if we make strategic investments congress does something we can have incredible growth. how do i know that? we did it in newark. our port area was a great potential. we put together a strategy. we're booming with pitney bowes, building out our area creating thousands of jobs in newark. we started with the manufacturing sector. we needed strategies to make it grow and stronger and did that even for small businesses. we had to look within and create a access to capital pool that helps 50 to 60 businesses grow. my point is why isn't congress doing the obvious things we know we need to grow our economy? yes, we need to fix the tax code. we need to make it simpler. we need to bring businesses back here with their resources. we need to invest in r&d and do things i know can happen. if newark, new jersey, can grow the way it is growing right now i know the way we can do it in washington to make our state and nation grow even more robustly. .

holt: it paid back many times over to. that's what we need to be doing now. we should be investing in our public schools, we should make it available -- accessible for motivated, prepared students to go to college. i'm working and in the senate i will work with elizabeth warren to make sure that we have the lowest possible interest rates for student loans for prepared students to go to college. we can do that. we don't need to have the higher interest rates that we do now.

>> moderator: madam speaker. oliver: yes. something that is of major concern to me when you look all around the country, we have significant numbers of aging suburban communities that once had stabilized tax rates and tax ratables. those things are gone. it is time for the u.s. congress, the federal government to work in tandem with the leadership of the president and governors of states to move forward a recreation of economies across this country. i use new jersey as an example. and despite what you read about the bureau of labor statistics and despite what you hear about job creation, significant numbers of people in newark, trenton, camden, as bury -- asbury park, woodbridge, people continue to be unemployed in this state. pause the jobs that are being created here are not jobs that are providing livable wages in

one of the highest wage states, income states in the country. >> moderator: time. congressman? pallone: i know reference has been made to congress being broken, and i mentioned it myself in my opening remarks. but i do believe that we can get things done in congress. and i think that right now not the tea party, because they're the problem in trying to cut everything, but i think there are more moderate republicans, mainstream republicans that realize that this cutting and the sequester is slowing the economy and not good for the economy. so i think we have to reach across the aisles. you know, we have republicans in the majority in the house, but reach across the aisles to some of the more moderates and explain to them that we have to get rid of the sequester and, basically, that's what the president was talking about in his speech in the last few days. sort of a grand bargain or deal that basically says, look, we will do certain things with the corporate tax rate. we may even reduce it, but we have to get rid of these corporate tax loopholes.

and then we will invest money in the economy to grow jobs and create jobs, you know, that have good benefits. but at the same time, we can make some cuts, rational cuts -- not across-the-board cuts -- in things that don't make sense. >> moderator: time's up. mayor booker. booker: congressman pallone has worked really hard to do the things he said, and congressman holt said we need to invest, but i'm telling you right now we need to act. let me give you a data point, newark, new jersey, is 3% of the state's population, but we make up 33% of all the development in the state going on in newark right now. that's not because of one leader, it's because of people like the speaker, it's like people like the governor. we brought him together as part of the coalition. right now in newark we're bringing small business people together with firms like prudential, we're bringing community activists together, they're doing training in unions, we're expanding

apprenticeship programs for our kids. what i'm saying is we can get this done. we actually need people that can bring folks together in washington, that can bridge divides, create coalitions where action can happen. we can do this. it's not time for excuses. there are too many people still suffering in a tough economy. it's time for action and getting things done. >> moderator: time, sir. our next question will go to, madam speaker, to you, and we're going to go back once again to my colleague, alfred dobbin. >> speaker, i want to stay on the term investment, but rather than taxes and funds, let's talk about education. clearly, people view the most important investment in the future is in educating our children. it's something everyone talks about, but changing the system from washington has not proved to be a very good, successful thing. no child left behind has, in fact, left a lot of children left behind. can we fix it from washington? is it a washington problem? and what would you suggest going

forward? oliver: i think that we need a national agenda in terms of moving the public educational system, the community college system, the university system forward, federal leadership is required. but i think that the challenges represented to k-12 systems cannot have an expectation that washington lead the way. each one of our states is different, the demographics are different, the profiles and the economies of the states are different. and the federal government certainly cannot craft out a national agenda that is going to reflect the needs in each particular state. but without question one of my opponents made reference to science, technology, engineering and math. we need to make broader invement the feds can certainly, certainly do more to make certain that our curriculums

reflect what is necessary. >> moderator: time. congressman? pallone: look, the federal government can make a difference in terms of investment in education in our schools. i've been advocating a school modernization program where towns or counties can apply for grants to repair or build schools like they do with transportation. i've also said that we should be sending money back to schools to avoid layoffs of teachers. we did this a few years ago in the aftermath of the recession after 2009 where we sent money back so there weren't police and fire layoffs and teacher layoffs. in terms of no child left behind, i think that it has misfunctioned in ways. there's too much reliance on these multiple choice tests in terms of rating schools. and i really think that what needs to be done is that we have to do more in terms of providing teachers with skills and better -- and providing teachers so they're better qualified teachers. i mean, that's where the federal government can play a role. i do have to say, and i differ

very much so with mayor booker on this, i do not think that vouchers are the answer. i'm very concerned about the fact that vouchers, which he supports -- >> moderator: time's up -- pallone: will take away funding from public schools. i believe in public schools. >> moderator: mayor. booker: it's not just about the federal government's responsible, it's about taking action. all four of us right here have the same amount of legal authority over schools in our districts which is really no district authority. but we didn't wait for congress or anyone else to act, we jumped in. we brought hundreds of millions of dollars into our public school system. we are actually paying teach efforts more and paying them even more if they take on more difficult jobs. we've worked to expand the school day and even at home with kids give them home libraries for thousands of our students so they can better start learning at home. so the federal government does have a role to play. if i'm your united states senator, i'm not going to sit back and watch struggling districts struggle. we're going to do real things. first of all, my first policy paper was about dealing with the

challenges of child poverty, because the reality is if kids are dealt with and have the kind of empowerment with universal preschool, the kind of acceptance when it comes to prenatal care, they actually go to school more ready to learn. we need real ideas and solutions. but most of all, we need people that will take responsibility and action. >> moderator: time, sir. congressman holt. holt: in addition to universal early education and really making public schools work by dedicating ourselves to public schools, we also have to pay attention to science and math education. there is no one in the congress who has been a bigger champion of science and math education than this scientist. and, in fact, worked in a bipartisan way to see that science education and math education are included in the elementary and secondary education act. i do not think that -- i'm

interested that mayor booker was silent about vouchers that mr. pallone raised. i would like to know how vouchers can help the schools of newark or any other city. they just siphon money away. and a massive expansion of charter schools is not the answer for excellent education for 50 million children. and the idea, well, "the washington post" said it best, that mayor booker is the, is a vigorous proponent of governor christie's educational policy. >> moderator: madam speaker. oliver: yes. since we've focused in on some of the troubled school districts in our state, there's no negating nork comes into the discussion. jersey city has been a takeover district, patterson has been a takeover district, and under the state's auspices we have seen no improvement whatsoever in the operation of our schools. in the north district while it was under state control, we saw

massive fiscal impropriety, we saw a superintendent who contracted with a food service in queens, new york, with the lunches delivered to newark on a daily basis. we have not seen improvement with state intervention of the schools. there is no question the difficulty with large urban districts is the pretty schism that is involved -- to lit schism that is involved in the operations of the school. we have enough knowledge as competent professionals and legislators to address the issues that are impacting urban schools in new jersey. >> moderator: congressman? pallone: you know, mike, mayor booker talked favorably about governor christie's economic programs or something, how it benefited the city of newark. the fact of the matter is that governor christie's been doing the opposite. he's been taking money away from the city, so it's been harder for them to pay for their teachers, to pay for their firefighters, to pay for their

police, and many cities have had to lay off people in each of those categories because he's not helping. i believe the federal government should help, but the governor's not doing that. and mayor booker has been very supportive of governor christie's plans with education which means vouchers, which means privatization of schools which you have to be extremely wary of. okay, maybe some money goes from private interests to help with the schools, but what is the real impact? and what does that mean in terms of their wanting to influence what goes on in the schools in terms of curriculum or other things that might be involved with that takeover? we have to be very concerned about the lack of funds that are going to the public schools. i know that money isn't everything, i'm not suggesting that. but if you have to lay off teachers and make deals on curriculum, it's not going to make good public schools. >> moderator: mayor? booker: i'll never apologize for bringing millions of dollars, but i do want to bring up about why i was silent on vouchers.

many things mean many different things when they talk about vouchers. for poor kids who are stuck in persistently failing schoolings, i support scholarship programs to give them a lifeline so they can have the same kind of opportunities that that wealthy parents do. i find it interesting that congressman holt would bring this up as a criticism of me because he actually voted for the washington, d.c. opportunity scholarship program. he actually voted for a program substantially similar to exactly what i support. in fact, both congressmen voted for omnibus bills that supported the washington, d.c. scholarship act. so while they're criticizing me, i'd like them to explain why they vote for the same positions that i have. >> moderator: congressman holt. holt: well, the mayor should check the record. i have been an opponent of vouchers because, as mr. pallone said, they are an efficient method of sigh nonning resources -- siphoning resources away from the public schools. the idea is to bring excellent education to all 50 million children in america, not some children who are lucky enough to

find some specialized schools or get some money that they can use to buy their way partially into a private school. we should be investing in the teachers. of course, that's the place it starts. we shouldn't be turning education into a market-based enterprise where the students are the products and the teachers are the means of production. we should be treating teachers as professionals, not somebody you hire and fire and go to a temporary agency if you need some more in the fall. we should be investing in teachers, in their professional development. we should be investing in the school -- >> moderator: time's up. holt: -- the public school system. >> moderator: let's talk about the affordable care act, also known as obamacare. it has been hailed as a pan pana for that which ails us, others say that it will drive businesses out of business, it

will drive doctors and would-be doctors away from the medical field. your take on it. is the affordable care act the way it's constituted -- and it's been delayed in terms of implementation as well -- are you satisfied where things stand and where things are going? should we reevaluate the course we've taken? pallone: mike, i helped write the affordable care act, and this is my proudest achievement as a member of congress, and it's the reason, one of the reasons i believe people should nominate me as our democratic candidate for senate, because it shows that i can get things done on issues that really matter to people. please do not believe the tea party and those who tell you that the affordable care act is harmful. it is one of the best pieces of legislation that we've ever passed because the bottom line is there were 40 or 50 million americans who had no health insurance. they will now be insured. there were at least as many who had a very skeletal, lousy benefit package, and they're now going to have a good benefit package. and there were at least as many who because of preconditions or other discriminatory

practices -- particularly women -- who were not able to buy insurance at an affordable price. by the end of this year, those problems are going to go away. americans, most americans will have health insurance, they'll have a good benefit package, and they won't pay more because of a pre-existing condition, and the discriminatory practices will go away. >> moderator: time's up. pallone: this is when congress works. congress can work and make a difference. >> moderator: mayor? booker: i do want to give the congressmen credit, because this is a great bill, and the courageous leadership of our president putting a lot on the line got it through, and it's massively expanded opportunities for our residents here in new jersey. helping people with pre-existing conditions not be kicked off insurance, helping young people who mine getting to the older -- might be getting to the older ages staying on their parents' insurance. so it's a very good thing. but now we need to fight for its implementation and defend it against those who want to try

to -- voting almost 40 times in congress -- to try to repeal it. but the second thing for the long term of the strength of our economy and the sustainability of our health care in america, we've got to begin to do more to control costs. this is unsustainable the way we're spending on health care right now, and we can do a lot more to getaways, fraud and abuse out of the system and begin to reward doctors for outcomes, not for how many expensive tests they can run. to make health care strong in america, we need to implement the aca and make sure -- >> moderator: time's up. booker: -- we do what's necessary to control costs in the long term. >> moderator: congressman hot. holt: as a member of one of the authorizing committees of this legislation, i too helped write it, and it is a great improvement over what existed just three years ago. so the affordable care act, we need to see that it's implemented over the objections of people like governor christie and those who in congress have voted to repeal it now 40 times over the last couple of years.

but that will not by itself, as good as it is, as good as far as it goes, not bring all americans -- will not bring all americans into the fold of excellent health care. we need to take the next step which is universal, single-payer health care coverage. that's the way to bring excellent education to all, it's the way to put a check on the uncontrolled increase in spending. now, at the last debate my, the other candidates said, oh, that's impractical which is another way of saying, well, we can only do things that we first clear with the tea party. >> moderator: time's up. hospital hot i don't know how mayor booker feels about it, because he wasn't at the last debate. oliver: i have been a proponent of the single-payer system as well. and during the last several years when congressman don payne was alive, he spent spent a lot of time with legislative leaders in his district as well as labor

unions and health care advocates trying to work and advocate for a one-payer system, but that's not what we could get. i am totally embracing the affordable care act because i know there are 1.3 million people in this state who have no access to health care. i do commend the congressional delegation from new jersey that created an opportunity for children in our state to get insured. but their parents are not. the affordable health care sets us on a trajectory to provide access to doctors for all. wellness and prevention are going to be cornerstones as we roll out implementation, and as with any law that is ever created at any level, those pieces that don't operatallize properly, you go back and repeal. >> moderator: time. congressman? pallone: mike, i am going to be a little critical of some of my colleagues here who are suggesting that, you know, we need to go a lot further. i mean, look, this is a major

achievement to get the affordable care act passed. the tea party was not with us. the tea party wanted to kill it and is still trying to kill it, so there was no agreement here with the tea party. and i'm a big single-payer advocate, and i also believe we need to control costs. we couldn't even get a public option. being an effective senator or congressman means that you deal with what you can, and if you get half a loaf, i remember senator kennedy always said half a loaf is better than none, and that is the reality here. fact of the matter is, when you talk about controlling costs, already in new york they've said that with the affordable care act costs of insurance in the individual market is going to be 50% less than it was before the aca. so it is actually controlling costs. and when you talk about, you know, a single payer, i mean, sure, that's great, and it sounds wonderful. but the fact of the matter is we couldn't get the votes for that. >> moderator: time's up. pallone: we are going to make a difference here. most americans will be covered, and this will be a very effective program. >> moderator: mayor?

booker: thank you. so health care, obviously, there's still urgencies that exist. this is a great bill, and we should do everything we can to implement it. it is reducing premiums in some places but, again, we have to have innovative, get it done leadership. in newark we're showing the pathway by actually promoting better health, doing things we could be doing from the congressional level to end food deserts, to deal with childhood obesity, forming programs to each lower costs for seniors and even more like we did with our newark-based prescription drug plan. so there's a lot of things we could be doing to build upon this, and we just can't wait. we have to get going now because the urgencies not just of people having health insurance, but preventing people from getting sick in the first place, giving them access to preventive care, making sure that we're creating healthy environments for them as well. and especially our children. >> moderator: congressman holt. holt: a universal single-payer system is not pie in the sky. we have it. that's what the va system is.

that's what medicare is. it works. it works better than what most people have or so many people don't have at all. so, yes, it is doable. and the idea that we can't hold out a vision of what is best for america because the tea party is going to object, i think, just holds us back. that's not the definition of leadership, in my book. >> moderator: madam speaker? oliver: yes. you know, tied to this issue of what system is better, the reality is that there are communities that are losing hospitals because hospitals cannot afford to provide charity care. finish and despite initiatives in obesity control and healthier eating, the reality is in a city like newark we've had the closure of united hospitals, st. james hospital, columbus hospital and st. michael's hospital is teetering on the

brink. if, in fact, there is not political support for the affordable care act, we will see even more hospitals close in very vulnerable communities. what the affordable care act will do, it will provide a way for hospitals to be compensated for the care that is being subsidized by the state and helping people become healthy. >> moderator: last question, we're up against the clock. i can't guarantee rebuttal, but we'll get as far through as we can, and that is this: you are democrats, you've gotten rave reviews in a lot of the papers as being one of the best fields of candidates we've seen in the state in a long time. in a state that usually goes democratic in these races, for four decades it certainly has. so there's a good chance one of the four of you will end up being the u.s. senator. going to an institution that is dominated by the democrats. fighting against the other body which is republican controlled.

why should the voters send any one of you there in particular? what difference will you make? mayor? booker: actually, i'm surprising that the criticism that i've gotten with governor christie. the truth is he and i disagree on most everything from marriage equality, frankly, to the issue of giving women access to preventive care. i'm the mayor of the largest city in the state, i've got to work with the governor. he and i partnered together and did do, as i said, created the largest economic development period in newark since the 1960s. 33% of all the development going on in the state is going on in the newark right now. that's what you've got to do as a united states senator. you've got to find ways with people you disagree with not to criticize them, but find ways to reach across the aisle, find common ground where it exists even if it's only 10% of the things between you and actually make progress. you see, this is the problem with washington right now is if you look what you're getting from washington, stick with it,

but it's not working. if you want the same experience in washington, take the same experience. but what i think we need in washington is a different type of experience, not more washington experience. >> moderator: time. congressman holt. holt: as a scientist i begin by listening to people and then studying the evidence, following the facts and taking them where they lead to a conclusion which i then espouse clearly and courageously. and that's true in all of these things. and i find, you know, if you start with the facts, you can actually get things done in a divided, polarized system in washington. that's how i got the mental health and suicide programs done for soldiers and veterans. that's what i've done with student aid to get $16,000 of up front student aid money for future teachers of math and science and foreign language, for open space protection for

historic protection for foreign languages that i did with senator lautenberg. that's -- you start with the facts, you can find common ground and get things done. that's what i have done in washington and, furthermore, i know holding out a vision of what needs to be done to take america forward. >> moderator: madam speaker. oliver: yes. one of my hair wynns was the late congresswomen, shirley chiz some, who said talent comes in a skirt often. i believe the lack of women's representation in new jersey's congressional delegation must end. i have served at every level of government. we've heard a lot of discussion about municipal government. i've worked in newark's municipal government probably when its mayor was still in high school. i have sat at every desk at every level of government. municipal, county, state. i've administered nonprofit organizations, i've worked in higher education, and i have also worked in the private

sector. i know the challenges that face not just this state, but this country. i believe i have the capability to address any issue that is of note to new jersey's next u.s. senator, and i also bring with that a scope of experience in working on new jersey issues. that's what people are interested in, new jersey. >> moderator: time. congressman? pallone: mike, i think that being the experienced legislator does make a difference, and having been in congress and worked across the aisle to pass legislation and basically working with my colleagues on either side of the aisle to make a difference in writing the affordable care act, of doing the kids' health initiative prior to that to insure kids, working to put an end to ocean dumping to cleaning up toxic waste sites, all these things i use as examples of how you can get things done.

but i think we need an experienced legislator. i know the mayor talks about being the mayor of newark, and i understand he feels that qualifies him. but i don't think it's the same as having been in congress and actually worked with a lot of the congressmen. half of the people in the senate now are actually former members of congress who i know and i've worked on with legislation over the years. so i think that if you think about what i've done and what i can do to really make a difference in terms of working families, growing the economy, creating jobs, trying to, as i said before, change the tax code and working with the president to build the economy, this is what you need, someone who has that experience. >> moderator: time. if this is one of those situations as well where i believe it's time for closing statements. and the fascinating thing is i had a list here, alfred and i put a list together of all the issues we wanted to talk about tonight, we barely scraped the surface. so i apologize to viewers if your personal issue did not get recognized. i don't think the camera

lighting system's set up for that, but i do want to say we try to get to as many as we can, and it is time for our closing statements, and we've drawn straws and, congressman pallone, i believe it's your opportunity to close us out here. pallone: thank you. well, i think you've seen some clear differences tonight between the candidates on a number of issues, and i want to stress that i believe strongly that we have to protect working families, look out for the little guy and create jobs with good benefits and grow the economy. that's what i want to do in the united states senate. i very much model myself on senator lautenberg, i was endorsed by his family because they think i'm the person they think can get things done. they talk about me as the go-to guy. and like senator lautenberg, i will never compromise my principles. i was one of the first people who voted against the doma, the defense of marriage act, because i thought it was wrong. i was also a very early opponent of the iraq war, and i voted against the iraq war because i do think that you have to stand up for your principles. and we are democrats.

we're all democrats. i believe in the democratic party, and i believe that i can make a difference. i mentioned the fight against ocean dumping, the fight to clean up toxic waste sites, the fight to pass the affordable care act. i can make a difference as united states senator. i ask for your vote on august 13th. thank you. >> moderator: congressman, thank you very much. time now for the closing statement from mayor booker. mayor? booker: thank you. i do think you've seen two different types of leadership on the, and the two congress people here have 40 years of experience between them in washington, and if you want that kind of washington experience, you should vote for them if you're happy with what you're getting out of washington. but, again, to me, we don't need more washington experience. we need a different type of experience in the washington. in newark when washington couldn't pass a jobs bill, we got to work and actually were able to create local loan funds and other programs that grew jobs. in washington when they couldn't get it right for our veterans coming home, we started new jersey's first-ever veterans

one-stop in the municipality helping veterans in all our surrounding areas. when washington couldn't get a background check bill passed, we worked together with state and local authorities to get more guns off of the streets with creative programs. enough is enough. we've seen what 40 years of experience is getting us. it's time for a different type of leadership. it's time for someone to do better, because if better is possible, good is not enough. i hope you will give me the chance to be your senator, because i know that together we can do better. >> moderator: time's up. mayor booker, thank you very much. congressman holt, your turn. hot hol again, i thank the organizers and the viewers. the citizens of new jersey need to know what they will get in the next senator from new jersey. i think in my case i've been out there, i've been very public, i've been running this campaign on issues, specific issues. i've got a record that is clear. "the new york times" said i am the most able legislator of the group. so, and you also have the vision

that i hold out. i wish that we could have more of these debates, because we still need to know where, for example, mayor booker is on these things. coming into tonight's debate, i said i was supporting breaking up the big banks, the too big to fail is too big to exist. i said that i support a carbon tax to get serious about climate change. i said i support stopping spying on americans. but mayor booker didn't support any of those. well, tonight he has added to the list. he doesn't support single-payer health care coverage east. so i have -- either. so i have a list that's available for display, i have not hidden it, i'm not equivocating. i am presenting a progressive agenda that will help the people of new jersey and will help extend the american dream to all americans. >> moderator: congressman, thank you very much. speaker sheila oliver, your closing statement.

oliver: i, too, would like to thank njtv and all of its partners for allowing us to engage in this dialogue this evening. and to the voters of new jersey, i would like to say i think it is time to break up the old boys' network that exists not just in the political system in our state, but on capitol hill. and the way we do that is by making certain that new jersey's congressional delegation reflects the people that live in this state. 53% of our population is composed of women. nationally, 40% of all households are headed by women whether they be widowed, divorced or never married. it is time that issues that are of importance to average, everyday, working new jersey yangs and americans are addressed on capitol hill. not more of the stakeholder interests, the big money wealth interests, the corporate interests. it is time to have a senator

that will represent working class people and people who are trying to get a leg up and a toe hold and become part of the middle class. it doesn't matter that you have frat earnization with people from california or new york or some other blif yous state. this campaign is about new jersey, no place else on the planet. >> moderator: madam speaker, thank you very much. and to all the candidates, thank you as well. it's hard to imagine that all the time has gone by, but this debate is, indeed, now over. we want to say thank you, of course, to our friend in the studio next door, alfred dobbin, the editorial page editor of the record. thank all the candidates, congressman pallone, speaker oliver, congressman holt and mayor booker. and a reminder that the special primary election to choose the democratic or republican candidates for the u.s. senate is a week from tomorrow, that's next tuesday, the 13th of

august. we've had the extraordinary privilege and pleasure to bring all this to you this evening from the dumont television center here on the campus of montclair state university. so many issues we wish we could have gotten to, but for me always a personal honor and privilege to be amongst candidates who are dedicating themselves to trying to do some good for the public, and i thank you all for being here. i thank you for watching at home as well. i'm mike schneider, thank you very much. hope to see you back here once again. until then, good night from all of us here at njtv. ♪ ♪ >> president obama has canceled his meeting in moscow with russian president vladimir putin. the president will still attend the group of 20 economic summit in st. petersburg, russia, but a top white house official said the president has no plans to hold one-on-one talks with

mr. piewrten while there -- mr. putin while there. .. not setting a special meeting with putin during the g20

business. >> host: let me read to you a portion of the statement from the white house press secretary that came out just about 40 minutes ago. the press secretary saying that given our lack proving guess on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relation, global security issues and human rights in civil society in the last 12 months we have informed the russian government we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda. >> guest: of course that's right. another factor mentioned was the decision to grand asylum to snowden as well. carney saying disappointing decision to grant temporary asylum was a factor we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral statement. that is a quote from the statement. he is getting repeated questions about this. as late as last night the president was saying that he was disappointed in the move. >> host: the president will still travel to st. petersburg, russia, explain the

difference, between that summit meeting and that bilateral in moscow. >> guest: that's right. the g20 summit has been scheduled for st. petersburg. the president will travel to that, and of course putin will be there as well. the significance he is not going to meet with him separately either. it is not a separate bilateral summit where they discuss issues. it has been interesting to note over the past few months when there have been meetings with obama and putin, the kind of tension we noted for instance, earlier this year with a special bilateral appearance. at this point, given, not just the increasing tensions during that appearance but what's happened since then, the relationship seems to have, to evolved just a bit. again the white house stressing this is not a cancellation as much as it is a postponement. this is how they're framing it, until a time when meeting might be more productive. >> host: rebecca sinderbrand, developments from

"the new york times," a editorial in "the new york times" says the president should not meet with russian president putin. of course we know that will not happen. reporting of a meeting that will take place this friday that includes secretary of state john kerry and defense secretary chuck hagel, here in washington with their russian counterparts. is that meeting still takes place? >> guest: that meeting with kerry and russian counterparts will take place as scheduled. they will discuss how we best can make progress moving forward. also not indicating there has not been a complete break of some kind but definitely sending a strong message to the russians that the bilateral relationship has been harmed by the latest series of moves. >> host: and in diplomat talk, let me go back to the statement that you referred to. we talked about earlier where the white house called russia's disappointing decision on edward snowden. what do you read into that. >> guest: that's right we've heard that language again and again from jay carney during

the white house briefings. he said the u.s., repeatedly said the u.s. is deeply disappointed. the president saying last night they are disappointed. there were a lost complaints about the u.s. officials about the way the russians handled this move even though there were signs it might be coming. for instance, they were not given a head's up it was actually taking place. they were surprised by the timing of it. so a sense that the relationship is not working well behind the scenes apart from the public displays but not necessarily working well behind the scenes either. >> host: what about the one-on-one relationship between president putin and president obama? >> guest: it's been interesting to see the personal dynamic between the two, flashing back to the press conference earlier this year but when the two kind of agreed to disagree on the subject of syria. you could not get more tense in the body language between them. it seemed to be very cold. and, you know, the president also expressing a personal disappointment in feeling as though, yeah, the russians had

not lived up to, what he had expected of them. and you know, not necessarily, it treating the u.s. the way that, that they had expected based on bilateral relations in the past. the two men, again, not a particularly warm dynamic. and, there was a lost discussion after their last appearance about the kind of notable tension between them. >> host: again, reading from the top of the statement, following a careful review that began in july, we reached a conclusion that the white house statement there is not enough recent progress to hold a bilateral meeting with russian president putin. so that meeting has been canceled. let me ask you about the pressure the white house has been getting even from democrats. senator chuck schumer saying last week, this summit, this one-on-one meeting, should not take place. >> guest: that's right. you've been hearing lots, a lot of talk even more from congressional leaders pushing for for instances g20 summit to

be moved which wasn't going to happen and possiblepossibility of u.s. withdrawing from the olympics set to take place in russia next year. the early announcement is positive. we have statement from chuck schumer saying that the president made the right decision. he said as he said in the past, president putin is acting like quote, a schoolyard bully and doesn't deserve the respect a bilateral summit would have accorded him. earlier views positive from a lost congressional critics of putin. >> host: so moving ahead, what happens next? >> guest: well, you know it will be interesting to see how russia reacts to this. you know, there have been questions about, you know, they clearly this move with snowden and with others, standing up to the united states or at least being perceived to stand up to the united states plays very well domestically in russia. and so the question will be whether officials there, maybe think that they have gone as far as they can go or whether they want to, this kind of ups the ante and they want to be seen as

standing their ground. so the response from moskow will be very interesting. >> host: headline at "politico".com, amid snowden tension, obama cancels putin's meeting. on the phone, rebecca sinderbrand, white house deputy editor for "politico." >> guest: thanks for having me. >> in final stop on the west coast president obama will meet with u.s. troops and their families today at california's camp pendleton. c-span will have live coverage 3:50 eastern. each night this week on c-span2, while congress is on break we're showing encore presentations of q&a. this week, jody williams. she won the prize in 1197. her efforts toward a worldwide ban on landmine. 8:00 eastern, booktv in prime time. the focus on what booktv viewers are reading this summer. viewer glen es, is reading shelly alexander's new jim crow.

summer reading choice, former speaker of the house newt gingrich's gettysburg. a novel of the civil war. lilly and donna from the facebook page are reading, sheryl sandberg, lean in. tonight on c-span's town hall a look how the media handles war. we'll take your calls, emails and tweets on the relationship between government and journalists, censorship and national security. the c-span town hall is life tonight from 7:00 to 9:00 eastern. >> 150 years ago, our nation was engaged in a civil war. yet, in 1863 our nation was reminded of its revolutionary past when henry wadsworth longfellow produced tales of a wayside inn. one ever those entries began, listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of

paul revere. so in 1863 the revere aim name is being elevated. however at the same time the revere name is being chastised because one of paul revere's grandsons, joseph warren revere, brigadier general joseph warren revere of the army of the potomac is up for a court-martial because of his actions at the historic battle of chancellorsville, virginia, in early may of 1863. how did this grandson of one of our revolutionary war heroes get in such a mess? >> the life of union general joseph revere, saturday night, just past 11 eastern. part of american history tv, every weekend on c-span3. the national park service was recently cited in an inspector general's report with

what the inspector called a lackadaisical attitude for the management of its firearms. before leaving on their current five-week break, two subcommittees held a joint hearing on the issue. this is an hour 1/2. >> committee will come to order. [inaudible], by, stating the oversight and government reform committee's mission statement. we exist to secure two fundamental principles. first americans have a right to know that the money washington takes from them is well-spent. second americans deserve an efficient effective government that works for them. our duty on the oversight and government reform committee is to protect these rights. our solemn responsibility is to hold government accountable to taxpayers because taxpayers have the right to know what they get from their government. we work tirelessly in partnership with citizen watchdogs to deliver the facts to the american people and bring genuine reform to the federal bureaucracy this. is the mission of the government oversight and reform committee. we appreciate you being here in a joint effort with the natural

resources committee to conduct a very important oversight hearing today entitled, missing weapons at the national park service, mismanagement and lack of accountability. also like to welcome mr. bring hall have and joining us on the day is. mr. tierney and mr. bishop from utah, my colleague, mr., also involved in these two committees will be joining us here shortly. i'm pleased to hold today's hearing shortly with my friend and gentleman from utah, representative bishop. he is the chairman ever the house committee on national resources suncommittee on public land and environmental regulation and i look forward to working with him on an ongoing basis on these issues. today's proceedings result from a need to further address questions and concerns a raised in june 27th report from this year issued by the u.s. department interior office of inspector general, entitled, review of u.s. park police weapons accountability program. in the report the oig made some

very serious charges finding insufficient, quote, accountability, accuracy and oversight of the u.s. park police's firearms program. during the course of the oig's investigation the oig found, quote, credible evidence of conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms and the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing, end quote. moreover, despite requirement to maintain an accurate firearms inventory, oig find u.s. park police firearms inventory records were inaccurate and failed to account for hundreds of firearms. if these findings are accurate the lack of accountability is completely unacceptable. given the oig's glaring findings are the u.s. park police's lack of accountability for their weapons program i am also interested to learn whether the ammunition used by the u.s. park police is properly accounted for. the subcommittee on national security previously conducted oversight hearing, an oversight hearing on april 25th of this year, entitled, oversight of the federal government's procurement of ammunition in

which we found the federal government in some cases has not procured ammunition efficiently or effectively. based on the seriousness of the charges in the oig report the findings warrant further examination where the report fell short. there are a number of questions it would be helpful to explain the findings. are there examples where u.s. park police weapons were actually stolen or misused? how did the oig arrive at the hundreds of weapons used number? were simple typographical errors or poor data entry the main cause of unaccounted firearms? these are all legitimate questions. as a result, today's hearing provides an opportunity to discuss the findings by the oig, and to assess the extent of accountability issues within the united states park police. it is also important to further examine the weapons procurement process. oig cite reviews of u.s. park police's field office armories discovered approximately 1400, quote, extra, end quote, weapons with a force of only 640 officers. these extra weapons consisted of

477 military-style automatic and semiautomatic weapons. according to the ogi quote, we also discovered a number about weapons according to u.s. pp officials, fulfilled no operational need, end quote. it is my understanding that the undetermined number were awaiting destruction. we need to discuss that. i'm also concerned about oig's finding regarding senior management supervision of the weapons program, specifically that, quote, staff at all levels from the firearms program managers to their employees had no clear idea how many weapons they maintained due to their incomplete and poorly managed inventory controls, end quote. moreover the oig reported that firearms managers, quote, accepted verbal assurances that firearms inventory were completed correctly rather than taking personal responsibility for accuracies end quote. unverified verbal assurances about accuracy of park police firearms inventory is simply not tolerable. the report, the report is lack

of accountability over the u.s. park police weapons problem has been documented as a long-standing issue. i believe starting in 2003. but certainly in 2008 and 2009, the oig found a lack of oversight of weapons accountability program but the problems persist still today. one of the main reasons that we're gathered here today and i called this hearing in conjunction with these other members this continues evidently to be an ongoing problem. unfortunately after the reports issued in 2008 and 2009, it does not appear at least on the surface, that meese problems were resolved. and we're talking about firearms. it is very important and that is why we're here again today. i want to take a moment to emphasize that the hard work and dedication of the park police officers is greatly appreciated. we have great men and women who dedicate their lives, put themselves on the line in support of a very patriotic duty in serving their nation and protecting some of our nation's greatest assets. we need to ensure that our law

enforcement officers are properly trained and equipped to efficiently and effectively to do their jobs. that said the vandalism that recently occurred at lincoln memorial, national cathedral and smithsonian castle are raisings concerns that taxpayer dollars are spent effective in light of these shortcomings. i find it hard to believe given the prominence of lincoln memorial that we don't have somebody, 24/7 watching, guarding, taking care of, the lincoln memorial. that somebody could come and do that, and then simply be able to walk away. i'm particularly interested to learn what the u.s. park police is doing to insure the national monuments will not be defaced vandalized or become prime targets of terrorism. i look forward to hearing from all the witnesses today. today's hearing will focus on need for proper inventory procedures, improved oversight of firearms management. we will be touching on the

recent defacing of some of our nation's best assets. committee seeks to insure that the u.s. park police appropriately addresses the oig recommendations outlined in the june 2th, 2013 report. again i think the thank y'all for being here. i greatly appreciate work i do with the ranking member, gentleman from massachusetts, mr. tierney. i recognize him for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. in interest of time i ask unanimous consent my open remarks be placed on the record. >> without objection. absolutely. we appreciate that. mr. grijalva, we appreciate, hoping we set a trend, yes. we appreciate your being here today. mr. grijalva from arizona is the ranking member of public land and environmental regulations subcommittee in the natural resources committee. we appreciate you being here today. now i recognize you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and i think the problems

identified in the interior department's office of inspector general require serious consideration. we should try to understand the allegations in the report and not overstate or politicize them. i would like to acknowledge that the fraternal order of park police has serious concerns with the methodology used by the inspector general and allegations made in the report. the title of this hearing, missing weapons at the national park service, that, there is no reason to believe that weapons are missing or that weapons were ever in the hand of unauthorized personnel. an interior department task force was able to account for all weapons with the exception of a few weapons assigned to officers overseas or on extended leave and the department has determined that 98% of its weapons were already in the official system. and there's a whole litany of issues but following the trend set by mr. tierney, almost following the trend set by

mr. tierney, if may, mr. chairman, if there is no objection, enter the letter from the united states park police fraternal order as part of the record for this hearing. >> without objection. so ordered. >> thank you very much. the rest of my statements which were eloquent and well-thought out will be, will be submitted for part of the record. thank you. >> i thank the gentleman. all members will have seven days to submit opening statements for the record. we'll recognize our first and only panel. miss kim thorson, deputy assistant secretary for public safety resource protection and emergency services at the united states states department of interior. the honorable jonathan b. jarvis is director of the national parks service. mister risa chambers the is chief of the united states park police. mr. robert knox is assistant inspector general with the office of investigations with the office of inspector general with the united states department of interior. we appreciate you all being here side by side to have this

discussion. pursuant to committee rules all witnesses will be sworn before they testify. if you please stand and raise your right hand. do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? thank you. you may be seated. let the record reflect all witnesses answered in the affirmative. in order to allow time for discussion we would appreciate you limit your testimony to five minutes. my understanding is we have a consolidated opening statement which we greatly appreciate. but we'll now recognize mr. knox first for his opening statement. >> chairman chaffetz, members of the subcommittees. thank you for the opportunity to testify today about a recent office of inspector general report on the accountability and accuracy of the united states park police firearms inventory. in short, we found ample

evidence that. >> states park police's firearms management requires immediate attention to address a multitude of problems we found which range from fundamental errors in record-keeping to glaring, non-fees sans by senior command officers. we initiated our review after receiving anonymous complaint. we initially set out to determine if the united states park police could account for all military-style weapons in its inventory. whether the united states park police had failed to perform inventories is r is to missing weapons and whether officers used united states park police weapons for their personal use. our efforts to definitely address allegations were hindered by inability of united states park police property and can custodians to provide a baseline inventory and accounting of firearms. the conditions of the united states park police inventory were such that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms and the ability to conceal any missing weapons. having found the firearms

inventory program in disarray, we discontinued our efforts to prove or disprove the complainant's allegations and changed our approach to focus on the overall management of the united states park police firearms inventory program. following a consistent history of inaction and indifference on part of united states park police leadership and management at all levels we again found the basic tenants of property management and supervisory oversight were missing in most fundamental reforms. commanders including chief of police have a lackadaisical attitude towards firearms management. we have evidence that indicates product of years of inattention to detail. in 2008, an in 2009 the office of inspector general conducted reviews that included aspectses of united states park police operations including firearms inventory controls. in our 2008 report we had a recommendation regarding property management.

in 2009 we focused on firearms inventory controls for all law enforcement programs at the department interior which klein you haded the united states park police. at that time we found and pointed on strikingly similar conditions as we note in our current report. firearms custodians were unaware of number of guns in their inventory or of the origin of these guns and that guns physically present were not listed on the inventory. in the end we have little confidence that the united states park police has the managerial commitment to implement a professionally responsible firearms management program without direct and frequent oversight from the national parks service, the office of law enforcement and security, and the office of inspector general. among the 10 recommendations we make in our report is a recommendation to initiate quarterly firearms inventories and provide the office of inspector general with the results. we intend to conduct a series of future reviews and inspections to insure that the united states park police has implemented our

recommendations and that they maintain the level of accountability expected of a law enforcement entity the size and stature of the united states park police. chairman chaffetz, this concludes my testimony today. i would be happy to answer any questions you or other members of subcommittees may have. >> thank you. appreciate that. my understanding we have a consolidated opening statement. would that be you, mr. jarvis? >> yes. >> you're now recognized for five minutes. >> okay. chairman chaffetz, ranking members grijlva and tierney, members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to appear before you for the discuss findings of inspector general's firearms accountability within the united states park police. . .

>> on june 27, 2013, the inspector general issued its review of the weapons accountability. the review raised serious, significant concerns regarding the firearms management. the accountability of weapons used by our law enforcement personnel is of critical importance and take the issues raised here very, very seriously. the idea report provided recommendations to address the issue, and we appreciate the ig's efforts. we will commit the recommendations to improve the accountability in the area, and in the last 30 days since the issue of the ig's report, we

took immediate actions to address the irk g's recommendations. the first priority was to conduct a thorough, physical inventory of all government owned firearms in the custody, in accordance with recommendation 3 from the ig report. to conduct the physical invenn story, we created a team of senior officials from the national park service and the departments of law enforcement and security to personally contact all officers within the park police and permly inspect every firearm issued to an officer or the facility. they visited vice for a minutesn san fransisco, new york, and washington, d.c. with the exception of three officers currently either deployed overseas op military assignment or on extended leave, the team met with each police officer. the team has ensured that each inspected firearm is entered into and tracked in the department's new property accountability system.

initial assessment of the team is approximately 98% of the physical inventory of firearm in the u.s. di of the u.s. park police were previously entered into the system. we are completing the inventory and reconconciliation with exisg records. the team is reviewing the police's approach to training and coordination, admitted to committing the highest accountabilities to the firearms inventories. with regards to the other recommendations in the ig report, we either already addressed or are in the process of addressing each one of them. for example, we are in the process of reviewing all park police guidance to conform to -- to confirm it complies with park police -- park service and department of regulations policies and procedures. the park police has ceased using informal positions and transitioned all firearms to the new property accountability system. the park police now has a

schedule to ensure quarterly inventories of all firearms, and the chief the park police personally will approve all firearms purchases. that's already in place. in addition, the national park service asked the park police to detail all work that's been done to date on all of the ig recommendations and the actions planned to successfully address the ones that have not been completed. the department office of law enforcement and security, which is responsible for policy development, coordination, evaluation, and support of the department's programs concerning law enforcement will work with the national park service and park police to provide additional oversight. the office periodically audits the department's bureaus for compliance with the department of law enforcement policies. currently, the office is conducting a program compliance assessment on bureau firearm programs. we want to assure the committee that the department, the nps, and park police take very seriously the accountability of weapons used by the law enforcement personnel. we'll work together to monitor

compliance at the ig's direction on this matterment thank you for the alternation to the important issue and happy to answer any questions you may have. >> thank you, i appreciate that. normally, when we schedule a hearing at nine o'clock in the morning, we're in safe territory until 10:30 or so, but today being an exceptional day, members are advised there is a vote on the floor that has 13 minutes on the clock. given that necessity and priority, this committee is going to stand in recess until the conclusion of the votes, and as soon as we have members back in appropriate numbers, we'll resume the hearing. we guess that's an hour and a half, hour and 15 minutes, certainly not any sooner than, say, 10:30. we will resume no sooner than 10:30, but whatever votes, what members are back, the committee will resume. the committee stands in recess

until then. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> the committee will come to order. thank you, we appreciate the time we had to take to vote, and

there's voting later on as well, so i will now recognize myself for five minutes. the oig, inspector general, has issued a report, do any of you take issue with in any of the findings in that report? >> i'll start. i -- we appreciate the ig's report, and we take all ten recommendations that are spot on, and taking them seriously. >> but are any findings -- do you take issue with the findings. i appreciate your implementation of the recommendations. we're going to talk about that, but any of the findings, did you take issue with any of those? >> whether findings indicated a snapshot, essentially, a photograph of the conditions of the inventory of weapons at the park police facilities at that moment, i consider them

accurate, but they do not indicate the real behind. they backed up, said go do inventory. that's what we are doing. >> they took a snapshot in 2008 and 2009, similar problems and collages, were those accurate back then? >> i am not that familiar with those reports because i was not in this role at that time. >> i guess that's one of the concerns is that when the inspector general offers recommendations, they take snapshots, a report put on the shelf, and that's in part why we are here, the repetitive nature of the challenges. chief chambers, according to the national park service handbook 44, an invenn story's supposed to be taken twice a year. does that happen? >> yes, sir, it does. >> did you sign this memo of august -- august 31st saying,

quote, i certify that all weapons inventory for which i'm responsible have been completed and all weapons records have been recon -- reconciled? >> i did, sir. >> what did you base that on in >> a number of conversations with folks in the chain of command including the firearms custodian himself. >> so merelily conversations? did you review any of the records? look at the physical material? >> i reviewed the records, but i did not physically touch all of the weapons that are in the inventory, but i asked probing questions. i asked how it compared to the previous inventory to ensure there was no anomalies and asked if everything was accounted for. >> with who? >> whom, sir? chief, captain, and perhaps the captain in training at the time. >> why the discrepancy on what mr. knox found and what you found? >> in the period of time he came in, it was in between two effective computer systems, one

shut down, and the other not up and running left to use spread sheets, frankly, better than nothing, but not able to quickly ascertain where items were or get a quick count on how many of anything there was. that's all changed since then, but in that snapshot of time, we were limited in our capability to quickly review. >> ms. thorson, why was this the case? why the discrepancy between the two? you have a report, they certify and signed this, obviously, not reconciled, so i give you an opportunity to say were there issues with the findings of the inspector general, you didn't say a word, so -- >> chairman, i have no issue, the department has no issues with the findings in the ig report. the ten -- >> they are in dispute. somebody's wrong. you have chief chambers saying that the weapons inventories for

which i am responsible have been completed, and all weapon -- all weapons records have been reconciled. the inspector general says, no, that's not the case. i'm trying to figure out from the three of you, why is that? how does the chief of the park police say they are reconciled, inspector general says, no, they are not, they are in the even close. i give each of the three of you an opportunity to do -- to question or dispute any of the claims or findings from the inspector general. you didn't say anything, so what -- put yourself in my shoes. what's the right answer here? >> well, i'm not particularly familiar with the memos and what the chief did, chiefs -- >> why not? what's your relationship with the chief? like, what responsibility or oversight or -- >> the security, which reports to me, has responsibilities at the department level to develop policy, department developmental

policy, coordinate with the bureaus, and provides oversight. the -- >> so do you feel responsibility for what happens or doesn't happen in the park police? >> the accountability and responsibility for, this this instance, firearms, is starting with the officer, supervisors, the chief, the director of the park service to whom she reports to directly, and my office has the responsibility to periodically ensure that -- actually, all the law enforcement programs in the department follow departmental policy. that's our role. >> mr. jarvis, we have a dispute here. explain to me how we can have two totally different conclusion s, who messed up here? chief chambers? is it inspector general? >> the way i see it, mr. chairman, is that we have a inventory management issue, and that is exactly what the ig found. they came in, they could not

reconcile weapons they saw in the u.s. park police possession against what should be a computerized data base. just, there was no reconciliation. they backed out. >> chief -- chief, were you or were you not able to reconcile the weapons inventory? >> at the time that the ig was there, we were not in a position to say with certainty, but we can say now that it's been recop siled. >> when were you there? when were you doing this inspection? >> chairman -- >> microphone, please, turn it on, thanks. >> mr. chairman, we conduct the the inspection from february 11th-131th -- >> of which year? >> of 2013. >> you said they were reconciled august 3 is -- 31st, 2012, and the next year it was in disarray. >> we can't prove or disprove -- excuse me, allergies acting

up -- we couldn't prove or disprove if they were accurate because we had several spread sheets to bring the compilelation. the weapons were there, but there was no way to reconcile. we can do so now. >> i have more questions about this as do other members. i'm over time. i recognize the member from arizona for five minutes. plus another minute or two if you so choose. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let me start with a basic question given the report from the recommendations. has the park police accounted for all these weapons? ms. thorsen, do you believe all weapons have been accounted for, and the same for the directer and for the chief and for mr. knoxment do you believe all weapons have been accounted for? >> at this point in time, our officer in conjunction with the

park service have conducted physical inventory of the park police weapons, and at this point in time, 98% of them have been accounted for. there's three as mentioned by the director that have -- that we have not put eyes on, okay, so that is not complete, but -- so there's three outstanding at this point in time, so other than that, yes. >> i would agree with that. we are not satisfied until we put our physical hands on every weapon that's in the inventory, and we are still missing three that are assigned to individual officers who are not on duty at the moment, but will be very soon. >> chief, -- >> likewise, sir, the time three we know we have to touch, and as a safeguard, there's another step to do, go back and look at acquisition and property records to make certain things purchased or acquired over the last five to ten years are actually in

that new computerized data base. i'm confident they are, but i want the additional ainsurance. >> thank you. >> congressman. the ig takes no position as to whether they have full accountability of all the weapons possessed by the u.s. park police or not. >> just to follow up a second. so when you did -- when the inspection that was going on, there was a spot analysis that you talk about in your report, so there was no follow-up investigation in your office to go deeper into that issue? >> no, sir, as we began our assessment, we realized that the condition of accountability was in disarray. there were not good clear records of what weapons should be available, what records should be on accountable records, and so we have a position of looking at the weapons physically present in the locations we visited, and the reason for me saying we

don't have a position on accountability today that although we're confident in the national park service, we are doing all they can to inventory the weapons that are currently present within the control of the u.s. park police. there's still another step the chief points out to take, which is to go back in time, and identify the weapons that it's acquired through transfer or purchased or other means, and ensure all of those weapons aring thed for -- are accounted for as well. >> i have another question having to do with the mission of the park police to provide quality law enforcement to safeguard lives, protect our national treasures and symbols of democracy and preserve natural and cultural resources entrusted to the american people and to the park service and the park police. let me begin with you again. do you believe that the mission of the park has been compromised

as a result of the report, and as a result of the issue subscribed in the report? >> no, i don't, sir. >> if you don't mind, director, i'd just like to get this. >> no, sir, i don't believe there's been in the compromise to the responsibilities. >> chief, if you don't mind? >> our mission has not been compromised, sir. >> and i go back to you. do you feel that essential mission that the consequence of your recommendations and snapshot view have been compromised? >> sir, the oig assessment related to the accountability of weapons alone, and we did not look at the impact that had on the operational mission of the u.s. park police. >> that's a neutral position? >> it's a neutral position as to the operations as you describe them. we feel the accountability of weapons is a part of their duty and operations, and that those were severely lacking. >> in the limited time, if i may, mr. knox, you used words

like "inaction," "indifferent," "nonfeasance" to describe the senior management handling the weapons accountability. can you elaborate on why those strong words were justified in the report, and then, chief chambers, do you believe that the inspector general was justified in saying that park police senior management has a lackadaisical attitude towards weapons management and accountability. i ask the question because going back to the i just asked, it's about the integrity of that function, the police function, and the confidence the public has that that's why these questions are important, so those words are strong words, and your justification for using them is my question. >> congressman, we looked at numerous factors when we came to deliberately choose the words.

i begin with the series of incidents where the chief of the u.s. park police had been advised of the serious conditions regarding weapons accountability at the u.s. park police. there was a memo authored by the force firearms custodian to the chief of police in 2011 that actually demonstrated an inventory variance of 120 weapons brought to her attention. again, in that year, the audits and evaluations unit, part of the office of professional responsibility for the park police issued memorandum based on weapons accountability assessment indicating a critical failure in the weapons accountability posture of the u.s. park police, and later, a memo -- sorry, a meeting regarding the custodian memo was held where discussions of the content of the memo occurred, and later a subsequent meeting with deputy chief chapman was held in 2012 as a follow-up to

the discussions, and i would point out that even as we accountanted our field work on february 13th of 20 # 13, i personally briefed the chief of police for the u.s. park police on february 15th of this year advising her of the findings, urging her to take immediate steps to begin an inventory and get a handle on what the actual weapons cont for the u.s. park police weaponing invenn story was, and we found in meaningful efforts taken until after the publishing of the report. >> gentlemen, in the overage time, could the chief respond? thank you. >> thank you for the opportunity. while i would certainly have chosen other words and not characterized it with words that may be so emotionally driven, i do appreciate the feedback nonetheless. only because mr. knox mentioned memos, i'll touch on them.

each step of the way, extreme action was taken, dialogue, trip to the field offices by the forced firearms cues todayian, and i have to put on the record, the audits memo that talked about the critical failure was a new memo to me, i never heard of it, and the only record that the inspector general's office could produce was one that was still in draft mode, still had draft changes, no letter head, no recommendations, and that memo never made it to my office. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate the extra time. >> mr. knox, you can have an opportunity to respond to that. >> i can't say for sure whether the chief of police got the memo from the firearms, but the multiple events that occurred between 20 # 11 and 2013, and position of the office of inspector general, some of those should have alerted senior leadership, including the chief of police, of the serious

conditions of loss of weapons accountability at the u.s. park police. >> thank you. i would recognize chairman rob bishop from utah for five minutes. >> thank you for the opportunity of being part of this hearing. with some respects, i feel like i'm dealing with syria policy. i don't know who the good guys are out there. in fact, i think there's fail year on every -- failure on every level that's gone through here. i appreciate it. i appreciate the questions asked, and ms. chambers, i'll follow up on that in a minute, but i want to go to mr. jarvis first. the ig report focuses exclusively on failures in the park police for which you have ultimate jurisdiction. is there something about the relationship or the autonomy of the park police that allowed them to fall outside public policies on firearms? >> no, mr. chairman. i believe that all of our

departmental and national park service policies apply doctorately to the u.s. park police. >> so the rest of the park service, you also have armed law enforcement in the rest of the nation outside of these three cities? >> yes, sir. >> how do you compare the accountability in place for those weapons opposed to what we found here in the park police? >> well, with all of our managers, we have line responsibilities for controlled properties such as weapons. we have a policy of inventory. i have a policy of trust, but verify, which means i have expect them to do their audits and report deliberately on their inventory as well as any missing weapons, and -- >> so i appreciate the concept of verify. that's extremely important, but have you investigated -- what have you done to investigate the concept of park wide -- firearm park service wide, not just with

the police. >> well, we have periodic audits where we do send in our agents to do spot audits. we had independent audits done specifically, and one case we found a missing weapon that was not recorded, and i removed that employee's law enforcement commission immediately and permanently, so we do have that oversight and auditing going on throughout the service. >> you're confident this problem only exists within the park police? it's not system-wide? >> it is not system wide. >> why were you not on top what happened in the park police? >> i was only made aware of this briefed by the ig. that's the first time, and that was in june of this year that i was made aware. >> one other issue with you, though. 2010, the park service sent guidance to the field that the

springfield armory historic site would no longer accept firearms for destruction. i assume the historic arms are just sitting somewhere under your jurisdiction. do you have any responsibility to bear for the unused weapons piling up over with the park service police? >> took three years to get a new contract for weapons disposal, and so the springfield armory shut down on weapons disposal responsibilities, took three years for a new contract, so there's approximately 500 weapons in the inventory in the u.s. park police due for destruction. >> ms. chambers, is that accurate? >> yes, sir, it is. >> any his historic value? >> i don't know, sir, i can find out for you. >> really? do you have any policy for allowing historically valuable weapons to be saved, something other than being destroyed, mr. jarvis? >> absolutely. it's springfield armory, specifically, the storage repository for historic weapons.

>> they are taking them now? >> i don't know the answer to the question, but before we complete destruction on weapons accumulated, we'll see if there's historic weapons valuable for display or museum of storage. >> do we know how many are? >> i do not know that. >> do you know, ms. chambers? >> i do not, sir. >> shouldn't you? >> i had the information at the disposal, but not here today, sir. >> i'm over by 40 # seconds, i'm not as long winded, but i have second round questions for the rest of you. >> thank you, i recognize the gentlewoman from washington, d.c.. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to say i have questions about the report, but i want to take the opportunity to thank

the park police. the park police are the only -- we have, the saying going 5011 police forces in the district of columbia. every agency has a police force. this is the only city wide, and indeed, a region wide police force, often underappreciated, and i remember after 9/11, the capitol police reenforced with new police, and it took some time to get around to the resources with much larger territory in the district of columbia, and the entire region so i watched the capitol police very closely. they have jurisdiction, for example, with the metropolitan police department, the only one that go anywhere, the police, unless they have signed men ran dumb of the bill that i passed a decade ago, can't even leave the

premises. we're talking about all the parades and the people who can go and really protect people in this town. we're talking about when it comes to federal police, only the park police. i thank the park police for looks to be a quick capture of the person who was -- who may have been, alleged to have been defacing monuments. i want to ask you, but i also want to thank you for somehow finding a way to make sure the park police were not on thoroughs. that's particularly absurd when we had furloughs in federal government, we had law enforcement officers, and we were putting the entire city at risk with all of the officials and all of the ceremonies, and

you found the funds. are you able to fill vacancies in the park police, chief chambers? >> we're not currently hiring, ma'am. >> so if someone were to leave that because of the sequester or the cuts, those positions could not be filled? >> at in moment, we do not have a class scheduledded, we'll look closely at the fy14 budget as we get closer to that. >> i'll be interested to know whether you are able to keep the reports in place during this time. in fact, i asked mr. knox, apparently, and believe me, because i represent the district of columbia. i was pleased that no weapons were stolen, weapons were not found to be taken home for personal use, no weapons ever seized in a crime, could this

have happened without some kind of monitoring? did this just happen by chance? those would have been the worse things to me of the results, and yet none of that occurred. why not? >> congressman, we didn't examine, our assessment of weapons accountability at the park police did not find instances of weapons being stolen, but not accounted for properly. they were not on the property record, or we found property records for weapons not physically present. ..

>> are there examples from federal police or other police of ways to do this that you would recommend to the park police so this would not become a paperwork exercise but to adjust the kinds of things you'ryouhave not yet found. you have not found yet, stolen weapons, people taking weapons home when they shouldn't be, or inning of any crime. so does somebody have a streamlined way to do this that you could recommend to the park police? >> we made 10 recommendations in this assessment which we feel is complied with will enhance their posture a great deal. our expectation would be that they can't account for all the weapons and that would be typical behavior and most police

agencies. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you but i ask unanimous consent to allow mr. sutherland of florida to also join us in this hearing. hearing no objection, so ordered. now recognize the gentleman from michigan, mr. bentivolio, for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. based on the ig report, the lack of accountability here is very disturbing. i think a lot of the government holds civilians accountable to the firearms the own as private citizens through registration and licensing procedures. but here we have a government firearm, government firearms paid for by taxpayers left in your care, with a total lack of accountability. the ig discovered hundreds of handguns, rifles and shotguns not listed on official park police inventory records. where's the failure here? that periodic enacted records

were not maintained. is there any legitimate excuse for this lack of accountability? should there be more frequent audits and inventory? chief chambers, in the army we are required to hold periodic weapons inventories. each soldier was held accountable for the weapons they were assigned, and like most all instances in the military, the most senior person is responsible to ensure that his subordinates do what they're supposed to do. ms. chambers, as the chief of the park police, who is ultimately responsible for the firearms inventory at the park police? >> it is me, sir. >> the ig report indicated a board of survey should be conducted whenever an item is lost or stolen to imagine that in the case of firearms, which are sensitive government property. like in a military. this is even more important. the ig report also stated that when asked about a board of survey you are not aware of what

a board of survey was and whether it was required to be conducted for missing weapons. can you explain why this was not clear to you? >> yes, sir. i had no person heard the term it did not need my team did not, in fact, we reissue the milk. identifying the members of the boards of survey. it had been an ongoing practice, just coming from municipal government it was a term which was foreign to me. >> are you aware of in display actions at the park police taken as a result of ig findings? >> no, sir. i'm not. >> nice to see you again. who should be held accountable for the shortcomings? what type of discipline actions will be taken? >> we are still in the investigative phase on this. the first step was recommendation three which is a full physical inventory, as i indicated in my earlier testimony, we are almost done with that. we have three officers that we want to put our hands on those weapons a look at their serial

numbers. then there is a forensic sort of analysis of the previous procurements. so when with those guns brought into the u.s. park police? when with a purchase? when were they transferred? we want to compare that to the inventory, and then we will see whether or not there are any weapons truly missing or stolen. and then and only then would we take a disciplinary action if we found that there was true mismanagement. at this point we have and inventory management issue, not a mismanagement issue. we've got to get the completed over the next probably 60 days or so to get that second part because the forensics done on the procurement and then we'll understand whether not this is just the fact that we did not have been in the inventory and could not account for them in the computer system, rather than the are actually missing weapons. >> if you can't account for them

it sounds like it's mismanagement, or something else. i understand according to your testimony earlier, it's been ongoing for the past five or 10 years, correct? did i understand that correctly, yes or no? >> i heard that. i wasn't aware of anything prior to 2011. >> well, i heard testimony going back as fourth 2008-nine. ms. chambers, do you receive a bonus? >> no, sir. >> mr. jarvis the? >> no, sir. >> never received a bonus? >> no, sir. >> 2010? 2011? >> my salary is -- no bonus. >> thank you. i yield back. >> will the gentleman yield? >> yes, sir. >> mr. jarvis, you gave a nice spin but you didn't answer his question. his question is who is ultimately responsible. not what have you done. who is ultimately responsible? >> i am the director of the park

service. >> so you are ultimately responsible what about ms. chambers? >> she is the line supervisory is park police. she's also responsible. >> right. there was a 2003 report that was given, 133 guns were missing. two ended up in a punch up. 2008 report showed problems. at 2009 report showed problems. all of you were on the job than. mr. jarvis, what specifically did you do to element the findings of the 2009 report? >> i was unaware of the 2009 report. >> but it came under your watch. >> i was not the director in disputed you were the director after this report was taken, was permitted to what did you do about it? even if it came after you took office, which it did not, what should you have done about it? >> i should hold my line supervisory accountable to follow the speed is just the line supervisors? i mean, ms. chambers, you are throwing everyone in your department under the bus.

how much accountability should get? how much accountability should you hold? >> [inaudible] >> have you taken full accountability for it? >> [inaudible] >> what is your actions? >> the most immediate has been to elevate the position of the firearms manager -- >> what about your responsibility. >> i have a more direct line of communication. >> still letting other people for. >> it is my responsibility. >> i will yield back to the gentleman. >> we will now recognize the gentleman from tennessee for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and both chairmen, started touching on this, but i read in this letter that it said this report further underscores the letter from the deputy inspector general from this report further underscores a decade-long theme of inaction and indifference of u.s. park police leadership.

basically -- basic tenets of property manager, supervisor of others are missing in the simplest forms, commanders of cynically the chief of police and the lackadaisical attitudes towards firearms management. historical evidence indicates this indifference is a product of years of inattention to administer detail. that is a very disturbing letter. this becomes even more disturbing when the 2008 report on the 2009 report both have the same language. we found it disconcerting attitude towards firearms accountability at u.s. park police within u.s. park police, and take a ton of firearms custodians were unaware of the number of guns in the inventory or of the origin of these guns. guns physically present were not listed on inventory. that is very disturbing that this has been going on for, if there's a decade, and that there was this report in 2008 and

2009. are we going to be back here five years from now in the situation be the same? i mean, will each of you assure us that something is going to be done to straighten this out and change these lackadaisical attitudes about this? or are you just going to go back to your offices and laugh about this hearing? >> i'll respond to that. absolutely, i can assure you that we will not be back in your, other than perhaps to report on the final findings of this investigation. but i can assure you that we, throughout the national park service, including u.s. park police, ensure accountability through the out -- about the organization. >> ms. chambers? >> certainly after the director's remarks, action has been taken and will continue to be taken.

it is a continual improvement process and we will get better at it was each day. >> is it accurate the report i had that there's 640 officers in your department? >> approximately, yes or. >> that's not a gigantic bureaucracy. it looks like to me like it shoulshouldn't be this difficulo straighten this out and change these attitudes in this indifference. so thank you very much. i yield back. >> i thank the gentleman. start a second round, recognize myself. chief chambers, in response to chairman bishop come you said that you are elevating this position, or the person. what does that in? >> not the person, the position. it's been -- >> when you see elevate what does that mean? >> right now it is enhanced, the firearms customization is handled by a sergeant who also is our range master. that's not appropriate.

i needed person full-time who will devote all of his energy to the management of the firearms. lieutenant is now being taken from another position. valentin is being pulled out of the chain of command and go right to the deputy chief who sits next to my office. >> how many weapons then does the u.s. park police have? what is the current inventory? >> approximately 2500. >> 2500 weapons, like 2500? >> a patrol officer would have three weapons each. a fire on active site, a pistol, a patrol rifle and a teaser. >> -- taser. spent the ig found that there were, in their words, 1400 extra weapons. what are these extra weapons? >> i would've characterize it differently, but as i probed the extra weapons included things like serialized parts. firearms that have been cannibalized so we can keep other firearms in working

condition without incurring additional costs. some of these were training weapons. some as we had already discussed with those that were set aside waiting disposal once were able to get a contract. >> 2500 weapons is what you have? >> approximately. >> you 640 officers? >> yes, sir. >> you say a person would have three weapons? >> a patrol officer would have three, yes. >> who has more than three weapons? >> it is likely that a squad officer may have an additional weapon, depending upon his assignment. >> 640 officers, three weapons each, that's close to 1900. how do you account for the other 600 weapons? >> many are for training purposes. they include things like assimilation guns. you point at a screen, teasers. things that speech when can you provide to this committee, when i say this committee both committees oversight and natural resources, actual inventory?

>> i've suck on your asking for -- >> a copy of the inventory. when will i get that? >> if i could have a week that would be appreciated. >> one week sounds reasonable. by next friday we look forward to seeing that inventory. i asked you if you took an issue with the idea with the find of the oig. he found that you had 1400 extra weapons. do take exception to that? >> i do. >> why didn't you say that before when i asked you? >> i didn't want to interrupt the others were speaking. >> i ask you that question. you were not interrupting. how is it that they're such disparity -- how did you come up with the number 1400 extra weapons? >> chairman, doing our assessment, we physically examined over 1350 or so weapons on hand. at the same time of course firearms custodian provided as a list indicating had 1450 essential weapons on them. there was a disparity in those numbers, and even as i listened

to the chief testified today, if each officer has a weapon, 1920 weapons, therefore he should, that would leave only 600 on hand for total count of 2500. but we counted twice that many. and granted, they are slightly -- >> let me understand. you counted how many weapons? >> 1350. >> but when you said twice that many, what does -- explain that to me. >> if three weapons are issued to each officer, meaning a total of 1920, if 2500 is the total sum of weapons in possession of the park police, we should have only been able to count six and weapons when we went through the various facilities. but, in fact, we counted 1350. >> chief, how do you answer that? >> many are patrol rifles that have not been yet issued. it takes 40 hours for an officer to get fully certified, and at this moment we don't have a range to you so we used those as we can get it but it will take

several more years until every officer is certified. >> mr. jarvis, do you concur with everything the chief is saying? >> idea. i do. but i want to add one other factor though that they are in possession of some five and weapons that are scheduled for disposal. >> would any of those include the sale of those weapons? >> i do not believe so. >> why not? >> i think our policies are those weapons go to disposal. >> that's a policy we need to revisit. i now recognize the gentleman from arizona for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. knox, just for sake of definition, it's my understanding what triggered your investigation and your recommendations and findings was an anonymous tip, or an anonymous complaint.

then anonymity is for the sake of protecting a whistleblower under the statute, or is it indeed anonymous, as the definition will be of anonymous? >> congressman, in this instance the complaint was received anonymously. we have no knowledge of -- >> was it in writing or phone call? >> the complaint was received in writing. >> and excuse me, i don't have that with me. that particular complaint, that's been made able to the committee, inviting? >> no, sir. i don't believe it has. >> mr. chairman, could we have that complaint in writing as part of the record? >> are you asking me? >> you have. >> i will have to consult with the deputy inspector general on our policy relating -- >> the committee would certainly appreciate that. not just the consultation to comply with the ranking member's request. >> i understand.

thank you, mr. chairman. >> and excuse me, i keep, to all the witnesses, i keep asking the same question to people because i keep looking for a smoking gun and i can't seem to find one, pardon the pun. the fraternal order of police have concerns with the methodology and the allegations made in the ig report. they believe that law enforcement best practices were not followed and that the report unjustly places blame on the current agency administration for the failure of previous chiefs of police. and that the report undermines the credibility of this and future inspector general assessments, and, indeed, the credibility of the force themselves. chief, your reaction to that assessment? and i'll ask the same of you, mr. knox, if you don't mind. >> the fraternal order of police

communication with you was of course on their own volition. the fact that one agrees or disagrees without an inspector general's report may have been conducted. it's not as important to me, and just the value i find. i did find a valuable and recommendations are a great roadmap for it, for us, and i intend to see their fully implement it. >> thank you. mr. knox? >> congressman, i received a copy of the fraternal order of police letter just moments before while we were in recess. i've read. i'm not sure what information they might be referring to. i take exception to the statement about undermining the valley of oig activity. in fact, our recommendations have been received well by the national park service, and we are pleased that the intended to implement them. >> and i agree. i think that the fact that the reaction from the administration of the department has been to be

proactive and say, okay, let's look at these and make corrections and adjustments. but we keep looking for the root cause of all this, and so that's why we're assuming, i assume where having this hearing rather than giving it ample time for the recommendations to be implemented, to be corrected, and then to have a hearing on the assessment toward the end of the line as opposed to making some judgments now that are probably i think unfair when the process isn't done yet. but given all that there was a transition going on with sources from one system to another dealing with the reliable weapons inventory. do you believe that transition to the new system is one of the reasons the park police could not provide the inspector general at that moment with a snapshot with the records upon request? >> without understanding the

thorough assessment process the ig used, they of their own methodology in which they follow when they do that assessment, it appears that when you're looking for records and talking to the chief, they were unable to bring up records in the system. so it may very well played into the fact that they could not produce at the time the electronic accounting record needed for verification. f. bms is financial business and management system for the department. >> thank you. not by act of congress or signatory of the administration with guns in the parks. the public can have that access. i will suspect that maybe our committees time would be well served to assessing how that's going. and what, if any backlashes --

with that i yield back and thank you, mr. chairman spend now recognize chairman bishop for five minutes. >> thank you. mr. thorson, you are the person who oversees all the law enforcement programs in the department. what is your responsibility to ensure that departments firearms policies are known and followed? >> the office of law enforcement security and the department is part of a tear to responsibility in the department for firearms accountability. it starts with the officer, supervisory chain can achieve in this instance, the director of the particular bureau that the law enforcement program resides in. spent so you responsible to make sure she knows what she's supposed to be doing? >> we do that through compliance evaluation, periodically, just spent if the chief claim she did know about some of these things, is that your responsibility for making that known?

is that, as of in your office's failure in her not understanding what she was supposed to be doing? >> no. i cannot believe it is our office's failure. >> but it is your response to? >> we did after the 2009 report was issued. >> how do you follow-up on the? >> we follow up with periodic evaluations that we are in a doing a firearms assessment right now on all seven law enforcement rogue is within the department. >> the report, a server looking at this thing in february. you start counting in july. why was there that disparity of time? why did you wait so long to try to find out what the answers would be? mr. thorson, to you spent actually we sort our assessment in april, and we're still in the middle of that spent mr. knox, you didn't do a baseline accounting, did you, of how many guns ought to be there, what is the number that should be? >> mr. chairman, we could not do that. the records were not available

state mr. thorson, what is your office down to provide an accurate baseline accounting for firearms, not just within her department but across the department. >> with the park police were part of the team that isolate out doing a physical in the right now regarding the park police. >> are you doing baseline? >> were doing a physical inventory at this point, and -- >> has someone come up with tommy weapons should be out the? >> that's the next phase but as talked about we'll be looking at the park service in particular will be looking at purchasing records, transfer records and comparing those to the physical inventory. >> when will that be done? >> i don't have an exact date, but i'm hoping in the next couple of months. >> so are we. the department's testimony says -- go ahead. >> would the gentleman yield? >> yes. >> recommendation number six is reduce the firearms inventory and has to be done on october 2013 but if you have a baseline in vietnam and you were

reduced by, i worry that do you even know what the recommendations are? >> yes, i do, sir. >> yield back. >> all right. the department's test misses the office of law enforcement and security will work with the park service to provide additional oversight. that suggests that a whale us has not been the best been conducting adequate oversight of the department law enforcement unit and their inventory your did you or o ola s. conducting oversight in response to the allegations of the 2009 report to ensure that recommendations were implemented? did you do anything for the 2009 report? >> week issued a variety of policies in our firearms policy, and then weise compared policies of the bureau of land manageme management, bureau of reclamation and fish and public

service office of law enforcement to ensure that they have policies in place that we, we in the department, identified from the 2009 report. >> so wide wasn't he able to find any of that? >> those are three different bureaus. the park police, the process for the park service and the park police with them in the follow-up is scheduled in the next couple of months. the capacity we have in the department was seven law enforcement programs, we're going through them systematically. >> all right. so they're different from the others and i get that, like in 2009 it was supposed to be, the recommendation was olas should revise the existing policy to correct that lost or missing cash firearms must be reported and investigated similar to lost or missing a signed firearms. that was the responsibility in 2009. why didn't you do at? this is now four years later. we find out hasn't been done. why wasn't it done in? >> we did issue policy,

chairman, to ensure that weapons lost, missing weapons were reported those are required to be ported up into her operations and on serious incident report. >> what good are those if no one knows about and no one is following up on the? >> of no follow up on what you said you did after -- there's no reason that this ig's report should have come out. there's already a profit in 2003 when all of you were involved. there was a report in 2008 and another one in 2000. it told you to do this. you say you issued policies but no one knows about them and no one has followed up on them. why not? >> appears to know about the policies. we issued them to all seven law enforcement program. once they're issued from the department. we have ongoing conversations with the bureaus after we, in fact, when we issued of those policies. so they are aware of those policies. >> then why didn't have the data? why would these things missing?

white did the ig report finds only path that the label that lackadaisical action and a culture that takes place? why wasn't this thing sold in 2009 if you actually did your job in 2009? if you actually follow the policies that were -- you safety. why do we solve this problem for years later? is a perfect question by mr. duncan. i were going to the same thing happen in five years because of the attitude of lackadaisical attitude we have in the department? ms. thorsen, this is your responsibility. why for years later are we still mms? >> the responsibility of the candidate for firearms rests partly with the department but also with as i said earlier the officer, supervisory chain, the chief and the director, whatever particular beer law enforcement program falls and. as the director spoke earlier do, they do regular inventory, yearly inventory, information assurance statement every year to ensure that those accountable

property items are tracked. so my expectation is that the bureaus and other programs are executing those requirements. through policies we issued and policies issued by the property management staff. >> i am way over time. i will ask a simple question but if you did everything right and you screwed up. >> the department issued policies for actually the 2008 and 2009 report. the park police did not institute all of those policies, which we found out and we are implementing those recommendations as we speak right now from the ig's report. >> so ms. chambers screwed up? >> there aren't many layers of folks that were not taking appropriate accountability specs so you all screwed up? >> no. i would not say everybody screwed up, sir. at first there are members of

the force, members of the park service as identified by the ig in the report that apparently were not able to account for their firearms. so we take the recommendations to heart. we are implementing them to ensure that they are trained at the farewell aware of their personal accountability requirement when it comes to firearms. >> this is the last statement in. if you did take the recommendations that go back four years ago and he did all that, this ig's report should not have happened. somewhere there was a failure. this ig's report should not have been, happened at all. somewhere there is a failure, and someone needs to be responsible for that failure. i'm sorry, i do have one last question. you said you elevated this new position to take care of this problem? >> i've assigned it to a rank, one rank higher. >> so someone got promoted to do this? >> yes, sir. the currently can as now been moved into this position. >> so someone on staff has been

promoted speak was not promoted. moved laterally. his other son was a shift commander. >> was that person responsible -- never mind. i think you understand where i'm coming. someone got a new assignment because of this but that doesn't solve the problem. i'm sorry for going over. >> one of the challenges is everybody always takes responsibly but nobody's held accountable. nobody is held accountable. that's the problem. was anybody fired? has anybody been fired? no. we have this persistent problem we're doing with weapons. this is not an excusable, oh, ma sorry, you know, i won't let that happen again. if president obama wants gun control, he should start with the united states park police. now, a very generous five minutes to the gentleman from washington, d.c. >> i thank you, thank you, right to be concerned about the ig

report and what looks like difficulties of setting up a consistent to keep track of -- anybody who is control of guns has a special responsibility or i find it also interesting that this committee is as interested as it is in the question, since it is tried in the past to wipe out all the gun laws in addition to going to which would've given the park police a whole lot more work than it has now. so uninterested, less than be someone else and finding out how to get this done, given the personnel issues that face every agency, every agency including the park police. now, did i understand you to say that you're not filling vacancies, ms. chambers?

>> not sworn vacancies. civilian ones only on an as need basis and approved up the chain of command. >> so no matter how low community lieutenant. was he in a line position that had to do with control of the park police throughout the region? >> yes, ma'am. he was a shift commander. >> so someone will have to do that job which has to do with law and order. so unconcerned the time spent, even officers of the park police, when they leave the park police and create a vacancy cannot be replaced, that we are talking about why people are doing what clearly they should have been doing in this climate. all i can say, chief chambers, in trying to get a hold of this

inventory, important responsibility of the park service, and of the park police, i certainly hope that because you have heard so much at this hearing, from congress, that can always be intimidating. you will bear in mind that the public want our monuments to save. our public wants the 20 million visitors who come to the city from around the world to be safe, especially since most of them go to the monuments and to the mall. i can only hope that your first priority, whatever the concern, and it is a legitimate concern, about these guns does not deflect you from the law and order, a law and order mandate

of the park police. mr. knox, is there any evidence that there's ever been a system to keep control of guns? aren't we starting from the ground up? >> congresswoman, the current state of accountability for weapons at the park police is in disarray. >> i understand it. it sounds to me the knowing ever invented one. >> we don't have a baseline from which to start. there's no point in time where we have confidence in any inventory -- >> bear that in mind, that essentially there's no record that the park police has ever, in any administration at any time, done anything but keep the guns and getting out of its control. and apparently it has done that but i has never had the kind of professional system that we expect and law enforcement office to have. of course, the park police has

been among the most unappreciated and least well staffed police forces, the federal police forces. you know, it shows. so i understand this is an important issue. i represent this city. if the department can keep control of guns, then, of course, in no small measure this city may be the first to feel the effects of it. but we're asking the park police to great a system that was never in place at a time when they will not be able to replace police officer, no matter how low the number gets, when and if they leave. i want to make it clear that there are mandates and there are mandates. and i certainly hope nothing of this hearing they do believe

that there's any mandate more important than making sure that our monuments, our visitors, and the people, are federal employees, the people who come to this city in huge numbers every day are safe. mr. knox, this may not be done as fast as it should be, but i assume you also we believe that their first priority should be the protective mandate of any police force spent congresswoman, of course we do. i do as well personally, but i would like to say that weapons accountability is a very fundamental task of law enforcement agency. and not a difficult one to achieve the it just takes leaderships be agreed, and i'm the first to agree to that. my district would be the first to feel the effects. but you're talking to people who cannot fill any position at any time, and whose budget is going to go lower and lower each year

unless we do something about it. i think everybody ought to put all the cards on the table, and that's the big elephant in this hearing room today, and i yield back the balance of my time and i thank the chairman. >> i thank the gentlewoman. i would remind the gentlewoman that the u.s. park service spends some $50 million a year acquiring new properties, acquiring new things. we can't even take care of what we have now. so if you share my commitment that we need the proper personnel, they need to be trained, they need to be supervised properly, perhaps the gentlewoman would join me in making sure that rather than acquiring new things, spending to the tune of $59 a year doing so, within just this one department maybe we should take care of what we have here today. now, i will yield to the gentleman from massachusetts. recognize him -- sorry, the gentleman from michigan, mr. bentivolio, for five minutes. >> thank you very much, mr.

chairman. let me be perfectly clear, there's no doubt in my mind that they don't think our officers on the job are not doing that job of protecting life and property of the trade government, as well as our visitors. but ms. chambers, chief chambers, i'm still a little concerned. you said something earlier that you did not know whether a survey was what, like last year, or you just learned of it, is that right? >> i, after the interview with the inspector general's investigator, i then inquired of my staff what is this term, what does it mean? they provided me with all the background. >> okay. how long have you been in this position? >> sir, i was reinstated in january 2011. >> reinstated? that means you held this position before? >> yes, sir. >> what years was that? >> 2002 and 2003. >> you held this position before

and didn't find out what a speedy never heard that. >> give any military expense? >> no, i did not. >> i can ask a sergeant what a report of survey i is and they will be able to county. i'm a little bit surprised and disturbed at some measure rank doesn't understand that. now, let me ask you another question will quickly. if i went, just stopped in one of their field offices where there were some rifles or pistols, and i asked you, and register your number, would you be able to tell me where it was acquired, when it was acquired, who had come for a scene if you will? if somebody signed forward, and received, anything like that? >> not knowing the capabilities of the financial business management system that we just got access to, i don' don't knot and she did but i'd be glad to find out for you. >> okay. do i come in and say hey, i

would like to check out a rifle. i'm qualified. i'm a master gunner from a you know, i'm squadron, former military policeman. you know how this works. how do i get that weapon speak was actually such a request right now, and officer would request to have one assigned to them so does have to have to go to an arms when. it would be assigned to them each and every day to take out on patrol. >> what do you mean you don't have an arms room if he assigns it out everyday, you have to have -- >> it would be a secure area, yes, sir. >> these are locked up overnight when he is not under? >> yes, sir. stanky shows up in the morning, going on duty because he signed for that weapon? >> he better. i don't know the answer. >> he better? >> there are sign-up procedures. >> there should be an armor or somebody that hasn't lived over to him, and he signed for, is that correct? >> that's correct, sir. >> you are not doing that, i'm going to either recommend u.s.

army veterans -- a higher any veteran? >> we do, sir. >> they know this stuff backwards and forwards. they know this procedure. maybe you should consult somebody who has experience in this area. there should be a chain of title or a chain that i can look at right now and these are the number and ask you whether weapon is, or find out immediately where that weapon is and who had it. at all times. at any moment. you know come in the army if you didn't get that in my you know, you would be relieved on the spot. it would be a report of survey on the spot, five or six officers would have their heads rolling if they didn't get it fixed within hours. spent that is certainly the ultimate goal. >> that nobody's head is rolling. nobody understands it. i keep hearing five to 10 years to compare you to know what a report of survey was even back in 2002 when he held this

position. with that, mr. chairman, i yield back my time spent recognize myself as we wrap this up. i do have a few more questions. chief, how is it that somebody could walk up to the lincoln memorial, throw green paint on it, and walk away without anybody noticing? how does that happen? >> the criminal was intent on committing a crime in the presence or outside the presence of a police officer's view, he or she can do it. fortunately, we have got technology that has helped us gather the evidence needed in this case. >> why was that person apprehended on the spot? is nois not a person from avedo? >> there is, sir, and yet just left that side of the stature and was action on the backside at the moment that it occurred. i'm confident that it happened very quickly. based on witness statements. >> i find it totally and wholly unacceptable that we don't have

the adequate control on something so precious and so visible, so close to the white house as the lincoln memorial. we will have to get into that further. how much ammunition do you have? >> sir, we have approximately 500,000 rounds of ammunition and will be using about 200,000 of that here in the next few months for requalification it happens twice a year. >> 200,000 rounds for six and 40 people all have to work back into the myth. -- and do the math. that seems an awful lot. what i would like, and mr. jarvis, i would like this from you and ms. thorsen as well, all seven of the agencies, i hope you find it reasonable to ask for the current inventory --

we've done this with other departments and agencies. we didn't with the social security, and others. it's not a new ask. to provide us a listing of how, the current inventory of all the weapons, broken out by each of the seven agencies, departments, whatever you want to call them, that would also include the inventory of ammunition. and if you could also show us the historical purchases of both weapons and ammunition, for the last five years, that would be very helpful. and the final thing that i would ask is a projection on what you anticipate purchasing over the next 24 months. i know that crosses a couple different fiscal years and whatnot, but certainly have some sort of projection. mr. jarvis, is that reasonable? >> i think that you ask for the

current inventory is very reason. i think we can supply the, police i'm speaking for the park service. i can't speak for the other agencies. and also inventory weapons and ammunition. to one caveat i would say going back and looking over the past five years, the procurement, that is a big lift, as was indicated here a little bit behind the scenes we have transitioned to a new -- >> what is a reasonable time that you would get that to the committee? >> i will have to get back to you on how much time that will take your i don't want to over promise and under delivered somewhat to be able to tell you how long -- >> could we say september 7? is that every school time, over a month away? >> that we could get back with you as how long it would take? >> no. >> i cannot promise you that i can have the five years of procurement data to you by september 7. that is a -- >> let's say this but by the end

of august, if you would get is the current inventory, which you supposedly have right at your disposal at this time, and we'le will give an additional 30 days for the projection of your procurement. is that there, the end of september, for the procurement projection? >> i would guess that our projection for procurement is probably the next 12 months because we don't, fiscal year speed is the next 12 months is a start but it gives you almost 60 days to do, i think that is reasonable. ms. thorsen, can we do that with all the agencies, or although departments under the time parameters? >> well, i also don't want to over promise and under deliver. >> i'm asking you to make a commitment. you're the one in charge. >> i will work with the other directors in the bureaus to ensure that they get the direction and that we move forward. absolutely spent and that you hit the state's? >> yes. >> thank you. i appreciate that. i yield, recognize the gentleman from utah, chairman bishop.

>> i was just making sure when you said the gentleman from utah, you meant me. mr. knox, you didn't go through the procurement or stored anything else in ammunition, did you, in the report? >> mr. chairman, no, we did not. >> were the issues he saw as you're going through the report's? >> anecdotally, we observed as we moved through the various facilities conditions which could be enhanced for security. all of which i should mention, sir, were known by the park police, something they were dealing with. >> ms. thorsen, do you have a policy for missing weapons? >> yes. >> mr. knox, did chief chambers know about that policy for missing weapons? >> mr. chairman, i cannot tell you whether she knew or did not

know. >> isn't, the claim is that you are not aware of that policy though, is that right, ms. chambers? >> i believe the report would make one believe that i did not know, but that's not accurate. >> you did no? >> of course, sir. >> that means you should have done something about event. >> sir, we have no evidence of missing weapons. >> right. there's a couple of less requests you have from everybody. mr. knox, this is for something you're not responsible but we're going to call for. her title is acting ig, right? >> mr. chairman, she uses the title deputy ig which is a position she held. she did act for a while but the vacancy at -- >> is there an ig, a permanent ig? >> no, sir. we had the interior department cannot have -- >> it's been about four years, right? >> that speed is i will make this call one more time as our committee -- there needs to be a permanent ig appointed, and they

would give more credibility to the reports that are coming out of your office. i want, when you get a a permanent ig and i appreciate that. mr. jarvis, i do have some empathy for this and you have, especially when the park police has an autonomous street to it, that the responsibility still comes back with these reports. i notice many of the recommendations we're asking to be done by october 1, to be completed by october 1. i would like you to supply our committee with the evidence of what you have done by october 12 government all these recommendations. and i appreciate that. is thorsen, same thing. if we can get by october 1 day of limitation report from what you have been doing. ms. chambers, are you a political appointee or are you mayor? >> merit, sir. >> so you will stay there until you decide to retire in? >> yes, sir. >> we need better jobs. this is not acceptable from those who are under you, and

that's all there is. i mean, this report should never come out, because in 2003 your entity lost 133 guns. may be found in a and pawnshopsn georgia, a couple of them. this will not happen again. it should not happen again. it is you responsibly to make sure it does not happen again, and mr. jarvis, we will hold you accountable for that as well. >> you have my commitment. >> the gentleman you spent. will recognize the ranking member, mr. grijalva, from massachusetts. >> mr. jarvis, in this particular instance, have there been any identification of lost weapons? >> no, sir. there have not spend no indication of people find them and pawnshops or anything else? >> no, sir. >> mr. knox, you did it weapons accountability overview on your report, and recommend that a better system of weapons

accountability, correct? >> yes, sir. >> you based that on best practices and law enforcement feel? >> yes, sir. >> that's reflected in your recommendation to? >> it is, in fact,. >> mr. jarvis, you look at those eight recommendations and you think they're reasonable? >> yes. there are 10 actually. looked at often come yes, sir. >> chief chambers can you agree? >> i do. >> you in the process of trying to accommodate all of those 10 recommendations, correct? >> many of the others are well on their way to. >> mr. knox, you have committed to a constant overview of this progress? >> yes, sir. as listed in my opening remarks we feel we must stay engaged and continue reduce. >> how will you do that? >> we will schedule reviews and inspections after we receive results from the national park service on emendation of our recommendations. >> if you feel they are falling behind the schedule, you said you notified the committees that are here today to?

>> yes, sir. we will. >> neither mr. jarvis north ms. chambers have any difficulty at all? d.phil. that each of you has the personnel that is confident to carry out these recommendations? >> we have drawn from the department of interior as well to assist us in that were. >> ms. thorsen, you're satisfied of that is so? >> yes, sir. >> thank you all for your testimony. i yield back. >> thank you. we appreciate your attendance in his to this matter and look for getting the states and those commitments that we made, and the committee now stands adjourned. [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] >> national economic council director gene sperling participate in the global education summit today. he spoke about challenges in providing educational children in conflict zones. here's a look at some of what he had to say. >> you know, when i left, when i was in the government the first time, i felt that when it went to dakar to give one of the keynotes for the world economic

forum where the second millennium development goal for universal primary education was set, that it was so much work to get together the facts straight, and i vowed that when i left that he was ever in the government wouldn't do that, have that. so that's what barber and i did with what works and girls education but we wanted to collect one place all of the amazing economic, yeah, data, that shows education is good for growth and good for agriculture, good for reading and good for health and infant mortality, put it all come with all the studies anyone did so it was available in easy. and i'm glad i did than that. over the years i've had the joy of being told that books on the desk of oprah winfrey or other people have done it, but the humility i always remember is that all of that work and all of that research didn't even come close to the impact of win

cameras start putting some pictures on the face of little girls in afghanistan. in 2001 and 2002. when people just simply sat there and saw those faces, they choose, that's just wrong. why should they be able to go to school. why should a terrorist be able to keep this little girl who wants to go to school from going to school when our kids are here praying for a snow day every d day. >> in addition to being director of the national economic council, mr. sperling is co-author of the book what works in girls education. you can see all of his remarks from today at c-span.org. president obama will meet with u.s. troops and their families during a stop at camp pendleton today. it's the final stop on a two-day west coast trip. c-span love live coverage in a less than an hour and a half from now. each night this week here in

c-span2 while congress is on break, we are showing on core presentations of q&a. today, a nobel peace prize winner jody williams. she won the prize in 1997, our efforts towards a worldwide ban on landmines. then at 8 p.m. eastern booktv and primetime. tonight, the focus is what booktv viewers are reading this summer. >> and tonight on c-span's town hall and look at how the media handles war. we will take your calls, e-mails and tweets on the relationship between government and journalists, censorship and national security. c-span townhall is live tonight

from seven to 9 p.m. eastern. >> authors of the newspaper on health care reform briefly discussed alternatives to the affordable care act. that paper written for the american enterprise institute focus on universal coverage and personal choice and health care reform. over the next hour and have a will discuss the findings and talk with a group of bipartisan health scholars on the most effective health care reform. >> all right. can we please come to order here? i would like to thank everyone for coming. we are starting probably on time, not just welcome our guest in the audience but to welcome our guests across the country as this is being broadcast live on c-span. i'm henry olsen, vice president at the american enterprise institute, and i'm very proud to be hosting and introducing this event about the new plan put forward by eight a minute health

experts, best of both worlds, another personal coverage, universal coverage and personal choice in health care. this is important not just because this is a pathbreaking thing, which is. .. that both sides feel very strongly about in this debate. what this plan does, is talk about how to implement the

values that are often talked about by both sides, but also seem to be shared with somewhat universally by most americans, which is covering the most number of people that we can. providing quality care if the people we cover, and providing cost controlled for the system as large. while making sure that the system also takes care of the individual needs of each individual patient. i expect that not every person will sign on the board with every aspect of this plan. i don't think the author expects that. i expect today we'll get a lively discussion focusing open the details and the values imply -- implicated and implied by the plan. i hope it will start a discussion. whether or not one is a supporter or opponent of the aca, i think everyone can recognize that it's not a finished work. it's not a finished work whether

or not implementation -- rolls out successfully. in part, because if it implementation rolls out successfully, there are millions of people who will not be covered and not able to gave relatively affordable access to the health care system. even if it runs out according to plan, the serious doubts as to whether or not the other values we talk about cost controlled and quality will be adequately maintained by the plan. we will be continuing to debate health care reform for years in this country, regardless of what happened with the funding battle in the fall, regardless of what happens in e implementation. we have not yet dealt with what we want from health care plan. the -- we have three of the authors on the panel now. we have a couple more in the audience. i would like to mention who all eight of them. joe, our moderator can get the

program started directly. the lead author was the use share center. he was a visiting scholar that brought the team together. we have jay from stanford university in the audience. chandra on the panel. michael from harvard university who can't be with us today. dana goldman from the use share center who can't be with us today. the harvard medical school. and our panel from the university of chicago law school. in the audience and thomas philips from the university of chicago that couldn't be with us today. please join me in welcoming our panelists, our moderator, and our discussers. [applause] >> thank you, henry.

i'm joe at the american enterprise institute. i have the honor of introducing the panel. before i say a little something about them, i want to quote what i think is the single clearest sharpest statement about the state of health policy i have read in a long time. it's in the -- beginning of this report. this is -- , by the way, this is a report we're talking about. as to both world uniting universal coverage and both choice in health care. the statement is insurance marketplace and relies on a variety of stop get measures to prevent the collapse. if that isn't the american way, i don't know what it is. in any event, the great to have

an market-based alternative to other plans that have been floating around. it's sort of interesting, you use the term universal coverage. it's been used by another prominent health reform plan. we know that universal doesn't really mean 100%. so i'm sure there will be questions in the audience about what universal means in this case. in any event, let me introduce the panelists in the order that they'll speak, and so first, zarius lsakdawalla. he'll present the basic report. and followed up by chandra director of health policy research at the school of

government. and the third of the eight authors who will have a formal speaking role, anupam jena. an assistant physician at harvard medical school and a physician at massachusetts general. the two in the order they will speak new york new owcharpeko. and henry who is the bruce and virginia mclaurie senior fellow in economic studies at the brookings institution. >> thank you, joe. thank you to you and henry from your generous introduction and aaei allows us to 0 come together. from the beginning of the enterprise, we recognize that

the health insurance problem is really about values more than it is about prices and costs. even though we are simple-minded economists, we recognize that what society values is at the heart of the issue. we think that american agree on at least three kinds of values that underpin health insurance reform. the first is that in fact we know about one out of every six americans is uninsured. and most people find this situation unacceptable, and have demanded reform as a result of that. in addition, mo americans also think that government has a major role to play in providing health care and providing health insurance. so, i think, serves as our first key value that underpins what we do and underpins much of the discussion on health insurance. second of automatic, one of the reasons that people think government has a role to play is that many believe that society has an obligation to protect the sick and the poor when it comes to health insurance and health

care. we think that is also at the heart of the issue, and we share that value as well. in fact, when lyndon johnson presided over the signing of the medicaid and medicare bills almost forty years ago, he noted that, you know, americans have an obligation never to ignore or spurn those who suffer untended. and it's been a long time since london johnson spoke the words. i suspect many americans agree with the basic sentiment he expressed. now, of course, a lot has changed in the forty years since medicare was accomplished. one of the things that changed health care has become a lot more complicated. if you were unlucky enough to suffer a heart attack in 1960, there was really only one thing doctors could. prescribe bedrest and painkiller. the treatment strategy, we know, in best ineffective and

harmful. we have a number of new treatments. the difficulty there's an enormous amount of choice in the treatment available. today's heart attack patient has to decide with his or her doctor go in for surgery? invasive or less invasive. do i avoid surgery and go on pharmaceutical. it creates complexity in our health insurance needs. some people want health insurance that provides very focused coverage of a few conditions. or a few procedures, i should say for less money, and ores want to pay for more expansive coverage. unfortunately, the current system makes it very difficult to achieve these three goals. medicare, for example, for itself part has taken a long time to bring choice in to it. it took medicare about twenty or thirty years longer than it took

the private insurance marketplace to figure out the people-value prescription drug coverage. yet it's not necessarily a bed of rose. there a number of problems with the way the market has been structured. we create a situation that pits private insurers against the sickest and neediest consumers. we do think be requiring insurers have to charge the same premium to people who are sick and people who are healthy. as a result, insuressers go out of the way to figure out creative strategies for avoiding the sickest consumers who are the neediest in effect. it's almost as we set up an airline system and every airline had an incentive to get rid of the most frequent fliers. that's the preverse structure we have in the insurance marketplace. so what then happens in the market? what are the symptoms of these problems? one is that we have a rather strange redistribution mechanism

where because everybody is charged the same premium regardless of the health status. you have people who are healthy and poor sub diazing those who are affluent and sick. the ceo with hyper tension and diabetes is receiving a payment from her healthy mail room employees. that probably doesn't accord with most people's notions of social justice. in addition, we have a situation where insurers narrow choices so they don't end up attracting sick and needy consumers. it's, again, have airlines who don't want frequent fliers to start flying them. at the same time, we have healthy consumers who want to avoid buying insurance because they face premiums that are much higher than the true cost of coverage for them. we solved that by forcing them to buy insurance through a mandate. we think there's a better way to provide choice universal coverage and protect the sick. it proceeds along the fall with the falling essential elements.

the first is that we would provide universal coverage for all americans by providing free basic plans to everyone. those plans would be particularly generous for the poorest and sickest americans among us. second of all, we preserve choicely ensuring that every american can move in to the marketplace and buy at the right policy for them and their family by taking the subsidize for the basic plan using it to purchase the plan of their choice. third of all, we would end this perverse system which insurers are pitted against the sibbest by ending the -- be community rated and allow insurers to price risk according the true cost. essentially, we say it's the government's job to protect and it's our job as voters and taxpayers to protect the sick and the poor. it's not the job of private enterprise to protect the sick and poor. rather the job of private enterprise is to price risk. we will make sure that the poor

and the sick have access through traditional welfare mechanisms. the last two points you might worry that what happens to people who get sick in this system? their premiums go up. here we -- i think it's extremely important encourage long-term contracts that move beyond the way insurance is traditionally structured today. particularly imagine you can could go to a private insurer and sign a contract saying i would like to buy a policy that provides me a guarantee premium for as long as i'm with you. and you will grow not to raise it if i get sick. those policies exist in the small individual private marketplace. they need furtheredderder in -- furlt nurererring and accomplishment. the last point i'll make is we believe the excessive incentive we provide employers to provide insurance to their workers make for an unfair playing field. an unlevel playing field nap it to say, we end with a system

where too much coverage is provided through employers. there's a massive tax advantage for the system. as a result you have a system in which poor workers end up subsidizes high tax bracket richer workers who value the subsidizes more strongly. a lot of work we did lies beneath the surface. what i would like to do next is pass the baton to my colleague to talk a little more detail about the essential mr. element of our plan. >> thank you. >> it's great to be back. i'm going pick up where he left off. color in some detail around the vision for the new insurance system. let's walk through this vision piece by piece. the first thing we want to do is provide universal coverage. we want to do it for two reasons. it accords with our values, it accords with our notion of social justice. we think that insurance is

extremely valuable to those who don't have it. and it's also virtually impossible to do a lot about cost control when you don't have universal coverage. so the first thing that we do is to provide free basic coverage to all u.s. residents. this goes beyond the aca. we don't plan to insure only 30 million people, we plan to insure something like 50 million people, and the basic plan is a plan available to everybody regardless of how sick they are, how rich they are. and then it will determine what goes in to the basic plan using sort of a conversation between politicians and economists. we have a idea of a basic plan that everyone receives. from that, what we want to add is we want to encourage choice in health insurance. so in today's world, if i'm an employer or if i'm receiving

employer-based health insurance as he said, both the ceo of a company and the executive assistant receive the same health insurance offering. which makes the sense the ceo and they probably have different health care. they probably drive very different cars. it makes little sense for them to be receiving the exact same health insurance offering response we certainly constrain choice in the marketplace as a result of tieing health insurance to employment. we do the same thing for those we insure for the medicaid program. it may be valuable. but the networking of providers that they have access to is small and shrinking quickly. they are not allowed to same i'm going to accept -- i want something more generous than the medicaid program i'm being offered by the state. i'm willing to supplement it with the own dollars. we want to increase the amount

of choice that patients and workers have in the marketplace. how are we going do that? what we're going do is provide premium support. we will offer premium support to americans and to to the 50 million for the purchase of any chosen plan. so it's -- you get a premium support and you can supplement that premium support with your own dollars if you apt more generous plan than the plan being subsidized by the premium support. the third -- piece of our plan, which is probably the most innovative, is the elimination of community rating. it's very popular with people what it does is says we're going to combine the risk of the rich and the poor -- we're going combine the premiums of the healthy and the poor. and the healthy and the sick. the problem with combining of

premium with the healthy an sick. we don't want sicker people to pay higher premiums. we're not drawing a distinction between the rich who are healthy and the poor who are healthy. we're basically saying the healthy pay the same premium as the sick, which resultses in a big subsidize from the poor who are actually healthy to the sick people who are actually rich. so the elimination of community rating is an important innovation in this plan because what we do is we say as an insurer, you're allowed to look at the person in front of you, evaluate their sickness, and offer a quote to insure them. since that quote depends how risky or sick the patient is. the insurers has no incentive to essentially avoid sick patients. for sick patients they can charge a high premium. if i'm a healthy patient and get rid of community rating i no longer have a need to no longer purchase health insurance.

the whole reason we have the individual mandate in the affordable care act is because a community rating. we need the individual mandate in the affordable care act because we're basically trying to increase transer froms from healthy people to sick people. healthy people are essentially ily pay and unfair premium. which why we don't want to purchase health insurance which is why we say you have to. so if we can get rid of community rating we allow insurers to say healthy people have a low premium because you are healthy. sick people you have a high premium because you are unhealthy. it may be a high premium for a lot of people. what it does is to say if you are a poor sick person, your plan is completely free and you are allowed to supplement that plan with dollars from outside. the fourth thing we want to do is encourage long-term insurance. there's a number of reasons for this. the key reason is really that if

we think about what we need to do to bend the cost curve and think about the challenge of diabetes and obesity out there, it's very difficult to reduce diabetes and obesity with the year-to-year insurance contract. we want an insurer to say i'm going to be responsible not only if you fall sick next year, i'm going to be responsible for you five years from now, ten years from now, and so on. because it's only then that the insurer really starts to engage in prevention. so the advantage of long-term insurance contract we both start to think about prevention more seriously than we have, also it protects patients from premium increases. in today's current marketplace, if i'm purchasing health insurance on the individual marketplace, and i get come down with cancer. the insurer will take care of me for a year. in the second year they say you were diagnosed with cancer. your new insurance premium is going to be $50,000.

that's no longer health insurance. that's basically prepaid health care for one year. allowing for long-term insurance contract allock ups us focus on prevention and dealings with the problem that we are not going to allow premium increases to increase when patients fall sick. the fifty piece of our plan, is to end subsidizes from employer-provided health insurance. and this is an idea that has a lot of support on both sides of the political aisle. and the aca certainly takes important step in term of ending these subsidizes. they have a variety of perverse incentive. they are completely regressive. the benefit of the subsidize accrues much more to people who are in high marginal tax bracket than people in low marginal tax bracket. there are other consequences of the sub i did on american labor markets. there are -- many americans locked to the jobs. they don't search for outside opportunity. they don't become entrepreneur in part because they are

receiving health insurance from their employer. employers should focus what they're good at doing best. qop -- developing new idea which are innovative. we should completely sort of, you know, get them out of the business of offering health insurance to their employees. so that's the fifth part. and then finally, in terms of transitioning over to bob. the big question that is on your mind is this sounds fantastic. we understand sort of the broad contour of the plan. what will it cost? we believe it costs a lot less than the aca. it costs less for two reasons. the first is we're getting rid of the subsidize associated with employer-provided health insurance. so that's somewhere between at least something like $300 billion a year. we're replacing medicaid with premiums support. so that's saves us a lot of money. and the third source of savings is we actually turbo charge the exchanges. now a lot of people are buying

health insurance on the exchanges. and much like we saw with the medicare part d. experience competition. price competition between insurers for patient dollars could end up being a big source of savings as well. with that, i'm going turn it over to bob, who is going to give you even more detail and sort of drill down even further on what the specific of our plan are. >> thank you. i want to spend the next few minute working through some of the nut and bolts about how the proposal could be implemented. i'll start by saying there are numbers involved. as joe mentioned. i'm a physician. i'm afraid numbers. i'll do my best for you. first of all, how do we think about starting to develop a basic plan? it should be a few criteria. first of all, it should have zero premiums. no premiums at all. okay. the second fine of --

feature of the health plan it should be more generous for who are sick and poor. those who are wealthy would have more of a catastrophic-like coverage through this basic health plan. the third feature of the basic health plan, it's tied to how much we want the federal government to spend on health care. if we want to have a basic health plan that provides complete coverage for every single american, i think clearly that health plan is going cost at love money. and so the financing of the basic health plan in particular plan is going to be tied to how much we want to spend. this particular proposal we have tied the design of the basic health plan so the spending is similar to what will happen under the aca. i want to be very clear that we could change that spending level to the stars titus quo. we can make it 10% less than the status quo. the bottom line is we can change the spending and disiet plan in any way we want.

the basic features still hold. as he said, the idea behind the basic plan is to take individual, identify what are their health care risks, do they have diabetes? obesity. and try to identify the premium risk associated with that individual. individuals would be given the basic plan, if they are happy with it, for example, if you are poor or sick, then you have full coverage. it would be hard to imagine you wouldn't be happy. if you are wealthy and want a little bit more coverage and the deduck -- dedeductability is too high. you can purchase individual coverage a more general plan. in the premium support that you get would be tied to that basic plan. in other words someone who is sick, their health care costs are going to be higher than premium support they would receive to be able to purchase a plan in the private market would also be higher. that's the way the subsidize occurs in our framework.

and finally, in a way in which our plan is financed is that we're going e eliminate employer-responsed health insurance. we expect that wages would rise. there that's a lot of economic evidence as you eliminate the -- health insurance wages will match the value of that insurance. those wages that income can be used by individual to purchase the health insurance they choose or desire. let me walk you through a very illustrated basic plan. we're not wedded to the plan. it's just to give you a flavor how the plan that we envision might work. so maybe look not at me but the slide because it's going to be more informative. consider two types of families. very broadly speaking. a healthy family of four and a sick family of four. the sick family of four, as we describe is going to be the top 20%.

if you look at the x axis family income. as you move to the right these are family with greater income. the y axis is the dedeductble the family would pay under the basic health plan. it's a zero premium health plan. there are deductible and copayment. some of the detail in the report -- we can go through that in the aq and q & a. those under poor if they are sick, there will be no deductible. you do not have to pay anything. no copayment. for those healthy there will be a minor and increasing deductible as it goes up. the wealthiest family an income of $1 10,000. you can see it would appear quite high. $50,000 under a basic plan. it's supposed to be catastrophic coverage for those who have

inability to pay. they want to buy more jebous coverage they can do so. the most important thing to take from the slide though is that those who are healthy should not be hitting $50,000 deductible. people who are healthy the insurance premium they will get on a private health exchange because those premium are tailored to their risk will be much lower. and the idea behind the basic coverage is for families who have an ability to pay that the catastrophic coverage kicks in and they can purchase additional coverage as more generous if they desire. i would like to walk you through a couple of examples of some numbers, again, i'm a physician so numbers are sometimes a little bit difficult. but start with, again, two types of feament. healthy and sick family. the top is the healthy family. take a family, for example, who has less than 100 -- these family have a basic

insurance plan with zero premium, zero deductible, and zero copayment. complete coverage. for them the basic plan is obviously very good. as increase income, take for example, a family of four at 1,000% of the federal line. this type of family if they have a basic plan, the premium would be zero. the out of pocket would be on average $6 10. they could instead purchase an alternative more generous plan. the way we define generous plan here is a plan with zero deductible but 20% copayment. that plan the premium would be 560. on top of that $1 22. so approximately $8 00. but remember, when we eliminate employer-sponsored health insurance wage will wise. the wage increase for the family would be approximately $17 00. that money could be spent toward the premiums or the out of

pocket expenses once the copayment kick in. let look at sick families. again, for a sick family at 100% of the poverty limit. zero deductible and copayment. moving to the 1,000% family. you can see the out of pocket payment could be large. for example, under the basic plan, because the deductible is high, their out of pocket expenditure could be michael approximately $12 ,000. a more generous plan a plan with diser are deductible. the premium would be $11 ,000. and the out of pocket would be $24 00. and let me take you to the next slide to help you understand how the plan then works. where the subsidizes occurring. in our plan, everybody benefits relatively to the aca except those who are wealthy and sick. those who have an ability to pay

but also use additional health care resources. as he said, this is an issue of bill gates who has hieber tension diabetes versus the male clerk who works microsoft. they are paying the same amount. in our view, it's not the most ebbing itble way to deliver health care. so i would like to conclude by offering a few comments comparing our plan to the aca. we all believe, all of us in this room,ic, that universal coverage and care for the poor and needy is paramount. we cannot have a health care system that doesn't achieve those goals. and we automatic agree on those values. the question is how do we achieve the values? in our model we rei lie on competition, tax credit more than the affordable care act. we offer more choice to individuals. we offer a better way to think about how do we treat poor who are currently a two-tiered health care system.

we want our patients with medicaid, people who are poor and have medicaid insurance. we want them to have access to the same physicians that any of us have access to. that's the broad vision we hope to obtain here. at the end of the day, the take home point is our plan shouldn't cost more than the aca. >> thank you. now we are going to turn -- >> thank you for having me me today. i would tell the audience is that the report is -- more information and more than even the presentation itself has shown. there's a lot that the authors get in to. it really walks through what the complexity and the data limb ma of the current health care system are. i agree with many of the issues raised in the report. as joe already mentioned from the comment about the dysfunctional market that relies

onleyer stopgap measure to prevent the gap. the layer and layering on top of the broken system. they have i think that's is why we realize how hard it is to overall the health care system. and a really good contribution to the discussion on this and a experiment about how the system could work if we take away some of the key problem in the system. if it's looking at what you do. a what a system look like if you take away community ratings and the exclusion. if we look at different ways of looking at the safety net. how wouldn't a new system operate under that? i think that was a valuable contribution to the discussion.

i think good through the -- how do you put it in together to one plan? so i know you had your goal. a couple of things i read through your presentation as well as the report itself the goal that stood out in my mind. first, an effort to crawl -- create value in health care. something that is much needed. not only so the sick and the poor have access fop so others in the system find value in participating in the system. and access to health care. we -- it was noted already the uninsurance rate in the report gets in to this at the significant amount of the uninsured are those below 100% of poverty. but the second largest group, those above 400 percent of poverty. i think that illustrates the challenge of trying to provide ak sties to the poor but also making sure you're not crowding out people among a higher income level. the second standout goal was the

effort to protect the poor and sick. i think it needs to be done. i think our current program, as you documented, jurve -- underserved the poor in the many instances. and as a whole. i think that looking recognizing and we have limited resources and with limited resources we knit to prioritize spending in various ways. and looking at health care entitlement whether it's medicaid, medicare, or the tax inclusion which i call in a questioner in rick way show that need to be piratizedtized in better way. the significant involvement with what the proposal is putting forth and first one is leveraging choice and competition. we know if we can bring in choice and competition. you drive insurers to compete for the individualities themselves in to kind of fix the marketplace so it's a level playing field. the opportunity for diversity in

the plan and consumer choice i think is very valuable. i'm very disagreed -- intrigued by the long-term plans. maybe it's something we talk about in the q & a. how do you see it evolving in the long-term? another improvement is allocating the existing resources. i'm a strong supporter of looking at and rethinking the exclusion for the exact reason you pointed out. it's value for higher income people or lower income people. as well as converting medicaid spending to direct tan to the individual. and i do also think they are -- and help to monotize public spending and create defined contribution based on a real market price of what the products are in the marketplace

there. so those are kind of the improvement i see. i think part of the helpfulness of the discussions is talk about where we see actual maybe some of the challenges in moving in these proposal forward. and moving from what i call the theoretical to the practice. and maybe i've been in washington too long, but i see there are several -- i think, big hurdle in taking on a proposal like this and putting it in front of a congressional -- congress and moving it forward. and the first one i would say is really balancing this question of the basic health plan with controlling costs. your plan, it seem, by reading it start with the idea we're going define the basic health plan. i think it underestimates the change what that would look like. if you are too -- you will find resistance across the board. on all sort of group. if you leave it to congress to decide and panels and et.

cetera, you'll continue to be kind of spinning in circle as well. there are differing opinion. in the end people throw up their hands. i think that's one major challenge in designing what a basic health plan would be. second is the subsidize part of it. in looking at how do you interlog the subsidize that is a very complicated subsidize in some respects. it's not clear flat subsidize amount we have seen in previous proposal. it's a fixed subsidize amount. you define the package after wards. you define what the plan is and you have the subsidize to make up the difference in the plan. i think that is going to be very complicated not only to administrate but oak plain to people. how is it healthy? how do you take to a variation from there? the second part of balancing

this is how do you maintain a basic plan and maintain financial control? so we always have this pressure year after year, you see the pressure of and the level of the generosity of the benefit begins and you have issues like the medicaid program you have access or care. i think that your report clearly acknowledges it's a major problem. i think you head it on the hit. there's no solid solution to solve this.

and the second point you make in the report which also resonated with me. the political question becomes the level of coverage that society deems essential for people in different socioeconomic categories. i think if really clarifies for the reader, particularly me, this is a really big problem that subsidize together. you are still going to need some people involved in figuring how to get to the perfect -- the second challenge it's hard say this. ending the employer-sponsored health care coverage in particular the discollusion. it makes pure economic sense not partisan, i think everyone can agree when you read about it and see what is going on. it is really a distortive feature in the system. i think it's more politically trenched before.

you recently heard of the union plans say they don't want to have the employees going to the exchanges because the benefit are less generous than the union plan. we also see, i think, even within congress the past couple of week talk about whether member of congress and the staff will be able to retain the employer-based subsidizes. i think that in familiar i think this is one instant with the retreat and preserving the employer-based system and really having it as an ante-dote to the affordable care act in the big challenge moving ahead. the last area is really overhaul of the health care system as whole. i would think --

i think many people in washington have obama fatigue. and so trying to overhaul -- split the difference of saying we have federal exchange and will allow state exchange. i think that was partially a political calculation for them. i think it wasn't mentioned here you propose -- i think that's intriguing and would be more of a gradual effort. you have the counter point of it's one experiment. how does it apply to the rest of

the country? what happens to massachusetts may not apply to utah, for example. the last point on overhaul the transition issue. everyone can see the vision where you want to go long-term or get a sense where it is. but how do you get from a to z? what the bumps along the road? are there, as some people say, lateral damage that will likely perk up? which could create son problem in getting there. in conclusion, i point i think it's a valuable contribution to the discussion. i look forward to rereading it several time in the future based on the various element you try to address. i think that for the future that the political and policy -- settle 0 the current health care law before understanding how we overlay a new system in that area. and so that maybe when that new landscape is out there we can revisit the idea and figure how to apply them in a new

environment. thank you. >> thank you. and we're going wrap it up. >> now for something completely different. [laughter] i have to say that discussing this proposal is very difficult for me for three different reason. first, we're in the midst of a great national effort to implement systemic health reform. i believe this proposal has illerer vaunt to that debate. second, proposal has designed feature that i believe will have little appeal to the mass of the general public. third, was the tired cliche goes, the devil or god depending upon your theologies is in the detail. and this plan leaves unspecified a host of critical elements. before i explain those comments, i want to anticipate possible responses that the authors may

have. first, i may have misunderstood their proposal. if so, i look toward to corrections. second, they may say the paper is not intended really as a fully brought fact call proposal. i think that response would also fail. after a century of debate on how to extend health insurance coverage and reform the payment and deliver i are system, our political system laboriously and painfully -- we have debated and litigated it. we will do more of both. but it is the law of the land. and law abiding citizens will try to implement it. may succeed, it may fail. i actually believe that at first it's going to do both of those

things in different places. it's ultimate administrative legal and political fate remains uncertain. it is naive. it is naive to think that the u.s. will walk back from the affordable care act, say, never mind, then adopt a radical measure that scraps the current insurance frame work of the entire nation. now i'm going turn to whether this proposal will or should have appeal to the public and to the key missing elements that i think have to be specified before it really is a proposal. as i hope will become clear, those are seemingly two questions are really one. it could replace medicaid acute care and employer many of responsed coverage with a universal voucher sufficient to pay for the lowest or second

lowest premium on basic insurance coverage sold through a national exchange. that in a nutshell is the proposal. people would be free to buy additional coverage. they reference made to premium support for supplemental coverage, i think, it's nowhere described in the paper. federal would replace state regulation of insurance. all limits on medical underwriting would be ended other than those required by the constitution. insurance companies would be encouraged to write multi-year insurance contracts by nors -- authorizing to find customers who cancel their contract and presumably to sue them for damages. a proposal that in my view, completely misses the real reason why long-term contracts are so rare in health insurance. in addition, everyone would have

access to some level of general revenue financed emergency care. for the sake of illustration, the authorities present two table. they are in the paper, they are perhaps available on the slides. that show how debt ductble could vary by include and predicted medical companies. not actual predicted. there's one schedule of dedeductble for families with lower than average predicted medical expenses and another for those with above average predicted medical spending. who are labeled extremely burdened. the trigger as described in the paper for predicted use of medical services is $4 ,000 in 2011 based on 2011 dpa that. the authorities don't say whether the $4 ,000 threshold is adjusted for family size, age, or initial health data and if so

how. note, that the best constitutionally permitted algorithm now available to predict health care spending explain no more than than 20 to 30% of the actual variance in medical spending. further more, the screwness in medical outlie, a small proportion of families account for most health care spending means there will be a reverse -- effect. a large majority of people with high actual medical bill will have breaux average predicted medical spending. and therefore will face the higher deductible. that means that most house hold classified as extremely burdened would in fact also have negligentble, actual medical spending. to see what what we're talking about, we have to look at the

author's example. i shall focus on the majority who would have the below average predicted medical spending. in fact include most of those who will have above average actual medical spending. a four-person family with half the poverty threshold income just $11, 175 a year would face a deductible of $9 $50. it would be 10% of income, $22,035. at four time poverty threshold, an income of $89,000. the subsidizes under affordable care act just end, the deductible would be $35,760. for a four-person family with an income of $223,500. there may be one or two in the

room. your deductible would be your annual income. if you were judged to be extremely burdened millionly, your deductible would be just $145 ,000. in plain english this plan would provide no financial assistance for health bills whatsoever for the masses of population. it would cut loose the mass of currently insured americans from all over the insurance they now enjoy through work or through medicaid in return for which they would be provided a voucher sufficient to buy coverage that would provide most of them nothing in most years. i rather doubt that many here will find such an offer appealing, but even if you do, how many of you would be willing to bet on the re-election of an official who voted for such a proposal? , iyms really.

in addition it leaves address a host of really important questions that have to be answered before the proposal is ready for serious discussion. here i will echo some things that nina said. how are basic benefits defined? what limits, if any, will there be on physician visits? day in hospital, rehabilitate service, networking adequate sincerity, mental health coverage, provider have fees, what limits, if any, would there be on annual or lifetime benefits? what will be stop loss protection? if so, what level? and how would it be related to family income? as insurers would have to sell to all would be in purchasers and all limit on medical underwriting would be barred, what would premium subsidize schedules actually look like? i think some people would face premiums in the six figure range.

isn't talk of supplemental coverage for them rather fact use? because one would have to use past income for computing deductible, what would be done for people who have the income drop? for example because of an illness? as deductibles are high enough to cause a major jump from bankruptcy cue to serious illness. if there are stop loss limits above the deductible wouldn't it recreate the very problem of uncompensated care that the plan claims to end? if individuals decide to go without insurance, rather than pay fully underwritten premium for care beyond the basic level, i don't this fact either add to emergency room costs, or medical bankruptcies, our both. mention as made of add on basic coverage at state level.

how would that work? those are some questions that i think are basic and need to be answered. i want to close with just a few words about the national priority for reform that are listed on page 5 of the paper. two of which incidentally are missing from today's slides. the three on today's slide, and fourth that is listed in the paper namely increased deficiency in health care delivery. i think demand general agreement. very few would disagree. they might argue about relative importance. one priority in the printed paper is so seriously at odds with the others that i wonder whether all of the authors actually believe it. the ab sen from today's raises the possibility that maybe they don't. the paper labels as a national priority slowing the growth of public spending on health care. the priority in my view, should

be to slow the growth of total health care spending by improving efficiency while assuring universal coverage, access to health care for the sick and the poor, and respect for patients' values. but if those priorities are met, then public spending is what it is, logical consistency, as well as fiscal prudence would require that we pay the taxes sufficient to deliver on those four core plighter -- priorities. that means not just fulfilling them for you and me, but also fulfilling them for the vol nebl pop -- vulnerability populations. >> thank you, henry. those were very important comments. i think we have a few minutes for the little discussion about

agreements and disagreements about what is really wrong with the paper. and put what is right with the paper too. maybe you can start. >> thank you. thank you, henry. i'm glad you liked the plan. [laughter] >> i'll try to be more directive. >> that's always been my experience. i'll say a few things and hand off to give them a chance. first of all, i would say that it's also, i think naive to think that the aca will remain untouched. when medicare was passed in 1965, i imagine there was probably fatigue in passing that legislation as well. yet, succeeding administrations over the next ten, fief fifteen, twenty years, put their imprint. they added things like medicare advantage, medicare prescription drug benefit. they changed the added perspective pam. -- payment. you might say we're a little too

early for the discussion. perhaps. but i think this is -- i think knee -- new york warrant a longer national discussion before we're ready to talk about changes in the aca. and as a subsidiary point to that. i don't necessarily think that one would to start from scratch in order to rebuild. or rebuild the health care system in some kind of image. rather, one can think about changes to the way the aca implements tax credit as a starting point for a subsidize scheme. one can imagine the aca's exchange provision as starting point for exchanges as well. i think that this plan suspect necessarily as radical as one might interpret it to be. it's true, i think it's a fair point, that the paper was grappling with fundamental issues so it comes off as

obviously a radical change. ting could be a radical change. that's the first point. the second point, i think it's quite misleading to look at the basic plan and interpret these as the coverage people would get. it's a little bit like looking a the aca or status quo and saying, look, in the aca, we have leaving uninsured all of these middle class and upper middle class people. that's because the aca doesn't lay down a minimum subsidize for those people. that to me, it's an -- a move. all we're doing with the basic plan is setting a floor for people to use. it's extremely likely that the high deductible tresh hold henry quoted will be bought out by individuals purchasing coverage on the private market just like they purchase coverage today. that hasn't changed. we have actually increased the four subsidizes available to people over the aca and the status quo. i think that's an important

point. the other point that is relevant is ending community rating makes it cheaper for health people to buy down the deductible. it actually becomes more feasible to bring your deductible down a lot. if you are in one of the healthier groups. now to the point that henry made about the prediction of medical spending. he's 100% correct that predicting medical spending is difficult, and not much of the variances explained by it. i will note that current policy already attempts to make the kind of distinction by transferring more medicaid coverage to people medically needy. ..

>> the social insurance part of health care. this is not like car insurance. if you can't afford car insurance, you don't get to have a car. with health insurance there is that social insurance component which is basically the degree to which a healthy pay to subsidize the cost of the sick, which is something that we don't really have in flip the conversation around. so we view it as sort of, we put that up front saying we need to get what is the basic plan is. we don't think an economist will ever forget what that basic plan

is. we don't think a philosopher from harvard will figure out what that is but until we devised an institution, elected or otherwise, that figures out what it is, we are really not going to make a whole lot of traction on improving the health insurance marketplace. so i guess, i mean, that is a limitation you guys didn't figure it out but our view was as economists will be good at doing his figure out to get the market part of this plan to work, how do you do prices were, how you get incented were. it's really society and its sense of social justice that should tell us what the basic plan ought to be. that was one spot. second, again high level response to henry. i think, you say that we agree with you. we spent some time talking about the opportunities to improve diversity of choice in the medicaid program, but our plan is really not only directed at

public spending. it is directed at total spending. i think our view as economists is, if people want to spend an increasing chunk of their paychecks on health care, that is perfectly all right. but we would want them to elect to spend a greater and greater portion of their paychecks on health care. right now under employer provided health insurance, we don't have a choice. all harvard employers have the same health insurance plan. many harvard employees would prefer a less generous plan which would allow them to higher wages which in turn they could spend on gasoline, college tuition, a mortgage. i think we actually agree with you. this is not only directed at reducing the growth of public spending budgets of the bend the curve on total spending. we think the single best way to bend the curve on total spending is to get rid of employer provided health insurance, and cannot even get rid of it. if employers want to deliver

health insurance to their employees just like they deliver a nice office space or meals, they should absolutely be entitled to do that. all we want to do is eliminate the subsidy, eliminate the tax expenditure associate with employer provided health insurance. since that's the largest source of coverage in the united states, there's no question that we think that that would help reduce the growth of total spending on health care, not only the growth of medicaid spending. so that was a second point. finally, just an observation. i think that we are in this uncomfortable place as the country. i certainly feel as an economist, where any opportuni opportunity, any attempt to sort of modify the aca in any direction is viewed as a threat to the entire aca. we think i'm at least i'm speaking for myself, we think our plan starts and ends in many

ways with ideas that are lifted right out of the aca in many ways, completely turbo charges them with the exception of eliminating community rating. and we think that eliminating community rating is at this something that will happen naturally. we are just the first to come out there and say it. it's going to happen naturally because of the heterogeneity of patient preferences. there's no way to end people want to pay the same insurance premium as old people, that rich people want to pay the same premium as poor people, and so on and so forth. cancer patients want to pay the same premiums as diabetes patient. so there's an underlying for health care. if we don't acknowledge that we will have to keep sort of circling with more and more mandates. at some point both mandates which is sort of fracture. so i think what we are doing essentially saying, look, if community ratings were, if people were willing to enter into social contract, then

great. we just don't think they're willing to enter into the social contract which is why the aca introduces the individual medley. i think the authors of the aca understood that the young and healthy are not going to want to buy health insurance which is why we have to force them to buy health insurance. did you want to add something? >> [inaudible] >> first of all, thank you. darius, this proposal does go in a completely different direction from the aca. if what you're saying is that there are ways to modify the aca consistent with the principles, without jettisoning the whole system could be helpful if you would say so. but you don't in this paper. so i would urge in the revision that you take up the specific modifications in the aca that you think would move in a desirable direction. second, amitabh, if you really believe the goal is slowing the growth of total health care

spending, then i would urge you to lobby hard for saying so in the paper, not forcing the goal is to slow the growth of public spending. finally, much of this discussion sounds as though the united states is inhabited by two disjoint populations, neanderthal and homo sapiens. the sick and the well, and they're completely distinct and they never crossover. but at the same time the paper says we should have really long-term insurance contracts, and if you do, that gap is the difference between a well -- we all at some point in our lives in varying degrees both. so i think there is at root a deep-seated conception that this inconsistency indicates. >> i would just add that it still gets the issue of the basic plan, and i think the

challenge, which is not a challenge for you, but for everyone, and he gets a little at what henry is saying i think, i think people are looking for predictability. i think that's what you're trying to discuss with a long-term plan, and that the rest of the maybe just a transition to get us to the long-term plan. and i don't know if you can comment on that a little bit on how you see that long-term playing in kind of execution of this. >> i will ask my co-author, i think he wants a chance to spe speak. >> nini, thank you very much for your comments. two things. when this transition because i think that is intentional. realistically we have to figure out how do we get from the aca to our plan. i believe it's not substantial steps in getting there because the aca contained some key provisions that overlap with our plants.

specifically with tax credits, for individuals, it contains tax credits to help them lower the price of premiums to them. we would take those tax credits and eliminate the income limits on them. they wouldn't start at 132% and they wouldn't end at 100%. they would do although it up and down the income ladder. we would take the tax credit and generalize the entire population. that's never one. number two, the aca has a wonderful idea which is to start exchanges for health insurance plans. those are very important to we need them workplace where people can buy and compare health insurance. we will take those and generalize those. now, if you do generalize those two important things in the aca, you don't need a lot of other things. you don't need the medicaid expansion because tax credits will take care of it. you don't need the employer-sponsored health insurance tax breaks, because the tax credits on the changes

will take care of it. we think the aca got something very right to we need to go with what it cut right and expand the that i think is the main transition point. the second thing i would like to stress is when henry talks about the basic plan, he makes it out to be a very uncharitable plan. you know, if, makes it to be a very uncharitable plan, but the thing that is missing is the basic plan is not what you have to live with. it defines how much subsidies you get it you can always top it off. you can say my premium, sorry, my deductible is $20,000. that is way too high. what do you do? that person would go out and buy a plan that supplements the basic plan that lowers the deductible down to $5000, $1000, $500. the interesting thing is if you combine, if you take into account effectively eliminate the rating, the price of reducing the deductible is much

lower today, much lower under our plan that would be today. so that plan might only cost an extra $150, but you take the basic plan plus $150 your deductible come down to $1000. that's possible because of the elimination. that's important thing, we are changing prices to make plans cheaper. >> i spent a lot of time doing cost estimates over the years, and i heard some pretty amazing stories. that number is pretty amazing to me, but, you know, i can't wait for this plan to go into effect. i guess i have one, maybe 30 seconds to ask, i've heard a lot about the under 65 insurance market and a lot of that medicaid. have you met the older generation? how the medicare? where does medicare fit in? is very quick short answer? then we will go to the audience.

>> i think that medicare emphasizes a lot of these transitions that are, income i think we have not tackle that question. maybe the next aei report. >> bill, cannot add one thing to that? -- can i add one thing to the? there's nothing in this plan, one of the reasons we didn't touch medicaid because a lot of disparate between eight of us on which we could touch medicare with this plan. against the king for myself what i like about medicaid is that it doesn't essential have this apartheid plan. what you got the one plane and everyone else another plan. that's what i like about medicare. what i don't like about medicare at all is the fact that medicare, medicare essentially reimburses for services without regard to their value, and let me give you the example of therapy for prostate cancer. the private insurance went to

cms and begged seem is not to cover this therapy. they said we have no evidence the therapy works. they told cms, if you, medicare, cover the therapy we will have to cover it, too because if we don't cover it we will be sued. sieminski cites a comprehensive and all the private insurers cover. this is a long way of saying that to the extent that we want cost control and health care to come from decision-making by physicians and hospitals and providers, one reason to extend this plan up to medicare is that we are more likely see technology assessment of that type of which would've avoided the proton problem. >> but amitabh, and this is -- why do you think in the world you're going to be free of the congressional oversight, russia's public agency like the center for medicare and medicaid

services into making what was probably an ill considered approval judgment in this case? the same guys, women and men, are going to be running for office, voting on your basic plan as for medicare. >> you right. but it would probably be doing in november is they will be essentially campaigning on the size of that basic plan, right. so you have a guy say, elect me for office because if you elect me the basic plan will include the proton be and if you don't elect me it won't. what our plan does is it puts an explicit threat of that kind of confrontation, on that kind of comic getting people to vote for you. we can say this is what it's going to cost. >> well, just to wrap this up with a little bit of maybe possibly cynical, there's already that price that probably doesn't show up directly in anybody's medical bill.

but it's still there. so let's go to the audience with some questions. this lady had her hand up way ahead of everyone else. weight, please, wait for the microphone. please state your name and affiliation, and, of course, try to ask a question. >> my name is barbara and i mainers. -- and i mainers. i wanted safer so i was really happy to hear you speak of quality as one of the big priority. i think we all want to get well when we're sick. i wanted to address your elevating of the government responsibility to provide care and responsibility to protect three basic plan. historically that has always led also to government control, as in obamacare, when the government control is leading to economic rationing and loss of

the patient decision-making. how do you reconcile government controlled based on the economic and political needs of politicians with the needs of the patient for good quality care? i was a can and do happen -- >> we have your question. >> okay. >> i think this speaks to the issues that both henry and nina have raised about government intervention. there's a continuum here. you can never obviously disengaged the health care system from the political system. the issue is that the more buying power we give to the government, the more influential it becomes. the greater its capacity to make changes that may be good and may not be good. an example of this is the medicare prescription drug benefit. so if, for example, the government directly covered in insurance, or directly provided insurance for prescription drugs

it would have a lot more direct buying power for those prescription drug. and equipping very direct determinations about what drugs can and can't be purchased. instead what we have is a system of the government subsidizes a private marketplace. clearly they're still the potential for it to interfere and intervene, but at least the disconnection or the distribution of authority and purchasing power across the private and public sectors mitigate this to some extent. but i'm in complete, we are in complete agreement that political processes will have unpredictable effects in general. >> i would just like to say word about the affordable care act, because it was misrepresented in the question. patient choice among insurance plans for most people will increase, not decrease. there is nothing in the system that represents governmental imposition to benefits since the default plan for example, in the district on who's health benefit

exchange i said, the default plan is the private sector plan those most commonly offered, and ensures can offer additional benefits on top of that. for which they are free to charge. and that individuals are free to buy. so the idea that somehow choices compromise that patients are in a straitjacket, that federal legislation is constraining the range of offerings available under the affordable care act is simply false. choice is increasing. the only danger that faces is from those states in which governors, legislators and attorneys general are trying to make the plan fail in implementation. >> i just wanted to do a quick response to henry's point.

i think you and everyone will agree about one area where the aca does not increase choice and that's medicaid. so what it does is if you're under 133% poverty line, the aca put you into state medicaid plan with no choice, and has been alluded to there's massive access problems. you end up with a car but you can't find sufficient if that's how we will treat the poor under the aca. the alternative rigid which is what our plan does is to mainstream, allow them to access to the same kind of health insurance plan that you and i have come at a subsidized level is completely affordable to us. i think that alternative is much more to treat the poor with much more dignity than i think you see in the current system. >> the aca does one more thing. it raises fees for primary care, and so attempts admittedly i think been insufficient degree, but it tries to improve access somewhat. >> unfortunately that is only for two years, right?

[inaudible] [laughter] >> thank you all. tyler o. neil, journalist with the christian post to my question is to nina. you mentioned the difficulties of applying this plan as in the political space. and ted cruz has made a lot of headlines by saying he will try to a fund obamacare. but this plan would be more conservative solution to obamacare. so what, do you consider at all viable or the ideas from it viable as an option for, say, the gop to produce in the future? >> well, i mean, i think i said in my conclusion that the ideas that we need to see with the dust settles. we don't know as henry even said whether implementation, how it will go, whether the health care

law will continue as is. they're still i think some effort that they may be a reveal of health care law depending on once the law takes effect. so i think that this is an important contribution to i think we need to see where the policy and the politics and upon this, and then revisit with a proposal to offer. i said earlier that i think there are a variety of things that we have in common in the ideas that i have been what we should be doing. that overlap with the ideas there, but then you have to sift through and figure out at what point do you have something that builds a larger consensus. >> i would think something nina said also, the world will have perfectly changed before we get to streets consideration of alternative policies. john is next. >> thank you. my name is john graham. i see above national center of policy analysis. my question is about community

rating, and i'm struggling to maybe i haven't understood the proposal. today we have a medicare advantage community rating but there's a risk adjustment behind the curtain. that's what happened in the exchanges. a state like new york, the market doesn't work because there's no readjustment behind the curtain. so what i'm trying to understand in your proposal, if i had hiv/aids i go to the national exchange and they say your premium is $150,000, now you can apply to the iris for a tax credit for one of $3000 x. i don't quite see how that will sell to the voters. have i understood correctly or can i get some clarification? >> so, what would happen for the individual is the actual premium, if they're below 350% of the federal poverty level, which is a pretty thought high threshold we go to an online exchange. they would ask for a basic plan which would cost $150,000.

but they would immediately be a catch with the tax credit. the price they would pay is zero. >> jean ping with the national association of health underwriters. on page 26, an attorney who goes there, gets cancer, and then you guys subsidize him, what's the point of getting insurance? part of the social contract is that we are all in, but now i can just wait until i'm sick and my god, this is the best of both worlds should really be high in the sky. it's all free and i don't have to do anything. can you clarify this?

>> it depends on your income level. if you're below 350% of the poverty level you're covered for a plan that can be whether not you get sick. it doesn't matter whether the agreement is dated the beginning of the year or next day when you get sick. the government will have to pay for that once we decide that we want to provide care for the poor and the sick. so it is still insurance from the perspective of individuals getting a. if you're above 350% of the federal poverty level and very sick, your not going to get as big a substitute you have an incentive if you don't want to come income to get the insurance ahead of time and that's the simple and. we do provide insurance. the fact that you pay for every does not make it insurance. >> but also just briefly at, the presence of long-term contracts in the individual market as opposed to our employer market would be something that our hypothetical lawyer would probably be interested in as a

protection against income loss due to high health care spendi spending. >> my name is -- so my question is, the central tenet of this plan is choice and competition in health insurance will bring down costs for families. last year, i got published in the new england journal a response to some doctors, saying that there isn't a whole lot of evidence for choice and competition bringing down costs. dr. gruber of mit has shown a lot of choice inconsistencies among the elderly in the medicare part d plants. they pick plants that don't minimize out of pocket costs or financial variability and then another doctor from harvard has shown in medicare advantage that too many medicare advantage

plans just floods peoples ability to pick the appropriate plan, and they don't always respond to the general plan. so how confident are we that choice and competition will prove value in health care? >> actually, so i think kubrick and his. one is kind of compared to what. it's clear that medicare which that have a lot of choice hasn't done it particularly good job. so the question is are there alternatives that would be better. in terms of the medicare part d example which i think is failing, it is too there is evidence of some choice inconsistencies. i would say there's also evidence by dan mcfadden and others that suggest that on the whole choices have been reasonably beneficial. and over all the costs of the program have been somewhat less than anticipated, which all goes is a that markets don't work perfectly. the question is whether they will work better than the

alternative, and that's i think the way to frame the question. >> two points. first, the idea that medicare does have a lot of choice is false. the typical medicare enrollees has a choice between traditional medicare and a dozen or more medicare advantage plans. so there is an abundance the choice already in medicare. we could argue about the exact bidding arrangements that exist. the economist. could probably design better ones, better than the current system does. but choice, we've got. and there is evidence on the relative performance of medicare advantage of versus traditional medicare. it actually was done through a freedom of information suit by brian at george washington and some colleagues. and the evidence is that on the average, not uniform and it depends on where you live,

medicare advantage plans are slightly more costly after a just for patient characteristics and benefit packages, package differences than traditional medicare is. so that's in support of the skepticism that the questioner raised. on the importance of long-term contracts, i fully agree it would be great if we long-term contracts, but i think the reason we don't is not that insurance companies are careful that, or are unable to recover losses from those who cancel coverage, as is stated in the report. it's because they can't predict what long-term costs are going to be. they don't know the course of medical technology, and they have to be fiduciaries for their shareholders. in addition to that, behavioral economics has taught us that people tend to overweight current costs and discount especially low probability risks in the long run. and what our long-term interest

contracts by commitment today to pay more than you have to when you're young and healthy so that you can get a relatively level long-term premium and pay less when you're older and sick. so we're calling upon people to do what psychologically and what behavioral economics has indicated they really not very good at doing, which is making a very careful long-term plan involving risks that are difficult to appraise. those are the reasons we don't have long-term interest contracts. not because of a legal impediment that companies can't recover costs that they may suffer because of cancellation. >> just one quick point on that. it's actually, it would be i don't have long-term contracts that literally sat flat premiums but it's not necessary. you can imagine a pretty good long-term contract that just as you can't raise my premium because something happens to me

but you can raise it for aggregate technological reasons. some life insurance companies do this, for example. they will say we can't we rate the whole group but we won't rewrite you when you write a long-term contract. just one point you can still get pretty good results with that kind of setup. >> you know, we have about 30 seconds, so you could ask about a 15-second question, and you'll get a 15-second nonresponse i think. aspect. >> what can be done to incorporate into the health care universe increasingly come increasing growing number americans who are skeptical of the conventional remedy, medical treatments before, and would prefer more innovative approach that incorporates alternative and preventive approaches to the medical care? >> i can attest that. i always get confused.

the bottom line is the market should be able to produce plans that people value. so for example, if you have back pain and went to a positive surgical you want to get an mri, then you can choose a health plan that will cover those kinds of services. if instead you wanted to go to a more holistic provider, which surveys some of my patients have chosen to you and have great outcomes, you can go to an insurance plan that will cover that kind of coverage as opposed to having to pay out of pocket. >> thank you very much. please join me in thanking our panel for a great discussion. [applause] >> the health care law came up yesterday in a town hall meeting with congressman tom cole. constituents as the obama republican about talk among some members of his party about blocking government spending to force the law to be defined. here's representative cole's answers. >> question case you didn't

hear, if the present is getting run congress by executive orders and actions, but not all of these are orders, why isn't congress filing a lawsuit speak with in some cases we are but as a medevac the attorney general of the united states was recently held in contempt, or we filed against him, contempt of course case. we have multiple subpoenas to force testimony, and you know, so there is legal action under way. there's also things congress can do in terms of not approving presidential appointees. there are things they can do in terms of withholding funding, and we've done some of that in some areas. particularly where obamacare is concerned. there is a constant tension and struggle between the executive branch, but i agree with your point. look, i think the president has more than any president i recalled operating outside the normal legislative framework. since he lost control of the house and the senate.

examples, i can give, we went to war in libya. i would consider it were. i can say when you fire some 200 tomahawk missile and put in the fy 1000 combat sorties, the other guys on the other side think it's a war, was never approved by congress. not a dime, never voted for. george w. bush had done that i think he would've been, we would've been heard cries of impatient. we had part of our immigration laws suspended by the president. there's just a variety of issues like that when he is gone outside. we have tension with our system, struggles between congress and the president. this one is very safe. i think you'll see it continue. but there will be legal cases. >> i'm going to try to bounce around a little bit but again we will get to everybody. >> i was a little concerned to find that you are not in support of making the continuing resolution contingent upon

removing what optional spin you move on obamacare. i feel very strongly. i speak from a point of view -- [applause] >> i think they do, too. >> this is not theoretical for me because two weeks ago today my husband and i paid in cash for our son had major surgery. for our procedure. but, you know, what? that's a price i paid for the liberty of my children. i'm self-employed. i understand the consequent of that as i've limited options thanks our government on insurance. i understand that i paid for a limited coverage, a limited, signed up to $1000 a month or $2000 a month. i do not look for the government for recourse on that. we are individuals who are responsible and will make that sacrifice for our child. and i think even if you do not believe in your heart, never want it will pass, or number two, it's appropriate, you need to represent us and we are tired of having -- [applause]

>> great question them and i >> great question them and i appreciate it very much. and did you try to represent the people here. you know, let me walk, first of all, don't want to defund obamacare? absorbed. i voted against the. i voted 40 times to repeal it. or delay it. we've been able to pass seven pieces of legislation that got rid of, if your small business owner you don't have to file at 1041 every $600 purchase. i was in the original law. congress coverage that the republicans get rid of that and force democrats to accept it. those of you, there was part of his that was the assisted-living program was financially, not sustainable, would've bankrupted the government or even the democrats after they look at the financing, after they passed it, agreed and were able to get that through. i still think there parts of this, like attacks on medical devices. can you imagine we'll give you health care by taxing your oxygen tank on your wheelchair or your artificial limb. so i bow to nobody as being

opposed and i think we should do it now. the question is you want to shut down the government if you think that will achieve -- i've steadily taught you about the consequences of what a complete government shut down his. number one, that means you're chipped in the field don't get a. the military is not -- [inaudible] >> i'm sorry. well, of course i wouldn't do that. but that would happen. that being -- i've met. >> i listen to your question i will let you the microphone again if you want to. i will, but let, let me finish answering -- you are free to follow up. that's true, you know. we are for veteran centers in this day she have 15,000 civilian defense workers at tinker air force base that are being furloughed by the way right now. that would be a complete job loss. we have another 3000, 4000 in fort sill. national weather center. those things are real. just because you slow down the

government doesn't mean the other side has to give them. doesn't mean that the senate has to pass the legislation. we can pass that senate to the senate. the senate will refund obamacare, send it back to us, you know, and then it would be up to us who reject that to shut and the government. i think politically that is extraordinarily dangerous thing to do. i don't think it will work. if it works that's one thing. but, you know, i don't think it will. i think put millions of people out of work and at the it will really damage the economy and hurt a lot of innocent people. we'll get you might make back so you have a chance to respond. >> and i do understand that but i think it's a false argument from this standpoint. the house passed two versions, a continuing resolution that excludes obamacare that has that go forward. granted, the senate, we know what they're going to do. we do. but at some point obamacare was passed against the will of the people.

we look to our supreme court to step in. they failed us. we've looked to her congressman to do that, into your credit, 40 times you guys have come in and said to get rid of it. insanity definition is that we keep doing the same thing again. that's not going to cut it. so this is our last chance. and it's more than just comment on who's going to win the political power play if we shut down government. it's going to be what with the future of our country look like in a decade. because once the tentacles are there, it's, it's, it's too late depend on the back. look at social security. i think that's worth the risk. and also don't think it would come to that. >> well, i think it would come to that. and -- i've met spent if i can finish my point. i think it would come to that, and they don't think it would work. look, we can do as you suggest. that's a problem passing the original bill without. that's fine but it's not going anyplace in the united states center. it's going to have an attached

to it and it will come back. gene, at that point coming in, i really do think about the consequences of this concept in terms of people at veterans is you is, and i know you do, too. but it is true. i agree with you that this was passed against the will of the american people. there's never been a poll that said is popular but american people didn't give us the presidency in the last election and they didn't give us the senate. we lost ground in the senate. the house is the last thing between a replay of 2009 and 2010, which what we would see if there's a total democratic control in congress. the thing like cap-and-trade, card check, another enormous expansion, those things would happen. so you know, i will take what you have to say literally very carefully and consider. i suspect we will have a lot of discussions about it but i don't want to be disingenuous and tell you that i think shutting down the government is a good idea because i don't. i would be dishonest with you if

i told you i thought they can come it would work. i'm not the only guy who thinks that. i don't think james lankford are dangerous liberals or tom coburn who also feel very strongly about this. archives and other parts of the country like roy blunt or richard burr bound to be around for the last shut down. if it would work that's one thing. but, you know, i think it's very high risk and is very reckless with people whose jobs are on the line and our security as well. and i think it would be very damaging. so i'm going to be a hard sell on that but i will keep listing and we'll see what the legislative options are in september. >> you can see congressman tom calls entire town hall meeting on c-span.org. he was also asked about the nsa surveillance program. >> each night this weekend

c-span2, while congress is on break, we're showing on four presentations of q&a. today, nobel peace prize winner jody williams. she won the prize in 1997 for her efforts towards a worldwide ban on landmines. then at 8 p.m. eastern booktv prime time. tonight, the focus is on what booktv viewers are reading this summer. >> over this congressional recess, the service employees international union is lobbying to convince congress to pass immigration reform. this morning from washington to talk with one of the union's

leaders about why they're doing that. this is about half an hour. >> host: our focus is immigration and our guest is eliseo medina who is the secretary-treasurer of the service employees international union. thanks so much for being with us. >> guest: thank you so much for having me. >> host: as a look at the debate over immigration and it is front and center in the august recess as members of congress traveled to the respective states and congressional districts, what do you think the immigration bill needs to include? what would it look like? >> guest: i think what we need to do is have a bill that would solve this problem once and for all, and have the following component the number one, i think that it needs to allow the 11 million undocumented workers the opportunity to be able to legalize their status and give them a roadmap to have the achieve citizenship as they go through this process. secondly, i think we need a new way for the immigrants of the

future to come to this country so they don't have to come through the desert, putting their lives in jeopardy. third, i think that we need to have a way of figuring out how having an efficient policy on the border to make sure that we can deal with the drug runners, the criminals and people who will do us harm. and, finally, fourth, i think we need a way in which the workers here in this country can make sure they will have jobs and that employers can have a credible program for being able to ensure that the workers they hire are, in fact, authorized to work in this country. >> host: the politics facing the immigration debate is front and center this morning below the fold the story from "the new york times," dateline atlanta, georgia. the story is a focus of the 18 u.s. quit his job as an insurance agent a decade ago to work full-time on the campaign against illegal immigration in the state of georgia, one of the reasons why the state rivals arizona for the toughest

crackdown in this country on issue of immigration. one point, a quote from the piece, d. a. king who is reviewed as respectful but has this message to the speaker saying that they would be very grave consequences to those who voted for anyone that supports a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. >> guest: i think the threat is wrong but i think there's been poll after poll that's been done. the american people want this immigration system fixed. they understand that the system doesn't work. it's very expensive. it's ineffective. is inefficient. it doesn't serve anybody's interest will. and so i think that the people want this. house of representatives if you look at this photograph with the store, deport the illegal immigrants. by the way, this is d. a. king in "the new york times." that sentiment is very real within the republican party. particularly in the house of

representatives. >> guest: i think the minority within the republican party would say something like deport people because that's just not going to work. i think the polls once again show that a majority democrats, independents and republicans understand the system is broken if you want it fixed. >> host: one area come from us, the children of illegal immigrants would have a path to citizenship, but possibly not the adult. >> guest: i don't see how that is a solution. are you going to legalize the children and deport the parents lacks who is going to take care of these kids if the parents are deported? it just doesn't work. what we need is a solution that comprehensive that deals with a reality that we are facing today, and the way to do that is, let's bring in the 11 million, give them a background check, find it to they are, where they work. if you have a clean record, which have a 99.9% of the new, send them to work. have them go take of the families instead of spending money to try to arrest them and

deport them postman when and how did you come to the u.s.? >> guest: i came to this country in 1963. i'm from mexico originally. my father had been coming to this country as a worker, and then when the program ended the game as an undocumented worker. but eventually he was able to gather enough money so that we all immigrated legally to this country, and stayed there ever since. >> host: in 1985, president reagan signed the last significant immigration bill. what were the flaws in that legislation? >> guest: i think first of all the legalization part worked great. everybody was here was given an opportunity legalized. what was the problem i think is that they did not make provisions for how they would do with the immigrants of the future. instead, they just said let's crackdown on employers but they get no legal way for people to come in the future, so consequently the undocumented

continued to build up and we also build up a booming business in state documents, and then people have had to smuggle immigrants into this country. >> host: our guest today is eliseo medina who is with the service employees international union come also spent many years working with cesar chavez and will talk about relationship with him and his role in organized labor. our phone lines are open. as always, if you wanted to is on facebook or twitter, welcome your comments as well. our handle at twitter is cswj. gerald is joining us. good morning. >> caller: good morning. you live out one important thing i believe. it's the fact that they don't assembly. they want to keep hispanic

speaking and spanish advertising instead of going to english like every other citizen did in this country. my grandparents came to this country from europe. my mother-in-law and father-in-law came from poland over here. they learned to speak english and read and write english. yet we have people coming out of mexico and latin american countries, they don't want to do that. they want to speak spanish to they want to spanish programs on tv, and i don't think that's right. i think what we have to do is required if they want to be a citizen, they ought to learn to speak english house of representatives thanks for the goal. >> guest: first of all let me just say i'm a perfect example of somebody who came to this country. i spoke no english. i came from mexico a different country with a different culture. and i came to this country, and let me die, i learned english. i learned to become part of society. i love football.

i love basketball him and i love this country, and i think like me, millions and millions of us do that. however, we are also proud of our heritage. much like the irish. you know, everybody is irish on st. patrick's day. we have columbus day. i think that this is what make america great. you can take people from all over the world and have everybody contribute their skills, energy and passion to making this country stronger. and i think we should embrace our diversity. because it is what makes us unique in the world. >> host: is the present effectiveeffective ly lobbied for immigration? has used the bully pulpit the way you would expect? >> guest: i think the president has done a lot to put this issue on the table. he can always do more, but i do believe that this is a process that has been dealt by the senators, themselves, and i'm hoping it would also be led by the members of congress in the

house. i think that ultimate that's what's going to yield a good product. >> host: lessons learned when president george w. bush put forth his own immigration bill, which in many respects mayors the debate that we are facing today and the legislation is somewhat similar what comes to the dream act, what are the lessons 10 years ago or eight years ago? >> guest: well, you know, i think a few years ago we didn't have the same level of voice on american people. at the time this primary immigrant rights organizations and unions, and church groups that were advocating. today, we not only have -- with this is committed evangelicals. we have high-tech. and everybody comes together and i think this is a pretty representative example of the american people and saying we all agree. this system needs to be fixed. until we have that under president george bush, i think we would have immigration reform

and one dennis from canton, democrats like to good morning. >> caller: good morning. i was just wondering, this gem said he came in legally. okay? that's the problem. the illegal aliens are what we're talking but. we should not get a path to freedom, either send them home, all of them, fathers, mothers, children, all back to where they came from. even before or after they go to prison for breaking the law coming into the country illegally, or just send them back. and let them start out and come in legally. why should they jump to the head of the line when all the other people are trying to get in the country legally, are going to get pushed back while illegal aliens get another come you know, another free citizenship right. that's what i don't understand.

>> host: thank you, dennis. >> guest: let me just say, nobody will get a free ride out of this. you know, the senate bill that was passed, that's a very rigorous path before people can legalized and become citizens of the u.s. it's going to take a total of 13 years. during that time they need to undergo background checks to make sure that we know who they are and what their intentions are. we are going to make sure that they have a job. want to make sure they don't have a criminal record. they will also pay a fine, and they will pay the full cost of the legalization process. and during the time that they're on the process, they are basically just candidates for citizens. they will not automatically be citizens. so they will go to all of this, and it is an earne early citize. it is not something they will be given. it's a matter of course. the second thing i would just is what we need to keep in mind is

we would deport all 11 million, first of all, it would be she should expensive but it would cost you tens and billions of dollars. but let's assume we wanted to do that. what we would wind up with, agriculture would collapse. jobs would be lost in the packing houses, into supermarkets, the cost of produce would skyrocket. because a huge number, perhaps as much as 75% of the industry is undocumented. they are working. they are can shaping. they are helping create jobs. and if we were to deport them our economy would collapse. but finally, i don't think that's who we are in america. if we have a law that isn't working, we fixed it. and this is what we are saying. this immigration system is broken. let's fix it then what our guest is eliseo medina, secretary-treasurer of the service employees international union. here's this one of our viewers. how do you tell the goes a state

and federal income taxes and social security and medicare taxes? how do they file a legal tax return each year treasury first of all, you know, if they have a job, a large number of them, ma their taxes automatically deducted from your paycheck. and as the medevac every year they can she be billions of dollars to sell sushi cutie, which by the way, they are never going to be able to claim one single penny because they are undocumented. when the file income taxes, using a taxpayer identification number, and so they are, in fact, being that income taxes as well as social security. but when they go and -- they pay transportation taxes but if they own a home, which some of them do because they live in blended families, their spouse may be an american citizen, they pay

property taxes. and so this is a group of people that are actually here, there can shaping, yet because of their status they don't have the same benefits as the rest of us to in the worst part is that there are lot of employers to take advantage of their a document status to exploit them. some of them a under the table. so they get not only did not contribute, because of the system that is set up by the employers but also in a situation where if they get injured, they deny the worker's compensation but if there's no job have no an opponent insurance because of their status. this is a system that is rife with exploitation, and is rife for corruption. and i think that's what we need to fix it. >> we're talking about the immigration issue to our guest is from service employees international union, and mary is joining us from florida. good morning. >> caller: okay. you know, i'm down in florida

now, and i've been down here for three years. i have seen a lot of mexicans coming and i've seen them go from the tomato packing plants and work and work and work. they are workers. they are hard workers, and they have gotten now to where they're going in and they're taking the workers and their taken right out of the factors. needless to say, florida has fallen short on employees because no other domination no white, no -- no blacks, nobody will work for them. and i mean, the mexican, they do work. i've seen them work in these tomato plants. i've seen them work hard. they work hard. they work the long hours. delights on other, i mean, when it turns dark.

they are still working come if they can. but it's getting down to where they can't even get a job because they are deporting them. and like said, you know, the grandmother on the one, she was up there and she was out. illegally. well, somehow came down the line and she got caught. in the meantime, her son, her grandchildren, all of them are still up here, and the poor woman, 86, and they took her back to mexico. >> host: thanks for sharing that story. >> guest: mary, thank you so much for sharing that story. let me tell you, i was a farmworker. i used to pick grapes, oranges, tomatoes for living when i was younger. i know how difficult it is in and i also know that the pay is very low, and so most people, they can find something else, would rather do that. however, we do need those

vegetables and those produce in our stores so that consumers can be able to have the food to buy what they need. the tragedy is, while we need them, we are not creating the conditions that would both protect their human and working rights, but that also allows those employers to take advantage of them who have an unfair competitive advantage over the competition. that's not a good way for us to continue working, and i think as time goes on i think the american people are beginning to understand we need to fix it. >> host: let me ask you about your it spent in the early 1970s working on various forums and your relationship with cesar chavez to this photograph from 1973. when was that taken? >> guest: well, that was taken right around 1973, with a much

younger man at that time. i was fortunate to have been elected to the second board of a farmer's union with cesar chavez. and let me tell you, you know, as a farmworker, i was so sick and tired of the mistreatment of the low wages, of the exploitation, that went cesar chavez and the farmworkers union came along, i joined them because i wanted to have a change. you know, when i came to this country as an immigrant, one thing i knew about america is that if you work hard, if you did the right thing, you could also have a little piece of the american dream. and for me, meeting cesar chavez gave me the confidence and gave me the ability to actually go out and try and work, to try to do better for my family. i'm so grateful for him because i think that he not only did a lot for workers across this country, but for me personally, he changed my life. >> host: for eliseo medina,

mark is joining us from massachusetts, republican line. good morning. >> caller: good morning, how are you? at first, i have to, excuse my voice because i have a cold. second, he and come he didn't answer the question. speaking english in america, he beat around the bush but he didn't answer the question. i will hang up. [inaudible conversations] want to stay on the line and follow-up? >> guest: mark, i hope you feel better, get over your cold. you know, i'm saying that every single person that comes here as an immigrant understands that they needn't learn to speak english so that they can participate in this economy. because english is the language in this country. so i'm bilingual. my kids are bilingual and i tell you what, the way it's going, i'm struggling to have to learn spanish because i think the more that we can communicate with the

rest of the world, the better we are proficient as a country and as a worker to be able to advance ourselves and our capacity as working people. >> host: monty is one in his posting it is time to make spanish a must study in high school and to make english and spanish official languages. mark, did you want to follow-up? ..

because our country did not take care of us. therefore is this is our country. you speak english. [inaudible] i've lived in yuma and las vegas. when they say people are taking our jobs away. they are. i can go to denies, i can go to wendy's. wherever my children used to go and have jobs during the summer. now they can't because there are illegal working there. as simple as that. we need to fix the border. we don't need to create a new bill. kennedy put a bill in. it was never enforced. what makes you think we should enforce it. we should move the existing and enforce the border. my friends are on the border with they said when the fence was put up, immigration -- the immigrants comes across illegals stopped. the flow came down. continue with the border, he said, because it works.

that's all i have to say, because all i hear is everybody keep wanting big bills. they don't enforce the bills that congressman put in -- when they get out of office. they get a pat on the back the lobbiest pay them. nobody enforces the bills. just like the gun laws, they don't get enforced. >> host: thank you. let me use his point to put some numbers on the screen and get reaction. with the president's own record of deportation. this is according to the office of immigration and customs enforcement known as i.c.e. 410,000 illegal immigrants moved during the president's term in office. 225,000 of the immigrants removed had criminal records. 70,000 individuals were caught illegally crossing the border. 98,000 people were moved repeat immigration violaters, and 44,000 illegal imi-- immigrants deported during august of tbowrt, this month

along. >> guest: that's a problem with the law we have today. it doesn't work! it's not working. the fact that you are having -- people have no way to come to this country legally. we often create a legal pathway so the immigrants can come here. then secondly, the people that are being arrested and bethe-- deported a lot had kids born in the country that we have separated from their family. who takes care of the kids when you deport the parent? is that now become the responsibility of the government and the taxpayers? these are people who are working hard. they have no other way of getting here except through the broken immigration system. if we fix it, we wouldn't have those kinds of problems. we wouldn't have an immigration system that is so expensive. we are spending $18 billion a year right now. the senate bill would increase it from $49 billion a year. once again to --

[inaudible] farmworkers and factory workers who want to work. they have no other way of getting here. >> host: let me go back to the two numbers. 12-- 225,000 immigrants since the president has been in office for five and a half years because the criminal records for four and a half years. because the criminal record and 44,000 illegal immigrants this month alone were moved. >> guest: let me say you need to look at the figure. first of all, i'm for deporting and arresting people who are criminals. who have come here and committed felony. i'm all for that. the question is when you say -- for example, if came in undocumented, that is considered a criminal record and a violation; therefore, subject to deportation. the statistics i have seen show that 40 and 50 percent of the people being deported did not

have a vie violations except illegal entry. they might have a misdemeanor. they ought to pay the price for the misdemeanor. generally, those are not what you consider felonies in a serious violation of a law. that's why i think when we get the law, we will have background checks. we'll catch those people who are here and violating the law -- >> host: our next call is mike from louisiana. independent line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> host: good morning, mike. >> caller: yeah. some of the points he makes, i need to get this man to go out and ask women to go out with me the way he seems to go any real problem you have so you can figure them out later. >> host: put that in the form of a question, we'll get a response. >> caller: okay. we'll start with a little bit of time that he's put on. he said that being --

there was no problem with having your own culture. that's all fine. i -- i'm from louisiana i'm supposed to be french-english but i don't wear a beret. the irish people only celebrate one day a year. they don't speak guy -- i have three or four more points. basically his points. >> host: thank you, mike. >> guest: first of all, there's nothing in our law that requires spanish or any other language to be spoken. you know, i watch spanningish--- spanish-language television 10% of the time. 90% of the time i'm watching english-language television or english-language radio. we are part of this country, and if you look at the vast majority of us, vast majority of us,

we're here like generations of immigrants before us. and we're proud of who we are. we are proud to be americans. >> host: is it different for those who might have come during the turn of the 20th century and those irish and eye tal italians and polls and assimilated and learned english. we have a country that is not evenly divided. at love americans -- lot of americans who have spanish as their native tongue. the assimilation is different today than 80 years ago. >> guest: along with 100 years ago. i can tell you in the latino community we are assimilating, we are becoming part of this society. by us doing so we are contributing to the culture of this country. we have salsa. one of the most popular condiments in the country. everybody that comes here contributes a little bit of their own culture, this is what

makes america unique. we're a combination of many nations, of many people that create a unique experience in this world. i think that from my perspective, we should appreciate the diversity of a country because it makes us stronger. >> host: alana is next. michigan, republican line. our guest with the service employees international union. good morning. >> caller: good morning. how are you today? i have a comment. i think that a child who comes here illegally is brought illegal i are to to this country should have a path to citizenship. a adult who come ill leer -- illegally should be able to say here in some sort of status and not be separated from their family. someone who came here illegally as an adult wants to become an american citizens.

i think they should have to go back to where they came from and apply in the proper channel. if they don't want to do here, stay here in a legal status. there's a continuum of being here illegally or being deported. there's a lot in between. that's what i think. >> host: okay. we'll get a response. >> guest: i appreciate your comment. let me tell you that one of the strength of america is that everybody in this country is equal. everybody that has come here to contribute eventually becomes part of us. part of our society, and, you know, the people that came to this country a long, long time ago. they came however they could. they were seeking liberty, they were seeking freedom, they were seeking opportunity. what is being discussed is we want to maintain that opportunity for everybody to integrate, assimilate, and become part of us.

and we create a permanent underclass, i think that changes who we are as a country, who we are as a people. i think it would regard a lot more conversation before we went down that road. >> host: joining us from raleigh, next. good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> host: go ahead, you are on the air, betty. >> caller: i don't know where to start. i don't have anything against the legal ones. the ones illegally i don't think it's right. about ten years ago we had hired a lot of people from mexico, then every quarter the government would send us a paper telling us the people didn't have correct social security numbers. and we would let them go. it wouldn't be two or three days they would be back where working somewhere. you would go downtown and buy all kinds of id for $55. and they laughed. they thought it was funny.

i think if we took all of these illegals and sent them back and take the people off unemployment and let them fill the jobs and make them fill the jobs. at love times they don't want to. work is work. i think it would take care of two problems at one time. >> host: thank you, betty. >> guest: first of all, we keep say we put our finger on the problem. there is a system right now that doesn't work. it doesn't work for business. if somebody -- a business person hires somebody. they need that person to be there. they need them to the job they were hired to do. what happens is when you have undercommitted workers, they do, the government doesn't check. you have to fire them. it you have to find somebody else. the person then goes and finds some other job. what you are doing is turning the work force. creating a huge problem for business but not solving the problem. i think that's the issue. the other thing is that what

happened in alabama when they -- [inaudible] house bill 56 which was intended to make it difficulted for undocumented workers. they had crops rotting. they got people from the unemployment office to work. the only state half a day or sometimes even less. the work is hard, the wages are doing. the employers are used to doing the work with undocumented workers. we need to be able to fix it so everybody can have the same right and responsibility. you will not have a captive work force that can be used for -- [inaudible] >> host: your union released this photograph of you being arrested earlier this summer. part of a series of demonstration aimed at drawing the civil disobedience. what can we expect this month as lawmakers head home? >> we are going to be engaging in democratic tradition. we are going to be communicating

with our members of congress, talking to them about why the system didn't work. why we need to fix it. we have about 360 events that will be held all over the country. every day there's more and more of them happening in congressional districts. there's going to be a big conversation. we are going to be having with the congress. when they come back in september, we need them to bear down and have a serious conversation about this problem, and what we need to do to fix it. >> host: let's go maria in california. good morning. republican line. >> caller: good morning. i'm calling in because i would like for him to answer this question. who pays -- hello? >> host: yes, we can hear you, maria. >> caller: who pays for the people that come in to this country? who pays for them to give birth here? another thing is, knees eld -- these elder people come in too.

they will have kids. they go on the wic program. they don't welfare because they have kids from the united states, but doesn't make no sense that the people are illegal but they keep having kids and say no, we have kids from here. it should be illegal for anybody that is not legal to give birth in this country if they're not a citizens here. >> host: we'll get a response. >> guest: you know, first of all, people have children. people want to be able to take care of families. who pays? i think it's a very difficult question. some of them may go to the emergency room because they have no health insurance. they get unexe sated care. which means that the hospital and eventually those of us who have insurance wind up paying for the bill. there are also at rough them that pay for d ash lot of them

that pay for their bill themselves. they say a few dollars and whatever it takes to be able to bear that cost themselves. and i think that this is another thing that we need to think about. if our current health ?m this country is also means a lot of work. >> host: some wonder if anything will get done this with regard to immigration. if that. s -- if that happens then what? >> guest: i think there will be something done. i'm an optimist. i think that the congress will understand they need something. at the end of the day, this issue is going to have to be addressed. i am convinced it will be. the only discussion is when and it what it looks like. i hope we get it done sooner rather than later. medicaideliseo medina. thank you for being with us. the each night this week

while congress is on break we're showing presentation of q & a. today nobel peace prize winner goad i did williams. she won the prize in 1997 toward her effort toward a worldwide ban on land mines. 8:00 p.m. eastern booktv prime time. what booktv viewers are reading this summer. the bipartisan policy center releases recommendations this fall for protecting the nation's electric grid. the senate held a discussion yesterday with federal

regulators on some of the cyber vulnerabilities in the system. this is an hour ten minutes. >> good morning. great to be here. let me start out by saying this i want to thank the bipartisan policy center for putting this together. as you know, this is the cutting edge issue right now. when it comes to risk and how we deal with going forward, mitigation of those risks has everything to do with our success. and yes, the industry is doing a lot. the industry is already done much to make certain that is true. one of the things i really find a little hummerrous, normally the industry goes last on the panel. the first here. i think -- let's see how is it -- how is it listed here? what did i do? anyway, it has something to do

with, you know, responding. you get to respond first. i think that's a great opportunity for you to share exactly what is going on in the industry. what you know, how you know it. what you think our risks are going forward. now, as we talk about that, you know, we're going move a little bit away from the nation-state stuff. i know, that's the sexy stuff and general hayden did a wonderful job covering that, but we're going move to some of the not quite as sexy information how we calculate risk, when we deal with that, how our standards are set, are the standards right? should we have minimum standards? do the minimum standards get in the way? should we be more risk-based? those type questions we're going get in to here with the panel. one of the things we know, one of the things that the bpc set up early on while i co-chaired this with general hayden and sue tierney to know we don't have all the answers, but to talk

about the fact cybersecurity is in fact a journey and not a destination. we're not going reach an end date like y2k where we say, okay, question it right. now we can go home and rest. it's all over. some very bright people out there -- lots of it, has to do with ownership. some has to do with bad actors. we have to ask ourselves when we look at compliance, does that compliance in of itself with fear and penalties, does it actually drive the bar down perhaps? should we be looking at another way to do this? and as we look that the understanding that you have, doe, department of homeland security, dod, noshing, don't forget the state commission and the municipality involved in this. as we look at that. one of the questions for the industry is are we perhaps more prepared on the transmission side than we are on the

distribution side? and are of the states, maybe, just a little less prepared than the feds are on this because of the amount of attention that has been paid in the past. and some of the jurisdictional issues and cause. when it comes to jurisdiction, should we be looking at criticality of information versus private information? when it comes to the sharing of that data. one of the people that got up and asked a question about sharing of information, should that sharing of information -- do we need to make certain between the government and the private sector that it is flowing both ways? that everyone is getting any and all of the information they need? and i would subject to you that we probably do need to do that. as we do that, let's listen to the industry, let's see what they have to say because we know that electricity is the most critical of infrastructure we have; right? because we know that the gas,

the water, the telecommunication, all of that is dependenten on what we do on electricity. if we fail on electricity we are going to fail miserably. one of the things we can do, doesn't matter if you look at hurricane sandy, doesn't matter if you look at katrina, or the blackout and brownout we have had. when you look at be the l of -- billions of dollars involved in the losdzs -- losses, the cost system, and customers. it's easy to see why we need to go down this road. but -- i'm going to close with this and then i'm going bring the panel on. the one thing we cannot lose site of in this, i can tell you from my experience in this industry, as a stake commissioner, as a federal commissioner, as a practicing lawyer, someone who spent a decade with a fortunate 500, chris' company. i can tell you that cost matters. if we can solve our problems, frop perhaps through software

that might be less expensive than hardware probably we should look that way. we need understand as we go forward we do it correctly, we mitigate the risk. we understand the cost to consumers. there must be a balance between the benefits there; right? we're going do that. having said that, i'm not going read through everyone's bio. you have them in the packet, but those of you who know chris peters. he's vice president of critical infrastructure. ed goetz. doug meyers is chief information officer. and scott saunders. at this time i'm going bring them up one at the time. you can sit at the seat. you probably rather come up here. we'll go through and have a few

questions. if you don't have a few questions out there, i'll have a few and see where it takes us. chris? >> thank you, chris. let me echo what kurt said. it's a pleasure to be here to talk about cybersecurity and the grid, and also the response in our company has taken. some changes we have made over the past three or four years as we have seen a gathering threat of cyber actors out there. and responding to the changes we have made from a regular -- regulatory perspective. three quick areas i want to touch on so everybody has a change to comment this morning. one is threat. the other is strong govern mans, and commit and control. from a threat perspective, i think the change we have made from a paradigm shift we have to treat cyberthreat with the same respect that we govern forces of

nature that -- impact our grid, hurricanes, flood, ice, storms, the impact of our grid, you know, throughout the year. we are organized to deal with the threats, we're strategic about how we respond. we have to put the same comprehensive approach and the same attention to cyberthreat as we do the other threat that impact our system. the cyberthreat is part of the risk profile. we have to fund it, we have to staff it. we have to be prepared to respond as necessary. the other part is strong govern mans. i think what we have learned is that a company cyber message needs to come from the -- top. it needs to be a board level and ceo issue. they have to drive it. as a cyber leadership, -- as a

cyber leader we have to give them the right information they need to make decisions. not to blindly fund technologies or personnel, we stro give them the right information on what the threat is, what the investment is, or what the regulation is so they can make good decisions and keep them informed. i can tell you over the past three years, the awareness level at the ceo and board level, at least at our company has risen dramatically. they read the "the wall street journal," they read "the washington post, and ask hard questions. questions about what we're doing to combat the threats. they ask about regulations. what are we doing get ready for subversion five? how does the white house executive order impact our company? they are asking the right questions. lastly, command and control. i think it is critical from a

utility perspective that we need have firm command and control over our assets, our people, our processees, our investment, and how those all are integrated together and how they impact our cyber and regulatory perspective. we have to make contain an accurate security and compliance. i say that because i think the two are linked together. the security and compliance state. we need to know configuration. the fundamental. the borrow things. we need to know who is coming in and out of our secure sensitive environment. we need to know what traffic is coming to our networking. what traffic is leaving. i can tell you that we have external threat and internal. we have dealt with internal threat inside event that had an

impact on various areas of our company. we have to be able to track those and monitor it. we have to continue to evolve with technologies, the awareness it can all the data points together. we can see them in one complete picture. we can make the decisions in real time that we need to. not wait twelve months to find out we have a threat or knee far use actor inside our networking. with that said, let me turn it over to ed. >> thank you very much, chris. after 9/11, the united states government moved very quickly to close the information sharing gap within the intelligence community. i would assert that the gap that we now have to close is the information sharing between the critical infrastructure of key resource sector, and the government. i would like to talk little bit

about exlon's position. we have a very strong commitment to securing our comprise. we take it very seriously. our responsibility to maintain and protect the privacy of our customers, and to maintain the reliability of the collector system. we prepare for incident through an all-hazard approach. i think as chris lewded to. -- alluded to. it doesn't necessarily matter what the attack factor is, it is the result that we prepare for. in the area of information sharing, we rely on the government, but not solely on the government to address her threats to the electricity sector and exlon specifically.

with the goal of ensuring the reliability of the bulk electricity system, exlon has four cybersecurity legislative priorities. better government and private sector information sharing, increased access to security clearances, liability protection for good faith effort when sharing information with the government, and avoiding additional and due politictive regulations. exlon has specifically supported the bill introduced by chairman rogers and representative riewpters berger. as we believe it provides information sharing to the executive branch, addresses privacy concerns, and reduces a company's liability associated associated with good faith efforts. the operational side of information sharing there is some good work going on in the

industry and government. i would like to cite ice for the good work. i would also like to site nurec to give them recognition. specifically tim roxy for stepping in and working with to come up with safety processes and procedures to share information on a real time basis. none of the concerns initially in the information sharing process was whether the information shared with them would be provided to the enforcement arm. in the march memo from doe assistant secretary hoffmann, we believe that that has been addressed, and exlon is