-martin put together breathing while osama last assignment that was shared with our european partners in the program. they talked about the sustainment cost of the program. the number and they refer to it in terms of cost per flying hour. that was not the same number i'd seen in recent. is characterized in a different format. and so when i got into this job i ask our program officers to get with the lockheed-martin team and put these numbers side-by-side to figure out exactly what the differences were between the number we saw on the number we had to get at that problem. problem. that is one piece of the family determined where reality is on the figures we are using. that process is pretty far down the path and will make it to the point where you we have a good understanding of cost per flying hour as we understand in the air force, the numbers will be

different for the marines and the navy and we have to resolve all of that so we are comparing apples-to-apples. the second part of that is making sure that as we get more and more actual numbers now, because we are flying the airplane. it's a real airplane and flying every single day. my first trip to add when i got out of the airplane and looked up -- so it is real. it was impressive and so we are not getting actionable path the weekend track which will be helpful for for us to think and that will get more and more definitive as we fly more and more aircraft. so it's very important that we get this clear understanding of the numbers. it's critical to us for all kinds of reasons. for funding support and allies satisfaction and the comfort level that the airplane will do what it is supposed to do. one quote i took away is an operator, when you talk to the guys flying the airplane that they aren't impressed by powerpoint slides.

the one quote to give you is that they got the airplane right. that is the quote from a wing commander down there. we are working on the details of the development program but they got the airplane right. that is a powerful statement to people that fly the airplanes. >> briefly, there is a lot of work focused on sustainment and support for the f-35 program because it's transitioning into a more robust training environment and ultimately to deployments of these aircraft are coming off the line. they are being sent to eglin and two other locations and so the services are starting to take ownership and this is very important that we get this right. i have a control support cost and provide for streamlined support on a worldwide basis is on the joint strike fighter program agenda for all of the partners who are ongoing work on

how to do global support for this and it's an issue inside the department of defense. i would also point to the fact that in the context of holding this program, the f-35 simulator is the most sophisticated simulator that we have now so it provides a great opportunity to look more carefully at how we divide the actual flying hours. and some other areas as can be challenging in in the simulators have not kept up with modern technologies. in this case, that we have a very modern simulator so there are some advantages there. [inaudible] >> i don't have that but i think the folks in the program and the folks at lockheed-martin are getting to a point where they can understand exactly what the numbers are. what number we are going to use

i don't know yet. [inaudible] in the back over here. yes, maam. how are you? >> let's say you avoid sequestration but everybody agrees that the budgets are being cut in the air force budget made the cut and let's say you do the same kind of flying missions. where do you see the force after the budget cuts? how is the air force going to change and can you give us an education of how things are going to change in the next few years with budget cuts? >> i think the mission said that of the air force and the things that general welsh referred to, of the core functions and the calling cards as the chief refers to them as would stay the same. we are going to continue to do global precision attack,

mobility, command-and-control and all these things remain part of the air force's job. the challenge for the air force and not just the air force but services as well as capacity. what will be the size of the military and how much of that will we have? i think those are the issues pressing him on the u.s. military. we all understand the value of the joint capabilities, which the air force, the navy and army bring to the joint team and the importance of that to coalition operations in all of its dimensions. we need all of these parts to bring together the world's finest military capability. the issue is capacity and how much of it will we have? you can see with the air force will look like now and 2020, in terms of new capabilities coming in. the tanker will be fielded and the f-35 will be fielded and we will be well along in the

development of the bomber program. we will have developed further in the cyber areas for examples so you can see based on our priorities and the dollars that are needed and the investment now when these capabilities will deliver. so i think in terms of new capabilities coming in, you see some of what the future air force will look like. the underlying issue is size and overall capacity of the armed forces. [inaudible] >> as i tried to articulate in an op-ed earlier this week i think there are questions about how much smaller the air force can go in some of these areas without impacting the capability that we provide to the joint and the coalition teams. >> diane barnes, global newswire. can you provide any updates on nuclear reform activities at

local strike command or elsewhere in light of the weapons that passed a few years ago? >> i think we are in a much stronger place than we were a few years ago. we have put in place a more rigorous inspection process. we have put in place much more intensive oversight. we have restructured our nuclear under air force global strike command to help us get through -- to help us get unified management over this capability. ..

preparations for adjusting the size of the bomber force and also planning for adjustments in the size of the icbm force. we have advanced planning going with s.t.a.r.t. implementation. >> is there any plan to destroy the cd 22 to okinawa or any other place in japan? >> yes. >> what specific location? >> i will bet off on that for now but the answer is yes. let me see if i can get you a

more detailed answer after words. >> after all of the things going on with america's forces, after all of the fiscal cliff negotiations there has been a lot of chatter on the internet from amin saying they can't plan for the future and a lot of these folks are getting out rather than stating. is the problem you are trying to address? >> retention in the air force remains very strong but i did offer some commentary here that the current uncertainty associated with the budget processes in washington does create anxiety and frustration certainly among the defense leadership, but among airmen as well. they see and understand what is going on in washington, they are very well connected,

domesticated force we have ever had and they stay connected to what is going on in the air force and our military, what is happening in washington. they are watching this and reaching -- making their own judgments about the process. it is extremely inefficient and disruptive to have multiple -- to be basically operating on a multibillion-dollar enterprise which is the united states air force on a month or two at a time. this is not a sensible way to approach budget operations and execution. we can do better. >> if i could make a comment let me tell you what the people in the air force are, that is proud. there also a little tired of pulling for 20 plus years of trying to work hard to keep weapons systems operating without the funding needed so that is why we have to go to the

smaller force. i don't believe what you describe is a major issue. they are not begging to get out the door. retention rates and they are proud of who they are and express it every day but wants to know what is coming because they're better informed than i was one i was in the air force. we have 19-year-old chairman, i was not until i was a colonel or brigadier-general. they're phenomenally engage. we are trying to keep informed and stay in communication with them. you do that for us, you help us. good news and bad news is all important here. i said to every airman in the air force, an e-mail to each of them with a note from me, to tell them what we doing? what are the key issues we are trying to work, what direction do we think we are moving? tried to keep that going to ensure all our commanders and supervisors are doing the same

thing. communication for us right now is absolutely essential internally if we are going to be successful down a road. >> we heard an outside assessment earlier this week indicating that more sequestration to happen, dod would have to furlough the entire civilian work force for the maximum amount legally possible. does that jibe with what your expectations would be and how does that impact your various missions in thinking so far how to mitigate those data points? >> we do have to pay attention to a planning that would be necessary to do that later if required because of the various personnel rules that are in place and rightly so, notifications to union and all that. so we have to pay attention to that, plan for that at some

point just to be prudent in terms of that or approach the third or fourth quarter. the sequestration false on just the last two quarters of the fiscal year we can't avoid these impacts. in this case as i mentioned about 40% of our operating account is in personnel. these things have to be looked at seriously. they cannot be avoided. >> can you say if there's anything new that the decisions are 32 additional airlifts and the breakdown of the c-130 and 27s? >> that work continues. i do not anticipate that we are going to change our position from the president's fyi 13 budget to terminate the c 27

program. i don't think we are going to revisit that the we're focused on this group mostly on what to do about additional aircraft authorized by congress and we are developing courses of action appropriately to address that. i don't think we are going to revisit the c 27 issue. >> national defence magazine. the air force was criticized by several members of congress that in the last few months when spending $1 billion, on something that was canceled, can you tell me what steps you might be taking now to prevent those in the future with major acquisitions? $1 billion of budget cuts seems like a lot of money wasted on a single program. >> there are important lessons learned from the css and we are trying to apply that going

forward. we have other enterprise resources programs related to new budget systems and new personnel systems that are making some progress and are coming along. ecss lost confidence in the ability of that program and that contractor to deliver on what was intended. it is un fortunate we had to go a few years into it before doing that but we extended time, resources, effort to adjust the program, to see if it would be recoverable and to try to set it on correct path. that did not work. so we lost confidence in that program. we do think there are lessons learned. we owe the department plan, and correspondence for senate armed services committee and others on capitol hill.

>> to give you a chance to wrap things up. >> can either of you provide more detail on the budget savings we are expecting to find the next several days, do you think you have to find savings and where do you think the bulk of that will come from if you protect maintenance? will come from these personal savings or not and having started to try and put out any of the notifications to civilian employees about potential layoffs and freezes and how much can you save from those? >> the back part of your question, the answer is we are going to put out guidance in the next few days. we are not making notifications with respect to furloughs. that is not on the table at the

present time but we do have to consider hiring freeze or certainly perhaps with some mission essential exceptions but this is what we are working through right now so there will be some impact on the civilian personnel management processes. we are not targeting particular dollar amounts to save. i come back to this. the secretary addressed this yesterday. there is nothing we can do in the next two month for the next nine month, the remainder of the fiscal year to mitigate the impact of sequestration. there are no particular targets. it is simply prudent management steps to start adjusting the way we expend dollars so that we literally did not fall off of our own cliff created by this sequestration problem.

that is our challenge as managers of the taxpayers' resources. there are no specific targets. they wouldn't mitigate the impact of sequestration and all they can do is anticipate, slow, sort of prepare. as the chairman described yesterday to steel ourselves for what might happen. >> what share of this entire pie of cuts the air force would have to favor? >> we do have but cents for this and i think at the macro level was 18% to 20% reductions in our accounts. i will see if i can get more detail on that, but that is the estimate if all this were to take place but again, in the near-term as we introduce these

mitigating strategies over the next month or so to slow spending we are not looking at particular targets. >> the opportunity to close. >> thank you. the airmass and air force were wondering about what our job will be in the future, where they fit in. that is the big question. i stress to them whenever i get the chance that the job description for the air force was written in 1947 in the national security act. it never changed. commissions are the ones we're still doing today. i don't expect them to change. the space and cybercapability to develop to do those better were not there in 1947 so they need to continue and our focus needs to be on getting better and better and better in the way we do those missions. the future for us is figuring out how to better integrate data and information and moved quicker and connect platforms

together. not as expensive as new weapons systems that more near-term return and benefits us the way we do the job today and we have people all around here force focusing on that problem right now. let me close where i started based on the strength of what we do. my job, the secretary's job is to make sure we enable them to do their job and stand back and remains how well they are doing. thanks for being here. >> thank you, chief. just to reiterate and pick up on the chief's fema. take the total force airman active guard reserve and civilian to do all this work and rely on them to help get commissions done every single day. obligation as leaders is to hand off to our successors in the air force, better than the one that was handed to us and that is how our air force has gotten better

and better decade after decade. our obligation is to keep this air force, the finest air force in the world. we have a chairman who will help us get through the challenges ahead and we do face significant strategic challenges and fiscal challenges at the same time. but we have been through lots of ups and downs over the years and if we support our airmen and their families in this work, active guard reserve and civilian, they will get us through and i am confident making prudent choices, difficult decisions between force structure and modernization, difficult trade-offss going forward. we can still stay the world's finest air force. >> thank you.

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c-span network. vice president joe biden is continuing meetings to the together response to last month's shooting in a connecticut elementary school. meeting today with representatives of the video-game industry, met yesterday with the and r. a. and companies that sell guns like wal-mart and dick's sporting goods. wednesday he met with victims of gun violence. the vice president said recommendation for president obama next week. afghan president hamid karzai is in washington d.c. today meeting privately with president obama and they will hold a joint news conference at the white house. you will be able to see it live at 1:15 eastern on companion network c-span at 5:30 eastern. president hamid karzai will be at georgetown university talking about relations between afghanistan and the u.s.. c-span will have coverage of that starting at 5:30 eastern.

>> you could read the president's. unlike anyone else. he came as close as anyone to gaining admittance into what wrap it sure would called roosevelt's heavily forested interior. unlike mrs. roosevelt, he knew when to be still in the presence of the president, when to press him, when to back off and tell a joke. after he won the election, wendell willkie, who he'd be, within his office and they remained friends. wendell willkie said the president why do you keep that man so close to you? that man being hopkins. wendell willkie did not like hopkins and roosevelt said you may be in this office some day and you will understand but he asks for nothing except to serve me.

>> trusted adviser, friend and confidant to fdr, harry hopkins lived in the roosevelt white house for a 3-1/2 years. david roll on the hopkins touch sunday at 10:00 p.m. eastern on booktv on c-span2. the election assistance commission recently heard from two new york city officials and power outages and displaced citizens in the wake of hurricane sandy which happened the week before the 2012 election. part of a panel looking at issues that arose in november. another official from pennsylvania described how difficult it was to train poll workers and considering a new voter id law in that state. this is about 90 minutes. ♪

♪ [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. i would like to welcome you back to our round table discussion informing change and review of the events and issues surrounding the 2012 election cycle. this morning we had a panel of election workers and administrators as well as researchers, advocates of media individuals on two separate panels and i think we had a pretty lively discussion on that. we will continue this afternoon with state and local election officials. we have requested and gathered

officials from the united states and helping they will be able to share, i am sure they will, their experiences of what they went through in the 2012 election. i mentioned earlier in the morning session that we did have officials here from new york and new jersey and we all know they had a substantive challenge with hurricane sandy that kicked in, not to mention the other challenges the officials had with changes to the law, redistricting and of course the line. we want to start our discussion, i will turn it over to merle king. merle king has led these discussions for us and he knows how to do this and doing well. we will leave it to his expertise and he will give logistics' on how we want to continue this afternoon as we did this morning and begin with an opening statement. thank you to the panelists. we could do this without you. i say it and i mean it.

these are your hearings and help us do we need to do and get our issues together for the next round table as well as producing best practices. merle king. >> thank you. welcome to those joining us by the web cast and the panelists at the table, welcome and thank you for attending. earlier this morning we heard from poll workers, told managers, researchers, and the sick is the group's dividend advocacy groups about their issues what happened in the election, causation factors and most importantly recommendations for resolution going forward. at the end of the day we hope to summarize all of those points in an attempt to prioritize those things that the eac and state and locals should be looking at going forward. many of the topics, for example

poll worker training have been touched on this morning but was poll worker training from the perspective of the poll workers themselves, many of the issues we touch on again, what is important about this session is we want to look at these issues from the perspective of the local election officials that is that office that is in between the development of the legislation and the policy and the voter and the ballot and you all serve a unique and important and complicated function in the election process and we want to make sure we bring that to the table today to make sure we understand these issues not just from the voter or the poll worker's perspective but from the perspective of those individuals that are responsible for defining the procedures, implementing those procedures and evaluating those procedures.

in our hour-and-a-half session, we will start with patch. if you would introduce yourself and talk about those issues your jurisdiction experienced in the 2012 cycle. as we said earlier this morning we want to talk about not just election day those that is obviously very important. we want to talk about any of the proceeding elections, primaries or specials, anything that impacted this election cycle in a way that is relevant to your jurisdiction. once we come down to the table maybe take four five minutes to do that. at the very end starting with mark, i will ask you to summarize what you have heard here today, hope your colleagues and help those here in attendance to identify from your perspective what are the priorities, what are the things that need to be done better, how

can they be done better and what are the things that were done right that we need to institutionalize, make sure we don't forget how to do those things going forward? with that, pat, i will ask you to make your opening comment. >> good to be here, an honor to be in front of such an esteemed group and being able to discuss some of the issues we all relate to and have experience in our particular roles. my name is pat macdonald for the cuyahoga board of directors, have been deputy director for two presidential elections and we had our lessons learned from 2008 and tried to execute better election administration in 2012. a little about cuyahoga county, we are the largest county in ohio, the fifteenth largest voting jurisdiction in the

country. the biggest city in kayak of the county is cleveland. we have in the county 59 municipalities and approximately 930,000 registered voters and of those 60% are democrats, 36% are republicans and the remaining unaffiliated. in 2012 election, we have 70% voter turnout in which approximately 45% of them voted either by mail or in person and 40% voted provisionally. vote by mail has been a strong program of powers for the last five years where we executed a great response from the public within the counties that now they expected and with some court orders and director of changes it has been a struggle to continue the program throughout the last few years but there was a new policy by

the secretary of state this year that they sent out by mail like putt -- applications to all registered voters in the state of ohio. it was to provide uniformity and consistency among various counties, lance gough county as always, some people say it is unfair because there county doesn't do those and we have overlapping jurisdictions and many elected officials and school districts, local issues. with that said i want to go over a few, major issues that we had, maybe we haven't dealt with in the past emulated based off of such a heightened 2012 media frenzy with the state of ohio, cuyahoga county specifically, that was something we did not expect. we did not expect what was a cog and effect of being such a heightened state, a state so focused on make or break the

election for the president or elect a new president. it was factual that we have a president and vice presidential candidate or surrogate in their almost every other day in the last 45 days. it caused many concerns and many issues we had to deal with especially in our neck of the woods from voter turnout to come down to the boards to vote to the heightening scrutiny. national media was constantly in the board of elections asking questions that would be the topic of the day in terms of their channels, provisional voting, if it was in person voting and so forth. that did have an effect on how to administer it the election. we could have been a little more prepared, knowing what the outcome would have been in terms of national scrutiny.

many times i asked to be interviewed by fox news and my counterpart at nbc was on and they want our perspective on many issues which caused more local scrutiny of the board and more height in terms of in-house voting. another issue we were not particularly addressed in, third party interest groups, the normal political party stand that tea party, you had the advocacy group, the voting rights groups and the campaigns and they were all wanting something, self-interest at the board and throughout the county, extending hours or restricting early voting, weekend hours or not having weekend hours, no sunday voting so everybody had an agenda they were trying to project to us. another issue that i think is important to bring up here