proposals that would encourage investment in the united states and not the shipping of jobs overseas. so i think overall if there's a single theme that ties this budget together, it's about being able to say that we're doing exactly what you're asking. we have a path for economic growth, we have a path for job creation, and we have tools in place to make that happen today and in the future. >> mr. secretary, in spite of all of the problems that we face in our country during the past few years, some people have done very well. and others have been left out and left behind. can you tell us what is in the budget that's going to help those that have been left out and left behind? >> i think that the disparity of income in this country is a very significant problem. and we have to deal with it at both ends. we have to deal with it at the end of those who are struggling

by creating the ladders of opportunity to give them the ability to get the education they need and have the skills for the jobs that they deserve. when they go to work, we need to make sure that they get a living wage. anyone who works full time should be above poverty in this country, which is why the president has put a proposal in his budget to raise the minimum wage. i think at the high end we very much need to make sure that as we put in place the policies that will put our fiscal house in order, that we raise revenues from those who are most able to afford it because they have the greatest income. i think overall this is a budget that doesn't instantaneously fix a problem that's been decades in the making. but it moves it very much in the right direction. and, frankly, the action taken in january was the most significant step in that direction by raising the top tax rate really in a generation. >> well, thank you very much. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> thank you. and at this point i'm going to go two to one, so i'll start with mr.-- [inaudible] you're recognized for five minutes.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. secretary, my subcommittee on human resources will be holding a hearing next week on unemployment insurance. and so i want to focus on -- i have one question related to unemployment insurance, but also want to use it as an example of a comment that you made earlier that people, including corporations and small businesses, are confused about the budget and our process here and also as sort of a lack of understanding as to really what's going on. >> that's probably something we can all agree on. [laughter] >> yeah, i think you're right. including myself. so i have two documents. this is, i guess, part of what really creates a little bit of confusion. first, a document from the white house. and then i have a document from the department of treasury. and these seem to be in conflict to me. so the president's budget has a proposal that would more than double the wage base on which

federal unemployment taxes are applied from 7,000 to 15,000, correct? >> correct. >> all told as displayed in your budget documents, this would increase revenue by $51 billion over ten years. i note that these tax increases would take the form of higher federal and state payroll taxes which, in my opinion, are taxes on jobs. my question is this: why do you think a summary document prepared by the white house says that that same policy strengthening the solvency of the unemployment insurance trust fund reduces spending by 50 billion? can you clarify this discrepancy and this sort of conflict for myself, the rest of the folks here in the room and the people -- >> congressman, i would have to take a look at those two charts. i don't want to pretend to be familiar with the comparison, and i couldn't read it from this distance. the policy on unemployment insurance is one the

administration has advocated for a number of years. it would really restore the base for the unemployment tax to where it was in the reagan years just adjusting it for inflation. >> so -- >> that's -- >> excuse me just for a moment. so the 7,000 to $15,000 increase, is that a tax hike? >> well -- >> or a reduction? >> the rate -- >> forget what this says, what is your opinion? >> the rate doesn't change. what it does is it puts in place -- right now -- >> does it increase taxes? yes or no? >> well, it increases the base of -- >> i'm not, i just want a yes or no. does it increase taxes? >> it pays for an unemployment program that's not now properly funded, and i think the reason for the -- >> by increasing taxes? >> it raises the base to the reagan levels. >> increasing taxes. but the white house is saying it's reducing spending. >> yeah. the -- >> so i'm confused. >> categorizations of these issues has been -- >> so i can look forward to an answer that would clarify for

me? >> i'm happy to get back to you. >> okay. can i -- i want to move on to you have used the term fiscal house in order here several times today. what does that mean to you, getting our fiscal house in order? briefly, please. >> congressman, i think that the challenge we face is to get our budget on a path to having the deficit and the debt as a percentage of our economy at a point where it is sustainable which means the economy's growing faster, and we're not -- >> what percentage would you say that would be? >> you know, our budget gets the deficit to less than 2% of gdp in the tenth year. our goal originally was 3% -- >> but your budget doesn't balance. >> you asked me a different question. you asked -- >> but does -- >> yeah, it does balance in an out year. not in the 10-year window. quite a ways out. the challenge of balancing the budget -- >> the balance, the budget does not balance within ten years. >> no. >> is that correct? >> we have, the deficit -- >> can you explain to me, i'm --

i want to be in a learning mode just like my friend from ohio. can you explain to me and the folks around the country why it's so important for families to balance their checkbook, balance their budget? they didn't see a deficit, you know, an emergency ahead, but they lost their homes. but the federal government doesn't have to balance their budget. they can continue to spend, and you don't see an emergency down the road with the deficit? >> congressman -- >> i don't understand. people are trying to understand this at home. >> congressman, i, as i said in my opening remarks, i spent a big part of my career balancing the budget and creating a surplus. i understand how important a balanced budget and a surplus is. i also know that in the period before president obama -- >> why is it so important -- [inaudible conversations] excuse me. why is it important for homes, people at home to balance their budget, but it's not important for the federal government to balance their budget?

>> now, i -- >> that's what people don't understand, sir. my time has expired. thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. chairman, could i respond just very briefly to that question? >> yes. >> thank you. families and governments are fundamentally in different positions, and governments around the world are measured by the standard of whether or not they can afford to service the debt that they've undertaken. and the measures that are used to determine whether they can afford it are reflected in our budget, and we meet them. i totally agree with you, we should be on a long-term path towards pursuing more deficit reduction and balance. what i'm saying is if you try to get there too fast, you do more damage to the economy, and you'd end up making less progress, not more progress, in terms of reaching the goal. >> all right. mr., dr. boustany. >> thank you, mr. chairman. welcome, mr. secretary. the president's budget increase for the department of treasury and its program, and this includes $1 billion in increase, annual increase for the irs

budget, you know, we found information just a few weeks ago about an irs studio, production studio, star trek videos, things of that nature. now, as the economy continues to sputter, families across america are having to make deep, painful cuts in their own household budges. and at the same time -- budgets. and at the same time we're borrowing a lot of money. for every dollar of spending, 60 cents is borrowed. so with in mind, are there any other cuts under treasury that you could put forth other than what's in this -- i mean, the budget's proposing increased spending. >> congressman, the bulk of the increases that are in the treasury budget are really an irs enforcement. i think one of the goals this committee has traditionally shared with the treasury department is making sure their tax laws are effectively enforced and that we have a fair system where all taxpayers are treated alike and there's an understanding if you don't obey -- >> well, i fully understand that.

>> [inaudible] >> at the same time, we're concerned about on one hand the irs comes to us and wants more resources, and yet we see obvious waste on the other hand. >> congressman, i, i'm aware of the situation you're describing. i think we have made clear that action has been taken to make sure that, you know, that doesn't happen again. you know, across government there's a need to, i agree with you, tighten our belt and not do things that don't look like they make sense. i spent a lot of time when i was at omb and as chief of staff doing that across the government. i will continue to do that as secretary of the treasury. but i don't think it's right to confuse that with the need to have irs agents on the job. and that's what our, where most of our -- most of our budget -- >> i understand the need for enforcement. but i guess my question is are there other areas within treasury that you could come forward with some proposals more cuts? i mean, obviously, there are some. i mean, what about this

production studio? i think it costs $4 million a year. it's been, there may be -- are there others? >> there, we are, obviously, taking a look at that particular item. but i would point out that, um, you know, one of the things that we do to try to control costs in the government is do more business remotely and not have people travel when they don't need to. one of the ways you do business remotely is through video activities. so we have to be careful that we don't cut off the ability to do the kind of work that gives us the ability to operate more efficiently. i'm happy to take a look at that along with other things. but i don't think you'd want to have every meeting have to be in person in a city of -- if someone can sit in a studio and talk to 500 people -- >> i understand that. but we're going to continue to conduct oversight to make sure these dollars are being used appropriately. >> appreciate that. >> also you mentioned growth quite often, and mr. brady was asking questions about our views on tax reforms versus what we see from the administration and

the budget proposal. and one of the things i get concerned about is an approach where certain pockets of money in the form of tax provisions get pulled out to increase spending rather than really looking at tax reform. and we have a, we really do have a historic opportunity to embark on tax reform where we look at everything. with the idea of lowering rates and promoting american competitiveness. and, for instance, you know, as i look -- let's just take the oil and gas expensing provisions which have been in the president's budget continuously, year after year after year. the impact of this is going to be pretty strong in oil and gas exploration production, and at a time when we're seeing a shale gas revolution, if these were to be put in place without actual reductions in tax rates, i think you're going to kill the shale gas revolution, a source of job growth, a source of american competitiveness, new sources of exports. so it is a little bit of an inconsistency here, and i just

urge that you reconsider in the administration working with us on real tax reform that looks at everything with the idea of simplifying, making that code much fairer for everybody concerned, lowering rates and really focusing on american competitiveness. >> congressman, um, as i said earlier, i really do think that there's a common goal to broaden the base and lower corporate business tax rates. um, i think that we have a thriving industry now in the shale area. i think that the incentives that were put in place for a nascent oil industry are probably not what they need to do to thrive. we should work together on this as we go forward. >> and one last thing. in the transportation bill that was passed last year, there was statutory language about reporting on a plan for our ports and dredging. that's not -- >> the member's time has expired. >> i would ask that you respond

in writing. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the last two speakers caused me to state an obvious fact, and that is that our republican friends are always in favor of balancing the budge when there's a democratic -- the budget when there's a democratic president. and to have heard the last two speakers go on about how we arrived where we are with these deficits is to diss the point that they didn't -- to miss the point that they didn't say anything during the preceding eight years. and i think that bears noting as well. now, your dna in the legislative branch of government. you know how to make a deal. you worked for the only president who has balanced the budget four times since the end of world war ii. you understand precisely how this is done. and i think that that ought to be acknowledged as well today. in february you raised concerns, or the department of treasury raised concerns about an e.u. proposal to implement a new financial transaction tax in 11

eurozone countries. and in its current form, that will harm u.s. investors. it's more and more likely that some eurozone countries will implement a very broad-based ftt sometime next year. this proposed tax is intentionally designed to have of a broad global reach. it would result in multiple levels of of taxation, and the effective rate, as you know, could be much higher than advertised. could you update the committee on what treasury is doing to protect u.s. investors from this european tax, and could you also update the committee on your recent conversations, mr. secretary, as you traveled to europe? >> congressman, um, you know, we have made a different decision as an administration than many others in europe are making. we have a financial responsibility fee that's been in our budget. we think that that's a better way to raise revenue from the financial services side. and, you know, we've made that point both here and in

conversations overseas. i think the design element that you're describing is a very troubling one. what other countries decide to do in their borders is their business, so we can disagree about the best way the tax domestic financial services. but it is not an acceptable policy from our perspective for other countries to create a tax that has an extraterritorial reach and would levy a tax on a transaction in the united states. when i had my meetings earlier this week in europe, i made that point very clearly to a number of european officials both in the european community in brussels and in meetings with finance ministers making it clear that, you know, we found that to be unacceptable, and we would continue to make that clear. so we're engaged with them. they understand our view, and we will continue to do so. >> thank you. and, mr. secretary, i'm pleased that you included the ira bill

in the budget that i've worked on for many years, and a word of thanks for recommending another item i've worked on, to kill amt. it takes time, but the auto ira proposal, i think, is superbly positioned to help with some of the issues raised by our friends on the other side of the aisle as well. >> totally agree. >> a reminder, it is endorsed by the heritage foundation. i'm still waiting for a republican to sign on to my bill. in addition, it's broad bipartisan consensus that it would address some of these issues. could you speak to that as well? >> i think the auto ira proposal is something that doesn't require that anyone participate in an ira, it just shifts the decision point to you opt in, or do you opt out? we think that, you know, if you make it an opt-out, which is what auto ira would do, there are an awful lot of people who do not start saving very early in their careers who will do so. and if you save when you're 24,

25 all the way through, you build up a much more substantial nest egg for your retirement because of compounding over the years. you never can catch up for the early years that you are out of retirement savings. so i think it's a very good idea. it's something that we have put in our budget. we continue to advocate, and perhaps in the context of tax reform, something that would have the ability to actually be given serious consideration. >> well, the other part of the auto ira i think that has particular appeal is that i think insurance agents, community bankers and credit unions, even though they're small accounts, they would like the opportunity with the potential to expand business down the road to sell that very concept. >> sure. >> and another word of thanks on the safer's credit. that's very important to me. i've worked on that for many, many years here, and i'm pleased to see that you've paid attention to that again in the budget. thank you, mr. secretary. >> thank you. >> thank you. mr. cos come, you're recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. secretary. mr. secretary, you said something in your opening

statement that jarred me, and then i went, and i wanted to confirm that you actually used this language because it seemed internally inconsistent with some of the other themes. so during the opening statement, you generally laid out a theme of, look, i'm jack jack lew, i've got this experience and background on a bipartisan basis, and i've been successful in the past many bringing groups together. and that's a good attribute, and it's an attribute that we all admire and we aspire to. >> thank you. >> that bipartisan language is in contrast, it seems to me, with this statement. you said: it is important to note that this framework, the house -- the white house framework, does not represent the starting point for negotiations. so here's the, here is the challenge. it's very declarative. it sounds as if there's been some revelation that you've had that we haven't participated in. and you're making a declarative statement that this is a precondition for negotiations?

>> no, that's not what i said. >> well, you did say -- >> i said it's not a starting point. i didn't say it was a precondition. >> well, so what do you mean by -- >> sure, i'm happy to -- >> saying it is important to note this framework does not represent the starting point for negotiations. >> i think the last two and a half years have represented a lot of movement from the starting point. i certainly have the wear and tear to show for it, and i think others do as well. we're not at the beginning of the processment this budget reflects where the president was after two years of negotiation, and in december we were perhaps one or two turns of the wheel away from an agreement. it didn't come together, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying. what i was saying and what i believe very strongly is that it would be very counterproductive to treat this somehow as if it's a kind of beginning of the conversation as if the last two and a half years had not happened. >> okay, i understand that. >> and to separate the parts would be a very unconstructive response. we're doing the very hard things, and we're asking others

to do hard things. >> i understand. at the end of the year, the president was making the argument around a consensus around protecting middle class taxpayers from a tax hike. and he basically said, look, since we both agree on that, let's take them off the table, and you remember that argument. >> uh-huh. >> it was a very compelling argument, a very successful argument. what's different about that argument with the notion of if there's consensus on both sides of the aisle around your proposed changes on social security, why not move forward on there in the same spirit with the same approach and with the same goal? >> look, i think they're very different -- >> why? >> -- policies. there was a broad bipartisan agreement that middle class taxpayers should not pay higher taxes. of we're not saying we want to raise this chained cpi issue. we're saying we're prepared to do something very hard and in a package with additional revenues to solve our deaf skit problems -- deficit problems, we would do it. it's very different.

we all wanted to prevent taxes from going up on middle class workers. i'm not going to sit here and say i want to do the chained cpi. we may feel we need to as a part of a balanced plan, but i've heard one after another leader on your side say chained cpi has to be part of a budget agreement. the president put that in in december, he's kept it in, but it has to be connected to solving the whole problem including more revenue. >> the long-term discussion on medicare is a discussion that continues to, i think, get everybody's attention. and yet your predecessor gave a presentation to the house budget committee, it was february of last year, where he basically, you know, he -- you know, it was one of those moments of clarity, frankly, when he said, look, we don't have a long-term proposal, but all we know is we don't like yours, meaning the house budget proposal. that was his language, not mine. you're basically doing the same

thing now as it relates to medicare, isn't that right? because at the end of office when the president leaves in 2017 according to the trustees, they say, look, this solvency only goes out another seven years after your time in office, so isn't that exactly the same thing that secretary geithner was doing? >> i'm not familiar with the exact comments -- >> i'll get it to you. i didn't want overcharacterrize it. >> i will describe our policy in my own words which is, you know, since the enactment of the affordable care act, we have seen substantial reduction in the rate of growth of health care spending. with the implementation, we will see more. the president's put in this budget $400 billion of medicare savings including some very difficult provisions like income-related premiums which are really means testing -- >> that's all well and good, but the trustees say 2024, right? >> and i, you know, there's no doubt as the president assayed be times, we have more work to do after. but that's not a reason not to do this now, and we probably don't agree -- >> do what now?

>> all right, time has expired. >> the policy the president's proposed. >> i yield back. >> mr. gerlach is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. secretary, for testifying today. i wanted to focus on your comments regarding the r&d investment issue, and you state in your testimony on page 5 that the president's budget increases funding for nondefense r&d investment by roughly 9% over 2012 level. how does the president's budget propose to do that? >> congressman, um, this is the first year in a long time where i wasn't responsible for the appropriation accounts, so i'm going to have to probably defer to my colleagues at omb to go through all of the specific increases in r&d in the budget, but i can tell you the pattern of increases is that we have very much put resources into energy and energy efficiency research. we have very much put resources into biomedical research, into

core basic research. we also have proposed making, you know, the tax credits for r&d permanent. so we have a balanced set of approaches. we think that r&d is the key to american competitiveness in the future and have for the entirety of this administration been pushing very hard to try and increase r&d as a share of what we do. >> we have a manufacturing working group ongoing here in the committee, and my colleague, mr. roskam and congresswoman sanchez have been holding a number of meetings about a rarity of issues involving manufacturing including research and development. and one of the things we heard in our meeting on research and development was how the irs many times contests the efforts by a company to get an r&d credit in a particular tax year where they have to constantly battle the irs to justify that innovative work, that research work to establish that they, in fact,

are entitled to that credit. would it be possible for you to acquire information for us that would demonstrate how many times, how many cases the irs really contests the efforts by companies to take the r&d tax credit and where the company then has to take an appeal of that process of that initial determination where that company ends up being successful and, in fact, is entitled to that r ask and d tax credit so that we can get a better sense of it's not only the permanency of the rate or what the rate itself is, but how hard it is for these companies to have go go through the rigamarole to actually get the credit to begin with from a bureaucracy standpoint? can you help gather that data for us and see if there's some way that not only with the rate itself, but also with the language in the statute as to when and how you yet the credit -- you get the credit, how that could be made more simple, more common sense and more usable by companies so that they, in fact, can feel comfortable moving forward with research and development which is what we all want to see happen in our domestic economy?

>> congressman, i'm happy to look into that. whereof the numbers -- >> i understand. >> at my disposal today. i agree with you, we ought to make the administration of the tax code such that taxpayers and businesses trying to make decisions can have clarity and understanding. at the same time, we have to make sure that we, that there's compliance with whatever requirements we have. i'm happy to take a look at it. >> thank you, sir. yield back. thank you. >> thank you. mr. becerra's recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you very much and congratulations to you. >> thank you. >> i'm glad you clarified once again that some of these provisions in your package are part of a previous negotiation with republicans, speaker boehner in particular, to try to resolve our fiscal issues in a balanced way. and i know you've mentioned in the past that there are proposals by republicans to include a chained cpi which is a

different way of calculating the cost of living for anything from social security benefits to veterans' benefits to the tax code and how much people pay on their taxes would be impackaged by -- impacted by the so-called chained cpi. some $230 billion is saved by moving towards the republican-proposed chained cpi. so let me ask a couple of things. my understanding is that by going to the chained cpi you would end up cutting benefits earned by seniors who paid into the social security system, you would cut benefits earned by veterans for their retirement, you would cut benefits earned birdies abled veterans -- by disabled veterans who are receiving veterans' disability compensation. and if that's not accurate, will you please or treasury please forward to me a response that would refute or explain how those payments to seniors, veterans and disabled americans will not be cut?

i wish that we could go into it in detail, but i know we'd run out of time if we did. >> congressman, can i respond to that? no, if you could respond in writing, because i know there's been a lot of discussion, and i will run out of time because i have several questions to ask about the chained cpi, because it's very disturbing that the folks who are going to get hit hardest, the $230 billion that you save in the budget from moving towards a chained cpi is by impacting seniors, veterans, middle class americans. the next area is on the tax side. about half of the savings, half of the savings of $230 billion in savings you get by moving towards a chained cpi aside from the cuts to benefits to, earned benefits to seniors and to veterans and disabled americans is by raising revenues, raising taxes. and most of that, my

understanding is, is a revenue hit, a tax increase for families who are middle class or below. in fact, my understanding is that unless things have changed, the biggest impact by the tax increase caused by the chained cpi hits families who are earning somewhere between $10-$20,000 because they would be pushed up into the higher brackets faster. and so as i look at my district, the average -- the median income in my district is about $38,000. the median income of the national american family, so not just my district, but everywhere in america if you take the median income of american families, it's about $53,000. now, i know the president fought very hard to protect middle class taxpayers $250,000 and below, and, obviously, the middle of america's way below $250,000. and we ended up after compromise with our republican colleagues at $450,000 in income which

would be protected from many of the bush tax cuts expiring. .. if you were to move to the chain cpi. now i heard you say that the president is not a fan of moving to the chain cpi without a big balanced approach but the, the facts are, please in any you write to me, please refute mid facts that folks earning $38,000 like folks in my district will not see a tax

increase which my sense is certainly within the $250,000 income that the president said was the threshold for protecting americans from any tax increase. my final comment is this. and you're a social security trustee. in the 77 years that social security has been in effect americans from way back then to now have contributed $13.9 trillion in their taxes to the social security system. we've also seen those contributions earn $1.6 trillion in interest earnings by being saved in the trust fund. the total, and mr. chairman, i will end with this the total amount that has been spent in benefits for americans is 12.8 trillion dollars. the result is a $2.7 trillion in amount that has never been used by social security. yet the chain cpi gets so much of its savings by hitting beneficiaries under social security who earn those benefits by paying into them. so i very much would like a

response, if you could in writing as to how you would explain or refute that seniors, veterans and disabled would not being asked it pay more by getting fewer of their earned benefits. >> mr. secretary, if you would respond in writing to mr. becerra. that would be wonderful. >> i would be happy to do that. >> mr. buchanan. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank you, mr. secretary, thank you for your service and congratulations. >> thank you. >> i want to mention one of the things we like to talk about is the challenges we've got today. everybody bring as different background. i've been doing business 35 years before i got here but i one of the things i had a chance to go over to china in the late 80s. in terms of clinton era we were growing 4.9, almost 5% a year. we're under 2%. to me we're looking to blame each other and look at what happened the last 10 or 12 years but the world has changed. i was in beijing in 1989. i saw reality there.

i seen what happened with india. it has become much more of a global economy. how much of these factors are the realities we're dealing with today? i'm concerned that people don't realize that the world has changed. it is a global economy. we've got to help our businesses to be more successful? i give you one more point on this and i would like to get your response. i met with the minister of trade in january. himself and i think the vice premiere in two separate meetings told me the same thing. we want to grow our economy, 20 million jobs a year. that's what we've been averaging. that is what we're looking next five or seven years. so i think japan's been obviously a big factor but china and india coming on line in the last 10 or 20 years, i'm a blue-collar kid, i watched what in the midwest in terms of manufacturing, but to me that is one of the biggest issues we're not taking into account the world has changed. we have to help our businesses be more successful. so what is your thoughts on that. >> congressman, i agree totally we have to compete in an increasingly global

and competitive world. i was in china a couple weeks ago and i made the very strong case that we need to be able to compete in a fair way, having our businesses have access to their markets and they also need to restructure their economic approach to increase demand in china and to shift some of the focus from really anti-competitive support of old industries to contributing to demand. it's good for the u.s. economy for demand to grow in china and europe. >> let me say i met with, they have a delegation there of chamber 4500 members. i had a chance to meet with many of them. we need to do more in terms of our government to help our businesses be more competitive there. so they need to open up their markets more. i agree with you there. >> i met with representatives of 20 u.s. businesses in china and asked them what we could be doing to be more helpful to them. you don't get everything you argue for but you do make progress when you engage on

these issues and we need to compete on a world market. >> let me just mention a couple other things. i could chair the committee for small business, pass-through entities and medium-sized businesses. two things of the how do you define, when you look at small businesses how do you he define that just quickly because i don't have a lot of time but i want to get your definition of what a small business is? >> there are a lot of different ways of drawing the line. sometimes it is by number of employees. sometimes it is by total gross amounts of sales. rather than get into where exactly to draw the line i think i would -- >> let me move on. i just want to say one thing, in terms of startup businesses i don't know what that number is, that is something we have to do everything we can to make sure we have got proper tax incentives or incentives to have people start up. i hear they're down 20 or 30% in terms of any kind of startup for entrepreneurs. that was one factor. they want more simplification of tax code. more certainty of the tax code.

then i want to ask you another question. that was just a general comment. one of the things we're talking about and the president mentioned, i thought i heard two different numbers, 25 and 28% in terms of corporate tax rate. as someone who is one of the cochairs heading up and dealing with businesses in terms of pass-through entities, i'm concerned we don't believe small businesses and medium-sized businesses behind. they're effectively at 43, 44%. how do we lower the rates to 25 or 28 ideally, eliminate some of the loopholes and not leave behind a lot of our folks that generate a lot of jobs in the america, that happen to be in that tax bracket? because i can tell you talking to a lot of friends, they would all become c corpse. what is happening, the evolution, my background we start out with c corps, then we went to s-corps and went to llcs. how do you deal with lowering the rates on c-corps without dealing with

small and medium-sized businesses which are mostly pass-through entities that compete in the same industries? >> i'm not sure i could answer that in 15 secondses. one reason we need to broaden and lower the rates on the business side not have a skewed sense of business decisions as though choose how to organize. we need reform form on the individual side and we look forward working on a bipartisan basis to working on that. >> i would have you just suggest the president, have him understand there is a lot of businesses that have 50 to 100 employees are paying at much higher bracket. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. smith is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you mr. secretary for your time here today. i guess perhaps building off of those comments from my colleague, i mean, i met with some bankers back home in my hometown, locally-owned banks. three bankers were present. two of them pay under sub chapter. is and one pays under c-corp

the tax code, yesterday there would be reform for one and not the others. i think roughly half of all private sector employment in the u.s. exist in pass-through entities that pay tax on the individual rate. could you expand on that, perhaps? >> obviously individuals and businesses choose how to organize based on the tax system and based on the comparison of individual pass-through kind of organization or under the corporate system. one of the reasons that so many firms have organized on, as pass-throughs is we have high statutory rates. a lot of deductions and credits on the business side are so targeted at large firmses that they're not really relevant to the startups that you're talking about. obviously this is a complicated set of issues and the relationship between them is very important. but, you know, we want to

work together on making the business tax code, make more sense. we want to work together on tax reform on the individual side as well, to make it simpler and, i mean the thing we have universal agreement on, it is just too complicated. we've done an awful lot in the administration to encourage small businesses and small business investment. i can't say it is simple. for a small business looking what we've done, it helps them but they need to go to accountants and lawyers to take advantage of it. we should get to a place where we have a simple tax code where people sitting down trying to do business can look how they can do their business and not have to have all the costs and time of the complicated compliance if we simplify the business tax code and lower the rate i think that will help a lot. >> okay. shifting gears a little bit to international tax and we know that u.s. companies, and it's a good thing that u.s. companies have done well marketing their products overseas. they have generated some profits and some cash and basically parked that

overseas because after punitive corporate tax code which i think corporate tax reform would help address. but i'm still september call without further changes we still would not be able to see u.s. companies invest that cash that they generated overseas back in the u.s. economy. would you disagree with that or would you make some proposals to suggest or to offer an incentive for u.s. companies to bring that cash back into our economy? >> we're finding more and more as companies look at the overall pluses and minuses of investing in the united states versus investing overseas they're deciding to invest in the united states because of our workforce, because of the ease of doing business in the united states and notwithstanding our political problems the greater stability in the united states versus most other places in the world. so i think we're making progress. in the budget we have proposals that would have incentives to create jobs in the united states in manufacturing. that would have disincentives for offshoring

jobs. as we lower the tax rate and differential and statutory rates between the united states and other countries is reduced that will help. i think that this is a challenging area. we've seen efforts in the past that were designed to bring money back. it doesn't really serve to encrease investment. they just cut taxes. i think our goal here is to grow the economy, grow employment and we look forward to are woulding together to getting that done. >> okay. thank you. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. donegan is recognized. >> thank you very much, mr. secretary. of the many americans out there getting their taxes to ready to file next week i doubt there are very many think they will be able to pay a mere nickel on the dollar but as you know and as your comments were just referring to there are many of america's largest corporations that continue to lobbying you, the administration, and this congress to let them pay a nickel on the dollar in taxes on a significant

portion of their earnings. i was pleased with your response just now and with president obama's comments here in the capitol on march 14th as to this so-called repatriation, we looked at the math and it just doesn't work and it will, as your comments suggested, never work in terms of creating jobs as it failed in 2004, though it may help to pad executive pay and corporate tax, corporate share buyback programs, that type of thing. i'm also pleased to see that you continue to include in your budget, rejecting that idea for your budget, the repatriation notion but you have included in your budget a number of measures that address unjustified international corporate tax avoidance. i believe you have incorporated earnings stripping provisions about companies that have earnings here in the united states but they strip them to it caymans or some other

non-taxed jurisdiction. you have pointed to the problem of corporations that develop patents and intellectual property here but then it is owned and sign abroad with payments having to come for some of the very intellectual property that was developed here in america. you have referenced the problems of corporations reducing their income because of the way they allocate interest expense on income they don't actually take right now. on those three and other items in your budget, do you continue to find a number of areas of unjustified corporate tax avoidance on the international level? >> congressman, we do try to close down the areas of tax avoidance that we see. we put some of them in our budget. we look forward to working with the congress on a bipartisan basis to do more. you know, the there shouldn't be an incentive to move u.s. jobs overseas.

>> as you know, one of the, the problems in that regard is that overa three-year period, 30 fortune 500 companies devoted more of their moneys to lobbying this congress than they did in paying taxes to the treasury. some have a negative tax rate. many of our largest corporations are paying effective tax rates that are single-digit. you are aware, and i believe the treasury's involved in the comments recently of the top finance ministers in germany, in france, and in the united king many do calling for cooperation among the g20 countries to deal with this problem of corporate tax avoidance. we want to be competitive. we want every american company but not just be competitive in terms of corporate tax avoidance. where we seem to be the world's leader at the moment. i have several pieces of legislation that attempt to implement some of these

budget provisions than to go a bit further than what i review as rather modest revisions. the concern i have, mr. secretary, is that while i think some adjustment in the statutory rate is appropriate to reduce it, that you devote every cent of that reform to, right back to the corporations. we know that the history of this very year, is that in the fiscal cliff negotiations, and the law that was finally approved, corporate america didn't contribute a dime, in fact some corporations got major tax cuts out of the fiscal cliff negotiations. isn't it reasonable to expect corporate america having paid such low effective rates to contribute a little to closing the budget gap and to the cost of our national security? >> congressman, our budget and our policy very much states that we think there ought to be more fair distribution much tax burden, raising the top rates was a part of that.

having individual tax reform that raises revenue by limiting the value of deductions for high-income individuals as part of it. i think when you look at the difference between business and corporate tax reform, the beneficiaries of great corporate income and wealth are the same people who are in the very highest tax brackets. we have elected to try and do business tax reform in a way that will really enhance investment in the united states and job creation and we've done the revenue-raising on the individual side. i'm not sure that there are different people who are paying the taxes in the end because corporations pay out, you know, to their shareholders and they tend to be going mostly to people in those top brac debts -- brackets. >> thank you. i know we have a few more minutes. i will try to get to as many people as possible. tomorrow with secretary sebelius we will start off where we left off today. we'll start with those

members to get a questions starting tomorrow. >> i like to bring up the issue of the estate tax. you know the current rate is 35% on all estates over $5 million. this is the result of the agreed to legislation, fiscal cliff deal. many of us in this chamber, myself included who voted for that fiscal cliff deal did not not because it was perfect but for the sake of consistency, but for the sake of allowing small businesses and farmers to put that issue to rest and focus on growing the economy and growing their business. why did the administration choose to revisit this issue, in my view, go back on what we agreed to just months ago and only add to the uncertainty of america's small businesses at a time when quite frankly we need them focused on growing their businesses and not worry about losing what they have got and rules changing once again? >> congressman, i appreciate the question and, we obviously did change estate

taxes in january. it was a difficult negotiation. it was one in which we made clear we thought that the estate tax provisions were too generous. we agreed to them and we have, we're sensitive to this question of, kind of speed at which change is made. i don't think we ever had tax poll made for all-time. in area of the staes tax where it was heavily debated. we thought after five years it was time to revisit. it is says in five years when we revisit number of other issues we should revisit estate tax. we don't propose a massive increase in estate tax. we go back to rates in place in the 1990s. it is an area where i know there is disagreement on both sides of the aisle, within each side of the aisle. we look forward to working with you. we very much agree that we node to handle our tax discussions in a long-term

way, it create certainty. i think of all the planning horizons, the estate tax does not affect investment decisions the same way other provisions in the tax code does. we don't -- >> may i ask, wouldn't you agree a business's decision what they invest or don't invest is tied precisely what their presumed liability might be if and when they have to pay an estate tax? >> i think most business decisions are based on what the value of that decision is to the business, the goal is to grow the business and grow the income of the business. and i don't think it is disincentive to grow your business that sometime in the future at the point when there's a passing that the estate tax may be different. i think that is different from things like current tax rates, deductions, credits in the time of the investment. >> thank you. this other question about this retirement income. i'm particularly interested in this because i thought i was doing the right thing at the age of 14. i opened my ira and put in what was then the maximum of

$2,000. this body then passed the roth ira in which i've been putting maximum of $5,000. if i'm lucky enough to earn the same rate of return as my counter parts who at the time were working for states and federal governments and received those acutarial returns of 7 to 8%, in 30 years i should have and in excess of $3 million to retire from. why is the administration so opposed to americans like me who want to save with our own money for our own retirement from doing so? >> congressman, i think you may be the one person who beats me in starting earlier with ira's. i was 17 or 18 when i started. i applaud people starting early. we're not discouraging people. we're on the contrary to start and stay in the pattern of saving for their retirement. the question of what the kind of maximum amount is, comes down to the hard choices we have to make in a tax code, in a budget where there are hard choices. at a time when most

americans look forward to retiring with well under $100,000 of retirement savings, $3 million is quite a high a target. this was an attempt, to make balancing the decisions. you still can save for retirement without getting the extra tax break. i think people who have scene seen the value of compounding on their savings will continue to do so. >> doesn't this put private sector employees at competitive disadvantage from public sector employees? >> i'm not sure how you mean that? >> you say i continue to save as private sector employee with my own dollars. i will have to pay taxes on in essence or annuity or the nest egg over 3 million. if i'm a public sector employee for the state of illinois, that same employee, public school teacher or public firefighter who in 30 years whose income may be in excess of $200,000 when they retire, in essence their annuity will be in far excess of three million and will be able to accrued that

annuity tax defered rates. >> comparisons between savings plans and pension plans are very hard to make. obviously the pension plan doesn't have kind of survivorship rights a plan like an ira or a 401(k) would have. i would actually have to look at that in more detail to make the comparison. i can't off the top of my head. >> time expired. miss jenkins you're recognized. >> i thank the chairman for yielding and holding this hearing and we thank the secretary for being here. the president continues to embrace a worldwide system of taxing income which potentially subjects overseas income to double taxation and this he despite the recommendations of his jobs council, his export council and simpson-bowles to adopt a territorial system. we are the last major does he'llized country with a

worldwide system having the world's highest corporate tax rate and only major industrialized country with a worldwide tax system. it hurts our competitiveness. i know many details remain but are you willing to consider a shift towards a territorial system? >> congresswoman, i actually think the choice is not so stark as one or the other. our system is a bit of a hybrid already. and our proposal for a global minimum makes it more of a hybrid. we would welcome the conversation how to set the dial in the right place so it has the right incentives without losing revenue that we can't afford to lose. i think that there's a solution in the middle here that, that if we work together in a bipartisan basis we can find. >> okay. we'll look forward to that. then i wanted to follow up on a question from my colleague, representative richert, when he asked if your budget ever balanced. and you said yes in an out

year. what year does the budget balance? >> i believe in our out years it is in the 2050s. quite a while away. it is not, it is not in the 10-year window and we think that the attempts to reach balance in this 10-year window force the kinds of choices that we think are not right for the economy. they wouldn't grow jobs. it would be unfair to retirees and medicare and other places who would lose their ability to count on medicare as a guaranteed benefit. these are hard choices. we need to get us to a place where our debt is sustainable, where we meet the internationally accepted standards of what it is an economy can have as far as deficit and debt as percentage of gdp and we need to keep working together. in the 1980s and 1990s we didn't reach balance in one shot. took year after year. >> is it safe to say under the president's budget in our lifetime, we will never stop spending more money

than we take in? >> i am not going to sit here estimate either of our lifetimes. >> you would be 100 years old and i would be pushing that. so is that safe to say? i don't intend to live to be 100. >> i think the question is not, is not, i think, when we hit balance. it is when do we have our budget in a place where it is affordable, where we can pay our bills and -- >> that is not in our lifetime? >> no, no i think it is. >> why wouldn't the budget reflect that then? >> no, i guess what i'm disagreeing on defining reaching balance in short-term window. >> define it not taking not spending more money than you take in any one year. that according to the president's budget is 2055. what date do you think it would be before we pay off the debt that we owe? >> when i left the white house -- >> wait, is there a date

that you could give me? >> i would have to look it up. >> so we don't know? >> worry on path paying down debt. >> is that the way small businesses in my business do business this way, rack up debt and have no clue when to pay it off? >>. gos are different from businesses. governments are able to pay their debt if they maintain a growing economy and able to keep current with that. >> how can -- >> i'm only person in this room that balance ad federal budget. i believed in balanced budget. i didn't believe in the policies in 2001 and 2003 and 2008 that created deficit. >> do you have children. >> i have two children. grandchildren as well. >> how do you explain to them that you're not willing to pay for the things we're enjoying today you're just going it send them the bill. >> i am proud i spent 40 years of my life trying to get our fiscal house in order. i balanced federal budget and ran a surplus three times. >> you about you're not willing to balance the budget in your lifetime? >> i think we had inherited a situation with a deep

deficit and a economy that was had no bottom. it was in freefall. we've stopped that. we're growing. we're making progress. we have to be honest with the american people. it will take a long time before we can actually reach the goal of a balanced budget again because we started so far behind. we're -- >> we started in the same place and we were able to budget, balancing in 10 years. >> i would be happy to have debate on policies it takes to get there. i don't think the american people will accept the policies because they're not good for the country? >> i think they show huge growth in the economy, a better gdp growth rate and a higher employment rate than the president's proposing. we'll look forward to that. >> time has expired. mr. larsen is recognized. >> thank you, very much, chairman camp. thank you for this hearing. thank you for the way you conducted the business on this committee and with mr. levin as well. and what an honor to have jack lew here. i think the previous questioner just asked to

spark this question. i believe it was under your leadership as well that the entire federal debt would have been paid off by 2009. i think that was in your lifetime. is that not correct. >> yes. >> i don't remember the exact year but it was very much in my lifetime. so the policies of course that led to us going into a situation where we have wars never before in our history that weren't paid for, tax cuts, that weren't paid for, and medicare portion unpaid for, and then, a serious financial crisis that led to an enormous recession, have caused us to be in this situation? is that a fair assessment? >> congressman, it is a fair assessment. i think as you know when i

left omb in january 2001 we projected a surplus of $5.5 trillion over the next 10 years. they were series of decisions that were made that caused that surplus to go away. we then hit a terrible recession and our fiscal cannon instead of being loaded was emptied out of the so we got to the position we're in because of combination of policy decisions and economic conditions and we need to work together to get back on a path to a sustainable deficit and keep working because ultimately we should do more. >> we all want to see us deal with the deficit and we all want to see that happen in as timely a way as we can without placing the burden on the backs of beneficiaries of our system. now, one side we hear this all the time that we have a group of people that, would like to shrink up government so small they could drown it in a bathtub. the people that they're drowning of course are the recipients of social security, and medicare, veterans and the disabled. people that we would like to

help especially in these very difficult times. especially people who served their country with honor. it would seem to me, that the administration's application of its budget, it takes that into consideration. and especially takes that into consideration with the care and need to make sure that we're not going into an austere climate that would balance this on the backs of everyone on, on the backs of beneficiaries. that is why i want to ask you this question. . .

>> and the other side seems to say, yeah, we'll take that, but we don't want to take any of the balance that has to go along with that. if that kind of attitude prevails, what will the president do? >> congressman, i think the president has been very clear. he put some very tough things in this budget consistent with the offer he made to the speaker in december because he very much believes it would be the right thing to have a sensible, balanced agreement that has both sides doing difficult things. he's not prepared to do something like chained cpi outside of the context of a balanced approach. and i think that we're so close in terms of what the positions the president's articulated and what we've heard over the last two years of what you need to reach an agreement in that sensible center that i'm still going to be an optimist, and i'm going to push forward, as the

president will, to try to get this done. but i don't want there to be any misunderstanding, and that's why i said in my opening statement, it's not a starting point. we've been at this for over two years, and it would be mistake to treat it as if you can take one piece out of it. >> one last thing i would adjust as a comment, no need to respond. social security and medicare specifically are are not entitlements. this is insurance that people pay for. you just go to your paycheck, everybody in america, and check that out. it's insurance that you pay for. tell us you need to make an adjustment, tell us -- >> we're going to leave the last few minutes of this hearing. you can find it online at the c-span video library. take you live now to the national press club in washington, d.c. for a conversation with the president of iceland on protecting natural resources in the arctic. >> icelandic olafur ragnarson,

says we live in an ice-dependent world. the leader of a country with ice in its name would like the world to take notice of the glaciers s and sea ice that dominate his neighborhood. but president grimmson's message is no cry for attention for his small island nation. instead, he was elected to a record fifth term as iceland's president and has a global worry that the north pole's shrinking icecap is wreaking havoc on the world's weather systems, ecology and economies. the disappearance of the arctic sea ice is threatening life as we have known it, president grimmson told french students and scientists at a paris university lecture in february. iceland is a member of the arctic council which is ought nations that includes the u.s., canada, norway, finland, russia, canada and sweden that all have territory in the arctic.

the council has reached environmental treaties, but deep concerns remain about sovereignty, resources such as oil, gas and fisheries, shipping routes and now climate change. as interest in the polar reaches -- resources have grown, other nations have asked for a stake in the arctic including france, singapore and china. last summer chinese scientists traveled to the north pole to research whether polar melting had caused extreme weather in china. today iceland became the first european country to sign a free trade agreement with china. president grimmson, long an advocate of geothermal energy and sustainable management of natural resources, says the time has come to settle the resource claims in the arctic and take steps to address the environmental degradation of the polar icecap. the issues are, well, polarizing. [laughter] but president grimmson hasn't shied away from controversy and tough policies.

president grimmson wars elected to the country's legislature in 1978. he has won the presidency five times and was twice unopposed. he directed innovative radio and television programs from 1966 to 1971. he has edited a newspaper and served as iceland's finance minister. in 2008 he presided over iceland's near economic collapse. the country's unique response, which included social and political reforms and allowing the country's banks to fail, pulled iceland back from the brink without the austerity measures demanded by other european leaders. perhaps most challenging of all, he has raised twin girls. [laughter] please, help me give a warm national press club welcome back to president grimmson. [applause] >> well, thank you, thank you

very much for these words of welcome, and thank you for hosting us at the national press club here today for a very special occasion where i have the privilege later on in my introduction to announce the establishment of a new venue aimed at enhancing the dialogue and the cooperation on arctic issues. i know sometimes here in washington the arctic looks as if it is far away. perhaps in the minds of many still the hidden part of the world as it was. in the beginning of the 20th century. where our knowledge of that neighborhood to our countries was still very limited. and it, in fact, remains so into the first decades of the 20th

century. the cold war brought, however, this territory into the military concerns of not only nato and the warsaw pact, but also every country in the arctic was subjected to a military buildup in our part of the world. but with the end of the cold war, we saw an enormous transformation in the arctic. it suddenly turned from being a highly militarized, confrontational part of the globe into a very successful demonstration of positive and constructive cooperation. and during the clinton/gore administration, the eight arctic countries decided to make it our arctic, so to speak. global territory where the eight countries with geographical position came together in the arctic council. it's in the beginning limited --

[inaudible] but in recent years started to agree on treaties and further steps in cooperation. but now in the second decade of the 21st century we have suddenly seen that what we thought was our arctic becoming the global arctic. with countries in far away places wanting to have a seat at the arctic table. last year, for example, to indicate this interest in every meeting i had with leaders of asia whether it was the prime minister of china, the prime minister of south korea, the leadership of singapore and now, last week, also with the prime minister and the foreign minister of india, in every one of these meetings the first item they wanted to discuss was not if, but when they would acquire a seat on the arctic council.

and that should serve as a wake-up call for us, the eight countries. i don't know what can serve that purpose. but we might ask ourselves why is it that countries in asia, qloabl -- global players in the 21st century economy, have suddenly acquired this enormous effort in what we thought 10 or 15 years ago was exclusively our arctic. there are, of course, many reasons. one is that with the melting of the arctic sea ice we will see in the near future, and i emphasize the near future, opening up of new shipping routes linking a asia to america and europe in the same way as the suez canal did in its time. one of the reasons why the

leadership of china has such a strong interest in the arctic is that they are already planning for a world where china will be the preeminent trading country in the world. and if they send their cargo ships through the northern routes to europe and asia, the distance will be shortened by more than 40%. china is already building ships for this purpose. they are already formulating plans indicating the number of cargo vessels that will in this decade save through this route. singapore has already got an arctic ambassador with the primary mission of finding a location for a big singapore harbor somewhere in the arctic region m -- region. so like the suez canal indicated trading transformation of the 20th century, the opening up of

the northern sea routes will indicate a fundamental transformation of the global trading system in the 21st century. the second reason, of course, is the melting of the arctic sea ice through its impact on the global weather systems. one of the reasons why the chinese polar institute sent the ice breaker snow turtle from shanghai to iceland last summer -- the first time in history a chinese vessel goes from shanghai to an arctic country through the northern route -- was that they discovered in the summer of 2007 and the following winter that the melting of the arctic sea ice had tremendous implications for the extreme weather events that occurred in china the following winter. and as a result of the expedition last summer, the chinese authorities could prepare for what happened in january and february of this year.

where china experienced in many of its regions destructions of the infrastructure of towns and communities and of the economic operations perhaps greater than storm sandy caused here in the united states a few months before. storm sandy, by the way, also being partly caused by the melting of the arctic sea ice. and if you'll remember, this rather symbolic picture of governor christie of new jersey and president obama embracing a few days before the presidential election, a political event which was thought impossible by almost every commentator within the u.s. political system. [laughter] it was the melting of the arctic sea ice that actually brought them -- [laughter] that actually brought them together. [applause] indicating the implication for the american political system. but the third reason is, of

course, the enormous resources in the arctic. it has been estimated that about a quarter of the untapped energy resources can be found within the arctic in addition to various metals, minerals and other important items for 21st century economies. one of the reasons why the prime minister of south korea visited greenland last year with a big communication on why you have a long list of global corporations wanting to engage in formal agreements with the new self-government in greenland. so for all these reasons and many others, the arctic has become the crucial political, strategic and economic theater of the 21st, of the 21st century. but we should also be respectful

and remember that within the arctic there are people who have lived there for thousands of years, people who have made the arctic the neighborhood of the ice their homes and their livelihood. and our states, whether it is the republic of iceland or the united states of america or the federation of russia, are relatively recent arrivals in their arctic neighborhood. so the interrelationship between what happens to the people and the disappearance of the ice and the development of the arctic will also be a fundamentally political and even judicial concern. what are the legal rights of the people who have lived there for thousands of years compared to the claims made by states and corporations? but there are also similarities between what's happening in the arctic regions and what is

taking place in him lay yas. himalayas where you also have two big countries like china and india, like russia and the united states in the arctic, and a number of smaller countries as well. and we are increasingly seeing the development of the arctic cooperation being seen as a model for the countries in him lay yas. the message being that what happens in our arctic neighborhoods is not just of consequence for us in the arctic or the countries that want to be with us in the utilization of the arctic, but can also serve as a model for the part of the world where almost two billion people depend on the water systems and the effect of the melting of the glaciers of their economies and their livelihood. in that respect, what happens in the arctic has also global consequences beyond our own cooperation. when i first started speaking about this in the first years of

my presidency, arctic issues were still very, very peripheral in the theater of political dialogue and international conferences. i was sometimes asked why are you spending your time talking about these issues, but somehow i realized that within the near future my country and others would have to deal with this in a significant way. so in recent years we have seen a number of gatherings coming together on arctic issues, expert think tanks and others. but there is a need especially in the light of the importance of the issues that i have outlined here today to enhance this dialogue. and to bring more people more effectively and more productively together to discuss and deliberate and decide on the future of the arctic. a kind of open invitation where everybody not just within the

arctic countries, but also in other parts of the world can come together. and that's why allison scott and i and a few others started thinking about it last year how we could do this. and in cooperation with a number of arctic leaders in other countries, we have decided to announce here today at the national press club in washington that we are forming what we have decided to call the arctic circle. with this venue somewhat a play at work because it indicates both a geographic allocation as well as the democratic tradition of everybody coming together around the table in the same way. where there is no distinct or protocol of who is important and who is not important, but everybody who can contribute and wants to contribute to the arctic dialogue is welcomed. the essence of this initiative is not to create yet another

organization in order to replace others. on the contrary, the essence of the arctic circle is that it will be a kind of open tent or a public square where different organizations, institutes, governments, think tanks, universities, public associations, nongovernmental organizations can come together in their own name with their own agenda and through their own decision making. but making use of the great number of people who come there in order to deliberate. it will be, hopefully, the preeminent event every year where all those major players that have an interest and involvement in the arctic can come together for dialogue and discussion and where, also, the countries in far away places like china, india, south korea, singapore can come and present their case. why are they so interested in

the arctic? what is the chinese agenda in the arctic? why does india want to have a seat at the arctic council? and also the big, the big corporations in the world whether they are the oil companies or the mining companies and the others come to present the case. but also a place where the representatives of the indigenous people, those who live in the villages and the small towns all over the arctic, can also be a part of the dialogue. the arctic council will, therefore, hope to facilitate a new type of dialogue within the arctic. and why are we announcing this in washington? not only due to the great tradition of the national press club, but because within a few weeks the presidency of the arctic council will move to north america where canada will

take over from rush that and those -- russia and those of us in the nordic countries that have in the previous ten years or so been responsible for the presidency of the arctic council. this will be the first time since this cooperative organization came of age that the two north american countries, canada and the united states, will become responsible for its leadership. and after two years of the canadian presidency, the united states, the obama administration, will take over the chairmanship of the arctic council. and that will be, my dear friends, a testing time for the united states if terms -- in terms of the scientific community, the political community, the engagement of the business corporations, the think tanks and the others. because it will be a testing time indicating how does the united states see the future of the arctic. what is the direction it wants

to give not only to the other arctic countries, but also to india, china, many be of the european countries and others that also want to be a part of the arctic, of the arctic future. that is why in addition to the great tradition of this institution, we were both honored and pleased to use this venue, the national press club in washington, to announce the establishment of the arctic circle. we all live, as was mentioned in the introduction, in an ice-dependent world. we perhaps don't realize every day how dependent we are on the ice. but it is melting and melting fast. that's why the chinese are already preparing their shipyards for the new shields. that's why singapore has got a

special division in its foreign ministry looking for a harbor. i come from a country where we don't have to go to international conferences to realize that the glaciers are melting. and they're melting fast. and our neighbors in greenland see now every year the big lakes and the rivers that are created on the greenland ice sheet. and there are villages in the northern part of russia, in alaska as well as in greenland that now face survival tests because of their rising sea levels and the melting of the ice. greenland is the america's backyard. half the size of europe. mostly covered with ice. if about half of it melts in the coming decades together with a small part of antarctica, we could see a sea level rise of

2-3 meters. storm sandy indicated in this country what could be the consequences of the combination of extreme weather patterns as well as rising sea levels. so if it was only for the security of our cities whether they are in florida or on the west coast or even if they are in china or bangladesh or india, it's absolutely clear that no threat apart from a major military catastrophe of a nuclear kind will be as disastrous for the future of ourties and our nations all over the -- our cities and our nations all over the world on every continent as the melting of the ice on the arctic -- and the arctic is the primary area where this is taking place. so with that message as well as the need to enhance our dialogue and cooperation on this newark

tick future -- new arctic future, i'll be ready to enter the dialogue which nations in faraway places are already engaged in on the future of our own backyard and our own territory. it is necessary to try to find new ways to enhance the dialogue and the cooperation on the arctic. and those of us together with distinguished political leaders from other parts of the world who will come together to announce and launch the arctic circle hope that through this effort we can bring many more people to this table in a constructive and cooperative way. because it's not just our arctic, it is the global arctic. and what happens there will have fundamental consequences for every nation in the world. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you. can you clarify please, how exactly the arctic circle will differ from the arctic council? what will be the roles of the two groups and membership comparisons? >> the arctic council is a formal governmental organization of the eight arctic countries; united states, russia, canada and the five nordic countries. it is an intergovernmental organization where you have you have to be a diplomatic representative to be able to speak. it has a few observer states including france. but as my good friend, the former prime minister of france said in paris of this meeting you referred to in your introduction because he hasn't been in the seat of permanent observer of prance to the arctic

council meeting, but he has not yet been allowed to say anything in that meeting. laugh -- [laughter] and in paris a few weeks ago he said in this public forum france is not accustomed not to be allowed to speak. [laughter] at international meetings. at the arctic circle, everybody will be allowed to speak. everybody will be able to come there whether they are concerned citizens, whether they are nongovernmental organizations, whether they are scientists and researchers representing universities or think tanks together with government alleyeders and -- governmental leaders and corporations who either simply want to be there to be a part of the dialogue or to hear what people are saying or because they have a special message and a special agenda. and while it might take a while for the arctic council to decide on which countries be given the

status of permanent service and what will be the role of permanent service within the ark tuck council, these -- arctic council, these countries are already send their representatives or spokesperson or sign difficults or others to a meeting of the arctic circle to demonstrate their case and be a part of the dialogue. in that sense, it's an open, democratic tent where everybody who wants to participate will actually be welcomed. >> from where will the group's funding come? >> well, first of all, many of those who will come to the arctic circle will come through their own funding. they will host their own meetings, their own sessions sed be responsible for the agendas of those sessions and for those meetings. but we will seek a collection of support from foundations and from others who have an interest in the arctic. it will not be a particularly big budget compare today many

ornishtives because it hopes to be a be sill tater. -- facilitator. it hopes not to be a part of a big organized effort that requires great financial needs. for example, we know from a meeting this morning that google is interested in being present. there are those responsible for polar law discussion that have decided to be there. the northern research forum has already agreed to organize the meetings and sessions within the arctic circle. but we hope to collect a body of foundations and other sponsors that will provide the necessary seed money, and we have got very positive response from those supporters, and that will be announced in due course. but those will be small on the scale that you're used to here in the united states in terms of such funding requirements. [laughter] >> you, you addressed the

relationship between iceland and other arctic countries and china. how would you, in your own words, describe iceland's relationship with china? you also talked about what china may want from you. what do you want in return from china? >> the relationship between china and iceland is in many ways an interesting example of how china is gradually playing, in my opinion, a constructive role in the world. i have often said as i indicated to you in my speech that due to the relationship between the melting of the arctic sea ice, between the melting of the ice in my neighborhood of the world and the extreme weather events in china, china has a legitimate reason to study and do research on the arctic sea ice. so at the meeting that was, that

took place earlier today in china where we were the first country to sign a free trade agreement with china, the first european country to sign a free trade agreement with china, it was also announced in a meeting between our prime minister and the prime minister of china that we will continue our dialogue and cooperation on the arcticment -- arctic. the other major reason why china is interested in cooperation with iceland is our clean energy transformation. iceland, as some of you might know, was in the early decades of my life dependent on imported oil and coal like most countries. now for a number of decades, 100% of our electricity production and space heating has been from clean energy resources, and the geothermal resources are increasingly taking a bigger part of our energy system. so now we are engaged in -- and one of those agreements was also signed this morning in china between the icelandic venture in

this corporation and synopec in building such urban geothermal heating system in chinese cities so they can gradually close down the coal-driven heating system in china and replace them with geothermal transformation. and in addition, we have also had academic relationships and -- [inaudible] relationship, and on the whole i have found our dialogue and meeting with the chinese leadership throughout my presidency to be very constructive and positive. >> given the environmental record of china, are you concerned that the agreement might open the door to an exploitation of icelandic resources by the chinese? >> no, i am not afraid of that. we are a pretty independent lot in iceland. [laughter] i think we can be trusted to govern our own resources.

the it's one of the main stumble blocks in our negotiations with the european union, our desire to control our own ocean resources. ing and, quite frankly, i have to admit in the many meetings i've had with every chinese lead leader to the present, i have never, ever found any indication of their desire to get control over the icelandic resources. so i am not afraid of that, that this will happen. and in addition we fought for our independence for over 100 years. the republic was founded in 1944. we had to fight three cold wars, so-called, with the british to get control over our own fishing grounds, so we are not going to surrender these right toss the chinese. i mean, don't worry about that. la laugh --

[laughter] >> we have several questions about members of the arctic council. is iceland willing to take new permanent participants? what do you think about applications for permanent observer status, and what about china's efforts as, to be either a permanent participant or permanent observer? >> well, first of all, let us realize that china is not the only asian country wanting to be a permanent observer in the arctic council. india has also applied, south korea has also applied, and singapore has also applied. in addition, a number of european countries have also applied. there is a relatively long list of countries that want to have a seat at the arctic council as permanent observers. but we still have to decide within the arctic council how we move forward in this respect. and one of the reasons why we perhaps hesitate a bit is that

the arctic council has turned out to be in the last ten years an extraordinary successful instrument for cooperation. let's not forget that 25 years ago the nuclear confrontation between the united states and the soviet union was so overwhelming with reagan and gorbachev had to meet in my country in order to find a place where they could actually talk. [laughter] and most of us have throughout our political life been influenced by this cold war threat. and i've sometimes said to my american and russian friends it would be interesting to add up how much expenditure both countries put into military buildup in the arctic from the 1950s until the 1990s. so within a relatively short time, we have transformed the

area which was among the most militarized regions of the world into one of the most successful, constructive examples of cooperation in the 21st century. and one of the reasons this has happened that council has been sufficiently small to develop its own culture of cooperation. and it has helped that the five nordic countries that have cooperate canned among ourselves -- cooperated among ourselves for over 50 years were a big part of the eight. so within the arctic council there has developed this constructive culture of cooperation. and if you enlarged it to what more traditional international gathering, there is a surgeon risk that that -- there is a certain risk that that positive spirit and culture might not prevail. and then, of course, there have to be some ground rules in what are the roles of the permanent observers, and as my good friend

indicated -- he has not been allowed to say anything so far, and he's not happy about it. [laughter] and this needs some deliberation and also because the list of countries wanting to apply keeps on getting longer. india decides last year to apply, and now we have a situation which is kind of paradoxical that whereas india and china do not cooperate on the glaciers in the himalayas, they want to cooperate on the glaciers in my part of the world. [laughter] which, of course, might be welcomed and necessary, but it's somewhat paradoxical. but we are positive towards these applications, but we want to do it in a constructive way. >> now, in your speech you cited as evidence of global warming the unusual photograph of president obama and governor christie right before the election.

however, here in the united states there is still a large contingent of climate change doubters. what do can you say to that part of the u.s. to persuade them that climate change is real? >> well, my simple advice would be to take a look at the picture of obama and governor christie. [laughter] because according to the ground rules of u.s. presidential campaigns, such an embrace three days before election day was an absolute taboo. and talk to the people in new york and new jersey that had their homes destroyed and their communities destroyed due to the extreme weather events. look up on the web sites the reports on china in january and february.

one example just to give you a visual image is the melting of the arctic sea ice in my part of the world had the consequence that 180,000 cattle froze to death out in the field in china. so whether we call it climate change or not, i mean, that is a political concept which i know has positive or negative connotations. but the ice melting is a reality. and the consequences of the ice melting in my part of the world is extreme weathers in the united states and in china. this is the overwhelming scientific evidence to include, to prove that not just from the chinese strew, -- industries, bt also your research and institutes in the united states. so we can work on some debate about climate change as such, but it's a scientifically-proven

relationship that the melting of the arctic sea ice has severe consequences within a few months. not ten or twenty years in the future, but within a few months on the weather patterns in other parts of the world. and, therefore, that should be, in my opinion, a sufficient reason to have a serious debate on it. i don't care what's the trademark whether we call it climate change or the melting of the arctic sea ice or extreme weather patterns. it is a reality which we have to deal with, a reality that many of the insurance companies that are no longer willing to take insurance policies for private homes in florida have concluded is a serious reality. when the insurance companies stop being willing to insure your homes, i think that is from the business world sufficient indication that at least they

think that this issue of the melting of the ice and the extreme weather is a fundamental, is a fundamental business reality. >> this questioner says iceland is currently in the midst of a macro war because climate change has driven fish populations northward. if iceland cares so much about climate change, why has the government chose to increase its mackerel quotas? >> well, one of the advantages of having to fight for elections in iceland is you have to know manager about fish. [laughter] something about fish. nobody gets elected in my country without knowing something about fish. [laughter] and it's true, the mackerel was not something that we used to talk about. it was definitely not something that we used to eat. [laughter] it was more of a kind of a

mediterranean or south atlantic type of fish. but like i said before, the ice is melting, and can you might debate -- and you might debate here whether the political establishment of different countries is willing to recognize that change on the warming of the oceans. simply ask the mackerel. the mackerel has decided that the oceans are warming. and that is why it has moved up in the north atlantic. into our fishing grounds. into the fishing grounds of the islands. this is an example of what is happening to the global oceans and how the species like the mackerel is indicating that fundamental change is taking place. so whereas no icelandic fishing company ten years ago or so put any effort into fishing mackerel, now we have this wealth of resource coming in to

our territorial waters and actually feeds within our territorial water. but some of the european union countries still want to operate the fishing regime on the basis that the mackerel has not decided the oceans are getting warmer. they want to maintain the same quotas as they had when the mackerel was closer to their own waters. but we have said let us have science as a bay is the of these fishing policies. that is fundamentally the icelandic viewpoint. we have built up a productive fishing sector in the last 30 years, primarily by scientifically-led decisions every year on the allowable quota from each species. and we have said to our partners who are involved in the mackerel dispute we should do extensive research on the movement of the stock and the nature and how it plays out so we can make sure that we treat this in a responsible way, in the same way as we have done with other species whether it's the cod or

the haddock or some of the other species. but the mackerel dispute is one to have the early warnings -- one of the early warnings that the fisheries in the northern oceans in the arctic are changing fundamentally due to the warming of the climate. >> we do, indeed, have a lot of questions on fish. this next one is on a mammal that's from a 9-year-old in our audience who says that she was in iceland recently and noticed on a last of restaurant menus that they were serving whales. she asked, is there a plan to stop hunting whales? >> well, we actually stopped hunting whales. it was when i was a member of parliament, it was one of the most heated issues in our parliament. but one thing i've done in recent years is a very limited, also scientifically-based whaling which is primary arely to allow us to -- primarily to

allow us to estimate in a more rigorous way what is actually the state of the whaling stock. but traditionally in iceland, like in alaska and parts of the united states and definitely greenland and canada, the whaling is part of the traditional natural culture. and i, i'm not sure where i'm correct in this, but i think the number of whales that the government of the united states allows to be hunted on the basis of indigenous whaling is, in fact, bigger than we actually do in iceland. it's mostly the tourists who eat the whale meat that we offer in iceland. [laughter] and it's not on a big scale. it's kind of like curiosity which does not require sort of big whaling. so i don't think it will be, is a threat to the stock. i respect the feelings that many

people have towards the whales, but they also are part of a marine environment and have been a part of that since iceland was settled. >> taking a step back and looking more broadly at the two things we've been talking about, climate change and fishing, has global environmental change been a net benefit to iceland's fisheries or a net detriment? >> well, it's very difficult to answer that question. that's, indeed, one of the big issues if we rook ahead a number -- if we look ahead a number of decades. because cod has traditionally been over the centuries the key part of the export or-driven icelandic fishing sector. of course, some other fish species as well. but some people are arguing that due to the warming of the north atlantic there could be changes in the movement of the cod stocks. so one of the reasons why there

is a need for more active arctic cooperation is, in fact, to study what's happening to the fisheries and the fish stocks in the northern oceans of the world including the arctic as the ice melts. and i found it interesting when i invited the french prime minister a few years ago, and he is, as you might know, the special envoy of the president of france on arctic and polar issues. his argument was that the first disputes that would alert nations to a new situation in the arctic would be disputes over fisheries, that the melting of the arctic sea ice and the transformation in the northern oceans would challenge the traditional partners of fisheries, but also bring nations from faraway parts of the world, nations that do fish all over the world up to the arctic in a way that we have never seen before.

so we might see fishing fleets not just from the arctic countries, but from dominant asian fishes nations also coming up to the arctic because of the melting of the sea ice. that is why the fisheries in the arctic is among the issues that we have put on the agenda for the arctic circle meeting. in reykjavik next october. i think i forgot to announce in my speech that the dates in the middle of october, the location in the capital of by country, and you can -- of my country, and you can also go on arcticcircle.org to see be of the issues that will be discussed during this meeting. >> looking to russia, the questioner says russia recently adopted a new strategy for the arctic region. does russia's strategy correspond with your own views on development in the region and of the arctic council?

>> on the whole, i think russia has been very constructive within the arctic council. in fact, the agreement on search and rescue which was signed, and i think hillary clinton was among those who signed that agreement when she was secretary of state, the negotiations were partly led by the russian representatives within the arctic council. similarly, the new agreement on oil spills, they have the u.s. and russian experts worked together in negotiations on that issue. president putin has taken a very active interest in the arctic. the russian geographical society which is very old and distinguished, established in the middle of the 19th century, has hosted two conferences on the arctic in recent years. the first one in moscow, and the second one in --

[inaudible] on both occasions, first as prime minister because that is what was his post, now-president putin came to these conferences and gave very informed and detailed speeches on the russian policy towards the arctic. and if i may say so, in the capital of this country, i think it would similarly be very interesting if president obama came to arctic conferences and gave a policy speech on the emphasis that the united states and the arctic council would evolve from 2015 to 2017. because the chairmanship of the arctic council will be, in my opinion, the primary chairmanship responsibility that the u.s. will hold in international institutions in the second half of the obama second term. and in those speeches president

putin has offered many constructive ideas including how to plan both in terms of infrastructure and regulation for the opening of the north ian sea route -- northeastern sea route along the russian coast. but one of the reasons why the chinese authorities are planning to go straight across the northern pole instead of along the russian coast is that then they can more or less decide on their own. but i believe of it is correct that the russian parliament last year approved the first law on the northern sea route indicating the legal framework for this new venue of transport in the world. so on the whole it is very interesting that whereas consultation characterized -- confrontation characterized the relationship between the u.s. and russia the second half of the 20th century, within the

arctic council together with the other six countries they have both cooperated very constructively in recent years. >> now, the arctic council, as you said, is intentionally kept small, but even within that, iceland is a small country compared with the u.s. and china with the upcoming chairmanships and, of course, russia. how much do you see them wanting in the arctic resources debate? >> during the cold war, by country had the strategic position in the military system in the northern region. that's why the united states had the base, military base in my country for over 50 years. the bush administration then can decided six years ago or seven years ago to close it down. and some people were saying at that time that that might indicate that iceland

geographically, geopolitically was no longer of any interest or of consequence. but the emergence of these arctic issues has demonstrated that iceland is now placed in the middle of this new highway that characterizes the future of the arctic. and it has served as a basis for a new relationship with the united states, with canada and also with russia. and as i said before in my introduction, it has become a regular item on the agenda of our meetings with the leaders in asia and european countries. one of the items i discussed with the president of france, president hollande a few weeks ago. and among the discussions are not just the opening up of sea routes and how to utilize the

natural resources, but also scientific cooperation, research, the training of scientists that can inform us about the environmental changes taking place. and so increasingly the arctic cooperation has become a fundamental pillar of our 21st century foreign policy. and there's no disagreement about that in my country. the parliament passed last year unanimously a policy resolution can which defined the icelandic objectives in the arctic. so together with the other nordic countries, we hope to play a constructive part, and an evidence of this was that a few months ago one of our able civil servants and officials was chosen as the first director-general of the secretariat of the arctic council. >> we have several currency questions.

the icelandic krone, of course, is coming out of financial you are the policy. what would you consider the future of the krone, and are you at all considering any alternative currency for iceland? >> i think it's a positive indication of how we have moved off the financial crisis -- out of the financial crisis that i can come here to the national press club and only when six minutes are left, i get the question -- [laughter] on the financial issue. nobody would have believed that four or five years ago. but that is the state of affairs, that we could perhaps come together again and talk about how we recovered from the financial crisis and how we dealt with that crisis in a different way from many other countries, how we did not follow the established orthodoxies of the financial world of how you

deal with a financial crisis, how the imf acknowledged that maybe they learned more from dealing with iceland than we actually learned from them. [laughter] and how we have dealt differently with the situation than many european countries like, for example, we let the banks fail, we introduced capital controls, we didn't introduce the same austerity measures as most other european countries. but whereas you could argue that our own currency, the crony, was part of the -- the krone was part of the problem leading up to the collapse of the banks, it has certainly been helpful as a part of the solution, enabling us to devalue the currency and making the export-driven sectors including the tourism sector that's more profitable. that's one of the reasons why every year since the financial crisis tourism in iceland has increased by 15-20% whereas in

southern europe it has deteriorated every year. what will be the future of the currency is, of course, hotly debated in my country. there are different views on this. some people want iceland to be a part of larger currency area, some people argue the euro, some people argue the u.s. dollar, the canadian dollar. others are saying that for the foreseeable future there is no alternative except to have our own currency. my personal view has for a long time, including when i was a minister of finance, been that a stable currency is not an aim in itself. the aim of the economic policy should be to create prosperity and economic growth for our people. and if you have to devalue the currency in order to get that prosperity, it might be, might be a useful tool. but you will have to invite me in a few years' time to give you a more comprehensive answer to that question.

[laughter] >> we'd be happy to have you back, of course. today we are almost out of time, but before i ask you the last question, i have a couple of housekeeping matters. first of all, i'd like to remind you of upcoming speakers. on april 17th we have the direct director of the office of the national drug control policy. on april 19th, patrick donahoe, the postmaster general of the u.s., and on may 7th we have chris evert, tennis legend and publisher of "tennis" magazine. second, i would like to present our guest with the traditional coffee mug, also suitable for eating skeer. [laughter] [applause] and one last question. back in the 1970s before you were president, you were a journalist like many of us here in this room. you hosted a very successful television show. what was the secret of your success, and what advice do you have to today's news

professionals? [laughter] >> i was very young when i was -- [laughter] television reporting and had a discussion program on television. i was sufficiently young and sufficiently arrogant to ask questions nobody wanted to answer. [laughter] so i am not sure whether i would like today to have that kind of debate. but on a serious note, i think you need to stick to the issues, and you have to respect the people, the ordinary people and their interest in the real issues. i've often been asked what have you learned from your long public career, and my simple answer is that you can't fool the people. you have to trust the people by speaking in a straightforward way, in an honest way about their concerns. abraham lincoln, of course, said

this more eloquently in his time, as we all know. you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time. too much of modern media is perhaps based on the fact that maybe you can fool some of the people some of the time. [laughter] but we, these issues are so serious including the ones we have been speaking about here today that we immediate the media -- we need the media to deal with them in a serious, detailed way, and that's one of the reasons why we decided to establish the arctic circle, was to give the global media and the national media and respective countries a venue where they can come every year and report on what's really happening in our own arctic, ice-covered neighborhood. thank you very much for being with us here today. [applause] >> both chambers of congress are

back in session today. the senate just about to gavel in for speeches and debate on a judicial nomination. tomorrow the senate continues work on the gun control bill with debate on amendments expected to take up most of their time this week. we'll take you now to our live coverage of the senate right here on c-span2. o tempore: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. eternal god, inspire us to treat others as we want them to treat us. let us rejoice in their strengths and let us be patient with their weaknesses. as our senators do the work of freedom today, may they be

sustained by your love. remind them that your divine affection has given them everything they need for life and liberty. answer them when they cry out to you, and tell them great and unsearchable things they do not know. give them the humility to understand that none of us has a monopoly on your truth and that we all need is each other to discover your guidance together. we pray in your great name. amen.

the president pro tempore: please join me in s. station of the pledge after leejence to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. mr. reid: mr. president? the president pro tempore: the majority leader. mr. reid: following leader remarks, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 5:00 this afternoon. during that period of time, each senator will be allowed to speak for up to ten minutes each, if they wish. at 5:00 p.m., the senate will proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of beverly reid o'connell to be a district judge for the central district of california. at 5:30, there will be a roll call vote on confirmation of the

o'connell nomination. mr. president, the debate over the best way to prevent gun violence in america raises strong emotions. second amendment advocates, me among them, want to preserve and protect the right of every law-abiding citizen to bear arms. victims of gun violence and family members of those killed by guns -- me among them -- want to ensure that guns are kept from the hands of criminals, those with mental illnesses, severe in nature. these, mr. president, are both worthy goals, and they should not be mutually exclusive goals. it's possible to uphold the second amendment while protecting innocent americans from gun violence. of course it is. and the compromise background check proposal before the senate, a measure crafted by senators toomey, manchin, kirk and schumer, achieves both goa goals. this bipartisan measure would keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals by requiring

background checks for private gun sales at gun shows and over the internet. it strengthens existing instant check system by encouraging states to put all their criminal and mental health records into the national instant background check system, a step supported by gun rights groups. and it would establish a national commission on mass violence to study all causes of mass violence in our country, school safety, mental health, video games, whatever is appropriate should be looked into. mr. president, the legislation has the backing of the citizens committee for the right to keep and bear arms, has 650,000 members. the second largest guns rights group in the nation. and on this proposal, background checks, the national rifle association's not being very talkative. why, mr. president? because they've supported this measure in the path. and while they're not publicly

supporting it now, they've done it in the past. this measure has the support of antigun violence advocates such as the mayors against illegal guns, consisting of hundreds of mayors around the country. has the support of law enforcement groups, such as the national -- international association of chiefs of police. and although this compromise doesn't go as far as background checks as some had hoped, the nature of compromise is what it is. that's what legislation is all about. it isn't perfect but it's certainly a long, big, heavy step forward. expanding background checks to cover gun shows and internet sales is common sense. it will help protect the innocent from gun violence and will also protect firearm sellers. no responsible firearms dealer wants to unwittingly put a gun in the hands of a murderer. one need only ask a man by the name of bruce daily. mr. daily sold the shotgun that was used in a shooting rampage at the lloyd george federal

courthouse in las vegas a few years ago. a 72-year-old security guard and retired police officer, stanley cooper, was murdered by a felon who bought a gun at a gun show in keenman, arizona, 90 miles from las vegas. i repeat, the shooter was a convicted felon who had no right to own a gun and could never have passed a background check. but because mr. daley sold the shotgun at a gun show in arizona, he never had to perform a background check. after the shooting at the las vegas courthouse, mr. daley was found to have an expired federal permit for selling weapons, and because of that, he was convicted. but, mr. president, mr. daley admirably has stepped forward. he admits having sold dozens of guns that were linked to violent crimes. i repeat, today mr. daley

admirably wishes he had done more to keep the guns he sold out of the hands of criminals, and he has -- and he has stated many times that expanded background checks is the best way to do that. most gun owners, most gun dealers are responsible, law-abiding people. they love and respect firearms. they're sportsmen who hunt, they may take their weapons when they go hunting -- i'm sorry, fishi fishing. these are people who enjoy targeting shooting, who no longer hunt but they like to go out and plunk or they like to go to a range and shoot. they're citizens who simply want to protect themselves, their homes and their families. a better background check law won't infringe on second amendment rights in any way but it will prevent the small minority of people who want to obtain guns for the wrong reasons from buying these weapons and will stop troubled

people who because of an illness beyond their control would be a danger to themselves or to others if they possessed a firearm. this compromise legislation shouldn't be controversial. nine out of ten americans claim a majority -- a vast majority of gun owners and 75% of n.r.a. members support stronger background check laws. now, mr. president, this is not the background check law that was reported out of the committee that's in the underlying bill, but manchin, toomey, kirk, and schumer think they could improve that and that's what this amendment is all about. a number of my colleagues oppose this measure. i'm sure that's the case. it's their right to vote against it. we continue to work, i continue to work toward an agreement to vote on this compromise and to

consider other amendments. we need to do that. all democrats aren't going to offer all the amendments. republicans want to offer amendments. they feel the law in the country today is too weak. in their minds, they want to make it weaker but they think that's a strength. most people, the majority, would disagree but they have a right to do that. i hope that there aren't going to be a few unreasonable extremists who are going to try to prevent an up-or-down vote on legislation in this bill. we shouldn't have a filibuster on this legislation. i, of course, can always file cloture -- hope we don't have to do that. that would be a shameful tribute to the memory of 27 people who died in newtown, little boys and girls -- in the minds of many, babies -- and schoolteachers, administrators who were killed. 27 of them. newtown deserves a vote and so

do the mothers and fathers, loved ones and friends of the 3,300 victims of gun violence in america since that terrible day at sandy hook. mr. president, 3,300 people have died because of gunshots since sandy hook. don't we have an obligation to the american people to do some correcting of what is not right in this country? i believe so. mr. reid: i know the chairman of the committee, who's worked hard to get this matter, is here has also -- i hope we can get to his amendment, which i'd like to do next, and that is an amendment that i am told is even supported by the national rifle association to improve what is in this bill that was reported out of the committee dealing with federal trafficking. mr. leahy: mr. president, i would -- the presiding officer: the senator from vermont.

mr. leahy: i would tell the senator from nevada we've been working very hard on that. has bipartisan support. it was -- had a bipartisan vote out of the senate judiciary committee. we have been working not only with the national rifle association but a lot of others because this trafficking allows somebody who can legitimately buy weapons going and buying them and then sell them to people in a drug cartel or -- in this country or others, or a gang, people who could not have bought them legitimately and it is a huge loophole. we saw this same loophole in the murder of the head of the colorado prison system. the man who we understand shot him would have been prohibited from buying a weapon but somebody who could buy one

bought it and passed it on to him. mr. president, i do want to thank senators manchin and toomey for coming forward with their bipartisan amendment to close the gun show loophole and prevent criminals from obtaining firearms. at the same time they protect the second amendment rights of responsible gun owners. now, these senators have worked long and hard. they've studied the issue. they've compromised. they've reached an agreement that i intend to support and hope the senate will adopt. the senator from nevada has said he hopes senators will vote and not filibuster. the american people i think would consider it a disgrace if senators were unwilling to stand up and vote either "yes" or "no." a filibuster means you vote "maybe." i would hope that with only a hundred of us to represent

314 million americans, we at least have the courage to vote "yes" or vote "no." it may not be a popular vote either way you vote, but voting "maybe" -- which is what filibuster is -- that shows no respect for the senate and shows no courage. now, we've had background checks for decades that accepted as part of the process of buying a gun. i'm among millions of responsible gun owners who have undergone a background check as part of this process. as i tell our gun dealers in vermont, when i bought a gun there, i'm like millions of responsible gun owners, i understand this check is necessary. i have no problem in going through it. but i expect everybody else to go through it because it keeps guns out of the hands of criminals or those who are dangerous to themselves and others due to a mental illness. and background checks work.

since 1998, over 2 million sales to prohibited people have been prevented thanks to background checks. that's 2 million times a potentially dangerous person trying to get a gun was denied a gun. now, some argue that these don't work because not enough people fail the background check and are later prosecuted. failing a background check is not in itself a crime. the main purpose of the background check is to prevent the prohibited person from getting the desired gun. and it's not foolproof, but having it in place has prevented dangerous people from getting guns 2 million times. now, we want to improve it -- that's what the manchin-toomey amendment is trying to do. there's a huge, huge loophole in our background check system.

criminals and other private people who couldn't go in to a legitimate gun store in the presiding officer's state or my state can get around this by going to nonlicensed dealers at gun shows. i know gun store owners in vermont. they conduct background checks. they wonder why others don't are to follow these same rules. i agree with them, just asgy through a background check when i buy a gun, i want everybody to have to go through it and not be able to use the loophole. i voted to close this loophole for years. in 1999 the senate adopted an amendment to close the gun show loophole. we passed that provision. it was after the tragedy at columbine. but the house wouldn't pass the bill. the republican leadership just let it drop here in the senate.

i hope we'll close the loophole once and for all. the manchin-toomey bipartisan amendment closes the loophole in a way that doesn't impinge on second-amendment rights. sales at gun shows, sales using online or print advertising will be governed by the same kind requirements as a gun store owner in vermont or virginia or anywhere else has to follow. it's going to make us safer. it won't confiscate thing's guns. it won't create a guest registry. it does not undermine the second amendment. no court has held that background checks, which have been with us for decades, violate the second amendment. indeed, the united states supreme court expressly held that the second amendment provides an individual right -- in the heller case it also said that long-standing provision of the possession of firearms by felons and mentally ill do not violate the second amendment.

the compromise these senators have sent to us is focused on gun shows and commercial sales. it doesn't require background checks for sales against -- between spouses or siblings or parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephewsing nephed cousins. it doesn't require background checks between friends and neighbors who talk to each other who decide to sell or give each other firearms. it doesn'it does require backgrd checks for the kind of sales that can be easily exploited by people intending to do harms. sales online and through print advertisement. i would hope the senators would agree that 90% of the people in this country, we need a strong

background check system in order to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals. why not try to plug the loopholes? it is a matter of common sense. if we agree that the background check system makes sense, why not make it more effective? what responsible gun owner objects to improving the background check system? i come from a state with a lot of gun owners, myself included. i haven't heard a single gun owner say we shouldn't have a background check apply to everybody, just as it applies to them. the first of our judiciary committee hearings of the year, the first of three, i pointed out to wayne l lapierre -- he hd pointed out for mandatory background checks in the past.

he said "no loopholes anywhere for anyone." well, that's common sense. that's what i voted to do in 1999. we should again. i've said over and over again, don't filibuster or sloganeer. vote. vote "yes," vote "no." don't vote "maybe." no one is going to take away our second aempt rights. -- our second amendment rights. our lives are at risk when responsible people fail to stand up for laws that keep guns out of the hands of those who use them to commit crimes of violence. let's come together. we can make america safer and more secure. in fact, a recent article in the washingto"washington times," not considered a liberal paper, documented gun prosecutions were in decline beginning in the bush administration. they suggest having a senat

senate-confirmed director of the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, and explosives would help law enforcement get such a director. but let's not be distracted from what we can do to keep americans safe by partisan attacks on either this administration or the last administration. i thank senators, like senator schumer, for his effort to bring us all here together. i worked with him to make sure the legislation considered on the judiciary committee included a provision to improve the background checks system. he introduced a number of background check proposals. he reached across the aisle, tried very hard to come to an agreement with senator coburn. and i think it probably helped

senator manchin and senator toomey come together. now, will everybody agree? perhaps not. but at least have the courage to vote "yes" or "no." vote "yes" or "no." if you're going to vote "maybe," that's voting to be a filibuster. the american people would like a little bit of courage on the part of the 100 senators. i ask my full statement be made part of the record, and i yield to the senator. the presiding officer: without objection, senator. under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 5:00 p.m. with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes. the presiding officer: so ordered. mr. wyden: in shakespeare's "julius see s.a.r." see s.a.r. is warned to beware the ides of

march. for most americans. the ide. of march passed without incident. the ides of april. april 15, tax day that so many americans dread. mr. president, the last few days must have been a big bonanza for the headache medicine industry. taxes are due tonight at midnight, and millions of americans spent their weekend struggling to use tax software that crashed, flailing about to locate receipts, and wading through hundreds of pages of tax instructions. instead of enjoying the outdoors or spending time with family and friends, too many americans spent this past weekend hunched over their kitchen tables or in front of their computers

surrounded by a maze of receipts, canceled checks, forms, and other paper welcome as they undertook -- as they undertook the annual water torture ritual of preparing tax forms. this is the tax instruction booklet for our personal taxes, our 1040 forms. it just goes on and on, mr. president, well over 200 pages. the first 104 pages of instructions are the basic form 1040, and the further 110 pages of instructions are for the most common schedules to the 1040. but there has got to be a better way. someday, mr. president, i hope the democrats and republicans

can come to the floor of this body, ask unanimous consent that this goes into the trash and instead we substitute a much simpler way for our people to do their taxes. the reality is, the tax code is too complex, too costly, and simply takes too much time to comply with. it's a code that's hopelessly out of date, mind-numbingly complex, and extraordinarily inefficient. as a result, one of our most consequential nic economic poli, our tax law does far more to stifle economic growth than to encourage it. our country needs a comprehensive overhaul of our system of raising revenue and a modern tax code that's simpler, fairer, and simply more efficient. in sum, what's needed is a

pro-growth economic tax policy, and if history is any guide, mr. president, particularly when former president reagan and a big group of democrats got together, it can bolster american families and increase revenue, mr. president, without raising rates. now, i've been something of a broken record on this issue for sometime, but on a day like this -- particularly given what our people went through over the past weekend -- i think it's time to spend a few minutes and talk about how important it is to bring some common sense to american tax law. what is particularly striking, mr. president, is i think the congress understands what needs to be done. this is a question of political will now. there have been all kinds of blue-ribbon reports, bush administration, the obama

administration, i think what needs to be done is widely understood. the pipes in the tax code are clogged with provisions that encourage rent-seeking behavior, lead to the misallocation of capital, and work the american economy. what needs to be done, mr. president, is go in there and drain the swamp and clean out the tax code. it contains almost 4 million words. in the last decade alone, more than 130 laws have been enacted that yielded almost 4,500 changes to the tax code. that amounts to more than one change to the tax code each and every day, year in and year out. it's become so complicated that almost 90% of taxpayers either hire a tax preparer or use tax-preparation cas software to

complete returns. the i.r.s. reports that the average estimated time burden for all taxpayers bil filing a m 1040, a 1040a, a 1040ez is 13 hours with an average cost of $210. with respect to these forms, nonbusiness taxpayers face an average burden of about eight hours, a full day's work, while business taxpayers face an average burden of about 23 hours. hthat's nearly three days of work. in 2011 the small business administration found that among businesses with 20 or fewer employees, tax compliance cost $1,584 per employee. in addition to the he is cay thg cost of compliance with this code, costs both time and money, the complexity of the code, in my view, has obscured the typical person's ability to understand it and, in my view,

has undercut voluntary compliance, which is, of course, the bedrock principle of you are a tax law -- of our tax law. with the ongoing debate about how to reduce the budget deficit, the tax code's code's complexity serves also to perpetuate what is known as "the tax gap." that's the difference between what taxpayers pay and what is owed under the law enforcement the most recent internal revenue service estimate for the tax gap is $385 billion. based on statistical trends, the likely gap for this year is going to exceed $420 billion. this is an underpayment of approximately 14%. now, my gut tells me -- and i serve on both the finance committee and the joint committee on taxation -- that some of this gap certainly is due to conscious tax evasion, but i also believe a significant

portion of it is attributable to inadvertent mistakes in filing, many of which stem from the complexity of the code. well-coordinated, thoughtful, comprehensive reform is going to reduce the need for many complex provisions that limit the ability of taxpayers to benefit from certain deductions, credits, exemptions, and exclusions. comprehensive tax reform must eliminate the multiple provisions that require taxpayers to calculate their liability multiple times, such as the alternative minimum tax. talk about bureaucratic water torture, mr. president ... all this weekend across the country middle-class folks were doing their taxes twice as a result of the minimum tax. the phase-out of itemized deductions isn't much easier.

i'd just like to show this particular poster that demonstrates 11 tax forms. these are forms, mr. president, and colleagues, that the typical tax filer had aes to fill out -- filer has to fill out every year, or if they can afford it, pay somebody to fill them out. is this really necessary to run this full-time hand-cramping program, to have our citizens try to wade through all of this? we also have another alternative, mr. president, a one-page 1040 form that i have worked on with colleagues for years. it is only about 29 lines long, mr. president. some industrious reporters took this particular tax form, and they found that a typical

citizen -- this was worked on by democrats and republicans -- can fill out their taxes with this form in under an hour. now to illustrate how complicated the code has become, let me just refer briefly to capital gains. the income tax currently imposes at least nine different effective tax rates on capital gains, depending on the taxpayers' regular rate, how long an asset was owned, the type of asset and whether the taxpayer owes the alternative minimum tax. for this, the i.r.s. provides three different work sheets. one with 37 lines to help taxpayers calculate their tax on capital gains. comprehensive reform should make things easier for taxpayers by allowing a percentage exclusion for long-term gains and applying

regular tax rates to the rest. that simple change, mr. president, could just have an exclusion for a measure of capital gains that have been earned and then a progressive rate structure from that point on would sharply reduce the complexity of returns while maintaining fairness and opportunities for all our people to invest. further complicating matters, a number of commonly used terms in the tax code -- qualifying child, modified adjusted gross income, and more -- have multiple definitions depending on the provision. certainly democrats and republicans should agree that uniform definitions for the most commonly used terms are something that shouldn't be a bipartisan issue. more than 40 definitions of "small business" exists in the tax code alone.

now, there are certainly policy reasons to provide tax benefits to families with children, but the definition of a child differs widely across the tax code. children under 19 count in defining the earned-income tax credit benefits. those under 17 qualify for the child credit. and only those under 1 are eligible for the child and dependent care credit. maybe these differences result from deliberate congressional actions about 0 who ought to receive tax benefits but i think they needlessly complicate tax filings and lead to inadvertent errors that the i.r.s. tries to figure out how to correct. other terms used to define qualifying children including

custody residence and who pays the child's living expenses. establishing a single definition to determine whether taxpayers may claim tax benefits for children would simplify both tax filing and i.r.s. processing of returns. mr. president, i see colleagues are here, and i would only saeut list goes on -- say the list goes on and on. the earned-income tax credit, something vital to low-income families, a whole host of different workshops, the educational credits, again, another example where families with students in college qualifying for multiple tax benefits to defray educational expenses, often can claim only one of them. for example, a family may be able to claim either the hope credit or the lifetime learning credit, but not both for the same student. if the family has more than one student, it may claim one credit for one student and the other

for a second student. determining which alternative is best requires multiple calculations and can conflict with the use of other tax benefits for education, such as cover dell savings accounts and 529 savings plans. comprehensive tax reform would at the very minimum coordinate these education benefits so that it would be easier for families to determine eligibility. just how complicated have thing become, mr. president? a few years ago treasury's inspector general for tax administration sent staff to pose as taxpayers at 12 commercial prepareer chains in 16 small independent preparers. of the 28 tax returns the professionals prepared, 17 had mistakes. all of the business returns were wrong. let me repeat that.

all of the business returns were wrong when professionals had prepared them. in 2006, the same sort of drill was undertaken. again the general accounting office found that professional preparers made mistakes. they mishandled bread and butter issues like the child-care credit and even got it wrong, mr. president, whether the taxpayer should even itemize, whether the taxpayer should even itemize at all his or her deductions. so the question, colleagues, is really: if the pros can't figure out how to file taxes, isn't that clear, isn't that obvious to all of us that the tax code needs to be purged and these special interest breaks cleaned out so that rates can be held down for all, and that in fact

we can agree on a simple tax philosophy. i can sum up mine in a sentence, mr. president. i believe we need a tax system that gives everybody in america the opportunity to get ahead. if you're successful, we want you to be successful. you're going to pay your fair share, but nothing in the tax code is going to make it impossible for you to be successful on the days ahead. and if you don't have much, we're going to have a tax code that is simple and understandable, and when you work hard and play by the rules, you're going to have an opportunity to get ahead as swell. comprehensive tax reform is going to make it easier to file. it's going to lay out an opportunity for the senate, democrats and republicans and independents, to come together. and i close simply by saying once again, mr. president, we saw just in the past few days

how broken and dysfunctional our tax system in america has become. can you imagine what people thought when their software was crashing in the last couple of days? they're trying to find their receipts, they're flailing through filing cabinets trying to find those documents that attest to their taxable event for the past year, and they can't know with certainty, based on some of those analyses by the general accounting office, whether they've done it right or even professionals have done it right. so until this senate comes together on a bipartisan basis to work for a simpler, more coherent tax system, one that promotes growth and eases the burden on american families and american business, until that is done, mr. president, there will

be no relief from theides -- from the ides of april. and that, in my view, is a tragedy worthy of shakespeare. mr. president, i yield the floor. mrs. fischer: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from nebraska. mrs. fischer: mr. president, i ask for as much time as i may consume. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. fischer: thank you, mr. president. i rise today on tax day, the deadline for americans to file federal tax returns on their hard-earned income for the 2012 year. benjamin franklin famously said the only sure things in life are death and taxes. today we americans live up to that first hard truth, the day when the tax man comes. for those of us in congress, tax day serves as an important reminder of just who is funding all of this government spending. it's the american taxpayer. even as families across america

made tough decisions and tightened their household budgets, the federal government has gone on a spending spree. government is posting now four straight trillion-dollar deficits and growing the national debt, and it's approaching now $17 trillion. in recent years the average annual deficit has skyrocketed to 8.7% of our gross domestic product. these deficits should be all the evidence we need in order that we get our fiscal house in order. i believe, and nebraskans believe, to generate economic growth, we must first address our nation's addiction to spending. we need to fix our broken tax system, and what better time than tax day to highlight this

need? tax day is a day to renew our efforts to simplify the tax system and ease the burden on hardworking americans. the act of actually filing taxes is never pleasant, but it also allows americans the chance to assess just how much of their income is going towards subsidizing an ever-growing bureaucracy. rather than making it easy for citizens to comply with the income tax requirements, the federal government has held on to an arcane, complicated tax system. many citizens, particularly our small business owners, are forced to hire costly accountants or buy tax software just to sift through the 3,951,104 words of the tax code,

which along with other rules and regulations fill 73,608 pages of text in order to figure out just how much one owes. nebraskans shouldn't have to waste their time or pay for expensive financial advisors just to fork over more money to uncle sam. americans collectively spend more than six billion hours preparing their tax returns. imagine what more could be done if americans could focus that time and those resources on something else. according to the national federation of independent businesses, 90% of small businesses have given up trying to comply with the tax code, and instead they pay a professional tax preparation service through tax reform make the tax code

simpler and fairer, the small businesses could redirect scant resources currently used for tax compliance to focus more on growth and to focus more on creating jobs. i'm encouraged, however, by the recent efforts towards much-needed comprehensive tax reform to simplify our tax code. just last week the chairman of the finance committee, senator max baucus, wrote an opinion piece in the wall street along with house ways and means committee chairman dave camp, highlighting their progress so far in pressing towards bipartisan tax reform. and president obama has called for revenue-neutral corporate tax reform in his fy 2014 budget. unfortunately, the president's proposal is contingent on a $1.1 trillion tax increase above and

beyond the $1.7 trillion in tax increases that the president has already sought and won. such a tax hike sends the unmistakable message to every american taxpayer that government knows how to spend your money better than you do. i believe that american families know how best to spend their money, particularly during ongoing times of economic hardship, when everyone is called on to make tough decisions and to make those tough choices about their budgets and about spending. revenue-neutral, pro-growth tax reform should not just be geared toward the corporate side of our tax code. we should pursue revenue-neutral tax reform on the individual side as well which would benefit american families as well as small businesses, which pay those taxes at the individual

level. small businesses already generate two out of every three new jobs and 95% of businesses employ nearly 70 million americans or are organized in such a way that earnings are passed through the enterprise. and, therefore, subject to taxation at the individual level. tax day provides us with a needed reminder of how broken our tax code is. we can and should use it as the impetus to pursue pro-growth tax reform. my goal for tax reform is simpler -- a fair tax code which ensures that nebraskans and our neighbors from across the country can keep more of the money that they work hard to earn while providing for the core duties and responsibilities of our government. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor.

ms. stabenow: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: thank you, mr. president. first, i would ask unanimous consent that laura flint, a detailee on the senate judiciary

committee, be granted senate floor privileges for the duration of calendar year 2013. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. ms. stabenow: thank you very much, mr. president. we're about to enter into an incredibly important debate about a series of issues relating to violence, specifically gun violence in our communities all across america, and today i rise to speak about a very important bipartisan amendment that i will be offering with senator roy blunt and others called the excellence in mental health act that addresses a very important piece of the discussion. it's really an opportunity for us to come together amidst a lot of controversial debate and agree on something that's a very important piece of the puzzle in terms of having access to comprehensive, quality mental health services in the community. this weekend, we heard from francine wheeler whose

6-year-old son ben was murdered on december 14 in newtown, connecticut. ben, we know, was one of 26 people, 20 children, who lost their lives. i can only begin to imagine, mr. president, what all of us as parents would feel in that situation. for those 26 victims and the 3,300 other americans killed since then in acts of gun violence, it is time to take action, and i am hopeful, given the strong bipartisan vote that we had to move forward on this debate that we can actually have this debate and people have the right to have their say and to vote on this very important issue. the bill before us is a commonsense effort towards comprehensive background checks that will help save lives, and i am very supportive of not only

that provision but others that will be offered as well. one important piece of this that hasn't been in the headlines as much but is very important in getting this right is the need for better access to comprehensive mental health services. that's why we need the bipartisan excellence in mental health act passed as an amendment which will increase access to care and improve quality for those that need it. we know that a person who does not receive treatment after his or her first psychic episode is 15 times more likely to commit a violent act. but let me be clear, we also know that the vast majority of those that are living with mental illnesses are more likely to be a victim of crime than to be a perpetrator of crime. but tragedies do happen when

treatment and help aren't available, and in a way, too many instances -- in too many instances today, we are seeing the fact that there is not effective help available to people in communities. the current lack of access to mental health services in the community means that too often, it's the local police who are responding to psychiatric emergencies, and they may not have services to take someone to, so they are diverting what their officers should be doing to respond to other crimes, and then they take people to jail rather than having them get the services that they need. spending resources, incarcerating people who otherwise need to be and should be in a treatment situation. that's why we have law enforcement supporting this amendment. we have over 50 organizations from law enforcement and community mental health and health groups as well as those

who represent our brave veterans who have come home from the war, all supporting this because they know that if we don't have quality service in the community, we will continue to see people in jail that shouldn't be in jail, we will continue to see families and individuals not getting the help they need, and in some circumstances we will see more tragedies occur as well. over the course of this week, we're going to see a lot of debate about different aspects of gun safety. colleagues are going to disagree about the manner of background checks or limits on assault weapons, but i hope that there will be no disagreement that people with serious mental illnesses should be given effective treatment and that we can do a better job for our country by making sure that treatment is readily available in a community setting. that should be really the hopeful part of this whole

debate. science has shown us significant advances in the study of the brain and the most effective mental health treatments, and there are solutions if people get the help that they need where they can then live healthy, productive lives rather than struggling with their illness. i applaud president obama's historic brain mapping initiative to expand that knowledge even more. it's amazing to me, mr. president, how we have so many studies as it relates to heart disease or kidney disease or diabetes, and yet all of the issues relate to the brain, whether it's a bipolar disorder or whether it's alzheimer's or whether it's parkinson's disease or whether it's schizophrenia. we have not tackled with the same vigor. and there are solutions. we are finding those every day, and there is hope. today, thanks to cutting-edge research, we have answers for people living with severe mental

illnesses. we have proven therapies, we have treatment options, we have medicines that truly transform lives. and, mr. president, i speak as one who has lived as a daughter through a time when we did not have appropriate treatments. when i was growing up in middle school and high school, my father had bipolar disease, but at that time we didn't know what it was. he was misdiagnosed for ten years. at that time, everybody was schizophrenic. there was no understanding that we actually have in the brain chemical imbalances just like we have in someone is monitoring their sugar because they are diabetic and needs to monitor that in order to be able to take medicine to keep them on an equilibrium so they don't get sick and don't have problems. we have the same thing with something called mood disorders in our country, and we have learned much about it where if someone is taking the right

medicine, it stops the imbalance of too much and being manic or too little and being severely depressed. there are solutions. when my dad was finally diagnosed for what he had and received the medicine at the time -- it was lithium that he was able to receive -- and the help that he received, he went on to lead a very productive life for the rest of his life. so i have seen both what happens when people don't get treatment and when people do. and we literally have the opportunity to take this next step in order to make sure people all across our country get the help they need. unfortunately today, one-third of all bipolar disorders do not get any treatment, even when we know today that there are absolute answers for individuals and families to receive. shame on us for not making sure

those are readily available. this amendment that we have in front of us would make sure that is available and close what i believe is the final step in what we've called mental health parity. we as a group have passed on a bipartisan basis legislation that was authored by our dear departed paul wellstone and senator pete domenici, with strong advocacy from senator ted kennedy, to provide parity under health insurance between physical and mental health services. we passed that. we have now gone on to strengthen that with the new health reforms that are in place. the only place where we don't have mental health parity right now is what happens in the community outside of the insurance system. we do not have the same parity between what we do through a community health clinic in terms of being able to receive reimbursement for preventative

care, for health services, and what we do for behavioral health, mental health, substance abuse, which is what we are going to fix in this amendment to make sure that we are focusing comprehensively in the community. as part of this, i also want to talk about another tragedy facing our country, and that is the loss of so many of our heroes from iraq and afghanistan. this is a very important part of this story and part of what our amendment will address in a very positive way. men and women who survive the horrors of war but are ending up taking their own life when they come home. 22 veterans a day commit suicide. a day. today, yesterday, tomorrow. and they, their families, those in that situation need to know that there is help available for them in the community. that's why we have very strong

support from veterans, iraq and afghanistan veterans organizations were very pleased to have stood with us last week when we did a press conference with veterans to focus on this important part of the puzzle. we know that one in four veterans are coming home and they need some kind of mental health support. and so we want to make sure that if you're in a rural community in northern michigan and it's three or four hours to drive to the v.a., that you instead could receive some help in your own community. working with the v.a., but receive help in your own community, and that's what this does. we want to make sure that our veterans are fully receiving services from the promises that we have made to them about making sure comprehensive health care would be available to them when they come home. i want to share just one story from our press conference, mr. president.

jennifer crane joined us. she is a veteran of the war in afghanistan. this october will mark ten years since she returned home, but she says the speernz live inside of -- experiences live inside of me like it was yesterday. she suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder. she couldn't sleep. she self-medicated. she ended up homeless. she ended up in trouble with law enforcement. but when she got the help she needed at a community mental health center, it transformed her life. she met the man who would become her husband. she is now going to have a baby. now she works with give an hour, which is a wonderful organization that helps veterans get the mental health services that they need, and they are strongly supporting what we are doing as well. jennifer could have ended up a statistic, but she got the help she needed. we need to give every one of our

heroes coming home from war the same opportunity. that's why the excellence in mental health act is so important as a part of all this. we have come a long way in a bipartisan way to recognize the need for mental health treatment, and as i mentioned before, the wonderful partnership of senator domenici and senator wellstone, senator kennedy paved the way for us to more fully understand that when we talk about comprehensive health services, that we don't stop at the neck. next down, one set of rules. neck up, another set of rules. that, in fact, we are talking about comprehensive care and making sure that we lose the stigma and focus sneddon what we can do to help people receive the services that they need. -- focus instead on what we can do to help people receive the

services that they need. this expands community helena health services in the community. i know again there will be a lot of controversial debate, but i hope in the end that we will be able to come together, as we have on this amendment -- and i'm very appreciative of the bipartisan support on this amendment. i want to thank senator roy blunt again on our excellence in mental health act as well as senator marco rubio, senator susan collins, senator lisa murkowski, others who have expressed support as well. this really is an opportunity for us to come together, as we have in the past, and do the right things for millions of families dealing with mental illnesses that are treatable. the good news is there is hope now, mr. president. there are actually answers now to so many mental illnesses. and by passing our bipartisan

excellence in mental health amendment we can prevent tragedies from happening in families all over our country. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the wonderful leader from connecticut waiting to speak. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: thank you, mr. president. first let me commend and thank my colleague from michigan, senator stabenow, for her leadership on an issue that is among the paramount questions for our time, whether we will meet our obligation to regard mental illness on a par with physical illness, a cause that has occupied me for a long time, and i want to thank her for spearheading this initiative, which is a vital

part of the effort to stop gun violence in our country and, in fact, make our country healthier in so many ways and i am proud to join her as a cosponsor and a supporter of these efforts. i come to the floor today to continue the debate on the gun violence initiatives which are central to making america safer and making our country stronger. this bill is a comprehensive set of provisions that hopefully will be, in fact, further strength end by an amendment amed tour offered this week and we are on the cusp of voting on that amendment, the work done by senators toomey and manchin, our colleagues, to reach a reasonable compromise and it is indeed a sensible, commonsense compromise that i am proud to support that will guarantee a criminal background check system to keep firearms and weapons of

war out of the hands of people who are dangerous, people who should not have guns. the criminals, mentally ill, seriously mentally problem stricken, and, of course, others like domestic abusers. for too long, criminal individuals and organizations have process answered from illegally distributing weapons and firearms and so the bill in its second title takes a great step toward barring illegal trafficking and also to ban straw purchases. too often given short shrift or little attention is the third title, which speaks to school safety, and that is the measure that brings me here today and i ask permission that the full set of my remarks be included in the

record. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. blumenthal: i will provide a summary of them here because i think they are vital. school safety is not an afterthought, it is central to stopping gun violence, and the tragic lessons that we have learned from sandy hook include not only the courage of the educators, those brave teachers and administrators and school psychologist who literally threw themselves at bullets and cradled loved ones of families who lost their lives, cradled children in their care as they were met by a hail of gunfire, that teaching moment should not only inspire us but obligate us to do more about school safety. and that is why i have gone to the schools of connecticut, most recently on a tour that i conducted to ten schools around

the state to learn from our educators what they think those lessons are from sandy hook, and where they think the priorities should be in terms of school safety. and that experience provided me with some pillars of a program that i believe is important and is embodied in the act that is before us, the school and campus safety enhancement act, i want to thank our colleague, senator boxer, for her leadership on it, which reauthorizes in effect the secure our schools program, which has been very productive and, unfortunately, was not reauthorized when it expired. these measures and the pillars of this program can be summarized very simply. first of all, decisions should be made locally about what best fits communities. and those decisions ought to be

made by school districts and their boards, parents, teachers, administrators, all who are involved and have the knowledge and expertise and commitment. those decisions best fit what is right for communities locally and washington should not impose its judgment on those communities with a one-size-fits-all set of policies. second, school safety ideally should involve atnerip between educators and law enforcement. in many of the schools that i visited, i saw the value of school resource officers. more importantly, educators pointed out to me the value of their partnership with local law enforcement through school resource officers that acted not only as security personnel but also as mentors, counselors, role models.

preventing crime, not just stopping it in progress or apprehending crime afterwards. and third, schools must be open, supportive, nurturing environments. they cannot be prisons. they cannot be transformed into permanent lockdown. we must commit ourselves to the freedoms and liberties that are embodied in our schools and the educative atmosphere that is so priceless and essential to real education. we cannot solve this problem by simply having more guns in schools or arming teachers or administrators. trained school resource officers or others provided with law enforcement support have to be part of a nurturing and open

environment. the act that is before us today embodied in title three is important to move forward school safety and to emboldened, encourage -- embodien, encourage, enable, and empower local decisionmaking. and today i want to provide a very short report to my colleagues on what i have learned in my tour, and i encourage my colleagues to do the same around their states because it is genuinely a learning experience. the teaching moment of this tour for me changed my perspective on school safety, and certainly reinvigorated my appreciation for what happens in the classrooms and schools of our country with the leadership of our teachers and administrators, and we owe them a great debt of gratitude. the issue of safe and secure

schools certainly raised its head just last week in connecticut. in fact, in the town of greenwich when reports of a gunman put greenwich high school in a lockdown. thankfully, the suspect was apprehended unarmed with no casualties. the fact that a lockdown was even necessary underscores that we've made great strides, but our young people will not be safe in schools unless we know all of the best practices and implement them. this threat proved empty but it offered a learning experience in terms of the training, the locking and unlocking procedures for school doors, the type of issue that can be addressed through better and more regular coordination with local police and others who can provide that

kind of guidance. over the past three weeks, the schools i visited were large and small in widely varying parts of our state, manchester high school, kelly middle school in norwich, middle town's, west britain's gilbert school in win stead which is also winstead high school, northwestern region 7 high school, waterbury's high school, ross woodward high school and shelton interimmediate yatd school and in every one of them i saw different ways of dealing with school safety and also aspiration for even better procedures and equipment, locks, lighting, alarms, cameras but also training for teachers and more school resource officers. and i believe that one of the most important pillars of this

program has to be federal resources that meet those local needs without imposing a one-size-fits-all policy. these schools are in widely different areas in terms of geography and demographics. the size of the communities that they serve, the size of the schools, the qualifications of their staff and their training, and that's why this program has to be individualized in terms of how it meets these needs. and, again, empower and enable local decisionmaking. the secure our schools grant program has impacted connecticut very positively. the program had a direct and tangible impact on schools in stamford, for example, where the problem of gang violence was dressed, and in other schools around the state such as

hartford, where a grant was used for the purchase of an outdoor intercom station as well as locks and card readers to control access to schools. i could go through the details. they are further provided in my prepared remarks. but let me just say that the secure our schools program was a success story, and this act now will not only reauthorize but strengthen the secure our schools program. in manchester, just to give you some examples, the swipe card entry program not only provides for better security but better attendance tracking. the illing middle school in manchester is considering that system, but the installation costs run about $50,000. a small price to pay for greater security that the card system provides. in general, i found that

security was not only cost-effective, it was minimal in its cost compared to many other programs that we are potentially taking to improve school safety. when i went to see kelly middle school in norwich, i had to buzz in on intercom and announce myself. that was true of many other schools as well. a senate pin may allow us access to the floor of the united states senate without passing through security, but it doesn't get you into kelly middle school, nor should it. they have a simple, practical system. if you're visiting during school ours you buzz in and announce yourself. and then they decide whether that individual can enter through another set of locked doors. the double locks are a system that some schools are considering to implement. it's a sensible policy that is enabled by an intercom system

and a camera. again, minimal costs compared to many other infrastructure programs that we may be considering this year. in middle town i visited snowe elementary school. principal james gudroe demonstrated how their doors are locked and when a person is buzzed in, video cameras record and archive who is entering. some schools have archiving systems, others do not. law enforcement knows that archiving is important, as chief william mckenna and mayor duran droot told me, these systems are planning that was undertaken even before sandy hook. school systems and boards and administrators and teachers were aware of security before sandy hook, but their awareness has been enhanced and they are planning to devote additional resources to this issue, and

both mayor drew and chief mckenna ex polled the virtues of the -- ex told the three -- extolled the virtues of the resource officers and they are looking for measures to enhance that partnership and cooperation between police and students and teachers, educators, and law enforcement, can collaborate. visiting new britain was very important on this tour. when i went to new britain high school with mayor tim o'brien and school superintendent cal cooper, i saw the need there, the requirement that any visitor automatically run through a database check, the sex offender database check using the driver's license. they were able to run that kind

of check virtually instantaneously. and they also have in that single high school 150 cameras. knowing what is going on in that school minute-to-minute and direct links to. the school is going to allow for rapid alerts to be sent to law enforcement, a belt and suspenders approach that many schools are implementing. at sandy hook, we know that adam lanza ended his massacre and took his own life when law enforcement arrived. so the presence of law enforcement can often have a powerful decertainty effect. the knowledge that apprehension will -- powerful deterrent effect.

the knowledge that apprehension will be swift, that killing will be stopped is a huge deterrent. at west bristol k-8 school, tim callahan, who's the school project manager -- project monitor there, pointed out to me how parent dropoff was configured with visual straight line. again, the design and architecture is important to security so that out in the parking areas, there are virtually no blind spot. they've integrated security features into this building while it was being constructed. and west bristol also requires visitors to buzz in through the main office when they go through the main building with grant funds made available under this legislation, this school could install locks on a second set of doors, slowing down potential intruders. we know in these dangerous emergency situation that time is

critical. slowing down a killer, stopping an invader at a second locked door can gain time for law enforcement to respond and save lives. adam lanza killed 26 people, 20 beautiful children and six great he had cairdzeducators, in fiveh 154 bullets. if he had been stopped earlier, if a second set of doors had alerted police, if a buzzer had been available of the kind -- the most immediate kind available elsewhere, the consequences might have been different. there were alerts to the police. they responded virtually immediately. their response was heroic and profoundly significant to saving even more lives. but we know that time is of the

essence in these situations. and that is why double locks, buzzer system, identification, additional checks all can be important. the chief operating officer in new haven public schools, will clarke, told me about that kind of buzzer system there. and in winstead, school officials, including the regional school district superintendent, judith palmer, and the high school principal, candide perez, are working hard to improve its security system. but infrastructure there, as they told me, are a continuing challenge. and winstead board of education member mimi valeo told me, we don't even have wifi. in 2013, we're in a wireless age and the next generation of security systems may rely on

wifi or smartphone. we need to make sure schools like winstead have the resources they need to address security needs of the 21st century with the technology of the 21st century. school security is too important to be allowed to lag. i want to thank all of the educators who educated me, who shared with me their stories of progress, their goals for the future, their hopes that we can improve our schools, make them safer. if we make our schools safer, we make our children safer and we make america safer. and i am hopeful, more optimistic than ever in light of vote that we took last week, that we are making progress and that we will have positive votes in the days ahead, votes that

fully fulfill our obligation to stop the plague of gun violence. and i again thanks my colleagues for their courageous votes last week and urge them to move forward this week in the same way. thank you, mr. president. and i yield the floor. and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. manchin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. manchin: mr. president, i ask permission to speak, as

needed. the presiding officer: without objection, the reading of the quorum call be dispensed with. mr. manchin: thank you. last week senator toomey and i introduced a very important piece of bipartisan legislation with our colleagues, senator kirk and senator schumer. it's called the public safety and second amendment rights protection act because that's exactly what it does. it protects the safety of the public and our constitutional right to bear arms. since we introduced the bill, there's been lot of misinformation about our legislation, and today i want to set the record straight with hard facts about our proposal and what it will do and what it will not do. i think people immediate to understand how guns first get their life, through a commercial sale of some sort. and what we're talking about is not creating any new laws; we're creating about uniforming the laws we have. first of all, we have on the books today f.f.l. -- federal firearms licensed dealer.

there are approximately 55,000 throughout the united states of america. these are friends of mine, people i know. if you go to a licensed dealer today and purchase a gun, you're required to do a background check, a criminal background check, and you're bawrvegly checked to -- and you're basically checked to see if you are able to 0 have a gun. that licensed dealer puts that record of the background check they did, and he or she only a a -- as a licensed dealer can keep it. the paranoia that someone say, someone will take them from pee? that doesn't happen. it makes it a felony with 15-year imprison many. the second way you buy a gun is at a gun show. if you go to a gun show and that

same dealer, the f.f.l. dearling, a licensed dealer, if you go to their store, gold through a background check. if you go to the gun show and you go through th buy the gun to through the background check there. but if you go to another dealer, you don't go through the background check. today if i want to buy a gun from senator toomey and he has a gun for sale understand i want to buy that the law today for me to buy interstate from west virginia to pennsylvania, mr. toomey would have to send that firearm to a licensed dealer in west virginia and i have to go have a background check done before i can take possession of that. so we're not creating new law. all we're saying is if you go to a gun show, there will be a background check for all guns that are sold at the gun show. if you buy it on the internet,

there will be a background check, whether it is in state or out of state. there is not a universal background check, mr. president. this is basically a criminal and a mental background check. a criminal and a mental background check. and that criminal and mental background check is you have to have been found guilty by a court that you are a criminal or you're found mentally insane by a court that you should not be able to buy a gun. that's all. so what everybody has been hearing and all this talk is just falsehood. if you're a law-abiding gun owner, like myself, if you are a product gun owner and like shoot being and you like to go hunting out in the woods with your friends and family, we do not infringe any way, shape, or form on individual transfer, so if it's not a commercial transaction, individual -- someone said -- i heard in west virginia, usually your father or grandfather or uncle or somebody got you your first gun and it

goes through that. i have some people who have a collection of guns that was handed down by your family, never bought a gun. you're still able to have that type of transa,. that's not inter-- you're still able to have that type of transaction. that's not interfered with. you can sell it to your neighbor without any interference. you can put on your bulletin board in your church and sell to a church member. no intervention. so if anybody says we're ink fringing on anybody's rights, we're not. it was a bill that basically we looked at the gun culture in america, who we are. how we became who we are and that's what we took into consideration. and i, for one, as a gun owner, and a person who enjoys hunting and shooting and all the things and camaraderie that brings, i feel very sometimes looked upon in an objectionable way just because i enjoy that. i am a law-a abiding citizen and

my second-amendment rights give me that right. i want to make sure that's protected. but i also have a responsibility. and that's what i want to make sure. and that mont responsibility iso the right thing. that's why we're here. if you're looking for ways to keep our citizens safe from mass violence, then shouldn't we look at the culture of mass violence? the culture of mass violence, i've gone around the schools in west virginia and talked to some of the students. we can talk to our young pages here, the bright and the best what we have, and they've probably become desensitized to what you and i would have been in our generation, if we saw on television or in a movie. and go god forbid we didn't have internet back then. if you're going to talk about banning somebody's weapon, a gun, a hand-me-down, if you will, don't you think you ought to have people with expertise that can tell you what the gun does than rather it might just

look fancy but doesn't perform anymore than a deere rifle? we have this commission. we will have people that have gun expertise, people verify mental illness expertise. i've gone to the schools and talked to teachers in kindergarten, first grade, second grade and they are he a saying, wait a minute. we have no help. we identify kids that we know have challenges mentally or they come from a home where they need help. as a society we have the responsibility, i believe. so we're going to have a commission with gun expertise, mental health expertise, how about school safety expertise? we have a situation, the horrific situation in newtown. that gentleman got in that school not because he had a key or because a door was unlocked. he got in that school because he

was able to shoot the glass out of the front door and stick his arm in and hit the safety bar an let himself in. i've been a governor for six years of the state of wet virginia. we built a lot of schools and remodeled a lot of schools. not one time, mr. president -- not one time did an architect come to me and say, governor, if we're going to build these schools -- they told me about all the safety devices so you couldn't get into the school. they told me about all the lockdown so you have to have a safety code to get into the room. not one time was i told, we should have bulletproof glass on every first-floor window. not one time was that ever brought up to me. so we need people that have school safety expertise. video violence -- talk to the children. talk to the youth of today. if you haven't got on the internet lately and flipped to video violence, you should do

it. it'll amaze you. it'll absolutely scare you of what you're seeing, the horrific -- the horrific things that you all have been exposed to, which i can never imagine in my childhood. so don't you think we ought to have the people that are defenders of the first amendment come and talk to us about how we can change the culture of violence in our society? that's really what we're talking about. so i have a lot of my colleagues, i've been hearing on different talk shocke shows, tag they didn't like this or we should be doing this. and my good friend, senator pat toomey, and i are going to go through this bill and describe what we are going to do and what it doesn't do. and how we can move forward by keeping society safe, treating law-abiding gun owners with the respect they should have and making sure that criminals or the mentally insane that have been found to be so by a court cannot buy a gun.

so, if you're a law-abiding gun orientation you're going to like this -- a law-abiding gun owner, you're going to like this gun, mr. president. if you believe in the right to bearages you'll like this bill. if you are a defender of the military veterans, you are definitely going to like this bill, mr. president. if you are looking for ways to keep our citizens safe from mass violence, especially our precious children, you're going to like this bill, mr. president. mr. president, if you know somebody that's a criminal or if they've been declared "mentally insane" by the courts, they're not going to like this bill, mr. president. that's exactly what we have tried to do. i want to go through so many of this, but i want my friend, senator pat toomey -- and i appreciate him so much. we have sister states, west virginia and pennsylvania, especially western pennsylvania. me and my family group in

farmington and fairmont, which is an hour and a half below. we saw yuns instead of you all or you. so pat and i understand each other. at that time i would like for senator toomey, if he would, to explaining the part that is so near and dear to him and me also. senator toomey. mr. toomey: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: thank you, mr. president. i would like to begin by actually taking a moment to inform the members of this body and people who may be listening, if you weren't aware, it appears that a tragedy has struck at the boston marathon and bombs have gone off, and there are injuries that we know of, casualities, the severity of which we do not yet know. we hope and pray that there are no fatalities. it apparently, according to the news reports i've seen, it's too

soon to know that with certainty. so i know my good friend from west virginia joins me in having our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families of very, very disturbing news we've just learned this afternoon. i can't tell you how much i appreciate the senator from west virginia, the work that we've done together has challenging and constructive, and i think we've come to a very sensible legislative product, something that i can be proud of. i want to thank senator kirk for the work that he did on this, from way back; and senator schumer's contribution to this process as well. i'd like to start if i could with just some thoughts about the second amendment and what it means to me and why i think it

is important to this discussion. sometimes i think it is useful to go to the source. just as a reminder, not that we're not familiar with it. i'm going to read from my pocket version of the constitution the second amendment to the constitution which says a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of a people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. today we often think that the second amendment is about sportsmen, is about hunting. that's an important part of it. but the second amendment is actually much more profound than a protection for hunters. it's more fundamental to our country and who we are as a people. in my view, the framers recognized in writing the second amendment, they were recognizing our natural rights, our natural

law rights of self-defense and self-preservation. in fact, those rights precede the constitution. they were acknowledging and recognizing those rights in the constitution. they didn't create them. i would also suggest that the second amendment is about sovereignty. who's sovereign in this country? is it the government? is it the head of state? or is it the people? and i think as we know, this whole great experiment of ours that is america is an exercise in recognizing the sovereignty of the individual people, and the sovereign people, of course, it flows logically ought to have the right to bear arms to protect themselves. and ultimately our founders intended the second amendment to be the means by which we would maintain our liberty and prevent tyranny. we often take for granted the, in a democratic society in which we get to select our own government and our

constitutionally protected rights are respected, but we all know that around the world and in the recent past there have been appalling cases where tyranny has destroyed the rights of relatively free peoples who in many ways have come from societies not terribly dissimilar to ours. so these are some of the thoughts that occur to me when i think about the second amendment, why it's so important to me. i see it as a very important part of our very identity as a nation and as a people. it's why it's very important to me personally, in addition to being a gun owner and someone who is always respected these rights, it has a very important philosophical underpinning for me. for years, of course, we had many contentious debates and one of the contentious debates we had about the second amendment for many, many years was

probably -- probably arose from the first phrase about the well-regulated militia. the debate centered around whether or not this right, this second amendment right, whether that was a collective right that depended on one's membership in a militia or if it were an individual right belonging to individual people. now it was always clear to me this is an individual right, clear to me for a variety of reasons, not the least of which the founders never recognized the idea of collective rights. for them, it was all about individual rights. but fortunately, our judicial system put an end to that question when a conservative majority of u.s. supreme court justices reached the heller decision in the district of columbia vs. heller, they made it very clear this is not khraefbgt right, not -- collective right.

the second amendment is an individual right that applies to individual americans. and i wholeheartedly agree. not too long after that in the mcdonald et al decision, the court went further in upholding the heller decision and referencing that. it upheld that decision and said this second amendment right is so fundamental and so basic and so important that it's binding on states and local governments as well. not only can the federal government not infringe upon second amendment rights, but neither can a state or local government. so that's a pretty, pretty impressive conclusion that our court has come to in resolving a big part of this contentious debate. now i would pose a question that the court has also addressed, and that is is this a right that is enjoyed by all of the people of america?

in my opinion -- and i think this is not controversial -- the answer to that question is no. young children are not expected to be afforded the same second amendment rights as adults. criminals who have been convicted of crimes have foregone many of their rights, including second amendment rights, by virtue of their conviction of serious crimes. and dangerously mentally ill people are people that we as a society have every right to protect ourselves from. and so they don't have the same second amendment rights that everyone else has. now i would argue to our founders this was a given; after all this was a time when capital punishment was quite common and they fully accepted capital punishment. how perverse and absurd would the idea be that someone who was subjected to capital punishment

would be able to enjoy second amendment rights. it's obvious criminals forego that right. the heller decision, the recent supreme court decision i just referred to, addresses this as well. justice scalia observed -- and i quote -- "nothing in our opinion" -- the heller opinion affirming the individual right of the second amendment. he says "nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast out on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." it seems to me that is a very explicit explanation that it is not an infringement on second amendment rights to attempt to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals, mentally ill people. so if the founders are in agreement on this and the supreme court is in agreement and we have laws in all 50 states that make it illegal for

certain criminals and mentally ill people to have firearms, the question is: are we willing to take modest measures to try to achieve this goal that i think we all share, and that it's clearly consistent with our constitution. that's what senator manchin and senator kirk and i are trying to do here today. what we're trying to do is make it a little bit more difficult for the people who aren't supposed to have firearms in the first place to obtain them. and i think senator manchin will agree with me that there is no panacea here. there is no law that anyone could write -- certainly not this one -- that's ever going to guarantee that a determined criminal won't be able to obtain a weapon one way or another, or that maybe even a mentally ill person may not be able to obtain

a weapon eventually if they're sufficiently determined. but can't we take a very modest step to make it more difficult? if we can do it in a way that does not infringe on the second amendment rights of the law-abiding citizens whose rights we want to defend. so our bill, i think of it as doing three broad things. senator manchin and i will get to -- will walk through some of the specifics of how we achieve this. but i would suggest one way to think about it is three categories. one, is we simply encourage greater compliance with the background check system we have in place now. we're not inventing a new one. we're not inventing new criteria for it. but the fact is the participation in the background check system by the various states -- you see, we rely on the states to provide information about the people who have been adjudicated as

mentally dangerous, people who have been adjudicated by criminals and they have been convicted. the federal government doesn't have that information. we rely on the states to provide it. and what we do in this bill is we create greater incentives for the states to in fact participate in this because the participation varies dramatically. a second thing we do is we expand background checks to gun sales at gun shows and over the internet. again, this isn't a new system. we're just applying this background check to a category that has not been subject to it, but it's the existing system. and then the third thing -- and we'll talk about this at length, i hope -- is we have a number of measures in this bill that frankly i think are overdue, and they enhance the opportunity for law-abiding citizens to exercise the second amendment rights that they ought to be able to recognize. so i think senator manchin put

this very, very well. if you are a law-abiding citizen who enjoys exercising the second amendment right, you're going to like this bill. it's going to enhance your ability to exercise those rights that you have. if you're a criminal and you'd like to get a weapon illegally, you probably aren't going to like this bill because it's going to make it a little harder for you to do that. and it will also make it harder for someone who is mentally ill. i'm going to yield back to my friend, the senator from west virginia. but before i do that, i want to make just one simple point about how tangible and how real and how important this can be. this -- to this, i'm referring to enhancing compliance with the next background -- with the nics background check system. we all remember the virginia tech shooting and the tragedy

here, one of the aspects of this tragedy is that the shooter's ability to obtain a weapon might have been prevented. i say that because the young man, cho seung-hui, had already been adjudicated to be mentally ill, dangerously so, by a virginia judge. they had discovered this. they had figured this out. they knew that this was a very unstable and very dangerous man. but the state of virginia never passed that information on, and so there was no information about this man in the national background check system. when who knows whatever demons possessed him to go out and obtain guns so that he could wreak the havoc that he did, he went and submitted himself to a background check, and he passed with flying colors because the system didn't have the data. one of the things that senator manchin and i are proposing in

this legislation is let's provide greater incentives and there's a carrot and there's a stick and a cost to states so that they will be more in compliance. i'll be clear. if virginia had provided this information to the system, then this shooter from virginia tech would have been denied that day, and we don't know what would have happened after that. it's possible that he would have found some other way to obtain weapons. but think of all the other things that might have happened. if he had been denied at that moment and walked out of that store, who knows what else might have intervened, whether he would have gotten help, whether he would have been stopped some other way. we'll never know that. but it seems to me that it's a good idea to try to put that block in place. and that's one of the things that we would achieve. our legislation, i think, would go a long way over time to

encouraging and in fact realizing a greater compliance on the part of the various states. senator manchin may want to elaborate a little bit on how we achieve that. and then i would continue in this discussion with him. mr. manchin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. manchin: i come from a state, like most of the rural states in america, that there is an awful lot of people who just live a subtle life. there is a thing back home that we call you have either common sense, nonsense, now we think you ought to have a little gun sense. and it just makes sense to think about what we're doing here by not infringing on anybody's rights but protecting those and prohibiting those who shouldn't be able to have a firearm through a commercial transaction. my good friend, senator toomey,

was just talking about the second amendment rights which all of us hold near and dear. you come from a gun culture state such as ours. with that being said, i just talked about common sense and gun sense. one of the largest -- one of the largest pro-gun organizations in the country, one of the largest, the citizens committee for the right to keep and bear arms, which is strictly for the right to protect the second amendment, have come out in total support of this legislation, total support, because you know why? they read the bill. that's all we're asking. they read the bill. we have had a lot of our colleagues that have been told certain things. we have a lot of friends in different gun organizations that have been told a different thing. and all we have asked, senator toomey and i, take time and read it. we started out working this bill from so many different angles.

everybody had a part of this. what we tried to do is find something that would make a difference. now, i want you to think about this. most every one of our colleagues have been visited by those unbelievable families from newtown. i can't even imagine, i really can't, i still can't. i know you have probably seen the clips when i kind of lost control of my emotions there, but i just -- i'm a grandfather, i'm a father, and i can only imagine what these families are going through. now, let me put new that state of mind. you lose a little child, such a tragic tragedy. the child goes to school and you would never expect that child not to come home from school. one of the safest, most sacred places that we have, but it happens. now how would you feel? what state of mind would you be in? let me tell you what were their states of mind. to a t, each one of these

newtown families that i met, they come in and say we don't want to take anybody's guns away. we don't want to ban any weapons. we don't want to infringe on your second amendment rights. and then on top of that, you know what they say? we really know and realize that the bill you're working on right now would not have saved my beautiful little child, but what we're asking you to do is maybe save another family, just maybe prevent another family from going through what we went through. now, think about that. i wish i could be that strong. i said if we in this body -- if 100 of us had one ounce of the courage that those families have, oh, my goodness, what a body we would have. if we weren't worried about all the outside pressure and maybe getting elected, maybe getting campaign funds that it would take for us to go out and get elected, if we worried about basically can we keep guns out

of the hands -- in a commercial, in a commercial transaction, from a criminal who has gone through a court system and found guilty through a mentally insane person who has gone through a court and found to be unfit, just maybe we could save one life. someone says why would you take this on? i don't know why else we were sent here, mr. president, than to try to make a difference. you know the easiest vote i can make while i'm a senator is no. i can make no and vote no on about everything and be fine. can i go home and people will go why did you do that? i didn't like that either. do you follow me? no is the safest vote as a congressperson or a senator. i understand that. and it's wonderful i guess to have a title as a senator. it's a great honor to be in this

unbelievable body with these truly magnificent people. i want to make a difference. i want to do something, and i think most of my colleagues do. the only thing i am asking most of my colleagues who have been told something or they have heard something or they have gotten pressured phone calls and letters is to read the bill. it's only 49 pages. mr. president, when have we had something that could change the course of our country, and it's only 49 pages long? i have seen bills that were a thousand pages, 500 pages, amendments 300 paijts. we have got -- 300 pages. we have got an entire bill of 49 pages. that's all we have asked for, sir. that's all. we are going to be on the floor for quite some time, my dear friend, senator toomey. tomorrow we will probably be joined by our other good friends, senator kirk, senator schumer. everybody has come together.

senator schumer has a bill that he started that i said my dear friend, chuck, i can't support that. he says can i work with you? i said i would love for you to work with me. he did that. and my dear friend, mark kirk from illinois, who has been steadfast, rock solid, has been right there. this is bipartisan, and it really -- the bipartisan -- i'm so -- bipartisan is democrat and republican. this is american. i don't want to say it's bipartisan. this is american. this is about can we make a difference, can we change something? can you have people that basically are the most unselfish, strongest, bravest people i've ever met, the families of the newtown children, be able to come and say listen, i want to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens, i want you to have your rights, i want you to enjoy your gun, i want you to enjoy your hunting trip with your family, i want you to enjoy all the things that the second

amendment gives you, but i also want you, if you can, to protect another family, protect another child, protect another person in america. that's all we're trying to do. and as you look through the bill, there are so many different things we have talked about. i have heard people say oh, my goodness, they are going to start registering. you know what? they are going to give all of those records, all of those records to some big, fancy computer that's going to know exactly where to come and get your gun, mr. president. not only does the law prohibit that today, this bill, when we pass this bill, this law will basically say if any government agency intends to do that and abuse that record that the law-abiding firearm dealer is supposed to keep and only them, it will not only be a felony, it's 15 years of imprisonment. that's why, that's why you might

have these organizations that are basically joining in and now looking and reading the bill and say my goodness, that's really protecting the second amendment rights. so it's -- it's an emotional bill. it's an emotional time in our country, but truly it's a time for us to come together. it truly is. there is a healing that must go on, and this bill will help that healing. and we want to talk about this, and we're going to go into it detail by detail, step by step. i just again thank my good friend, senator pat toomey, from pennsylvania. i would like for him to go ahead and explain that. the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: i think it might be useful to just discuss a little bit some of the specifics, specific ways in which this legislation would enhance the compliance and the participation on the part of our 50 states with this existing background check system.

as senator manchin and i both said, we're not creating a new system, we're not creating a new set of rules by which the system operates. what we're simply asking is since states already have information about people who are criminals and people who are dangerously mentally ill, we want them to put that in the database so that we can discover it when someone goes and attempts to buy a firearm. by the way, i will -- mr. manchin: let me say also that i might mention, if i may, we also talked and discussed about that to put an incentive so someone can't say that that's an unfunded mandate. that is not an unfunded mandate, my good friend, the senator. mr. toomey: i also want to mention, one of the very typical categories of mental illness that we want to capture are people who have been publicly adjudicated so, people who have pleaded not guilty to a crime by reason of insanity. that strikes me as a pretty good definition of somebody who is

mentally ill or someone who is deemed not competent to stand trial by virtue of their mental deficiency. that would be another category. but the idea here is we have a series of specific measures that would encourage greater compliance. there's a carrot and stick approach. we would authorize some funding. it would have to live within the spending caps that we have already agreed to, overall spending caps, but we authorize funding for grants that states can use to carry out, first of all, an assessment of the extent to which they are currently in compliance or not. as i say, some states are probably doing virtually all that they can. other states are doing almost nothing in terms of providing this information that they have to this database system, and they can start juan assessment of that. we would then ask them to -- start with an assessment of that. we would then ask them to submit a four-year plan by which they would develop full compliance or as full as they can achieve in

four years. they worked this out with the attorney general, there will be benchmarks along the way, and they would have a series of steps that they would take by which they would start to turn over this information that they already have about people who are criminals and people who are mentally ill. now, if the state refuses to develop such a plan or to achieve the benchmarks that they set out in their own plan, then we would propose that they would have a penalty, and they would -- they would lose some funding. that's the mechanism by which we have an inducement, an incentive for these states. they could lose up to 15% of what's known as the burn jag funding. that is funding that the congress annually makes available to states for fighting crime. so i think this is a sensible combination of measures to simply encourage states to participate as they should. now, if the gentleman from west virginia had anything more to say about the next improvement

piece of this, i would certainly yield. and if not, i would -- i want to mention a reason why i feel strongly about expanding the background checks. but, mr. president, at this point, i yield back to the gentleman from west virginia. the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. manchin: i thank the good senator from pennsylvania. i appreciate that. i just think that what he has said is spot on. what we're doing is basically just saying that it preserves important background checks, exemptions in current law like the temporary transfers. that way, for example, you can loan your hunting rifle. a lot of people, they are hearing all these misnomers. you can't even loan your hunting rifle to your friend or to your family member. you can do that. we're not prohibiting against that. your buddy or whoever without restrictions. also, under current law, transfers between family, friends and neighbors that we just talked about, that's all allowed to be done. so don't believe if someone is telling you that cannot be done.

that's not what we're talking about here. again, it's just common sense. like i say, the senator and our other colleagues, senator kirk and senator schumer, we have been talking back and forth on this, this is not a bill that we have just sat down as senators. we have had outside. we have had people from all different walks of life had input. and we would go and do a little research to find out if that made sense, if that has been done, if it happened, if an infringement has been done, if a person has not been able to enjoy their rights as an american citizen, a law-abiding citizen. we did all of that. and i just appreciate so much the senator pointing out some of those. he will continue and i will be happy to come back later. so at this time i would yield back to the senator from pennsylvania. the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: mr. president, the last point i would make about the improvement of the nix system is something i would have mentioned. currently there are states that can adjudicate someone as mentally ill, for instance, but leave that person with very few

options to challenge that status. that's the current situation. we remedy that. one of the things we require in this bill, this four-year plan that we require the states to develop, has to include a program, a mechanism by which a person who feels they have been wrongly designated as someone who can't own a firearm by virtue of their criminal background or their mental health, they would have an opportunity to challenge that, as they should. there ought to be a process they can go through to challenge that finding so that nobody who doesn't belong on this list ends up on this list. let me -- let me move on to the background checks at gun shows, but i'm going to -- i'm going to introduce this by reading a letter that i received from a constituent just yesterday. this happens to be a woman whom i know very well. i've known her for years. she is a conservative

republican, as it happens. she is a second amendment owner. let me just read to you what she wrote. she wrote -- "hello, pat. i just had to watch after watching your leadership with this very difficult issue. i very much understand what you're doing with the gun show checks and appreciate your dealing with this. this issue is very personal with me and if you'll indulge me, i'll tell you why. she goes on to say i'm a very strong supporter of the second amendment, and i'm the gun owner in my house. i do shoot, and my father very proudly passed down his remington 1100 to me several years before he passed away. he presented it to me with great pride and i accepted it as a very special moment between us. meanwhile, pat, i have an adopted daughter who has had emotional troubles her entire life. much of our journey with her has been difficult and it continues to this day. my daughter has been involuntarily committed twice,

and i, unfortunately, believe it won't be the last time as she refuses to get proper treatment. i was the one who had to sign her paperwork the first time and it was made clear to me i'd be taking away her right to own a gun. i knew that we had no choice but to try to get her some help. but my hand shook and i had to pause quite a long time over that document because i so strongly believe in our second-amendment rights. nevertheless i signed it and i would do it again today. at various times people have been concerned for our safety with the volatile nature of-daughter's problems. the idea that she would be able to purchase a weapon openly in a public venue is not acceptable. i don't believe that she actually would, but i don't find any comfort in the fact she could have an avenue if she so chose. once again, i can't emphasize the importance of the second amendment to me enough.

pat, i thank you for your efforts in d.c. and bless you for all that you're doing. be well and be strong. i think that says a lot about what we're trying to accomplish here. here we have a passionate supporter of the second amendment, a gun owner, someone who has always been a believer in the second amendment, and for reasons that she's explained very personal, very important reasons, she doesn't want her daughter to be able to go into a gun show and buy a firearm without so much as a background check. since the mom has authorized -- the recognition of her daughter's problems, if the information is provided and if that state complies, in this case it's my state of pennsylvania, complies with

this background check system, then someone in the circumstances of her daughter attempting to buy a weapon at a gun show would be denied. and i think that's the outcome that we all want. it certainly is the outcome that her own mother wants who loves her dearly and loves the second amendment. at this time i'd be happy to yield back to the senator from west virginia. the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. manchin: thank you, senator. i think we all have letters like senator toomey is receiving right now and people looking for what we call gun sense. which goes right along with common sense. there's so much out there about the bill and let me just reiterate a couple things the bill does not do. what the bill will not do. the bill will not in any way, shape, or form infringe upon anyone's second-amendment rights to keep and bear arms and in fact it strengthens that as senator toomey has so eloquently described. the bill will not take away

anyone's guns. nobody. will have their guns taken away. the bill will not ban any type of a firearm. it's not even in the bill. we're not banning anything. the bill will not ban or restrict the iewfs any kind of bullet or any size of clip. it's not in this legislation. the bill will not create a national registry which we just spoke about. and enact it explicitly prohibits that which we've given you the penalties of a felony and a 15-year sentence. as we talk about this bill we're asking our colleagues to come down and bring their questions, concerns or what they believe and what they've seen in talking to their constituents. i'm right now pleased to have with me a constituent -- a colleague of mine from the big sky state of montana who comes from gun culture like myself and senator toomey. and if i could, i'd like to yield to the senator from montana at this time. the presiding officer: the

senator from montana. mr. tester: i'd like to thank the senator from west virginia, thank the senator from pennsylvania. and i'd like to rise and talk about the toomey-manchin amendment knowing that this is not an end all when it comes to violence in america. we've got to -- we have got to do some things that revolve around menl health, mental illness, how we treat that, how we move forward in ways that make sense for folks that believe strongly in the second amendment. but also believe in how we make our communities safer. so whether it's the toomey-manchin amendment sore some other amendment that may come up during this debate or whether it's an amendment that deals with mental health and how we treat it and how we get professionals out there on the ground, this is a very important issue for folks in this country. the second amendment is very important. i'm going to give you a little

bit of background which most of you know. i come from a farming background, my grandparents came to our farm a little over a hundred years ago. when my folks took the place over, my dad set up a custom butcher shop. for 20 years, my wife sharla and i ran that custom butcher shop. that means every mortgage, literally every morning i would get up and we would go knock down a beef or a pork with a gun. i literally made a good portion of my living on the farm with a gun. that was a tool. it was a way that kept us on the farm, it was a way that kept our farm economically viable. but you don't have to be a butcher to know the value of a gun. in montana, we've got sportsmen and women who literally start hunting at a very, very early age and know how to handle a gun, they know responsible gun

ownership when they see it and they know irresponsible gun ownership when they see that, too. mr. president, right now -- right now anybody can go out and buy a gun, in some states where the senate instant crime background check isn't very good, literally anybody whether they have a criminal record or a violent of hundred thousand mental illness can -- violate -- violent mental illness can buy a gun. what we're trying to do with this amendment is trying to make the second amendment stronger for people who are law-abiding gun owners, but yet trying to keep guns out of the hands of folks who cannot handle them in a responsible way. and have a record of that. a court adjudicated record. so, you know, as we move forth here and we talk about the

things that this bill does positively and negatively, i'm going to tell you i've read it, i've read it forwards and backwards, i've talked to folks, and i can tell you that this makes my second-amendment rights stronger. and for that i want to thank you. and here's how it does it. my second-amendment rights are only put at risk by people who use them in an improper way, use guns in an improper way. this bipartisan agreement makes sure that we protect that second amendment by responsible gun owners. and not just in a willy-nilly way by the way, responsible gun owners that are clearly, clearly depined. -- defined. what responsible gun ownership is. it fixes the underlying bill that quite, frankly, i moved to move forward on -- volted to move forward on but without this amendment i could not support. it does positive things like let gun dealers sell firearms across

state lines at gun shows, that's new. it improves the process by which someone can get their rights restored, this is a big one for me. we've got veterans returning from iraq and afghanistan that -- and, by the way, need free trade agreement treatment, can get treatment, this bill does not impact them whatsoever. but, on the other hand, if somebody has a serious problem, gets put on a list, they've got the ability to -- through this law to be able to get off that list once they prove they can handle that responsible --, responsibly, that gun ownership. there's been a lot of talk about gun reg cities sisters -- registries. jot this prohibits it the department of justice. the way the world is right now i think it's fair to say nothing changes. no gun registry now, no gun registry after this amendment is passed. in fact, strictly prohibits it

when it comes to the department of justice. there are protections in here for veterans that makes sure that veterans are treated fairly by the system. i serve on the veterans' affairs committee, montana as the second per capita number of veterans in the country. and it's important that especially -- it was true with vietnam but especially with iraq and afghanistan, that these folks are able to get the treatment they need without impacting their second-amendment rights and i think we're clear on that, it does not impact them in a negative way. if you want to give a gun to your son or daughter or you want to sell it to your neighbors or friends, there's no background check required. active military can buy a gun in their home state or the station where they're at, not just their duty station.

it allows for a concealed carry permit to be used in lieu of a background check. but the bottom line is, it doesn't impact my second-amendment rights whatsoever. i was on the tractor this weekend, seeding a few peas and a little bit of barley. on the radio came a show called trade, if you have something you want to sell, you put it on the radio. one of the things being sold was a .808. -- a 5.308 -- a .308 rifle. under this bill if i put it on the radio and i says, i can, patrick toomey is and a friend of mine. if someone you i doiptd know calls, we go down to the local

story store and do a quick background check, and i'll ask the senator from west virginia, what does a background check typically take on an individual by a gun? mr. manchin: i would say more than 90% of the background checks in america that are done are less than three minutes and probably even no more than a minute and a half. so in that range there, that tells you about how quick it can be done. mr. tester: exactly. you zip down to the local gun store, wherever it might be in your town and do the background check. and then you don't have to worry about if, in fact, that person has a criminal past or is severely violently mentally ill. it will be there. and there's also language in this bill that if a state isn't putting information in the national instant criminal background check, money is

pulled back. had in the state of montana, i believe it's about 10%. in montana, that's serious dollars. that's well over $100,000 would be pulled back. would the senator from west virginia like to talk about the thinking that went into that and how this could impact the background checks? mr. manchin: all the members that worked on the bill, senator toomey and senator kirk and senator schumer, got together and there hundred, one of our largest gun organizations brought us to task. we supported background checks ten or more years ago. it just didn't work. you know what? they were right. we said fine, do you flow the baby out with the bath water or do you change the water and make it a little bit better? we looked at and we said fine. we didn't want any unfunded mandates, so we put $100 million a year for, for four years to give grants to states to get them up and running. there's an incentive. we said if you don't do your job

and turn your record are he records over, 10% the first year, 11%, i think it goes to 13% and up to 15%. atsd off of your burn jag money which every state depends on that money. that's serious. no one else has ever put that. and that concern came from the gun organizations right now, one of them who is not supporting it and should be. mr. tester: the bottom line be be -- bottom line is, this puts into effect real incentives to keep this national -- the nics, national instant background check database up to snufp. there is a commission in this bill that is good policy as we move forward. a weiss find almost on a daily basis some incident that --

that's happened that's unacceptable. the bottom line here -- and i know you guys have talked about this a lot during your presentation of the bill, we've talked about something called common sense. making sure that when we do a background check, it actually is a background check. making sure that -- and, by the way, it will not, this bill will not solve all the violence problems in this country, not even close. but is it a step in the right direction while protecting my second-amendment rights? yes, it is. does it take away my guns, does it stop my ability to go out and buy any guns that i could buy today? no, it does not. does it have any impacts on things like assault rifles or big, large magazine clips? no, it does not. what it does is this: once the

national instant criminal background check database is up to snuff it will prevent people who have a history of violence, who use guns improperly from getting a gun. it will prevent people who are violently mentally ill from being able to go out there and buy a gun. and i can tell you that if -- if we're able to work together in a bipartisan way, as the senator from west virginia and the senator from pennsylvania have done, hopefully we can move forth with some issues, with some policies that deal with mental health in this country, an issue that we've never dealt with well as a society or the stigma that is associated with it. if we can do that, there are other amendments out potentially that we can put on to this bill as we move forth. and if the amendments are -- have commonsense backing and protects the second amendment, we should take a hard look at them and have a debate on those too. but the bottom line is this -- i

want my second amendment rights protected. i want law-abiding citizens in this country to be able to go and continue to be able to purchase firearms. i want my kids to be able to do that. i want my grandkids to be able to do that. and i think this bill helps ensure that. i want to thank the sponsors for their hard work. i yield the floor to the senator from west virginia. mr. manchin: let me just say -- the presiding officer: the senator from w west virginia. mr. manchin: -- on behalf of all of us who've worked so hard, i want to thank my good friend, senator tester from montana. he comes from the same culture i come from and i know how many calls he's received and how much pressure he's had. i know that. because of all of the misconceptions and untruths. but he did does that we're asking all of our colleagues to do -- he read the bill. he read the bill and found out for himself that this bill does exactly what we've been trying to do for a long time and, most importantly, protecting the

innocent and our children by keeping the guns away from people that shouldn't have them and not infingerring on anybody's rights -- infringing on anybody's rights. he's readed bill. and that's all we ask for. and at this time i'd like to yield back to my good friend from pennsylvania, senator toomey. the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: thank you, mr. president. the senator from west virginia makes a really -- i know it may seem very basic, just read the bill. this bill's been available on-line since thursday night. it's available now. it's available in every detail. it's available in summary form. any way people choose to look at it. the citizens committee for the right to keep and bear arms, one of the pro-second amendment groups that endorses this bill, did so. and i'm just going to read briefly from their quote. they said, "if you read the manchin-toomey substitute amendment, you can see all the advances for our cause." "our cause" meaning the defense of the second amendment -- "that

it contains." here's the bottom line. as the senator from montana pointed out, our amendment isn't gun control. in my view, this is very clear -- and i think it's an important contrast. there are other members of this body who are not happy with this bill because they want active, aggressive gun control. for instance, they want to ban various categories of weapons. they want to ban various kinds of ammunition. they'd like to have various kinds of waiting periods and other restrictions on law-abiding citizens. that's gun control. restricting the freedom of law-abiding citizens who've never done anything to harm anyone and restricting their second amendment rights, that's gun control. i disagree with it. i oppose it. i'll oppose every such amendment that comes before this body. but trying to keep guns out of the hands of people who aren't legally entitled to have them, dangerous people, be they criminals or dangerously

mentally ill people, that's not gun control. that's common sense. as i started off my comments, there's no dispute that that's not an infringement on the second amendment. our founders didn't think so. our supreme court justices don't believe. so the laws in 50 states don't maintain that. it's just common sense. i want to point out another difference in the approach that senator manchin and i have taken versus that that some others in this body have taken. others have said, let's make a universal background check and then we'll think about who to make an exception for, and they carve out very narrow categories. well, one of the problems with that in my view is you're not going to imagine every set of circumstances you ought to carve out. we took a different approach. we said, you know what? private transactions generally don't need to be subject to th this. but i'm not going to try to imagine every conceivable private transaction. and so instead, what we said w was, let's have background checks on commercial transactions. that's where the big volume of

transactions occur. that's where strangers are buying and selling guns from each other. and that's why we require the background check at gun shows and we require the background checks on internet sales. but all the private transactions, whether they're within a family member or friends or neighbors or colleagues, all of that, if it doesn't happen at a gun show and it doesn't happen over the internet, it's not subject to the background check because we thought that that would be an unnecessary burden on people who know each other. now, let me just run through quickly some of the ways in which this legislation strengthens the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise their second amendment rights, and i'll do this briefly. the senator from montana touched on some of these. and i ought to start off underscoring something that the senator from west virginia mentioned earlier. not only will this not in any way contribute to any kind of national registry, it's explicitly forbidden.

and anybody in the federal government who did try to create a federal registry would be subject to -- would become a felon subject to 15 years imprisonment. that's point number one. some of the things that -- problems that we've heard from our constituents who are gun enthusiasts that we were able to address in this legislation, one is to clarify and fix interstate travel laws. because sportsmen who are traveling long distances, this happens -- unfortunately it happens too frequently when a sportsman from one state is traveling to another state, maybe so a hunting trip, maybe he's going home for christmas and he wants to give a relative a gun as a present, he's perfectly, lawfully entitled to own that gun, he's following the rules and regulation of his state, he packs the gun appropriately in his vehicle and then as he's traveling through another state, he discovers, oh, he's not in compliance with that other state. people have gotten themselves into trouble. never -- never done a thing to harm anybody.

just traveling into a state that has a whole different regime and doesn't respect the regime of his state. we fix that by clarifying in the legislation that if you're transiting through a state and you're in compliance with the laws of your home state, you're okay. we permit interstate handgun sales from dealers. we provide and -- and this is really important; the senator from montana mentioned this -- a legal process for restoring veterans' second amendment rights. we've got a problem in this country right now for veterans that come back from serving this country, risking their lives, often sustaining injuries, sustaining trauma and they can go to the v.a. and have a social worker decide that, well, they're not really able to handle their personal financial matters. that alone puts them on the registry and disqualifies them from being able to have -- to own a firearm, legally to be able to purchase one.

now, i think that's outrageous, frankly. that's -- that's current law. that's happening today every day to veterans. we deal with that. what we say is we change that system. we -- under our legislation, that just couldn't happen. before, anybody at the v.a. could designate a veteran as somebody that can't own a firearm. first of all, they'd have to inform the veteran 30 days in advance and give that veteran an opportunity to challenge that status. that's only fair. we owe that to these men and women who've given so much to us. that's in our bill. we also have a policy today, the law of the land forbids an active-duty military person from buying a gun in his home state. i don't know whose idea that w was. it doesn't make any sense to me. but that's lawsuit. -- but that's the law. well, we've repealed that in this bill so that a man or woman who's serving in uniform in this country can buy a -- a firearm in their home state.

we also allow a person who has a conceal carry permit to use that permit as the mechanism by which they're approved for a gun sale, and that just stands to reason. the conceal carry permit process is itself a very cumbersome and onerous process. in many places, it's very thorough, it's much more extensive. and if you've passed that, then you should be fine. we have that built into this as well. i just want to underscore, thi this -- these are the reasons why two of the leading pro pro-second amendment groups have endorsed this bill. it enhances the opportunity of law-abiding citizens to exercise their second amendment rights. now, if you're a criminal or if you are mentally unqualified to have a firearm, then you're not going to like this bill. but, as i said at the beginning, i feel very strongly it's not gun control to try to keep hands -- guns out of the hands of people who are not qualified

to have them. so i again want to thank the gentleman from west virginia, my friend. i appreciate the hard work you've put into this. i have another meeting that i'm going to be heading to. but i appreciate the chance to share these thoughts and to work with you. and we'll welcome any questions or comments or ideas or suggestions from our colleagues as we wrestle with this in the coming days and hopefully -- hopefully have a vote soon that will be successful on this amendment. thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. manchin: i'd like to, first of all, thank senator toomey for all his hard work in coming, to be involved and informed as he has in bringing his expertise to this discussion that we've had with our colleagues. and i think, as he's been talking -- and we've been joined by our good friend, senator tester from montana -- and those of us who come from this gun culture state, that we can maybe put some down -- some of these myths to side, if you will, and allow the foocts come out.

-- the facts to come out. i think the most important thing from us talking today for awhile has been that we're not creating new law. we're improving old law. and i think that's what we're sent here to do. my father always used to say, the only thing new in this world's a pair of eyes. everything else has been pretty much improved upon by what someone else has done. that's what we're trying to do. we're improving on a system that needed to be improved. the veterans -- we just talked about the veterans, as senator toomey had just done. i didn't know to the extent of how veterans were treated when they come home. we're in a war that's longer than 12 years and -- and counting. hundreds and hundreds of thousands of men and women who've put their lives on the line for us come back with challenges. if they've been affected by this war, they're almost afraid to go to get evaluated because if

they're evaluated in a positive way, they can be discriminated against. i believe that's wrong unless they're found through a process and a procedure to be not competent. we have 150,000 that maybe never were notified of their rights, which we're going to make sure that they have that appeal process available to them. and when this piece of legislation passes, every veteran coming back as they go through that court proceeding can say, wait a minute, i want an appeal process. i think your evaluation's wrong. so you just can't put them in a system that they have to work the rest of their life to undo. i think that we owe that to our veterans in this great country. again, it comes down to simply just reading the bill and not making up things and listening to organizations who may be using this fear tactic as a campaign to raise funds and

finances and money. i hate to say that. you know, i'm a proud member of organizations and they do an awful lot of good in informing, and we teach safety to young children. we do a lot of things. i had the benefit of growing up in a town that the people in that town had a sportsmen's club called the farmington sportsmen club. my father was not a big sportsman but my father wanted me to be involved. he worked a lot and didn't have time. so these people took me under their wing at a very young age and taught me to respect and to be able to use firearms safe and be responsible, totally responsible for that. when i should put a shell in the gun. when i should not have a shell. when i should have it in my ca case. how i should carry it in the woods. how when i crossed a fence the gun should be unloaded because that's when we've heard of some horrific accidents.

just little things. they ingrained that into me. and we do that and these organizations do a lot of good. but when they put misinformation out, that is a disservice to the law-abiding gun owners and the people who respect the rights and that second amendment gives us, which senator toomey has so eloquently gone into and senator tester has spoken to also. this is going to continue for some time, i'm understanding, and we're going to be talking, senator toomey and i will be talking on this and we'll be joined by i'm sure our other colleagues, senator kirk, senator schumer, senator toomey. we're inviting all of our colleagues to come down. if you've heard something from a constituent or from an organization, come down and talk to us about it and we'll show you in the bill that it doesn't do what they've said. you know, the biggest thing that we have is the registration. doesn't do that. not only does it not do it, it even protects you more than what you're protected today by law. we improve upon it.

it doesn't take anybody's guns away. i think senator toomey talked about basically there's things that he wouldn't vote for, nor would i. but guess what? that's not in this bill. there will be other bills, other amendments that all the colleagues will have the chance to either support if they're for more gun support, or oppose. what we're saying is this is one piece of legislation we know will make a difference by keeping guns out of the hands of those who have been adjudicated through a mental court or court system or a criminal. and we know that through commercial transactions -- and people have used all different types of figures how many guns basically are transferred at a gun show or online. and we know with the expansion of internet there's going to be more and more. all we're saying is that's the least personal of all the transactions on an internet. and we're going to make sure that i might not know you,

mr. president, but up in your beautiful state of maine, and i see something you have that i would like, i have the technology of the modern world today to make contact and hopefully be able to purchase that, which i never had 20, 30, 40 years ago. but i'm going to make sure also that that gun is sent to a licensed dealer who depends on their livelihood by abiding by the law to make thaour a background -- make sure a background check is done on me before i can purchase or pick up that gun i bought from you. that makes common sense. i've heard a lot of things about they could be charging, a lot of fees could be involved. we allow the person who's going to be doing that service for you to charge a fee. let me tell you as a businessperson, as a businessperson, every one of us in business, especially retail, we know exactly what the value of every customer who walks through a door. you might say they're just shopping. my father and grandfather said

there's no such thing as a shopper. they're all buyers. they just don't know it yet. they're going to buy something. they walk through that store, they have a value. and if they have a value, do you know what's going to happen? you're going to see people advertising, please, come and let us do your background check free for you. that's a service we want to give you. we want you to be right and make sure that the right person gets it. and guess what? they might be buying something else. they might buy new boots, some camouflage gear, might buy their son or daughter a new outfit. you just can't believe. that's marketing. that's business. that's what it's all about. don't let the naysayers say no, too much of a burden. trust me, the markets have a unique ability to correct themselves and take advantage of it. and a customer and a buyer, not a shopper, you get those buyers coming through the door, we're going to sell them something.

we're going to be happy to talk about this bill for a few days. we want to make sure we invite all our colleagues down here. as we do we'll be announcing the times we come down to the floor. in the meantime, to all of my colleagues, to all of you out there that have been hearing all the things and getting you excited that they're going to do something and take your guns away or take your rights away or register them, that is false. all we're saying is go online and read the bill. it's only 49 pages, and we even broke it down for you. if you will do that and if our colleagues will do that and bring it to the floor, it's all we can ask for. the facts will set you free. the facts will set you free, mr. president. and we believe we worked hard. our staffs have worked exceedingly hard, and i appreciate everybody and appreciate my good friend, senator toomey, my good friend, senator tester, the other senators that we have, senator mark kirk from illinois and

senator chuck schumer from new york, for working so hard to try to find a balance. and it takes us all from the right and the left, from both sides of the aisle, republican and democrat and independent, all of us to work together to make this come true. this is an american bill. it's not a bipartisan. it's for our country. it's to save the children. it's to keep our society safe. and also to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens and law-abiding gun owners like myself and you, mr. president. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: