>> i'm talking about the maintenance of the entire infrastructure system that made this country great in the last century. beauty rating and aging infrastructure impacts our on families, communities, the entire country. as was noted, for example, more than 40% of our urban highways are congested. that means americans waste almost two billions gallons of gas a year and a folks spent more than $7 billion on gas

idling while in traffic. the point is that indirectly we are spending this money and we're not getting anything for it. highway trust fund is essential for maintaining and improving our infrastructure system. poor infrastructure to quality of life and also hurts our economy. we also know that investing in the building and maintaining of our infrastructure create jobs for every american, both directly and indirectly. not just jobs for construction crews and manufactures, or even engineers, but jobs for everyone. at asce we have conducted a series of economic studies and found that iterating surface transfer station infrastructural cost the american economy knowing 900,000 jobs in the year 2020 alone. if we can increase investments for surface transportation, we can reverse this trend and create millions of jobs. since the creation of the highway trust fund in 1956, the highway trust fund has been supported by revenue collected from road users.

the system has served america well in the past allowing states to plan, construct and improve our surface transportation network. now with the trust fund going bankrupt the states alone cannot solve our national transportation infrastructure issues. to prevent bankruptcy of the highway trust fund in 2015, federal surface transportation investment is estimated to have to be cut by 92%. that's an unacceptable path. what would that 92% mean for your state? state transportation projects would be delayed. employees would be furloughed. families would see their infrastructure fall into disrepair. congestion would worsen while business would not be able to operate efficiently, thereby increasing cost to american consumers. we need your leadership to achieve a long-term revenue solution for the highway trust fund which will help grow the economy, create jobs and improve the quality of life for all americans. we need bipartisan, long-term solutions to ensure the highway trust fund can support the

transportation infrastructure improvements america needs. asce wants to thank you, chairman boxer, members of the committee, for your continued commitment to our nation's infrastructure and for the opportunity to visit with you today. we look forward to working with you, the committee, a as a devep sustainable revenue solutions for modernizing our infrastructure. >> i want to thank this entire panel. sometimes with great splits and divides in the panel, because the democrats pick our witnesses, the republicans pick their witnesses, and we are all in contention. this is the very important bipartisan statement of support for making sure that we invigorate the highway trust fund, and we have to do any smartly. so i'm going to start. i have some the questions but i will spend my five minutes. mr. poupore, thank you so much. first of all, this chart, it's not a happy read. and we are moving towards 2 million workers out, and what

i wanted to ask you is, does this not also reflect on the status of a lot of our small businesspeople? obviously these people work for the contractors. so you could comment on not only has there been such a disturbing comprehensive immigration reform the workers, but the businesses who employ them as well. >> you're actually right, trained to. -- madam chairman. the way worked with infrastructure, if we can get the funding out there, and the contractors have an opportunity to bid the projects, with that reflects with 2 million, almost 2 million people out of work is a lot of contractors not having worked. i'm sure the agc and peter's group will confirm that, that it's been a real struggle. i would also like to put a point that i look at these million and a half, 127 million workers that are out of work -- 1.7 mine workers that are out of work, they are small family business.

they support their family. if you don't have a job it's a burden on the rest of us. anything that we can do to kind of get things moving in the right direction, we build america and put america to work. again, appreciate your support. >> ms. kavinoky, could you and mr. ruane please impact -- limited these job losses their enormous. but i don't know how many of these businesses have been impacted, if you could address that. >> yes, madam chairman. the exact number according to the census bureau reports in the last five years, we've lost about 740 businesses in this space. our employment is down by over 50,000, just transportation construction i'm talking about, not construction generically. that alone is a measure, some of it is consolidation and mergers, but a lot of this is folks going out of business because i think what's not understood is while everyone at this table and in

this room i'm sure is very grateful for the leadership of the congress, the administration on the stimulus program, you know, the fact today is that states, because of their own challenges, many of them are spending less than what you're spending prior to await. impact -- prior to 2008. the majority or not. that is not what is understood by the general public so it's not a situation where it is robust. we are still at a 9% rate in construction, down from 20 which is a great improvement, but it's still a very serious problem. >> so it's fair to say we are looking at hundreds of businesses? >> absolutely. >> just as you call it this space. do you have anything to add? >> i would take a step further to the suppliers into the construction industry, and to realize that without a long-term view of where transportation funding is going in this country, it ripples through the pipeline as well.

so i think it's safe to say it we would be happy to work with artba and others to look more closely at this, there is that direct impact on individuals and businesses directly in the construction industry, but the next inning after the economy as well. >> i wanted to talk to mr. lewis for a second. could you elaborate on what would happen to states like rhode island that have prior financing obligations that must be met, how would they fare under a 100% cut in federal transportation funding in the year 2015? that's what we are looking -- we need to be very clear. this is a crisis, and we pushed that crisis down the road with a very good reform bill. i'm so proud of members on both sides, by the way. if i could just say, as a result of our work on the reform side, i say to my breaking member and senator inhofe, and, of course, my democrats, we really don't

have that much work to do in terms of more reforms. we just want to make sure these reforms are working. our work and all the focus on financing and do it in a way that we can all support. but tell us what it would be like if we failed. because, frankly, i don't want to mince words. what would it be like if we failed and there is no federal contributions to? that's a very critical question. i don't think there's a lot of awareness of this out there. in rhode island, and i can talk about rhode island or california because its opposite ends of the spectrum in scale and in geography. in rhode island, because of our past obligations, both in financing, using the rv financing to do big projects over the past decade, long-term multiyear projects that require multi-years of obligations, our existing commitment is out there, meaning that if we can't

rely on a 2015 level funding, we are basically in a position of not being able to obligate any new funds, even next month for fiscal year '14. huge impact with small states like rhode island, louisiana, some of the small states but even in a state like california which has a huge program. à la forney is facing this year without obligations in 15, plan the construction of 250 states sponsor projects costing $2 billion are put at risk. so it's not just the small states that are dependent upon federal funding for a large portion of our program. it's the big states also. >> you're saying it's already being felt? >> it is being felt, and i don't think that it's truly understood exactly -- we've all been talking about this cliff in fy '15. the cliff, we are at the edge now. >> that's why we're having this hearing and i'm grateful for colleagues on both sides for their interest.

send inhofe got permission from you, send white house to go before you. that's very kind of you. >> thank you, madam chair, and thank you again. i guess this is to any or all of you. there's a pretty broad consensus about the gas tax is really not sustainable, middle and long-term. and yet there's still a lot of focus on the gas tax for this next bill. do any of you have a concern that if we do a pretty big heavy lift in this bill and still focus on the gas tax, you know, we are still not getting to a fully sustainable system? >> sure. senator vitter comment appreciate that question. look, i think that there are two things going on.

one is that the current gas tax, the flat gas tax that has existed since 1993, is not sustainable. but i do think there's some hype out there that gas tax in general are not sustainable and that, the whole country is not going to be using gasoline or diesel in the near or long-term future, or medium-term future. that is really just not correct. set at the right rate and adjusted for the right variables, and we know the fleet is going to become more efficient, you've got to adjust the. if you just for the right things but i think the gas tax and the diesel tax have a great ability to continue to serve as a proxy as a good use of the for all. there are of course some vehicles that don't pay any fuel tax at all, battery, electric. chairman has talked about this. and at some point they will have to pay more prevalent in the marketplace. for the vast maturity of the

gasoline tax set at the right rate, adjusted for the right variables will work. >> does anybody else have any reactions on that point? >> i would say, senator vitter, that the gas tax remains as the most viable, efficient, reliable source of funding for the surface transportation program across the board. nonetheless, i think what's not understood is what makes up the problem. the drop in the revenue to the trust fund in recent years, primarily, came from the trucking industry. diesel fuel purchases going down, and the purchases of equipment to the actual drop in gas tax revenues from the average user was about 1%. and that's all coming back. as the revenue from the trucking related fees as well. so our position has always been that needs to be sustained. and many people there, everyone i think there's unanimity about

the idea of indexing that. the real issue is, is we're not doing what needs to be done with our existing infrastructure, let alone the need for new infrastructure. the purchasing power that's been lost, several people mentioned that. i'd like to underscore that again. we've lost a third and over the next five years it's going to get up to some 50% of the purchasing power since 93, the last time this was dealt with. then again, the reason i use the chart of the states, some pundits and cynics may be like to joke about this is a fact free zone in the city. those facts are undeniable. i don't think people gets lost in the shuffle sometimes that the dependence of the state for capital improvements, real-world construction and improvements is heavily reliant, over 50% for all states, and some use of the yellow states, my god, it was

way, way up there. so the removal of any kind of funding source, gas tax or whatever, or a diminishment of that would have a devastating impact across this country. >> let me ask a related question to my first. there are some users now who are not paying through the core mechanism. that's at the margins but that's going to grow over time. do any of y'all have specific ideas about how to address those alternative vehicle user's? >> if i could, senator, i think there are, you know, we are referring to other fuels whether natural gas or electric vehicles. i think there's a way to factor in on a stepped basis how they will contribute on a user fee. i think that's a relatively simple approach. >> describe how that might -- >> well, even if it's, is there a dmv, way of addressing say an

electric vehicle that doesn't purchase any fuel? is there a different rate for a natural gas vehicle? i think those are, they're relatively small contributors to the system ever think maybe the pilot programs will be targeted specifically at those vehicles. skin final question, i'm running out of time. mr. poupore, in your submitted statement, you supported linking revenue from domestic energy production with highway trust fund infrastructure investment. which also support that? i think you supported that for present and past. reaches for the for future or expanded energy production if we could achieve some consensus on some expansion? >> the organizations i represent have been on record supporting that type of revenue. we want to find solutions to fixing the revenue needed for

mass transit and the highway, so the answer is yes. >> thank you. thank you all very much. >> by the gracious of senator whitehouse and then we'll go to senator whitehouse and then will go to senator boozman. >> thank you, madam chairman. and i appreciate senator whitehouse letting me go in front of him. we have a conflict that i so didn't get out of, but i got a message i got to deliver, and i'll need your help in doing this. one of the frustrating things that i went through a year ago when we did our small 27 month we authorization was not the democrats but republicans. i mean, i can say this, others can't say because i've been make as most conservative republican more than anyone else's. and yet we have a lot of born-again conservative republicans using this issue down on the floor to sound like

this is a huge liberal versus conservative issue. and it was an. because clearly as i mentioned gary ridley back there, and he will not his approval, it's hard is it just a much more it costs if we would rely on extensions. we don't get any of the reforms. i was in shock and i want to applaud the chairman. there are a lot of things that senator boxer went alone with that i know she personally disagreed with. but we got the reforms in there, and there are no reforms to operate extension. secondly, the fact you can't plan ahead, and we've been using without being challenged about 30% more that it cost but it costs about 30% more to get extensions versus the reauthorization. that's what the issues right now because the alternative to our passing something that we all appear want to best is it's going to go back to extensions. now, when i listen to lots of the republicans on the floor, i didn't respond to them because i knew we had the votes to pass

but i went right over. i didn't even, i walked right over the door and went to the house side. i got the teams i committee, transportation and infrastructure committee, all the republicans, 36 of them in one room and sat down with them and explained why the conservative position, and thank goodness for the acu, they came out and i know mr. lewis you mentioned this constitution, article 1, section 8 of the constitution said that so we're supposed to be doing. and what the conservative position was as a result of that, i'm sure that had something to do with it, because i talked to him before and after. every single one of the 36 republicans voted for it. what does that tell you? it tells you when you really sit down and talk on something that is not liberal, conservative, democrat or republican. and i say that with one of the park, and that is where you coming. is we are able to go to some of these states where we have

someone who is opposing this, because of spending, transportation, all we have to do is go there and get the people, get the gary ridley's in each one of these states, and talk about how this is the conservative position, i have yet to hear one republican and one of these states say, not change his or her mind and say yes. transportation is important. but this has got to be done at the grassroots. and i know, peter, you are tired of hearing me say this, but that's where you folks come in. we're going to have to be able to go back to the states and let them link on their own people. and i think we can get something passed. we're going to work hard to come up with a robust bill, and this is something that should be rallied around by both conservatives and liberals. so the only question i have is, would anyone of you want to validate what i just said in terms of the extensions versus a

reauthorization bill? does anyone want to make a common? >> i counsel thee agree with it. not knowing -- absolutely i agree with it. we can't plan can we can engineer because we don't know if we're going to have a level of funding in the to intimate the construction. so any dollar spent today, the planning or design of a project that we don't know we can build this a waste of dollars. it's just when we are throwing away. in rhode island, we have an interchange just west of province. critical to the capital city. is close to half a billion dollar project. i can't even begin to invest in the plan. i've no idea where the construction is going to come from. >> i would like to have the rest may be for the record respond to that, and let me thank senator whitehouse and the chairman. >> send him off, what you said is really music to my is, because this is a non-ideological issue. the weekend people, oregon is going to keep up with rest of

the world and i think in the chamber of commerce, expedition they said that canada is moving the goods so much more official at the we are. we afford to get another four to continuing our work along with the ranking member, and surrender -- senator barrasso. now we have been senator whitehouse followed by senator carper, if we don't have a republican president at the ti time. >> thank you, chairman dick i wanted to follow up on the question that senator vitter raised about the gas tax. correct me if i'm wrong, but it strikes me that our vehicles are going to become increasingly more fuel-efficient. so for the same amount of miles that they roll over our highways, the gas tax will generate less and less and less and less revenue. that's the direction of technology. it only makes sense. and i think we can foresee considerable growth in both the electric and the hybrid vehicle

markets for a whole variety of reasons. so given that, i share his worry that we go just back to the gas tax. we're putting ourselves on the glide slope that ends back in a bad place all over again. and i know that mike mentioned the possibilities of finding other ways to generate revenue for use of the highway some different types of vehicles that burn less gas or no gas or whatever. but i'm wondering, you know, we are going to have to be looking at this pretty quickly. is there anything after that is pretty well-developed about how one might go about doing this? are we going to have to do a lot of original research in this committee to sort these questions have? so two questions, and ask her what greg cohen. then i will go to transport after that because he was nodding energetically. is this a real problem about the declining invention gas tax? if so, what are the best sources

to go to to look at alternatives that in pretty well-developed and have the consequences in the economics thought through? mr. cohen? >> thank you for the question. look, we have in the tax code a number of different equivalent to the gasoline tax for the 85, lng, methanol. and basically basically the most any form of fuel can be taxed an equivalent energy rate. the one exception i think at this point, and maybe there's a way to do, is the battery electric vehicle. some states have experimented with it is and i think we should continue to to look at that. >> but even if you -- let's just stick with gas. there's the tax. even if you don't move anything on it, as whatever the fuel is,

as cars become more efficient which their national going to do, the amount of whatever fuel they consume is going to be reduced, and that means the revenues fall. and i don't see our maintenance costs falling in line with that so you end up with the two lines crossing again, and they are at the point of crisis. >> aashto i believe has done a chart that says if we get to 54 miles per gallon, at that point i think we lose about 22% in revenue from the gas tax so it's a valid concern. that's why what i'm suggesting is that we look at all of the variables to index sales so we don't lose purchasing power. so if that involves having -- >> so the use of existing methods but index? >> right. index all of them. >> senator whitehouse, i really don't have a good answer for you, except that no matter how much more fuel-efficient the

cars get they still wear out the road. that's what we've got to look for, a revenue source to maintain and fix and expand. we have some good suggestions out there i believe, but, you know, and i know senator boxer has been supportive of vehicle miles traveled. i believe oregon is using that, so i will turn it over to greg spent mr. diloreto. you will wrap up for us. >> i am from the state of oregon and as you may know, several years ago this day did they vehicle mile traveled research project on whether or not we could generate revenue from vehicle miles traveled as opposed to a gas tax. we showed that actually we could. part of the issue is we convicting the cars we can do that so it doesn't happen overnight. it's not a device that's going to happen overnight spent is that gps type technology? >> it, when you go to the gas

station a result the number of models. it doesn't read where you win. it doesn't know you went to the store 10 times. it just knows how many much of kabul and then it gets added on to the price you pay. so it gets collected. this last legislative session in oregon they did authorize the state to expand. it has an opt out program. if you don't want to do that. it is certainly a techno geek that can be added to everything else that we have and i think there's lots of solutions that we probably shouldn't settle on one but we ought to put together a whole bunch of them. when one of the does have a problem the other one steps up and fills the void. if you're interested in more information, oregon can certainly provide it to you. >> thank you. thank you, chairman. >> senator fischer. >> thank you, chairman boxer. mr. diloreto, you said you were from oregon and you had the dtm. when i said state legislator, i met represented in your

legislature, bruce starr, who worked on the vtm. how many vehicles to you have involved in that? do you know quechee said you're looking to expand. >> i do not. spent do you know what the the program was? >> no, but i can give you all the information. i'm not an expert in it but i can get you everything you need and that. >> been a long it would take to set it up? >> if you were to do it full you're looking at probably 10 years or more because you're going to have to either retrofit existing vehicles or not to wait until the fleet goes through the entire, turn over your entire fleet. >> thank you. as a civil engineer, i know that senator inhofe, i was told, ask this in the planning i believe the mr. lewis. when i stepped out, but for you, sir, as a civil engineer on planning and the uncertainty of planning when you don't know what the funding is, can you tell us a little bit about had

to deal with that when you're looking at double digits percentage increases in construction costs, and how that kind of throws a wrench in things? plus been dealing with red tape of government to move forward on planning. >> it's sort of difficult women don't have a funding source to know how we're going to plan projects in the future. there's no question about that. we did benefit over the last few years because the economy, we are able to dig events of that and did a number of projects that we probably could have been otherwise but those days are over and we're seeing that now in our construction bid starting to come entire. so you don't have a revenue source, you cannot plan long-term and sustained by my colleagues on the table. he will stop making those kinds of plans until he knows that he has the money to do it. otherwise as mentioned usually wasting his money. you his money. he fire engine is becoming designed, that costs money and get to put the project on the shelf doesn't make really any

sense. >> thank you. mr. lewis, did you have anything want to add on that? i guess i'm interested in knowing if you think the current gas tax that we have now, does that provide you with certainty? and icy the map is back up where we look at the big division on how the revenue from a federal gas tax is sent back to states. >> i think this certainty is that with existing level of revenue and the highway trust fund from this certainty is going to go bankrupt a year from now. that's a certainty. we won't have the money to obligate new fund. when it does rebound it will be at a point that is considerably less than two-thirds what we are used to. it is a certainty we will have less to expect -- invest in transportation. my father always said you want to be best at something. rhode island is 102%, i'm not sure that mathworks, of our program is federally dependent spent that might be due to your petition maybe spend it is a challenge, though still states

and all those states. and the level of federal investment is on a percentage basis on average is dropping as more states are stepping up. but the states cannot, we just don't have the opportunity to raise revenues against the size of the state in order to fill that void. we are already, our state as tax is 10 cents either neighbors in massachusetts. a big percentage of our population lives a few miles from massachusetts. >> in nebraska where the variable portion of the gas tax and we're kind of unique in that where it moves, it fluctuates due to budgeting and how we handle that in our legislature. do you know if that's ever been looked at by other states or by the federal government? >> others may have a comment on the. as you know, virginia, for example, and maryland i believe as well reform how they collect their gas tax rather than excise

tax on a percentage basis of sales tax and i think that's the kind of reform that can address perhaps some of these issues we talked about in variability spent did you want to speak to that end, janet? >> i am not able to recall a series discussion at the federal level where we actually tied the rate of taxation on the level of taxation the needs. however that would certainly get us closer to think about how to address those needs rather than attempting to address or take some that needs all the people based on what is the available revenue would be. >> if you went through a prioritization process on needs for each state on the federal project, and then tie a variable to that, do you think that would be something the group might be interested in looking at? >> i think that's a very interesting comment. i certainly can't come on what the chamber policy would be in terms of that. however, i think a clear

understanding of what the federal priorities, national interest level projects are in states, then could help drive where we need to be with revenue. if you look back to when interstate system itself was created, it was actually designed to be on a cost to complete basis. here's what we need to build, here's what it's going to cost and we move forward. i think that is from a planning concept and from a planning concept something that is worthy of further consideration. >> think is a much. thank you, madam chairman. >> so we're going to turn to senator carper followed by senator baucus who just joined us because he will be in that state. senator carper is also on the finance committee. >> we'll be looking for to making these decisions with you, madam chairman. i want to conduct a couple of you mentioned vmt, one of the

user fees we should consider. before i do that though let me ask made a show of hands how many of you think that part, that mrs. should all of the solution here to making sure that our resources meet the needs come how many of you believe that, if not a gasoline tax some kind of user fee relates to motor fuel taxes is part of the solution? would you raised your hand? thank you very much. i've been interested in a while in vmt. when we considered map-21, proposed, suggested that we might create a research program to explore how we might structure of vmt fee. unfortunately, it was included in the senate bill was taken out in conference, but i would like to ask mr. lewis, maybe

mr. diloreto, tell me how you think u.s. dot could help us support sort of a long-term transition to a vmt fee. take a shot at that. >> i think the state would certainly support a very robust study on how that would be done, in terms of transitioning to vehicle miles traveled tax. i think there are some technical issues involved with that. there are social issues involved with that, but these are things that need to have the light of day, and some light put on them. and then really look at a quantified assessment of how and when that could implement it. what about the fleet turnover? what about privacy issues? what about the way it gets collected? the one thing about the gas tax is a very well established means collected. the vmt change that. those are solvable issues but yet to be identified, put some good smart people behind them and then tear them publicly.

>> mr. lewis? >> i think my colleagues have absolutely right. those other issues oregon face and they went to the extreme of the project with the federal highway administers and several years ago. so it is solvable but it would take time. >> one of the pieces of legislation that i worked on quite it was the 2007 legislation with senator feinstein and the number of others. during that discussion we talked a bit about all electric vehicles that we use the roads, highways, bridges and they never use any gasoline and are they really contributing, so it's a fairness the equity question. and i think that needs to be addressed. our hope is that by the time we get to 2025 we will have a lot of new vehicles coming on the road that will be even more fuel-efficient than the ones today. for someone who is driving 25,000 miles a year on roads in

a vehicle that gets 50 miles now and someone is driving the vehicle that gets 20 miles per gallon, same number of miles, there's a sense of fairness and equity issue there. can anybody else gives some thoughts on a vmt the? -- vmt fee? anybody. please, mr. cohen. >> i'll take the opportunity speak if it's open to everyone, but i think the organ example is worth continuing to look at, at best it's a really the best laboratories right now for studying it. in oregon is not the only state. right now they are piloting 5000 in the i think it's worth looking at the. i think there are three different ways to collecting revenue. that they're looking at. and it may be that in time this is an interesting delay. is positive and negatives to the

point of collection is a good point. right now we have about 1100 or more racks the payday gas tax. paying 250 million vehicles paying individually would be an interesting difference in terms of enforcement and administered costs. but on the other hand, it's a more direct user fee. potentially it could abyei the need for toll roads because you're basically collecting from everybody so you don't have to click twice on certain roads. so it's something we might want to continue to study. >> a quick note. i used to chair the national governors association for a while and one of the things we had her best practices, we used to share those ideas and one of the great things about states, 50 of them, 50 laboratories of democracy and with the opportunity to test a lot of ideas and see what works and what works best and try to incorporate that into our own plans going forward. thank you all very, very much. thank you, madam chairman. >> thank you.

chairman baucus. >> i thank you, madam chair. i was just respect as anyone on the panel disagree with the proposition that highways to the station, i would program has to be national program? that is, a lot of states, some states -- some of them get a little upset and say hey, we wouldn't exist. that chart, that map over the next that point but if you look at the states over there that are yellow, 70% of highway funding is federal. it's not say the federal precocious states that there aren't very many people. my state of montana, for example, the use the third, second in the nation a number of highways powers my per capita.

we have every high state capital -- gasoline tax. general eisenhower, as you know, put together the interstate system, recognize right off the top, we need a national system. some states, forget it, let's jump. let our state take care of it. those other states that tend to be wealthier states. a lot more people. so-called donor states. is anybody who disagrees with the proposition that we need a national program and not a sex oral original program if we're going of the highway system that we need? raise your hand if you disagree with that. or disagree with anything i said. spent on certain not going to disagree with that. i want to add a point to the. i had an opportunity to visit many states around the country

and talk with all of my colleagues, and to a person, that issue is an issue we talk about. it matters in florida that wyoming has i ate in good condition. because it's got to get its orange juice to seattle. it matters to boston that we don't have bridges because of the commerce between washington and new york speed what about montana and 90 speaks i was saving the best for less. but i ran out of time. spend that does come up. that point is well understood. >> senator, in our statement there's a chart from the census bureau on the actual shipments between states that shows the dependency of one state to the adjacent state, or states several states away for the flow of goods. it's something they put out every five years and it makes a convincing case of the importance of every state to have a strong interstate system.

>> good. i have no more questions. thank you. >> well, i just want to say welcome. this panel representing a very broad brush of americans thought on this. i was able illegal spectrum and the rest. they have told us that we are just getting to grips with his palm out there, that will there will be no money in the trust fund i'd 20 -- zero. we have to act. and they also make the point that we need to solve the problem for the long-term. and we have an opportunity to do that. and if it's not solve we are really talking about, as mr. poupore pointed out, millions of jobs, and actually literally hundreds and thousands of businesses. so the country is counting on

us. and senator baucus, i know that you have a lot on your shoulders, but we are going to share with you our ideas so that we give you all of them and then you and mr. camp and senator hatch, and against -- who is ranking -- sander levin, will have the benefit of this committee's work, a bush event apart and your staff has been a part, and all the people here are so extreme helpful. they are not just saying it's up to you, we're out of here. each of them have come forward with a way to handle this. we are all very grateful, so thank you, panel one. we thank you very much. go ahead. >> is there a prevailing views and how to address the deficit? is there a prevailing view? is there consensus that we have to do? spin let me try to answer it.

tell me if i've misstated it. they want to see a user fee. they don't want to see, although there was one exception, maybe you can patch a small but with the general fund. that's not the consensus of the crew. the consensus of the group is we need a user fee, we need a long-term solution, and it would be pretty much related to oil and gas. that the, whether collected the way it is now and we increase the gas tax, or as i understand, in a state like virginia which is looking at that tax but it had a different level. it's a whole so, at the refinery level and is a percentage of the cost. >> i appreciate that. does anybody want to add a little texture to chairman boxer's statement? >> yes, senator. i think moving it up the food

chain in terms of some of the states that have looked at this and collection points, go further up instead of the individuals paying this at the refund or of the wholesale level, some states have looked at that very closely. i think there's an efficiency argument there, from a collection standpoint. so, you know, with most of us i think it's all of the above. whatever combination is obviously going to be what can be done, you know, both economically and publicly and everything else. but one of the points we want to underscore, i'm a little redundant here, is let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. that there is a reliable source already there and if you're going to change that, that's fine but keep the buying power of that source from whatever new method the congress might come up with. >> thank you. >> let me address the sustainability shoe, something we also talked about.

look, this last year we ran out of money. when you build it can only be funded for two years, would be nice and would be careful to that, the cost of have to deal with it every few years is to chart a course that includes an index so that we operation can be done procedures at a time so that states can do the plans, big projects can be done, we can achieve greatness again. and not just try to get to the point where we run out in 2020 or 2021. >> i mentioned in my testimony users pay and we have not always been in favor of raising the tax. two things i think of change. one is mapped 21. tremendous reform and i didn't stress this, streamlining provision and thus early came

up, were critical to taxpayers support who are paying more. we're going to look at them because they have been fully implemented, obviously. and sadly, just the dire nature of the situation right now. it's not like the old days where we had a big balance and we could simply draw from the balance. so we represent the users, aaa, truckers, bus companies. and we all agree that you have to pay more. >> your goal is to sustain current levels of construction and repair, or you want a boost? >> i think -- >> [inaudible] spent i think this thing is the absolute core. you know, i think the country does need to talk and debate additional investment. i think we're falling behind as

janet pointed out, other countries that investing more on a percentage basis than we are. but perhaps the enemy of good is better. we need to get to where we need to, at least maintain a level funding. >> senator, i would say we have to do both, we have to do simultaneously. and that may seem like a huge leap for some but this congress is more than capable of doing that. and what you showed in map-21, a bipartisan nature of the vote, you, prove it can be done. just getting the financing is obviously a bigger lift. but the nation is going by 3 million people a year. 2 million new users, new drivers on our nation's roads every year. we are growing. we are a growing country. and to accommodate that growth you have to not only take care of our existing system, you have to enhance our system to a comedy that growth spent well, you're right. spin let me just follow-up the

american society of civil and just gave roads a grade of d. we have about -- so to the question of new, and we need more, if our goal is to go transportation system into good condition, capacity needs, condition needs and will have to spend more as americans on it. >> mr. chairman, i want to give you more time in your opening statement. and i want to make a point here speak you may have read that spent -- you may regret that. >> i don't regret it at all. i just want to say this point. your question is important in sustaining the current level or actually moving for. and wanted to point out because of the work together, all of us, we had a way that was able to dramatically leverage existing fund. so, for example, just by using a billion dollars for tippy which we agreed upon come it's going

to statement economy up to $30 billion there were other proposals that your committee will look at. so one idea is to be the basic funding and then look for ways that we can leverage the federal investment. it's just a thought. without putting so much pressure on the user fee. in any case, you have the floor for five minutes. >> i'm fine. >> okay. then thank you very much, and will call up panel number two. >> madam chair? >> yes? >> while the panels are changing, i just wanted to emphasize the point that mike lewis was making very relevant to send her boxes question, that a lot of places have big projects that are out there that are looming because of the surge of infrastructure that was built 50 years ago and it years ago and did not serve reaching the end of its natural life. and those have never been in any

baseline. we have always been just scraping by. at some point those become things that we have to do. in rhode island, route 10, route six and 95 altogether innocent of our capital city, and if we can and would six connectors that we have a problem that's going to affect the entire eastern seaboard. never got into the budget of the rhode island department of transportation. it was too big to fit in the years much. it was always the hope of someday. we need to make sure we have the scope in this to take big projects that are coming do. >> all right. one moment to take applause. -- take a pause. okay, first of all, thank you to our second panel, very distinguished panel. thank you for waiting around here, and it is my pleasure to

start it off with jack basil -- jack basso. principal at basso and associates, a very important part of my world in advising me. so please go right ahead, sir. >> thank you, madam chairman, for those kind comments, and thank the committee, senator baucus and senator whitehouse, and other members of the committee. i'm going to be brief but i think there are some important points. while others on the panel will discuss in some detail what might be considered to address the funding crisis, and i think it's been discussed heavily, the first down, one of want to do is to discuss first what is the magnitude of the problem, and i think it's been stated, it's 100% reduction in fiscal year 2015, the highway program, and also for that matter the transit programs. i want to toggle bit about the evolution of that problem and

contrast conditional funding, financing tools such as the tv program and have those intimidation are critical to the infrastructure investment. the highway trust fund and in my written testimony i show faces a dramatic shortfall. in fact, the fun has been spinning about $50 billion per year will run average is about 35 billion a year through the good offices of the congress and wwe've been able to put in $54 billion from the general fund that has kept so to speak bankruptcy state off. in fiscal year 2015, if programs receive no new revenue we are literally out of business, and i think the impacts are dramatic and very bad for the country. the reduction capital programs of which the federal funding average is 45% in the states is

devastating for both capital investment and jobs. in fact, for every billion dollars of investment, about 28,000 jobs are supported. so we are talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in fiscal year 2015, on the back of an already dramatic decline in construction employment. so how did we get there? a combination of factors created that situation. let's give a little credit to the great recession because it did impact. for the first time in 50 years, vehicle miles traveled dropped in 2008. they been growing at a rate of two to 3% per year for 50 years. that translate into a dramatic decline in revenue, combined with another factor, heavy truck taxes, the sales taxes on trucks took a nosedive during that same period. the deficit and potential summer

program reductions in 2008. congress responded as i said by making serious of general fund transfers that have been critical and much appreciated by those in the transportation community. however, the real problem lies in the fact that no great adjustment has been made since 1993, 20 years. and i might note that suggestion was made actually in a comprehensive balance budget agreement in 93 as how this got address. something that's important to note. a quick word about financing. early 1993, the federal government began promoting a series of tools to allow financing for programs, revenue stream, bonds, state infrastructure bonds and in particular, want to note your role in the dramatic twentyfold expansion of the tifia program which is hugely important into chile useful. also build america bonds at one

time program was useful and very helpful to our infrastructure investment. but these things alone cannot substitute for direct funding. so the time has come and causes me to conclude as we approach reauthorization programs and address funding, and to continue the successful financing programs such as tifia and so forth is absolutely imperative to the nation's well being, and to the improvements that can be made in our infrastructure investment, and as important to maintain our international competitive position. thank you. >> we turn to kathy ruffalo, welcome. >> thank you, chairman boxer, chairman baucus and senator whitehouse, for the opportunity to address you today regarding

the shortfall and the federal highway trust fund a possible social to the transportation funding crisis. as a former staff never to think i fully understand the challenges that you face regarding reauthorization and the need to fill the current funding gap. i applaud your leadership and that of the of the committees to address the situation. before they can i want to let you know anything express our mind and mine only. jack has done a good job of telling you and the other panel about the trust fund shortfall in what the picture looks like so i will not go over it again. except to reiterate that the crisis is fast approaching and it's important congress to find appropriate vehicles to address it. through taxes or a broader agreement on spending and taxes which recent history shown to be a good option whether other appropriate legislation. i will cover two areas in my oral statement, an overview of the types of funding options congress can consider and i will end with questions that i believe are key policy implication questions for congress as well. if congress agrees we need additional revenue there are

three general ways in which to do so. my written test and include specific examples that no one from raising the rate of taxation assisting the revenue streams into the trust fund. number two, identifying and treating you for revenue sources into the trust fund and number three, diverting current revenues and puzzle increasing the rate from other federal sources into the trust fund. as congress looks into the chip and options of which there are many you may wish to evaluate each option based on how much money could realistically be raised. how much would it cost of health long would it take to put in place in a new way and want administrative legal and enforcement issues we need to be addressed, was indicted urban and rural users of the system, and what's the applicable to other levels of government. if i knew brennan for transportation are easy it would've been done already. each funny option has supporters, opponents and he just policy consideration. so given that, here are my key questions for you today. number one, where the highway trust fund balance nearing zero

in 2015, which for and commit them to most quickly? if congress wants to prevent dramatic cuts to state duty, transit agencies and other transportation partners, a time necessary to collect rent from any option becomes critical. you can't forget new revenue would have to be collected for the 2015 or possibly another general fund transfers have to take place. in other words, the time for them in any options have to be considered. as you export any list of options you may want to categorize them into short-term, medium-term and long-term in order to accurate exactly the time necessary for any new funding scenario to be fully implement. question two, how might a new federal funding option impact our state and local funding partners? several possible funding solutions are currently used by states, local governments and transit agencies to collect revenue. if the federal government were to add a new fee on to these existing non-federal funding sources, the federal government my crowd out the ability of transportation partners to raise revenue from these sources into

future. question three, should we retain the use of the concept? we have some discussion on the previous panel. funny for anyone is what matters most to what was a lack of use of the base is contract authority, of course of the talk to a concert the 30th what makes this program unique and it allows the state and local governments to plan and construct transportation projects with limited funds on a long-term basis. finally, what's the public appetite for multiple funding sources? given how controversial and difficult it is to raise almost any tax or fee, you may wish to consider the implications of choosing multiple sources of revenue and a level of opposition that may entail. some funny option trades very little revenue and others would necessitate new collection and administered and enforcement systems. at the end of the day we're trying to do what's best for the country. there are real men and women behind all of the numbers, thousands of jobs depend upon federal transportation funding,

not just direct jobs but indirect ones as well. whether it's to get to work, to move goods across the country or maintain our quality of life, the federal government as an important partner. i know with your leadership, madam chairman, tinderboxes leadership on the finance committee, and other committees, congress will result insolvency of the highway trust fund and provide the funding necessary to continue valuable federal capitation investment. thank you again for holding this hearing and for for providing me with the opportunity to provide my thoughts with you today. >> our next speaker is jack schenendorf. welcome, sir. >> [inaudible] spent please turn on your mic. thank you. >> you've already heard from a number of witnesses today, so i will be brief. it's a special honor to appear before this committee. for almost 60 years ago it was the leaders of this committee, democrats and republicans,

together with president eisenhower who had the vision, the wisdom and the political will to make a major investment in america's future by creating the interstate system. if there was ever a time to take a similarly daring look at our nation's surface transportation system, it is now. ..

>> and put in place a vision for the next 50 years that will insure prosperity and global preeminence for generations to come. map 21 took an important first step by modernizing our nation's surface transportation policies for the 21st century. my testimony today will focus on what map 21 left undone, insuring an adequate level of investment in our national surface transportation network. i'd like to make three points for your consideration today. point one, fixing the highway trust fund and increasing investment in our national surface transportation network must be a foundational element of any pro-growth economic agenda. according to a recent report by mckenzie global institute, our inadequate infrastructure imposes unnecessary additional costs on the u.s. economy and american taxpayers. they've estimated that

increasing road congestion is costing the nation $85 billion a year. on a per traveler basis, that works out to a little over a thousand dollars per traveler in urban areas and about $400 in suburban and rural areas. at a time of increasing global competition and uncertain economic growth, the united states can't afford to undermine the benefits that a well functioning transportation system provides or allow inaction to impose additional costs on u.s. travelers. u.s. jobs, the u.s. economy and this nation's position as a global economic leader are at stake. point number two, i want to emphasize one of the principles i identified in my written testimony for value -- evaluating appropriate solutions; that is, the need for a truly national investment policy. modernizing the 233,000-mile

national highway system which makes up just 5.7% of the nation's road mileage but carries 55% of the vehicle miles traveled annually will require significant, sustained investment over a considerable period of time. the highway trust fund is uniquely suited for this type of investment. the focus in creating the federal aid highway system and the national highway system in particular was the concept of a country unified by a nationwide infrastructure. and today's highly competitive global economy, this vision is more important than ever. only a strong federal role will help realize this unity, allowing for systemic improvements in both high travel and low travel states -- high traffic and low traffic states. point three, but must not underestimate the magnitude of this problem. according to cbo, it will take the equivalent of a ten-cent gas

tax increase just to close the hole in the highway trust fund. the policy and revenue study commission that i served on as vice chair estimated that we should be spending about 25-40 cents additional on the gas tax in order to start meeting the needs of the nation going forward to rehabilitate the existing system and provide the additional capacity. i have in my written statement identified a number of options for raising these revenues. i subscribe to both what jack and kathy have said about the revenue options. i want to bring your attention particularly to the first page of the chart in attachment a which is a color chart which shows a lot of these options and the way that a we evaluated them. and i also wanted to call your attention to a paper that i've also attached that an associate at covington and myself wrote on

federal user fees, an alternative way to raise funds if you were unable to raids any of these -- raise any of these other taxes. >> [inaudible] mr. foreman in closing, the honorable sean connaughton, you've looked at a way to fund your transportation in virginia, you're the secretary of transportation in virginia. thank you, sir. >> chairman boxer, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and tell you a little bit about what we've done in virginia. first i'll just preface by saying every state's a little different in tear transportation programs and some of the challenge, but one thing that is the same for the states and for the federal government has been about what's happened to the gas tax. in virginia we add not raised the gas tax since 986. the buying power had gone down 54% in that time period. we are seeing the impacts of much more fuel efficient vehicles. in fact, we can actually track

that we have in virginia more cars registered, more vehicle miles being driven, yet our gas tax revenues are actually going down. another thing is the increase in the cost of materials. asphalt binder, which is a basic construction material, maintenance material we use has gone up alone 350% over the last ten years. so revenues are flat, costs are going up, and we just saw, obviously, like everyone else some major problems with our major source of revenue. virginia's what we call a maintenance-first state. by state law, we must use any of the revenues coming into our transportation fund first for maintenance, then for construction. we've had to take just in the last ten years $3.3 billion of construction money, move it over just to do basic maintenance. and so everyone knew that there was a problem in the state, and the legislature has been looking at for almost ten years. one of the challenges is like

something that you're very familiar with. we have a house that had one position, a senate had another. the house is very, very strongly conservative republican and wanted to see more diversion of existing revenues to transportation. the senate initially was, democratic majority, now it's tied. but essentially, the position of the body was they wanted to see additional revenues come in. in other words, we didn't have anything happen for almost ten years. we took office, and this is one of the things we really took on as an administration on how we were going to deal with transportation. first thing is we want to take all the excuses off the table. we've done everything that a anybody has ever talked about regarding transportation funding and reform in our farm. we've done -- in our program. we've done audits, we laid off people, we ended up becoming a model, i think, in the country for public/private partnerships. last year we had the most

projects closed in the country. and, in fact, if we were a country, we would have the second most projects closed in the world. we've ended up doing bonds, we ended up establishing our own infrastructure bank to lend money to our localities to help them move projects forward. we've done all types of i.t. and percent transportation management -- and better traffic management including on the expressway, you can see on 95 with dynamic tolling. we've even proposed a very controversial tolling 95, and then we also looked for ways to maximize some of the revenues coming out of -- well, everything from naming rights to sponsorships to everything else. we did all that over three years, and even with all that we were able to show to our legislature that we were not going to have enough money even to do our federal match by 2017. by taking, essential hi, all these arguments off the table, showing that we were serious

about reform, renewing public trust in our program we came forward with a very, very bold program or legislative proposal in this year, and that was to, essentially, do away with the gas tax, move over to a revenue source that we see growing. in virginia, that's a sales tax. that actually passed our house. the senate took it is and replaced it all with a big increase in the gas tax. the conference committee came together, and we came to a compromise. it was a compromise that ended up having, essentially, we lowered our gas tax and switched over to a sales tax. we split off the diesel and actually increased the diesel tax and made that a sales tax. we ended up increasing the state's sales tax statewide. we ended up putting an alternative fuel vehicle fee on all vehicles whether electric or other alternative fuels. we took general revenues and devoted it to transportation, and so we ended up a little bit

of everything. it was a piece of legislation, i think, that in ways a lot of people were not -- no one was happy with the complete package, but it was a true compromise that ended up getting a majority of democrats and republicans to support it in our legislature. the bottom line is that this will mean about $1.5 billion a year more to our transportation modes in virginia. that's everything from highways to transit, airports to our ports and to passenger rail. we're actually putting in money and dedicating fees to the passenger rail. so this is a piece of legislation that i think that's become a lot talked about throughout the country, and it's something that we're, we think will solve our transportation problems out into the future. >> well, thank you. thank you very much for that. senator baucus. >> thank you, madam chair. i'd like you all four to give

with advice on how we proceed. everyone agrees we've got to fill up this hole. the question is, how. and how quickly, in what way? ms. rough low, you gave several criteria, how it affects dates really to raise revenue and whether to unmoor, you know, the funding from users, what's the effect of that. but a deeper question is how we politically proceed. some suggested that we were more likely to get the funding which i think we all agree in this room, mostly in this room agree it's necessary, maybe through tax reform, through an omnibus bill, through some other vehicle, some larger legislation rather than stand-alone. rather than a straight highway

legislation. the need to fill the gap in the trust fund is clear, but sometimes it's easier to address revenue questions in the context of larger legislation. so could any of you sort of give us advice here on what's the history? my recollection is that increases in the gasoline tax in the past are part of larger bills. it's not just straight highway. so could some of you all -- maybe i'll start a little bit with, you don't have a -- i don't have a lot of time here -- >> you can have -- >> jack, why don't you go ahead, kathy, why don't you go next. >> thank you, mr. chairman. yes, n., i can recollect in 1990 the staff i worked for increased the gas tax and addressed deficit reduction. 1993, president clinton and the congress similarly addressed it,

and they came together and they, frankly, the last time we actually stand-alone raised the fuel tax was 1982. in the reagan era at that point in time. so that's informative or instructive to me as to how one could move this forward. the thing that we face though, i think, and here is the problem: we don't have in front of us two or three years to deal with this. we have a situation where the opportunity presented itself in a comprehensive solution. to my mind, we ought to take that is be take it as quickly as possible. beyond that, we run out of money at the end of fiscal year 2014 to sustain the program. so we're going to have tabakup solution as well -- to have a backup solution as well. i depend to congress the question, what is the best way to take this on politically. and i'm not unmindful of how difficult this is. >> ms. ruffalo?

>> mr. chairman, i agree with what jack said. certainly, recent history shows being able to raise these revenues as part of a larger, comprehensive package of revenue and spending is difficult. and i agree, when it presents itself, i would just say, you know, as an industry -- and i say myself as part of that industry and probably most people sitting behind me and at this table -- we've done a really lousy job explaining to the american people what they pay today at the federal level for transportation. and people think they're paying thousands and thousands of dollars each year in federal fuel taxes to pay for transportation, and it's just not the case. i think the average is $250, maybe $300 a year for an average family of four. so when you look at what you are receiving for that amount of money, you know, i just think we've done -- not done a good job providing that push from the grassroots for this kind of investment.

and i do think as an industry we have to do a better job of providing you with that political cover at home hen you do -- when you do make some of these tough decisions whether it's tax reform or some other vehicle that may present itself. and i think that's the charge you need to give all of us as you move forward, is to give you that grassroots support for this kind of investment. >> mr. schenendorf? >> i wanted to add a couple of points on this. the first is not only is it, i think, politically easier to include it in a larger, more comprehensive bill, but i do think that larger, more comprehensive bill allows you to do some other things which help with, to the extent that you're raising revenues which will need to be done in the transportation sector. you can do other things in the larger bill to help offset that and the impact that that would have on various classes of either business or individuals. so i think there's a real policy advantage to including it in that larger bill, and it will

make it easier to sell to some of your colleagues in the senate. the only caveat i make is i don't i don't think anybody knows when that big bill is going to come. and if it doesn't come before the end of next year, then something's going to have to be done for the trust fund in a stand-alone bill, pause there won't have been -- because there won't having this mini grand bargain or grand bargain or tax reform bill. so part of it's just going to depend on the timing. >> well, that's true. chairman dave camp, senate house ways and means, and i and many others here are working on tax reform and have been for a couple years. it's not been on the radar screen, but a lot of staff work's been done, working if the administration, the treasury, you know, on technical details and how these various provisions work. and it's my goal to have a markup this year on tax reform,

and i know chairman camp has the same goal. it's going to be difficult to pass tax reform this year, but i think it's quite possible we could get tax reform passed in this congress next year. last year was '86, that was an election year. so elections didn't get in the way. in fact, it became quite popular to pass tax reform as a fall, late summer/early fall of '86 for election. and certainly a degree of tax reform does reduce complexity, it does close a a lot of loopholes and also helps with growth and jobs in and of itself -- >> we will leave this taped hearing at this point. you can see the remainder of it in the c-span video library. go to c-span.org. we'll go live now to the atlantic council this morning for a constitution on syria. they've just got started about two minutes ago.

>> a member of the house of lords now as well as a senior counselor at the cohen group. he serves on the international advisory board of the atlantic council, and most importantly he was formerly my boss. to his right, the former foreign minister of russia who is now president of the russian international affairs council. the atlantic council has upside taken a major partnership which we're working with former undersecretary ellen tauscher. we're delighted to have you with us, mr. minister. and to his right, mr. fred hoff, the center on the middle east. ambassador hoff was the special adviser for transition in syria. he brings deep experience in the middle east, known for being the top analyst on syria here in washington as well as a personal friend and colleague here at the council. to set the scene and frame our discussion this morning, i'm going to turn toword hoff to ask him to kick us off and give us a

sense of how he sees the current situation in the wake of an agreement on the chemical weapons yet seemingly intractable situation on the ground. over to you. >> terrific. thanks, david. i'll be very brief, and i'll just try to set the scene in line with two basic categories, the situation on the ground and the prospects for building a diplomatic bridge from the chemical framework agreement to something broader that can actually address the crisis in syria itself. first of all, with respect to the situation on the ground, i think, you know, the most plain spoken thing i could say is that it's absolutely appalling -- notwithstanding the agreement on chemicals. syria continues to hurtle at full speed in the direction of

cataclysmic state failure. the implications of state failure for 23 million syrians and for the neighborhood are actually quite appalling. refugees will continue to flow, the body count will continue to climb, the economy will plum new depths, and syria will become, in essence, a passive host for all kinds of terrorist organizations that will plague the region and the world for years to come if the current course continues. the assad regime is consolidating itself in western syria alongside lebanon's valley, alongside mediterranean sea frontage. it's in possession of several key urban areas in the western part of the country. the kurds seem to be creating a

sort of uneasy autonomous zone in the northeastern part of the country, and much of eastern and central syria is dissolving into chaos as jihadist groups continue to marginalize those groups armed and otherwise that remain true to the original nonsectarian tenets of the syrian revolution. now, after a brief post-august 21st hay yea discuss, the -- hiatus, the war on civilians has resumed in earnest. albeit without the use of chemical weapons. the independent international commission of inquiry on syria recently reported to the u.n. human rights council that the

regime's practice of targeting civilian neighborhoods with artillery, aircraft, rockets and missiles is the biggest single driver of the humanitarian crisis affecting syria and the neighborhood, and it also cited three jihadist units for similar behavior. the commission was quite categorical in describing all of this in the context of war crimes and crimes against humanity. and, of course, 13 jihadist organizations recently declared their opposition to the syrian national coalition and to the sort of mainstream nonsectarian free syrian army. so that pretty much sums up the situation on the ground at least

as i see it. in terms of diplomatic prospects for resolving this cry is sis, i -- this crisis, i, you know, i must say i would like to be optimistic about this, but i hi the prospects -- but i think the prospects are tim -- are dim at best. as we all know, russia and the united states recently worked a framework agreement for the control and the destruction of syria's chemical weapons, and this has been butt rested -- buttressed by a u.n. security could be -- council resolution. as we speak, u.n. inspectors are arrive anything syria and checking into the four seasons hotel where i think they'll probably have no trouble finding, finding accommodations. implementation of this agreement, obviously, is going to be fraught with difficulties. but its aim is good, to remove

chemical weapons from the hands of a regime that over the years has established itself as a serial weapons proliferater and a regime which has used these weapons against its own people. the real diplomatic challenge, however, in my view, will be to build a bridge from this chemical weapons agreement to something broader, something that seeks to resolve the syrian crisis itself. and this will be exceedingly difficult, i think, for several reasons. keep in mind that the purpose of the geneva approach, the mission of a geneva ii conference would be to produce on the basis of mutual consent a transitional governing body that would

exercise full executive power in accordance with human rights standards. that is the essence of geneva, and that is the objective. syria's foreign minister has already announced, however, that his delegation will not, will not discuss the political status of president bashar al assad. the opposition, meanwhile, is fragmented and is being asked to come to geneva for a dialogue while its constituents are being pounded daily by artillery, rockets and bombs. so there is a danger, i think, that the assad regime may see the chemical weapons agreement as a license to continue doing what it does so long as it does

not use chemicals. this means that clearly the united states and russia in particular have some very heavy diplomatic and political lifting to do if geneva is to produce the political transition that is at the heart of the june 30th, 2012, geneva agreement. for the united states and its partners, clearly a central task is to stop the continued marginalization of syrian nationalists in the opposition. the u.s. and its partners, in my view, have to help this opposition form a coherent representative and legitimate delegation to negotiate at geneva, and this will be

extraordinarily difficult. russia, on the other hand, i think has an equally difficult and more difficult task. it really has to persuade the assad regime of two key things. first, gratuitous shelling and pomming of residential -- bombing of residential areas must stop. there is no military aim, purpose or mission entailed in any of this. this is something the assad -- this is something the syrian government could do unilaterally today. it could stop the shelling of residential areas. and by so doing, help to create a foundation whereby a meeting at geneva could actually produce

some creative and potentially productive discussions. if geneva is convened with business as usual going on, i for one just can't see how those kinds of positive discussions could take place. the second thing i think that moscow really needs to, really needs to press on the assad regime is to convince it -- and this is probably mission impossible -- that the subject of geneva is, indeed, political transition. and that the status of president bashar al assad and the rest of the structure in syria will be fair game for discussion and for results reached on the bay is sis of mutual -- basis of mutual consent. now, it's not 100% clear to me that it's in the interests of moscow to do either of those

things, but with i suspect that's one of the things we'll be discussing this morning. >> thank you, fred. thanks for setting that scene. i want to use that to turn to you, lord robertson, to given our conversation. we've heard from ambassador hof a fairly bleak picture, i think you said syria hurtling toward catastrophic state failure. so against this backdrop, you've had to negotiate with difficult actors, you've had to use force to advance diplomacy, you've dealt with implementing agreements, difficult agreements, issues of wmd. let's start, first, with the prospects of following through and succeeding in implementing the chemical weapons agreement. give us your sense of where the territory lays with that first. >> well, let me say, first of all, that i think it's a disgrace on the world community that we've got to a situation that has just been described in these terms. you know, syria is not far away

from central europe. it's a two and a half hour plane ride. it's in the middle of an area which is already a a powder keg. its conflict is an internal civil war that's already spilling into lebanon, turkey, jordan and iraq. and up til now, put well nothing has been -- pretty well nothing has been happening until there was the use of chemical weapons, and all of a sudden we began to realize there was something grave going on here. and when we debated it in the house of parliament was that we seemed to be ring fencing the issue of chemical weapons but saying the rest of it simply goes on, and we'll simply wring our hands about it. so that's the sort of bad side of things, and i think that what it's done almost with one fell swoop is to destroy the concept of the responsibility to

protect, r2p, which was adopted by the general assembly of the united nations in 2005. and sort of gave an indication of what the international community should do if a state imploded and its consequences were spreading around the world. we seem to be saying, well, yeah, we did that. that's a good theory, but it doesn't actually matter in practice. what i think now is happening and what i think has got some good signs in sight is the fact that russia has accepted a degree of responsibility for what is happening. i think up to now and i've argued with russians the russian approach has been primarily negative. i think that the russian government felt that in libya they were duped, they stood back and allowed a resolution for an exclusion zone and it turned

into, effectively, regime change. and thus, there was a hardened view that under no circumstances is president assad going to be dealt with in the same way as colonel gadhafi was. but now with the appearance of chemical weapons and with the predominance now of the jihadis on the opposition side, i think russia now recognizes that it's got a very big and a nasty dog in this fight. and i think that is much to the good. we now have a resolution agreed by the security council. doesn't go as far as to say what will happen if the regime will comply, but in a way it's like resolution 1144 on the eve of kosovo. it leaves that hanging, the use of force may be there. and, actually, we wouldn't have that resolution had there not been the threat of force, if there had not been the possibility of america taking military, military action. but russia is now engaged, and i

think as we found in their toe in my time there -- in nato in my time there, when russia is engaged, russia is an effective partner many trying to -- in trying to find the outcome on the solutions. it's a responsibility that they've taken on, and not all members of the russian government will be entirely comfortable with it. but it's a new dynamic in the situation which i think can go beyond simply the chemical weapons issue. we haven't actually sold much if all we've done is to ring fence chemical weapons but say you can use every other method to scorch the earth and get rid of its opposition, because 100,000 people died up til now without the use of chemical weapons. in fact, i don't think there would probably have been any inclination by the regime to use chemical weapons again, but a standard has been established which i think offers a degree of promise. and i think there's now a

responsibility on the united states and russia in particular that the security council in general to actually deliver more than just the dismantlement of a chemical weapons arsenal which they denied having but actually gips to look at the wide -- begins to look at the wider implications for the middle east which are forfying, as we have just -- terrifying as we have just heard. >> many i want to come back, let me bring in the administrator on this part. lord robertson now says russia has a dog in this fight, some sense of ownership, a responsibility for the outcome, and if the implementation is simply on the chemical weapons agreement, it doesn't solve very much. there need to be responsibility to go further. what's the dynamic from your perspective? how does moscow rook at the situation? do you feel a sense of respond of implementing the chemical

weapons agreement and responsibility for taking this further on a political setting? >> thank you very much for inviting me. >> thank you. >> first of all, i want to say that i totally agree with the analysis of the ambassador of the situation on the grown. maybe two points that we don't have evidence that the syrian government used chemical weapons. let us wait international judgment, and the second that in geneva there is no word about assad personally. but in general, i agree with your analysis, and i think that this is the strange thing what we have in of the cases. we agree in our analysis russia -- [inaudible] but we disagree with how to deal with the problem. and that's why the syrian crisis

is solvable, is regional conflict, but also it's international challenge. a challenge for all of us that we great countries cannot do something real to stop the violence because all of us were against violence. we're against people every day dying there with chemical or without chemical weapons. we see what is happening there, we see what is happening many iraq and many other places. after the cold war, we -- [inaudible] any serious conflict. what does that mean? after cold war we, five permanent members who are responsible about the security, international security, we didn't take any serious measures to create new mechanisms which can help us to resolve such crisis. this is not only the responsibility of assad, of the government of syria or regional organization, but it's our

responsibility. this is the third point. and i think that when we speak about this, that the old system of governance doesn't work today. we have to recognize it. why? because after the cold war, everybody start to do their deal. americans started to create their -- [inaudible] europeans and largely european union thinking that they can do it easily. russia, first of all, trying to survive and then with oil, gas happy to do the -- [inaudible] and nobody seriously working on new mechanisms of how to deal with conflict. and conflicts are coming all the day. we see today syria, tomorrow there may be other many. we have iraq leader, we have a lot of conflicts.

without serious capacity to resolve them. that's why this is one of the lessons which we have to take from this conflict. second, i think that today the main responsibility if we speak about chemical weapon is of the russia and united states. because only our two countries can really resolve the problem. we cannot say this is the problem of united nations as some people say or this is other countries. only our two countries we have capacity to do this job. if we fail, we fail. we cannot blame afterward great britain or france or united nations. we will have to blame our two countries and this is big responsibility, i think, on both countries. the second issue i think that's

very important be, we -- if you see a lot of analysis, people say there's no trust -- hello, jim. half half that we don't have trust russia and the united states, there is no trust. sometimes i feel i'm coming from the cold war, that during the cold war we had more trust than we have today for different reasons. this is not the subject of discussion of today's meeting. but this is true. because we cannot sit and take decisions together on many issues. and during the major agreements in disarmament area-- how to create trust by statement, impossible. trust you create only working together. this way if we succeed to work together with positive results in syria on chemical issue completely, i think that it will

be very step forward in our bilateral relations to create this atmosphere of trust. not because the cites will want to -- the united states want to give gifts to russia, because for different reasons or maybe two common reasons we have to eliminate chemical weapons in syria. if we can do positively this issue, i think that also together we can leave the international process for political settlement. i repeat, our respondent will be higher not because i want to say that other countries cannot regrow, but our russia and united states can for different reasons play the leading role to lead the international community to geneva ii. now you ask me about geneva ii. i think that we have protocol of geneva i signed by everybody, and you have everything there. not everything, but some first

steps to create the representative of opposition. they will have to prepare political, transitional period, changes constitution or something and to prepare the country for the democratic elections in the future. it will be, it may be one year or two, i don't know how many, but it will be under the strong support and supervision of the international community. it means we have the first paper to start to work together and signed by everybody. and this is, i think, the very important challenge. >> so, mr. minister, let me just ask just a quick follow-up on that. you talked about your concern about the system of governance and some of the greater diplomatic issues surrounding this, the bilateral aspect. you said in the past that the kremlin's priority is not necessarily syria itself, but

relationship with america. in essence, syria is the diplomatic playing field for how russia wants to be seen being engaged in international decisions from. that perspective, clearly, this is a victory for moscow and you're in the center of the game. but picking up on your last comments, is there a sense of responsibility, is there a strategy for the way forward in syria beyond the chemical weapons agreement in moscow, and is there a real sense of ownership of respondent for not just im-- of responsibility for not just implementation of the current agreement, but for an enduring political solution? >> look, we cannot write history from today. we know some history what we know from past. we have experienced in balkans good -- bad and good experience. we were against the military operation of nato in yugoslavia, but when we -- everybody, more

different reasons, i repeat, understood after 78 or 75 years of bombing -- days of womaning that it was unnecessary -- bombing that it was unnecessary military exercise, we stat together and started to work on that resolution which stopped the war and started to create new political situation, new dynamics. with our support, the same thing. if we voted in the security council in favor with that resolution, it means we think the same responsibility as other 14 member of the security council for what is happening on the ground. that's why i think that we fully understand that elimination, control and elimination of chemical weapons, it's not the final story. it's only the maybe the first but in parallel not awaiting the elimination of political sentiment. it's necessary to everything in parallel because without stopping military operation on the ground, you cannot success

any realize the -- successfully realize the e prelim nation of the weapons. it's necessary to take control, it's necessary to eliminate some of them on the develop. some of the chemical weapons it will be necessary to take maybe outside from -- it's very difficult. how do you transport, for example, chemical weapons on the ground if there is every day you don't know from where and who can promulgate you with military operations? you need to do it everything, and that's why i think that the bigger responsibility of russian and american diplomats today is not to be happy only with a resolution, but to sit together and to prepare a whole road map including not only chemical weapon, but also political situation, also how to prepare geneva ii, how to stop violence, how to open the door for humanitarian aid, how to help to refugees, millions of refugees outside. it means also this is the whole

picture, and if we have success in this, in this -- i think that it will be very good signal not only for bilateral relations, but also to work together in settlement of other crisis starting with afghanistan, going to the other regional problems. be. ..

>> that if russia joins in these enterprises, to deal with problems in the future, then it can only be for the good. it's a heavy responsibility. i'm comfortable -- >> why join? we can work together. this is, this is the cold war mentality, to join. this is, you have to join me. no, we have to stick together to blend what we did and to implement together. >> let me ask about that because what we're about to see are the potentially the two presidents are going to sit together. we are hearing reports president obama's visit remains, there's a good opportunity within to meet in the margins in indonesia. so if they do so together, given this agenda you just laid out, this is a time when folks are figuring out what's the next step. let me come back to you, ambassador.

what needs to happen if there is bilateral meeting of the minds between our two presidents? >> i think, i think a specific challenges, and your excellency, i agree with you 100% but the specific challenge is for the united states and russia to agree, and i highly detailed way what it is geneva is actually saying. this has been the mission of u.n. special representative brahimi since he took over from kofi annan, to get the united states and russia on the same page as to the meaning of geneva. the words i think, the words i think are very clear. but i think if you ask special representative brahimi even today, he would say no, there is not really 100% agreement on what, frank from an american perspective looks very clear.

a very plain, plainly stated requirement for complete political transition in syria on the basis of mutual agreement, mutual consent. this statement i think is the thing that if the presidents can nail that down, and if they can nail down the idea of what needs to be done inside syria, to build a foundation for successful negotiations. kofi annan, when you have a job, recognized very clearly that unless some substantial concrete things happen on the ground, the prospect for successful negotiation is nil. he had five steps, basically, a six-point plan but the first step was to negotiations themselves. five steps that we need to be

taken where d.c. region government, by virtue of the fact that it is the government would actually have to take the initiative on several things. president assad agreed to do it, and nothing ever happened. so these are the challenges i think. get on the same page as to what it is geneva is supposed to produce. and get to work on creating the conditions to make it all possible. spare let me come back to you, lord robinson, because part of the meeting, how do you go into this? what's the strength you bring into these talks? visits directly at the fact we wouldn't have a resolution if it hadn't been for the threat of the use of force. but what's the dynamic now where we've seen in your country the uk parliament balked at the idea of using force, the prospect that if president obama gone forward to but with congress that also would have been

defeated? to questions about that. how does that impact the leverage, the negotiating dynamic, a dynamic that has been played out in the way forward, particularly president obama looked for to sitting down with president putin perhaps on this, and i want to come back and parse a little bit since we only as an incredible politician in the united kingdom, help us understand more the dynamics inside the parliamentary vote on this. >> i think that might be a yellow my capabilities as a politician. i think the dynamic in the present situation is that folks were threatened, it's still there, it's still on the shelf. and it still -- one of the reasons in my view that russia has become engaged, let's say joining or whatever, but has become engaged, it's because that new sanction was in place. i think it's something russia was not in favor of, to put it mildly, and wanted to avoid.

so it was an incentive. as we've seen in the past. these things are required, the diplomatic game, i think was kofi annan who wants to diplomacy is good enough, but diplomacy by itself with the threat of force is much more effective. so that has to remain there. i'm sure president obama is reluctant to do it. general dempsey on behalf of the military and the united states has cautioned about the consequences of doing it, but it's still there and it's still, it's quite potent to any needs to be in the mind of president assad, and even of the opposition, to what is going on. >> sure. maybe without parking all the politics, the parliamentary vote did spark some debate here. is this a greater sign of real question of the united kingdom's sense of its own political will to have a certain amount of

global ambition, coupled with concerned about its capability to sustain the military clout, to have that ambition? would you read more come is a right or wrong to read into the parliamentary vote what it signals about perhaps the role of the united states' closest allies willing to play in the coming years of? >> i think that the united states congress in many ways reflects it, a lot of the thinking. i don't think they took the reed from what the british parlance and because they rethink it to themselves. it's exhaustion at the moment in international, nevermind international military activity. and i think people look at syria without the expertise that some of us have and ambassador hof has illustrated. and it looks so complicated, so difficult. what do you do about it? what way will military action take place? what will it say to achieve? and i think perhaps with that

ill thought through, parliamentarian's reflecting a willingness by the electorate said not this time. you know, this is one step too far, but what happened in the balkans in the 1990s. you know, nobody did anything after 1990 when they wind up -- when they went up and it came a horrifying night after night, picture after picture, horror stories so close to our capital. until he got to the point where action had to be taken to an agenda that was action taken with russia, ukraine and other countries at that time. and i think there will come a point where, and this may well be the point the chemical weapons point, where people start to rethink of what their obligation and responsibilities are.

[inaudible] and insufficiency of relevant institutions and on modernizing united nations and the rest of it. but actually there is responsibility to protect a concept of drift up and endorse but all of the nation's in the united nations can and we seem to have completely forgotten that that is there. we toxic a policy, we got a method and we seem to have ignored it completely. >> i want to come to her audience to bring some questions. let me ask you one last question and then catch my eye, i'll turn to the audience. for moscow's perspective, how do you see -- you read implications in the way the united states, united kingdom, europe has responded to the syrian crisis, the congressional, the lack of congressional action, the parliamentary and vote, how does russia see the united states and

its allies, do you read something more into how they see their role in the world by what's playing out and have played out in the past week sincerely? >> three points. first point, and i want to be very clear because my opinion, russia is not against the use of force, and not against sanctions. because this is, we have you in chapter. we have a u.n. chapter possibility. the use of force cannot resolve by itself political problems. it can be used if, as part of bigger settlement, sanctions. for example, in the case of iran nuclear program of iran. when we see that it can help to go to political settlement, we, in many cases, took such a decision.

but when it is only to do something without understanding consistency, we cannot support it. yesterday, i spoke with some, remembering the discussion here in united nations before the war in iraq, some weeks or months, i don't remember, to present the report about the elimination of chemical weapons, of nuclear weapons and everything in iraq. it was unnecessary. we don't know what to do now in iraqi. this is our position. that's why what we ask only to have a dialect to seek together to try to understand, and then go ahead and case of syria, in case of other countries. in syria, some people present very -- again, i don't remember

what newspaper reading, something speaking assad is our guy, or russia. not true. it's not true. for many reasons. i was one of the ministers visiting assad when he took a position. for five years i tried to invite him to russia. i failed. i will not tell you the whole story, but this is not true, saying we are simply fine with problem. this is my guy. this is our common responsibility and went to work together. and i repeat, when we have agreement, in speaking about the geneva one protocol, this is compromised. sometimes each side tried to -- for example, there is no word

about independence of kosovo, independent state. some people after many years ago, no, it means that this is independent. it's not true because i was one of the authors of the resolution that we discuss and never mentioned, and not people tried to explain to me what we want to say. that's why we have agreement and web have agreements. >> i want to bring in our audience. i'm going to ask, i will, writer to the gentleman who. if you can identify ourselves. >> [inaudible]. i go speaks better english. maybe. this is not what i -- [inaudible] >> it's all right, igor. i speak bad english. [laughter] spent but nobody blame you. >> i don't know. but i think you both made the

case you both speak beautifully english. please identify so for the august. ask a brief question. i'm going to collect a couple of questions and then we will come back. >> i'm a professor at johns hopkins. fred hof, positive that an end to the bombardment of the civilian area was an important step at this point. assad may not be russia's men but russia is the main supplier of the weapons with which assad is attacking civilian areas. and russia could stop it, if only by cutting off the supply of spare parts and other things. would you be prepared to do that in order to lay a proper basis for geneva ii? >> thanks to let me pick up the question right next to you. >> thank you very much. also with johns hopkins.

damon, you made a very good run at minister ivanov on russia's position. and mr. minister, you stated that you agreed with ambassador hull's -- ambassador hof's situation and i just stated that russia's not even opposed to use of force. and, of course, you know second of state carry made a good-faith effort back in the spring, continuing over the summer with you in assistance to work with russia on the situation in syria. and yet, to no avail. so my question is, where is the difference? you say there is agreement on the assessment, even agreement on use of force. so where is the problem? what about getting to the viewpoint that the a great

concept that ambassador hof is talking about? >> let me pick up a third question here in the front row. >> thank you. i'm heartland with the atlantic council. my question has to do with the consequences of success and failure. if assad is using his chemical weapons as a ploy to gain time, it seems to me that a strike will be inevitable. i think the obama administration will be embarked on a regime change policy. but if this is real and assad is determined to deal with this chemical weapons, it seems to me than assad think going anywhere, even though his term ends in 2014. how then do president obama, david cameron and president '01 deal with already having said red lines and demand that assad must go come live with the proposition that assad must if are going to continue to get rid of the chemical weapons and possibly turn this into a much broader arrangement that leads

to some kind of settlement in the region? >> this is for him, the questi question. >> we will start with you, mr. ambassador. >> first of all, i will try to answer to the first question of the professor. syria received weapons for many years. the syrian government has not received weapons now, to struggle to use it anymore. it received weapons to be prepared for the war with israel. that's why they have a huge quantity of weapons, and that's why what is now sending very small portion, we cannot change picture of the country. second one.

about be civilian regional, the problem is that when you have civil war, you cannot say, you cannot see where we have lines, very clear. because sometimes so-called people armed in opposition, they use civilians to protect them during the war. that's what you cannot say you cannot bomb here and there. we are there, and we said so. many times we proposed it's necessary to proclaim talks by both sides at the same time to you cannot ask for the government because the other side will use that momentum to gain position. that's why you cannot ask or

russia, please ask assad to stop it we have to ask all parts to stop the fire. in the fourth boyd. this is -- fourth boyd. unfortunately, today, the united states cannot give instruction to any country. russia cannot do the same thing. if you think that we're in this -- my teacher can take point and say stop fire and italy it will be done, this is not the case. i personally went, -- [inaudible] asking them to do something. they didn't listen to me. that's why today the situation is more complicated and we cannot simplify. you can call.

nobody listen to you. you have to think about more complicated. we can, i think the main tool that we have as international community to bring together to have the same position, to demonstrate that they cannot afford possible consequences over what they're doing. the second question about assad, and what is necessary to do. the question is what is big but very simple difference before last agreement, that american partners, they bring all the attention one main position, to change the front. without telling us how will you do it, who will be the next guy

to take power, what, and only because we were saying that as speak about broader picture to let us see how to go to the elections or how did you transition, and that's why in geneva, i think that it was reasonable agreement between all of us signed by the united states and by russia that it's necessary to create a transitional board with full power. we represent the government. you know everything. that's why when we reached such agreement, we signed the paper. and now i will tell you, i am,i think that we have to develop many things. after, when we stopped military restoration in the region and started to work on the political areas, with who we signed the

agreement, -- milosevic. we stopped milosevic. and he was unacceptable for our partners, but my question was, it was necessary, i ready to sign with anybody if i want to stop the war, to stop the political settlement. at this moment with milosevic, and after milosevic no longer continues. >> if i may, just a couple of quick comments on the questions. first of all, about the motherboard met of civilian areas -- bombardment of civil war in syria, for us americans when we think about civil war, certain images immediately come to mind. general grant bearing down on richmond and petersburg and generally testily trying to stop them. a war of fire and maneuver between combat units, precious

little of that is taking place in syria now. yes, occasionally there's a city block that will be a salted in a level of someplace. very little -- a level or someplace. very little going on in the way most americans would conceive of the civil war that took place in this country. from 1861-65. what's happening to civilian residential areas is quite different. helicopters deliberately hovering over hospitals, and dropping barrel bombs down on them. this is an entirely gratuitous. there is no pretense of military targeting in all of this. yes, there are rebel elements in some of these neighborhoods, but there is no attempt whatsoever to seek out military targets.

absolutely none. one thing russia could do under these circumstances, it's easy to decry the problem, you know, what can be done about it. very quietly go to assad, discussed the problem with him and say, look, until we hear from brahimi, they are cooperating with this initiative 100%, you get nothing from us. whether it's under contract or not. you get no political defense in the united nations. when i going to make a press conference here. we are not going to share this with the americans or anybody else. but here is how things work. -- [inaudible] that you're playing ball, then things can return to normal. on a chemical thing, is assad using this to gain time?

of course, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that he could comply with the provisions. if i were advising him i would advise him to comply 100%, take the air out of the ball, lincoln the clock. lengthens the clock. it's not just a matter of united states thank assad should step aside. the difficulty is it's, if bashar al-assad becomes universally recognized as the party to a contract that now has to be implemented over a long period of time, this is the worst possible news for syria, and for the neighborhood surrounding syria. because the humanitarian crisis will deepen, the impact on neighbors will deepen. syria will implode economically and otherwise, because whether

you like it or not, as long as this guy is on the scene, syria is on a one way trip to being north korea. >> lord robertson, how do you deal with that point there building on the question of the consequences of either success or failure, the potential of assad's continuing role in this, injured to come, the parallel that the minister drew with milosevic? >> the deal, the agreement was the same with milosevic. it stop the war in bosnia but encourage milosevic to do what he did, and he went on to do that. so pragmatic -- [inaudible] spend well, yes. but that was in -- had he remained in power, goodness knows what he would've moved in next. but anyway, i think you to be pragmatic but you've got to be principled, too.

you've got to face up to the realities. as i put forward here as well. that the pragmatism has got to involve looking forward. you know, what sort of process is a that we're going to get. i think were going to hear a lot less of red lines in the future than we have up to now. that's my guess. but we are now into the tangled world of diplomacy where i go or even off has only been a great -- igor ivanov, what's is acceptable and what's not acceptablacceptabl e are going to go into the maelstrom of that, that's a good thing. that's absolutely come its absolute right. and russia is now very much a part, very much engage. you know, igor ivanov and i were both -- the setting up of the,

at the nato-russia council. and at a press conference that was held afterwards, president putin, myself, and the prime minister, well, let's say vladimir putin and i tried desperately to get the attention away from the prime minister at the time. [laughter] but remember, it was a very historic moment. president putin said, answer the question, and showing frustration, he said, you know, this is a change in russian policy. russian foreign policy. he said for 50 years russian foreign policy has been opposed to everything. we were against this, we were against of that. where has it gotten us? answer, absolute nowhere. that was sort of a breaking point of the ambassador of russia to nato sitting in front of me here as well, and even members me going over the

transcript of that day as well. >> it was true. >> absolutely. now we're into that nuking. i think the pessimistic that ambassador hof has rightly dated my will be changing as we get engaged in the. but i would just say, igor, you slipped away from this question about arming the assad regime. how is russia after supplied the air defense system? >> no. conventional weapons, yes. >> gentlemen, let me bring in more questions from the audience and a last 15 minutes. start with these two gentlemen in the back. brief question, please com, andf you want to direct it to anyone. >> i'm a syrian living in d.c. ambassador hof, i the couple of questions. i would like to represent your a syrian can have the syrians look at united states, russia and the nato.

i cannot say i represent anyone. first of all, thank you for all the articles about the revolution to the point is that if think most of the syrians, they see that the security council's -- [inaudible] -- is as bad as assad's impact on city. because they think -- very small strategy, issue, can go to and they forget the 1000 people being killed. we believe as a syrian that here's a question for mr. hof, right now they disagree on such resolution where it can ask more, demand more like cease-fire. from the russian part because the russians, they see assad on the resolution. and four igor ivanov, since the revolution -- revolutions are the russian support 100%. they said all parties should constrain themselves.

u.s. make equal between the civilian demonstration on database and killing of assad on database from day one. is it true that russians have a contract -- [inaudible] but in the last two years the russians they only sent spare parts? it's only spare parts for helicopters and in 18, whatever it's called. so according to all russia reports you are sending spare parts from your helping assad to kill. and fortunately the american administration, they are busy in its own domestic reasons or domestic issue so they're not too much worried about the russian administration. administration. >> just one minute. >> the russians are just busy to humiliate the american administration and say. i don't know how this worked together and work continued, thank you.

>> gentlemen, please. >> hello. i'm not collide from the embassy of denmark. i would like to hear your assessment of the influx of foreign fighters and other groups in syria. obviously, this is an area of shared interest but how do you deal with it? thanks. >> i'm going to pick up two more questions. jail and another one here. >> thank you. jill dougherty, cnn. i just wanted to be very specific about something that minister ivanov talked about in terms of the geneva one agreement. you said that there's nothing specifically on assad. so is that the sticking point that fred hof is talking about? is there something deeper? i mean, you could certainly eliminate the name of assad and come up with another. what exactly do you think is the

sticking point, which seems to be ther the even though everyons they agree on geneva one? >> final question right here. >> matterhorn, global strategies. just two quick questions. will robinson, do you see a role -- lord robertson, d.c. a role for nader indiscriminate will wider indications in the region? and minister ivanov, you start your marks saying let me be clear that the syrian government itself use the chemical weapons. i remind myself of the september 11 op-ed by president putin who said the same thing but and i think if you took out a vladimir putin's name in the op-ed it could been assigned by bashar al-assad. so how do you square his op-ed by what's going on now after everything regarding where we are today? and i realized that we have to move forward, but i mean, how do you, unicode look at all these

issues given what's going on in the region. and you consider russia enabling the bad behavior and the violations of international law? >> we have for diverse sets of questions. in the last 10 minutes, i'm going to come back to you. let's start with ambassador hof and work your way down any sort of fire, joined to make as rapid as well. ambassador hof. >> i'll be very, very brief. i agree entirely that the syrian opposition sees the chemical weapons framework agreement and resolution as bad. that's an objective fact, it's well published. i don't see it that way. in and of itself, it can be a very useful tool. and assad regime that is without chemical weapons is something that is much less of a threat to its own people and to the

neighbors. the real question though is, isn't going to stand alone, okay, as a separate process while syria continues to dissolve down the drain, while everything other than chemical weapons, including the kitchen sink, is thrown out populated areas in an entirely gratuitous, nonmilitary campaign of terror? is the real question. if it stands on its own, and i've written it just like, it's like having a successful operation removing an appendix from, you know, from a patient that's got advanced cancer. and the only other one i will comment on is the question of geneva and what's the actual difference. the name bashar al-assad does

not appear ended june 30, 2012, final communiqué of the action group on sure you. a diplomatic way was found to try to convey the idea that the objective of geneva is full political transition to something that looks democratic, pluralistic but i think those are the words from the security council resolution. but a full political transition. i don't know, i don't pretend to know where things stand right now in discussions between john kerry and his russian counterpart on the meaning of geneva. i know in the past there was a russian physician to the effect -- position to the effect that some of president assad and perhaps the security services should be exempted in some way from the transition process, and

that perhaps the emphasis should be on a government of national unity, meaning a prime minister, a council of ministers and so forth. so even though the name assad has not been mentioned, it's sort of a ghost in the room. and i think the question of his status in the future has been the focus of some disagreement between the united states and russia as different meaning of the provisions in the agreement. >> thank you, fred. >> first of all, about your bark that -- your remark, some people in this country say that president obama. other people say president putin. we want, as russia, not to -- [inaudible] we want to find a solution for this problem. please, don't speculate about it.

second point, for me it's clear, and if your expert you can understand, you cannot implement that resolution without political and many other measures of political settlement. you cannot do it physically. that's what if russia and united states really engage to eliminate, to take under control in different places of the country, and then to start very difficult process of elimination, it means that in parallel, not waiting but in parallel you need to take many other measures, including political settlement. without it you cannot do. that's why it's not true that somebody wanted only to lead the action with chemical weapons are not too. it was necessary to stop. it was good point. not only of syria because coincide, we want to eliminate.

we are new doing in our country eliminating chemical weapons but we want to eliminate in the world chemical weapons. coincide, totally, russia and deny states. that's why this is only to stop and this is very important. know about the weapons the assad. the weapons -- [inaudible] minister lavrov said many times, we don't violate any international agreements or any international rules doing what we're doing. because you have on the other side, countries without any specification sending weapons to the armed group of the opposition. that's why it has to be comprehensive. it cannot be unilateral.

now about g1, i agree totally with ambassador. the main thing is that we, unique, we decided to open transitional period of. and during the transitional period, to create some body with presentation of the government and all the other institutions. that's why it's necessary. we don't know who would be from the government, but it's clear it will not be assad. and that transitional board will have full power and the country. this is very important. i don't know six months, one year, but that transitional board will have full power in the country until elections or something. and this is, this is the main thing. this is not the problem. this is in general.

we can open if we do it. now, about nader, this is for ambassador hof. i suggest not to you nato. [laughter] >> your final point, not answering, i'm sure, and i think after that we have meeting with atlantic council delegation, i think this is really from my point of view, very difficult the very to challenge. to have real dialogue about international security. this is not because one wants to engage the other. this is -- not images of russia. now it is in interest to have dialect, to work on the issue, to give good example and to create trust doing together,

international interest of the two countries. >> i agree very strongly with that, and i think come back to the question that damon's colic at the back said. there are elements alive in see today who pose a threat to all of us. and if the jihadists and the al qaeda elements get stronger and stronger, we've got nobody to blame but ourselves. we are wringing our hands now, but this conflict has gone on for two and a half years, 200,000 people dead, huge displacement of population, overwhelming of jordan and lebanon by refugees. so you know we sort of say this is terrible. the jihadists seem to be getting an upperhand. so blaming in the past, useless. we need to look into the future but there's common ground. they've got to be eliminated. if you look back at the history of lost income and i think

people should really, we do great lessons learned exercises out of the conflict. we put them on a shelf and we forget them. the bosnian situation has got a lot of power of what's going on today. the jihadists were moving into boston, exploiting the muslim population in bosnia. and is only the peace agreement that stopped it and marginalized them and eventually got him kicked out of. so the urgency about a situation where you get a process has not just got to do with stopping the killing but it's stopping the momentum that these guys have been able to achieve up to now. should nato be involved? well actually, nato is involved. turkey which has been affected by the searing conflict as an en vogue article iv of the north atlantic treaty. not many people know about article iv.

i must i did know about article for until i get the secretary-general. [laughter] but article for by the wise people who lay down the charter at the beginning allows a member nation to come to the cows come to the north atlantic council tuesday they believe they're going to be threatened. it's a prelude to article v. it was invoked by turkey before the invasion of iraq because they believed that saddam might give a diversion attack on the but and it's been invoked now because the turks believe that they are affected by what's happening in syria. air defense weapons have been put in under article iv to give protections. so that is an involved, and i know in the council, there is a necessity for safe areas, et cetera, et cetera. again, boston comes in and we should learn from what happened,

the bad things and the good things that happen in bosnia before we sort of assume that the wheel has got to be reinvented. but the thing about nato is, nato is not just made up of the 20 countries who are full members. it's also the peace that goes beyond the boundaries. the nato you came -- nato ukraine commission. all of those countries that are affected. is the ideal venue to actually having discussion across a wider range, and i'm not sure whether it's being used properly at the moment to do that. and it would be a useful experience if it actually was to get onto the agenda of all of these different times, because in that way you can start to look at how to secure the situation as igor ivanov states rather than focus on individual little bits and pieces that are going on. >> thank you so much.

this has just been a terrific conversation. we started on a fairly bleak assessment this morning, and we're in the art a little bit of an optimistic note. obviously, this doesn't include a complex situation. it's why we have this conversation today, part of a program of our rafik hariri center and the middle east is meant to help provide a sense of clarity on these difficult issues in terms of understanding the reality that the choices that leaders face, and really what's at stake but i want to thank our panelists for just a trigger conversation. want to take a word just to thank those on our team that made this possible. matt hall, stephanie, as well as the team of interns from the rafik hariri center. they get very much but most of all to ambassador hof, lord robertson, minister ivanov, @robertson, minister ivanov,hem. please join me in thanking them. [applause]

>> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] spent a look at u.s. capitol where the government shutdown is on its third day today. yesterday afternoon congressional leaders met with president obama at the white house, but there was no progress reported. also yesterday the house continued its strategy of passing targeted short-term funding bills for something as the national institutes of health and the national park system. members will continue today with bills regarding funding for the national guard and veterans programs. senate majority leader harry reid has said these measures are nonstarters in the senate. later this morning kentucky republican senator rand paul

will be hosting a coffee with his colleagues to try to find common ground. we will have a came at that meeting and we will bring you footage later in our program schedule. the house is in at 10 a.m. eastern today live on c-span. you can see the senate right here beginning at 10:30 a.m. today on c-span2. we have a facebook poll up about the current situation. the question, who do you think is responsible for the current fiscal stalemate? over 15,000 have responded so far and you can add your voice to the poll and leave your thoughts and comments at facebook.com/cspan. >> this is the striking john f. kennedy library. this, of course, is the controversial building and a controversial decision. john f. kennedy had made a decision to locate his presidential library at harvard how and when he was alive poverty didn't dispute that ended very much wanted a documentary archives they are related to the kennedy presidency. a number of presidents have

graduate from harvard over the years. they didn't want amusing, particularly in harvard square because it attracts thousands, tens of thousands of schoolchildren aged if they didn't want the congestion and traffic. so that when universities got involved in deciding whether not to accept the presidential library, the big question is what do we do with the museum? >> overseen the legacies of 13 presidents from herbert hoover to george w. bush, the presidential library sunday at 7:30 p.m. eastern part of american history tv this weekend on c-span3. >> you are watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs. weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate big on weeknights watch key public policy events. and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our website, and you can join in on the conversation on social media sites. >> and now former vice president

al gore on climate change in the political standoff between parties. he spoke last right at the brookings institution before the government shutdown. we will show you as much of this as we can until the senate is back at 10:30 a.m. eastern. >> good morning, everyone, and welcome to brookings. and welcome to our c-span audience and to our webcast audience. please note that the hashtag for this event is cepm. my name is elaine kamarck. i'm a senior fellow at brookings, and i'm pleased to be announcing the opening of brookings newscenter, the center for effective public management. so, allow me for a moment to talk about our visions for the center. i don't need to tell you that

things are not going so well in washington these days you're indeed, we opened the center on the eve of the government shutdown. how fitting. in fact, if you're out and about on the streets of washington today, you may notice that people seem a little unusually depressed or anxious. in fact, if i owned a bar i would call in extra help for tonight. and that's because yesterday, agencies issued the shutdown instruction to the staff, and some 1 million people were told that they were nonessential employees. as you can imagine, that's quite a blow to one's ego. all in all, a pretty tough message to get. so let me tell you briefly wantt i hope we can accomplish at this center. when washington works, it works because politicians and their

appointees bring new energy and new ideas to down. when it works, it works because they confront the experienced members of the permanent government, the civil servants, who know a thing or two about how to make the place work. the result is a dynamic tension between change and stability. this has been the hallmark of our government and, in fact, it is the hallmark of all successful modern democracies. but these are troubled times for america's leaders, lyrical as well as civil servants. when washington doesn't work, the politicians can't manage to put the country above their interests and their ideologies. as everything gets politicized, the civil servants move into a defensive crouch, afraid to stick their heads up lest they get shot off. as we have seen, progress stops on all fronts from big picture items like the need for immigration reform or the need

to cope with climate change to the need for technical amendments to the affordable care act, something that, in more normal times, would have been passed without notice but that in these polarized times can't even be introduced to the congress. at this center we will deal with both politics and government. making it a little different from undertakings in the past with similar names to we will focus on political reforms that can help create more effective leadership by getting to the roots of our political dysfunction. we will look at the future of federalism in the united states and ask maybe if the states shouldn't come back to their rightful place as laboratories of democracy. we will try to understand what happens to regulation in a government in an era where the change is so rapid and technological and scientific change is so rapid.

we will try to foster a spirit of innovation in government to our new blog, fixgov, and we will look at the current system of capitalism and ask if perhaps it could be structured in a more sustainable way through our corporate purpose project. all of this is geared toward making both parts of the government, the political and the career, more able to engage in what my friend and former colleague leon fuerth, has called anticipatory governance. in today's government about the only thing we can anticipate is gridlock. certainly the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world can do better. i'd like now to introduce an old friend, david rubenstein. david is cofounder and co-chief executive officer the carlyle group. prior to forming the firm in 1987, david practice law in washington, d.c. i got to know him when from 1977

to 1981, during the carter administration, david was deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. before that he served as chief counsel to the u.s. senate judiciary's committee's subcommittee on constitutional amendments, and before that he practiced law in new your city. david is a magna cum laude graduate of duke university, following duke, he attended the university of chicago law school. among his many philanthropic endeavors, david is the chairman of the john f. kennedy center for the performing arts, a region of the smithsonian institution, president of the economic club of washington, and on the board of trustees of duke university, and vice chair here at the brookings institution, and also vice chair of the council on foreign relations. in fact, every time i turn around, i find another example of david's generosity.

one of our buildings at the kennedy school at harvard, where i came from, is the david rubenstein building. and last week we had a birthday party for my grandson, vincent, at the zoo. and there it turns out that the panda to go didn't exist courtesy of -- you got it -- david rubenstein. david, if i were one of your children, i'd be seriously concerned about this tendency of yours to give money away. back in the carter administration, david was famous for long hours in the white house and for eating dinner from the vending machines in the basement of the white house. i had the dubious distinction of writing the 1980 democratic party platform, and so some years ago i spent long hours at the white house with david and alice, who was later to become his wife. david, had i known then how much money you would have to give away, i would've cooked homemade lasagna and brought it to the

white house. anyways, before david comes up here to introduce former vice president gore, i'd like to remind the audience the hashtag for the event is there for both our virtual audience and her the audience in the room, and also to our notecards on each seat for your question for vice president gore. as he speaking, our staff members will be coming around to collect them so we can take some q&a at the end of the vice president's presentation. thank you very much for being with us. david. [applause] >> thank you very much, elaine. it was nearly 100 years ago that robert brookings decided that government could be managed somewhat more effectively than it was being managed, and he put up some money, modest in those days, by today's standards certainly modest, to put together some institutes that

would study how government could be made more effective. ultimately, these came together in 1960 as the brookings institution. it's altogether fitting that as we get close to celebrating the 100th anniversary of brookings we are in effect returning to our roots a bit like reading this center, because this center will help us study even more intensely than we do today how we can make our government work much better. it's of course altogether fitting that the person is going to kick off this center with his speech today is al gore who, among other things when he was vice president of the united states, our 45th vice president, he let the reinventing of government project. and that ever really did many things to make our government more effective and more efficient, and i wish today that the government was as effective and efficient as would like it to be. but many other things that al gore put into place and recommended to president clinton did come to be and are now some of things that we are fortunate to have with us. it was years ago that another

group of people began to think about reinventing government. it was last week, 226 years ago, that a number of individuals, 55 of them, came together in philadelphia and said let's reinvent the government we have. and they took the articles of confederation government and toward up and came up with this incredible document called the u.s. constitution. now, it wasn't a perfect document and it didn't create a perfect government. that it did do more than any other government in history to come together in a democratic form and a government which has lasted for some time -- some 200 years. to think about that. over 200 years ago people came together. they spent about three months work in our government should be structured and they came up with a system that was imperfect and as we are reminded, we see the imperfections of our system every day now on capitol hill. however, with the exception of some amendments we've had to make the system better we have an effect put together a government that is as effective as any in the world history.

and it's a government that i think as its imperfection but it can be improved upon, and it should be improved upon. had he been around about 260 years ago or so and been of age, i think i guessed today would have been a founding father. [laughter] because he no doubt would have been invited to that constitution convention but he had intelligence. he had the drive. he had a commitment to make the world a better place. and have the ability to work effectively with other people. it is to our great regret that he was not a founding father. one of the reason for that is that no doubt he would've been prescient enough, had he been involved in the states, to recommend that is part of the government we might have direct election of the president. [laughter] [applause]

>> but he wasn't around then, and so have a different system, and perhaps we can study whether direct election of the president would make the government more effective. you never know. i do think though that our country owes al gore to great favors, because while he was born much later than he might of been born to be a founding father, there are two things that are really want to cite right that's why think our country is in his debt. first, when the famous election happened in 2000, he was obviously a very complicated, difficult situation for our country. and it's not clear that other individuals or other governments would have acted the same way. i know had i been in a situation that al gore faced himself, i wouldn't have handled myself in as well as he did. he recognized it though that the most important thing in this country is the rule of law, and while the system and other been perfect and made a government that was invented by the founding fathers didn't work as well as we would all like, it was important that everybody recognize the rule of law

prevails. and so al gore did what i think every great citizen should do, recognize that the rule of law is more important than anybody's individual ambitions and anybody's individual plants. so he basically said, i think the system should work, it isn't working as well as i think it should that we should let the system work. and he in effect left town, let his successor do what he wants to do, and he basically did not disrupt that government. and i think that's a very important thing. while we only if -- while we all may of had disagree with of what happened in that administration, there's no doubt that allowing the rule of law to dale is an important thing. and i think it's a lesson for people all of the world. i think that's a very important thing al gore did four country. they may let washington to return to his native tennessee, what did he do? he reinvented himself. what he decided to do was to pursue what i considere considee highest calling of mankind, private equity. [laughter]

much more successfully, much more successfully than many people left government, he basically returned to the private sector and showed that after government service you can be very useful things in the private sector, and he's done an incredible job of building a number of companies which have been quite successful. but he did one other thing that i think puts us all in his debt, and it's this. and that maybe something more significant than anything any of us ever done or anybody in the city has ever done or ever will be. he basically made for the people that we have a problem with the way our globe is working. there is a problem with climate. and against great odds and against the region at times, he said no, we had to recognize that the world is warming up and has to be something done about it. and while we might not be able in our lifetime to really have dramatic effects on climate change, we have to begin now. and although he was criticized by many people and is still criticized by many people for what he is done, the truth is

the world has recognized in the form of a nobel prize at what he did was a great thing for humanity. and so when history is written, people will stick who changed the world the most in the lifetime of which we all live? there will be many people who would be given that potential honor, but i think nobody is likely receive that honor more than al gore, because al gore really stepped up and said the world has to do something about this global problem. it's not just a national problem, it's a global problem. and every government has to reinvent itself to make sure that it's still something to conquer and challenge the problems of global climate change. and, therefore, i hope very much people recognize that when they hear al gore today they are seeing a man who not only did something great for our country, which is to recognize the rule of law, but he's done something great for the world which is a -- which is just about to attack this most important problem, global climate change. and though for we all are very

honored that he's come to did that he's come today to kick off the center and we are all honored he is done the things you're done in his life and his reinvented himself and helped reinvent our government. and i hope you can help to reinvent brookings. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, david. thank you very much. i really appreciate that. thank you very much. thank you very much. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. i'm very -- thank you very much. i appreciate the warm welcome. and, david, thank you for that over the top introduction. i cannot remember who deserves credit for purchasing this old line -- i'm sure you have all heard it -- but my father would have enjoyed that and my mother would have believed it. [laughter] and i really appreciate it. and your comments about the

election, you know, my attitude is you win some, you lose them, and then there's that little-known third category. [laughter] and as for how to react to it, i did actually study the work of the founding fathers in some detail during those days, and i confirmed my worry that actually in our system there is no intermediate step between a final supreme court decision and violent revolution, and given those options -- [laughter] i basically did only what the american people are credited for doing famously by winston churchill. they generally do the right thing after first exhausting

every available alternative. and, of course, we're here today at a moment when we are exhausting a lot of alternatives to keeping the government running. but, david, thank you for your kindness and for your generosity and leadership in so many spheres of our life together. i want to also acknowledge darrell west, vice president of governance studies here at brookings. and i'm going to get to elaine in just a moment and talk about this important new center. but i also want to acknowledge one of the board members here at brookings, i friend and longtime business partner, joel hyatt, who, as some of you of heard me say on many occasions, is absolutely the best partner anybody could ever have come and our partnership recently ended very successfully, but the

friendship will be eternal. if i had to pick one person to be in the foxhole with, it would be joel. a lot of my former colleagues in government are here. leon fuerth was mentioned by elaine. bill golson, senior fellow here, is present. and some of my former colleagues in the congress. let's see, congresswoman jill long thompson, who i greeted just on the way and, and some of my friends in the campaign years. donna brazile, my former campaign manager is here somewhere. and ted devine, who was an important leader in the campaign. and my other colleagues from the white house years, in addition

to elaine and leon and put gordon adams and jim collin berger, leann brackett, kiki mclean, sally katzen, rob shapiro, mike or fee, paul weinstein, alan oaks, and others but i also want to acknowledge josh got bombed, the u.s. pension benefit guaranty corp. at it. and so now to elaine. [laughter] i have known elaine for 20 years, almost exactly 20 years. i want to acknowledge her husband who also was in a previous lifetime, a tremendous public servant running the ex-im bank, and their daughter-in-law, christi, who is here, and elaine sister, joan ciulla.

but elaine is by all odds one of the most talent -- talented people that it ever worked with, and whether it's in the sphere of governance or in politics, she is just truly outstanding, and everybody who has worked with her nose that. and to the powers that be at brookings, congratulations in wooing her away from being a professor at harvard and establishing this important center. i'm going to talk in a moment about why i think this is unusually significant and important. it truly is. it's hard work. but there is literally no one in the world who understands it better or more thoroughly than elaine kamarck. that's literally the truth. there are slightly more than

7 billion people in the world, and only one elaine kamarck. [laughter] so, you know, that's pretty special. but it's all true. in any case, i'm really happy to be here. i'm glad you all picked a slow news day to launch the center. [laughter] the most important news of the day, other than this launch, is actually than not -- exactly not depending potential shutdown of the government or pending potential default. i do want to talk about that briefly, but it is the release this morning in stockholm of the fifth assessment by the intergovernmental panel on climate change, and you may have

seen it in the news. and if you haven't, i urge you to look at it. it's not a topic that brings us here today, but it is intimately connected because we have a set of challenges that we must now confront that are very different in kind and difficulty compared to any issues that we have ever had to face and our ability to do it competently is absolutely crucial to the success of what we are undertaking. but, you know, where the report from stockholm is concerned, they used to be certain only to a degree, somewhere between

90%-100%. now, they are certain to degree somewhere between 95%-100%. i'm sure that will make all the difference to those who are wondering how serious this is. but joking aside, we are still putting 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours, as if the atmosphere is an open sewer. and the cumulative amount of man-made global warming pollution now trapped there is having as much heat every day as would be released by 400,000 hiroshima atomic bombs going off every single day. and it's a big planet, but that's a lot of energy. and is that energy that is disrupting the water cycle that central to life on earth,

disrupting the stable pattern of climate and weather systems that had been in place since the first cities were built 9000 years ago. melting the ice and raising sea level. .. in fact, then, in that year when 20 million people were displaced from their homes,