the monthly cycle picks up in november. >> so they will be notified if a decision is made even if they're not able to get a check? >> they will be notified if we are able to pay the retroactive aspect of that, and then we will process the remainder of the claims and put that, you know, in the line. ..

>> and so medications are available and will be filled. >> well, i thank you, mr. chairman, for allowing me to participate today. >> thank you very much. mr. bilirakis, do you have any other questions? >> [inaudible] >> mr. kaufman? >> thank you, mr. chairman. just one more question. mr. secretary, my oversight investigations subcommittee uncovered that the va's cybersecurity protection measures were inadequate even when the va has been fully funded before the shutdown. in fact, the investigation discovered numerous occurrences when foreign state-sponsored hackers infiltrated the va network. has -- how has the shutdown affected the private information of veterans and their families? are these 20 million individuals in the va system now at even greater risk?

>> congressman, i will tell you that what we know we have, we will have the ability to respond to what we know, but there's, you know, as you would expect more to this than sometimes even we're able to know. so we do take steps to assure the security of our system. every event better prepares us for the next, and we are active here. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> thank you. mr.-- [inaudible] you're recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. just a quick follow-up question, mr. secretary. you'd mentioned about the delays in the overtime you already had in your original budget you presented to congress as well as anticipating, i think it was $40 million to carry over for next year's budget. since you've utilized that $40 million, you can't carry it

over, and since the delays have caused the backlog to creep back up again, will you be requesting additional supplemental to deal with replacing that 40 million as well as more overtime money to get you back where you have to be as far as the backlog? >> i think the basic question am i going to try to reconstitute that $40 million. i will find every way i can in my accounts, and if i'm not able to do that and i need to look for support here to get that funding in place to be able to get veterans the care they need, i will seek it. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. mr. huelskamp? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i do want to take a note, a little bit of time. i'd like to apologize to anybody in this committee that might have been offended by my trying

to find out exactly why the u.s. senate has voted on these appropriations. i do appreciate the bipartisan nature of this committee, but i think we all agree here that our veterans should not be as pawns in this particular debate, and i appreciate the work in terms of the secretary. but the language that i've seen in particular reference to the individual in the senate that i asked a question about has used some language that i don't think anybody in this committee has used, has not called anybody an anarchist or a fanatic or insane, that's the language we hear coming out of here, and it does no service to our veterans. so i apologize to anyone who took offense. i would appreciate the secretary trying to work with the senate, trying to encourage them to bring it to a vote and keep your doors open -- or to the president and keep your doors open. thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much,

mr. huelskamp. mr. reese, do you have a question? sorry, mr. secretary, we -- [laughter] >> mr. ruiz, you're recognized. >> thank you. very much, mr. chairman, secretary shinseki. thank you for your service to our country. the government shutdown has caused a crisis that could have been avoided had congress simply worked together to put people ahead of politics and solutions above ideology. it is up conscionable -- unconscionable that congress continues to put political gamesmanship above the needs of our veterans. the best way to help veterans in my district and across the country is to end this reckless shutdown. now that the va's required to furlough thousands of employees, how will that affect the

veterans' claims backlog and constituents specifically in my district, meaning how will furloughs impact the l.a. regional office and the san diego regional office which review claims for veterans in my district? >> congressman, as i indicated earlier, we are -- our availability of carryover funding for $2013, roughly $40 million, we exhausted that on 7, october, and then had to furlough about 7,800 people. we have about 13,000 regional benefits employees who are doing what they always do, and that's, you know, process claims as quickly and as accurately as they can. with the end of mandatory overtime, we are doing that at 1400 claims each day less than we were doing, you know, before

30, september. so there's a cumulative effect here. these employees will continue to work until such time as something we call the mandatory count that currently has some residual funds in. they will continue to process claims until that point, and where we can pay for retroactive, a retroactive claim or for a student claim, we will continue to do that. but as we do that, we draw down the mandatory account. when the mandatory account is exhausted before the end of this and the vast majority of these people will also be furloughed. and that will begin to have great impact on the backlog. today the backlog is already 2,000 higher than it was on 30,september. so it's already beginning to have an effect. >> well, i want you to know that

we will continue, i will continue to advocate for pragmatic solutions so that we can open our doors specifically for our veterans. my office in the district has not shut down. we have extended hours, and we're even working weekends if a veteran needs it to come and pick up that mantle, because the mantle that has been dropped by this ridiculous shutdown, and we will be there for our veterans, and i look forward to collaborating with you so that once we open our doors, those veterans that have been ill-affected by this will have expedited, prioritized treatment so that we can continue to serve the veterans to the best of our abilities. so i appreciated europe service to -- appreciate your service to our country and thank you very much. >> that's my intent as well, congressman. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. ruiz. i'd like to recognize for a final question, mrs. brown. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

and, mr. chairman, i would like before i answer my question the four service organizations sent a letter to congress not supporting the piecemeal va bill on the floor. and so is it possible that i could submit that to the record? >> without objection. >> thank you. now, mr.-- because, you know, to talk about what a senator introduced, i don't want to talk about the senate, i want to talk about the house. the house of representatives where i serve. and, mr. secretary, my question to you is come november or the third week in october will 3.8 million veterans not get their checks in the mail? benefits, that's a nice thing, but checks is what they live on. most veterans that get those checks are on fixed income. explain to me how they're

supposed to make it. >> congresswoman, effective 1, november, if we don't resolve this, those veterans will not receive pension compensation for veterans who are in school, their education checks, vocational rehab and those beneficiaries are not just veterans. that's three million veterans. but when you add surviving spouses and children, you know, it's over five million. individuals will be involved. i mean, this is serious, and i'm hoping that the leadership of this committee will help us resolve it. >> thank you, mr. secretary. you know, i was told that the house, somebody sent them some snake oil. so i went home and tried to find

snake oil, i think it's just in texas. so i did look for some holy oil, and i did bring some back. this is not a joke, this is very serious. veterans have come up to me on church sunday because that's the only place i went sunday, to services, and i needed more. and they wanted to know about their benefits x. i told them as of october the 17th if we default, they will not get their benefits. and i told the social security people the same thing. you know, is this true? will they not get their benefits? is this a game? >> it's not a game, congresswoman. there are veterans and service members, families, children counting on us. and they expect us to deliver. >> well -- >> five million of them will be impacted here severely. >> i hope that that there is

some leadership on this committee that will work with the leadership in the house and come up with a clean continuing resolution, because the problem that we have is that so many of the people that's been furloughed, they're contract people. they will not get back people. and many of them are veterans. do you all have contract employees also? >> we do. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank the gentlelady. thank you, mr. secretary, for being here, again, on short notice and for over two and a half hours. we appreciate you taking the questions. we do have other questions that we'll submit to you for the record or, and in particular i want to ask that you help this committee in furthering a bill that was passed out of this committee in 100% bipartisan fashion, that is advanced funding for the remainder of va's budget so that we don't get into this type of situation anymore. all members will have five

legislative days with which to revise and extend their remarks. mr. secretary, thank you. this hearing is adjourned. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> the family research council's annual values voters summit begins this morning with speeches by senators mike lee, ted cruz, rand paul and tim scott as well as representative michelle back match. you can see that live on c-span3 at 9 a.m. eastern. >> the senate banking committee examined the implications of the u.s. defaulting on its financial obligations in a hearing on thursday. frank keating, former oklahoma governor and current president of the american banking association, and former congressman ken bentsen spoke about the risk of a deeper recession. here's a look. you can see this in its swirety on our -- entirety on our web site, c-span.org. >> well, as noted by my fellow

panel cysts, if the united states -- panelists, if the united states defaults on its debts a little bit or a lot, it's calamitous. and we have to think in perspective of what has occurred over the course of the last number of years. from 389 when -- 1789 when george washington became president to the year 2000 the national debt was $5 trillion. the bipartisan policy center, our rivlin-domenici panel, between 2000 and 2009 that national debt roughly doubled, a little bit less than doubled. now it's going to double again. so the figures are scalding, and i'm sure that the congressional panel as well as simpson-bowles and i know rivlin-domenici found the same thing. in the year 2020, it will be a trillion dollars a year just to pay the interest on the debt. by the year 2025, every cent of

federal tax revenue will go to social security, medicare, medicaid and interest on the debt. i mean, what is required as noted is to get through the default period because it'll, obviously, dramatically raise interest rates and create real havoc in the community bank environment, most marley, the ability to -- particularly the ability to borrow and lend money. and then sit down aggressively and in a bipartisan fashion to focus on this runaway train. in 950 the average person retired at 59 -- excuse me, retired at 62 and died at 69, or 65 and 69. today the average person retires at 62 and dies at 80, so all the actuarial tables are off. we are mercifully living a lot longer which is causing huge stresses in our ability to provide for the elderly in the united states, and it will continue to deepen and darken over the course of the next 20 years. >> mr. bentsen? >> i was going to say two

things. one is voluntarily defaulting on the debt is just something that, to me, doesn't make any logical sense. it'll create huge operational problems in the financial markets that will permeate across the markets as pointed out the treasuries are used in escrows, it'll affect municipal bond issues for every state in the union, it'll have dramatic consequences in liquidity and could create crises if it were to go on for some period of time. even some potential work arounds to deal with defaulted coupons. but the other thing with respect to the long-term fiscal condition, to default voluntarily would make resoing the long-term fiscal -- resolving the long-term fiscal imbalances just that much more difficult. so it seems to me that it doesn't make any sense to do so if you don't have to. >> mr.-- [inaudible] >> you know, from the real

estate perspective i think that we would have, we would fall back into a deeper recession. there's no doubt in my mind that that would happen. if we reached a debt ceiling impasse, the default on its u.s. debt could be very long lasting. interest rates would undoubtedly rise meaning less people could afford to buy or refinance homes. housing prices would plummet again, and you would have cats by in the real estate -- catastrophe in the real estate industry which would lead the economy back into a deep recession if not a depression. it also raises the rate at which we would borrow and would make it more difficult for us to meet our debts into the future, so i don't see any possibility of it being a good outcome. it's going to be disastrous. >> mr. stevens. >> mr. chairman, i think the key element here is confidence. we're the biggest borrower in

the world with. we have to engender confidence in those people who are lending us money. the treasury's history of repayments and the smooth operating of the treasury market has created that high level of confidence that permits us to borrow at very, very low rates. i don't think it's in the interest of the american people to do anything to give our invest efforts less confidence in the united states. and that would include either failing to repay or, as i said in my testimony, amazing so much debt that it's not going to be supportable. >> the president had us all down to the white house last week only to remind me that he was not going to negotiate over keeping the government open or over the looming need to increase the debt limit. >> democrats agree, we're willing to negotiate, we won't negotiate with a gun to our heads. we say to our republican colleagues, end this irresponsible government shutdown. >> we're not going to negotiate under the threat of further harm to our economy and middle class

families, we're not going to negotiate under the threat of prolonged shutdown until republicans get 100% of what they want. >> stay with c-span for coverage of the government shutdown and your input into the conversation. >> i am disgusted that obama cannot compromise. he refuses to negotiate. >> my view of the shutdown is that the republicans are playing stupid gains, and if everybody played these, the entire government would shut down, so it looks a little less than something resembling treason. >> join the conversation on of our continuing coverage of the shutdown on c-span. >> now, a look at the impact of the government shutdown and automatic spending cuts on the federal judiciary. democrats on the house judiciary committee held a forum tuesday with members of the american bar association and the d.c. federal public defender. this is just over two hours.

[inaudible conversations] >> the forum examining the impact of government shutdown and sequestration on the provisions of justice will come to order. thank you all for coming. so that we may begin and move as rapidly as possible, i know this is a fantastic panel that we have. we're deeply honored that you're all, everybody's here. we're going to limit our opening statements to a couple minutes, those that may want to make any, so that we can begin to get your analysis and recommendations right away. we're deeply grateful for the quick response that we got from the distinguished members of the

panel. as we meet today, we're staring at both a financial and heel abyss -- legal abyss resulting from the overlapping effects of an arbitrary budget she sequesta needless government shutdown and a looming financial default. all of these actions can and should have been avoided. the sequester could have been avoided with a common sense, long-term budget agreement including taxes that should be paid by the wealthiest among us. the shutdown could be ended in a matter of hours if the speaker would simply allow an up or down vote on a clean continuing resolution. and as the president of the united states has repeatedly reminded us, the full faith and credit of the united states has no business being used as a political negotiating tool.

and so i close with this observation: the financial impact of these events on the department of justice and the federal courts is grave and growing each day. and so with that i will close down my remarks and yield to the former subcommittee chairman of crime, the gentleman from virginia, bobby scott. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and like you, we want to get right to the witnesses, so i'll really cut my statement significantly. we know the shutdown is having an effect, and the focus today is the effect it's having on the judicial system, the courts -- criminal and civil -- and the operation of the department of justice. one of the particular areas is what it's doing to the criminal justice system, how you can operate the courts during the middle of a shutdown, and that's what we're going to hear today,

and i thank you for convening the panel. >> thank you so much. hank johnson, georgia. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman, for hosting this gathering today. it's very important. justice delayed is often justice denied. and with the cuts under sequestration coming on top of other cuts, we are at the point where we are delaying justice, and i'm sure that you all on the panel can probably point to many cases where injustice has been documented. but i do want to say that it's ironic that with this government shutdown and sequestration coming before it, it's ironic that a member of the bar would be part of the problem, a large part of the problem. i want to read to you the first

paragraph of the article in "the new york times" dated october the 5th by mike mcintyre. shortly after president obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former attorney general edwin meese iii gathered in the capital to plot strategy. their push to repeal obama's health care was going nowhere, and three desperately needed a new -- they desperately needed a new plan. so it's unfortunately that we find ourselves in this position, and with that, i will conclude. >> thank you very much. the gentlelady from california, the honorable judy chu. >> l well, i want to thank you for having this very, very important hearing. the government shutdown costing the economy $200-$300 million a

day, and it's so important for us to hear about how these cuts are affecting the ability of the federal courts and the justice department to fulfill their responsibilities. i want to hear about how these cuts are affecting domestic violence programs, domestic violence programs were prorated nearly $400 million last year. resources were significantly reduced, and i'm looking forward to hearing from you in terms of the real impacts on how these cuts are affect men, women and children from rape and abuse as well as how it is affecting our dmetsic violence shelters. and i want to hear about how this is affecting our voting rights laws. there are so many areas we are

trying to insure that people will be able to exercise their rightings as citizens in this country, and yet we do know that these voting rights losses can truly be burdensome in challenging these setbacks that are occurring to our laws. and i want to hear about our federal court system which has been subject to unprecedented funding losses. this has resulted in staffing losses and other programmatic cuts. but what i want to hear is about the public defenders who are supposed to provide the counsel to indigent offenders who don't have the resources to hire attorneys. i want to see what the real effects are of that. and so i look forward to hearing your testimony and hear what the true effects are of these cuts. thank you, and i yield back.

>> thank you. to my friend, mel watt of north carolina, we're all taking just a couple minutes opening statement so we can get directly to these excellent witnesses that have responded so early. the gentleman from north carolina, subcommittee chairman, mel watt. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i just want to thank the chair for convening us here, and i think i'll yield back my time and listen to the witnesses might be better than them listening to me. >> thank you. uncharacteristically brief -- [laughter] but definitely -- >> characteristically brief. >> oh, yes, i meant characteristically brief. suzanne delbini, distinguished member of the committee from washington state, is recognized now. >> thank you.

i also want to thank the chair for calling this hearing together. i really appreciate it and appreciate all of you being here, taking the time today to give us your feedback, and like congress juan -- congressman watt, i want to be brief. i want to hear from you, so i yield back my time. >> thank you very much. the gentleman from new york, jerly nadler, chairman of the -- former chairman of the constitutional subcommittee, senior member of the judiciary committee in the house. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. chairman. i, too, will be uncharacteristically brief -- [laughter] i want to thank you for calling this hearing, i want to thank our witnesses. the constitutional duty of providing defense counsel to people who cannot afford it in criminal trials is clear, it is equally clear that even before the sequester and before the shutdown we were doing a far from adequate, indeed, i would say an unconstitutionally

inadequate job of doing so. it is clear the sequester and now the shutdown is making it far worse. and that's not the only impact on the judiciary, but it is those constitutionally-clear violation. i look forward to hearing from our witnesses about the impact, and unfortunately, it's pretty clear what we have to do about it, so we don't really need a lot of advice on what to do. we need to end the shutdown, we need to end the sequester, and we need to give adequate funding. but it is very valuable to highlight just how deep the problem is right now, and i thank all our witnesses, and i thank the chairman. i yield back. >> thank you very much, jerry. we welcome our panelists who were con seened under -- convened under very tight circumstances. we rarely come together this quickly, and i'm indebted to

diane moyer, scott lilly, nan aaron, don saunders, ron kingle, a.j. kramer, judge ferguson and the president of the american bar, mr. -- [inaudible] in addition to be the president of the american bar association, he is also a member of the council on foreign relations and the american law institute, has served as the chair of the lawyers' committee for international human rights, was a fellow in the united states department scholar/diplomat

program and is a jurist doctor graduate from the university of chicago law school. welcome, gentlemen, and welcome, mr. president, and we invite you to begin our discussion here today. >> thank you very much. my name is jim, i'm a partner in the sullivan and worcester law firm office in new york city and president of the american bar association, a voluntary bar association of more than 400,000 members around the country. thank you for inviting the aba to participate in this forum to discuss the adverse impacts, effects of the government shutdown and sequestration on excess to justice throughout the nation. this is a discussion we need to have in public forrah like this -- fora like this again and again to make sure all americans know what is at stake if congress fails to provide the

federal judiciary with the funds it needs to fulfill what is at stake. to fulfill resources for the judiciary and our concern for the judiciary grows every day. i'm going to start with some general comments on the nature of the judicial function, what's at that stake here, then address the preeminent issue of the moment, the government shutdown, and end with a brief comment on sequestration which we feel is maybe the most important problem involved. even though the effects of the shutdown require a discussion -- and i'm glad we're doing this -- i want to make clear from the start that the aba believes that the funding cuts mandated by sequestration pose the greatest challenges to the fair administration of justice and a timely resolution of disputes in the united states. the federal judiciary's annual appropriations really must be

sufficient to enable it to carry out the many justice functions assigned to it by congress and by the constitution. so in addition to the actual ad jude case of all the -- adjudication of all the cases that come before it, the federal judiciary is responsible for a number of other programs, pretrial programs and supervision, defendants awaiting trial, supervising them, providing representation for indigent criminal defendants, securing jurors for jury trials, supervising criminals on postconviction release and insuring the safety of all those who work in courts and who attend court functions. these are vast responsibilities that generate workloads over which the judiciary has no real control itself. for example, last year more than 350,000 cases were filed in district courts and our courts

of appeal and 1,200,000 cases in bankruptcy cases. 132,000 persons were under postconviction supervision by the courts and over 137,000 indigent criminal defendants were represented by federal defenders. that's a very full plate for our court system. for the federal court system to operate efficiently and effectively, there must be sufficient funding to handle the case load generated by each of these essential functions. inadequate funding of any one of the functions will have a negative ripple effect really throughout the system. on the first day of the shutdown, i issued a statement on behalf of the aba stating that the failure of congress to compromise on a budget imperils justice in our country. and calling on members of congress to immediately resolve

the problem. the political brinksmanship, i think, reflects the same unwillingness to compromise that it posed on government activities including all activities of the federal judiciary. this is not the first time that there has been a lapse in appropriations or a government shutdown. what distinguishes this one, though, from prior ones is that it comes on the heels of a year of difficult and unprecedented funding cuts and staff reductions mandated by sequestration. the judiciary, unlike most federal entities, did not have to implement a shutdown plan on october 1st. that's a plus. the executive committee of the judicial conference of the u.s. courts authorized the use of funding from filing fees and long-term appropriations to keep the courts in operation.

the administrative office of courts estimated that funding from these sources will be sufficient to keep the courts operating and prevent staff furloughs for approximately ten days or through october 15th. and if the shutdown continues beyond october 15th, the judiciary will operate under the terms of the aunt-deficiency -- anti-deficiency act which allows a term to continue during a lapse in the appropriations. essential work in this context means activities necessary to support the exercise of article iii judicial power, resolution of cases in which there is a constitutional statutory grant of jurisdiction, emergency activities necessary for the safety of human life and protection of property and activities otherwise authorized by law of judicial salaries and so on. >> thank you very, very much.

president of the american bar, james silkenat. i turn now to the dean of the university of north texas at dallas college of law, himself a recently-retired member of the united states district court for the northern district of texas, the honorable mr. royal furguson. >> thank you very much, mr. chambers, mr. chairman, and thank you for this opportunity to appear today in order to discuss the challenges facing the judiciary because of sequestration and the government shutdown. for over 19 years, i was honored to be a united states district judge serving in texas. i retired on may 31, 2013, and now i'm the dean of a new law school. may i begin by sharing two stories in order to give context to my testimony. the first story is about my service as a border trial judge,

the second is about my chairmanship of the judicial resources committee of the judicial conference. i was sworn in as a federal judge on march 31, 1994, and began my service in el paso and then was transferred to the midland division of the western district of texas. the pecos division coffers 420 miles of the border with mexico and is a far-flung region of open range and small towns. it includes the big ben national park which is the fourth largest national park in the lower 48 states. in the first year of my service in pecos, 1995, there were 17 criminal cases filed involving 20 defendants. by the time the year 2001 rolled around, there had been 424 cases filed in one year with 552

defendants, an increase of more than a thousand percent. this occurred because of the southwest border initiative which doubled the size of the border patrol on the southwest border. during that period of time, during that enormous and amazing increase in docket, all of the members of the court family -- the u.s. marshals, u.s. attorneys, the attorneys receiving appointments, the court family and the judges -- were really overrun with cases. it was a time of unremitting stress, and things on the border are, in fact, unfortunately, much the same today. i share this story with you motto impress you with our -- not to impress you with our hard work, but rather to inform you that every one of us never

wavered in our devotion to our duty no matter how challenging our days and nights became, and our inspiration was, in fact, the constitution. and our commitment to making it work for all of our citizens even in a place as remote as the border region of texas. that is the mentality that continues to drive the federal judiciary. we are a co-equal branch of the united states government embodied in article iii of the constitution, and it is our duty to insure that the constitution works for all of our citizens all the time. to do less is simply unacceptable. and yet human effort can only go so far, you can only do so much trying to do more with less until you cannot do so. like any human institution, the federal judiciary needs appropriate resources to perform its responsibilities, and now because of sequestration and the

government shutdown the men and women of the federal judiciary face the unthinkable. they no longer have resources necessary to meet their constitutional mission, and if things don't change very soon, they might not be able to adequately do their job. this brings me to my second story. in 2004 the congress told the federal judiciary that we needed to do everything possible to contain our costs. and so we set about doing that. i was the chair of the judicial resources committee of the judicial conference, and my committee was in charge of people. and since the federal judiciary is basically people, we set about to meet the requirements of congress. we have always been good stewards of taxpayer dollars, but we committed to redoubling our efforts in those years of

cost containment, can and at some sacrifice -- and at some sacrifice we made recommendations that changed our, our human resources in such a way that $300 million were saved over the next ten years in the judiciary. i share this second story just to highlight the stewardship of the federal judiciary. as you know, recent events have really been difficult for the judiciary. there was a hard please in 2012 -- a hard freeze in 2012 and then with sequestration $350 million had been taken from the judiciary's budget. the impact of these cuts really cannot be adequately mitigated. and now we look at a situation where if the shuttown continues and she -- shutdown continues

and sequestration continues, there would be a loss of approximately 3700 positions from the federal judiciary in three years. that would bring our employee count in the federal judiciary in 2014 to less employees than we had in 1999. of course, i sit next to someone from defender services, and the consequences of the shutdown and the sequestration have ravaged our defender services, and you will be informed of that. let me say that probation pretrial have been impacted, our clerks' offices have been impacted. ..

>> for the foreseeable future then article iii of the constitution will not work as it must. we know that this is an age of great cynicism but yet even in a time like this i thought it would be inconceivable that the constitution could be dealt such a crippling blow. the heart of our democracy is the constitution and the rule of law and and the first thing, the preamble requires is that our more perfect union establish justice. and now today and tomorrow, the constitution will be in many instances placed on hold along with the shutdown goes, the worse it will go. the irony of all this is that the appropriators from both the

house and the senate, republicans and democrats alike, have recommended marks for this fiscal year that will provide the federal judiciary with sufficient resources to perform its constitutional responsibilities. but as long as the shutdown continues, these most thoughtful proposals remain in a billions. you asked for a recommendation was. i will tell you what my hope is. my hope is the shutdown and sequestration will and at the recommendations of the house and senate appropriators will be adopted. thank you for the privilege. >> thank you so much. our next witness is the federal public defender from the district of columbia, mr. a. j. kramer, by way of stanford university and boalt hall school of law at the university of california. welcome to the area. >> thank you, chairman, i am, my

name is a. j. kramer. i the federal public defender for the addition of columbia. i opened the office in the district of columbia in 1990. so i've been here for 23 years. prior to that i was in federal public defender office in san francisco and sacramento. i have come to appreciate over those years that the federal government has many crucial functions, but probably few more important than its justice system. indeed, it's a separate and go equal branch of government. the criminal justice system in particular dealing with people's lives and liberty which is held out to its own citizens, citizens of the united states is an example and to the rest of the world as an example of what a system should be, and the effects it has on people's lives and liberties, the community of those people, the families and the victims. it's ironic that 50 years ago the supreme court decided the

seminal case of gideon v. wainwright in which justice black wrote the famous words that lawyers in criminal cases are necessities, not luxuries. he also said speaking for a unanimous court the right of one charged with crime the council may not be deemed fundamental and essential to fair trials in some countries, but it is in ours. setting an example for the rest of the world. he also quoted justice sutherland's words in the case alabama versus powell, that even though a defendant be not guilty he faces the danger of conviction because he does not know how to establish his innocence. the court went on to note that of the first eight amendments to the constitution, a number of them dealt with fundamental rights to a fair trial in the united states, that the constitution and provide because of what the colonists had perceived as the abuses in the criminal justice system. and i think anyone who has been accused of a crime or even received a traffic ticket

recognizes the need for adequate defense when they go to court but if you go to court without a lawyer, procedures, the language, the way things are done, you are pretty much helpless. you ask any prosecutor, they will say they want a good defense lawyer representing someone so that they no that the conviction, if there is one, or the acquittal if there is one, was improperly or whatever the result of the case is. you have judges who will tell you that they want a good defense lawyer. if they have to impose a substantial sentence, as many census or nowadays, they want to know that the person received adequate representation before it came to that point. we still hold out our criminal justice system, especially the federal system, as an example to the rest of the world, especially in these times when people are being extradited from other countries. we hold out to those other countries that they will receive a fair trial in the united states, that they might not receive elsewhere, and that one of the hallmarks is the right to

have competent and adequate counsel to represent them when they get to the united states. as the federal public defender in d.c., which is a unique jurisdiction, we represent many people who have been extradited here where nothing happened in the united states and the immensity of the undertaking of those defenses and the resources required for those are enormous. so i'm all aware first hand knowledge of how we hold this example out to the rest of the world, and yet will we have to do to ensure that we are sending this example for the rest of the world and continuing to do it. and yet at the same time we celebrate gideon v. wainwright, cuts to the federal courts have been, they have been catastrophic i think is an appropriate word. the federal public defender system in particular has been decimated both by cuts, sequestration, another government shutdown has had a

huge effect on us. and the great irony is this, is that the reductions to the public defender's system and the budgets and the clerk's office which caused delay in the probation offices which means programs are not of able for our clients, the court course to thl court system will result in higher cost to the government in the end, to the citizens of the united states. federal defenders are extremely cost-effective. if we cannot handle cases, they go to the criminal justice act attorneys, and while most of them are very good comics truly good attorneys, their costs are much higher than federal defender offices. and if it turns out somebody did not get a competent lawyer, there's a lot of coast -- postconviction litigation that contract on for years at great expense to victims, witnesses that can drag on. so that can be an added cost as well. and an irony to the cuts in the

federal system could be very effective, federal defender system. this call comes at a time when the federal prison system has exploded through the mandatory minimum sentences and the sentencing guidelines. and at a time with the increasing complexity in supreme court rulings and those statutes and laws. and i don't think it matters of your politics. you want to know that under our constitution, someone is only enters the criminal justice system if they're going to get adequate counsel and adequate representation. i can speak personally of our office. we ended up taking 10 days of furlough or person which had a terrible effect both on morale, on people's paychecks, and on dealing cases and the representation of people. we have an ethical obligation to our clients under the rules of the bar where ever you are admitted. cases continue on, but they get the latest people can't get to court on a certain day. they get deleted people don't have time to file a motion. they get delayed if you can't

hire the expert or a witness investigator that unique. while people were on furlough i can tell you that you could find people at the d.c. jail into getting their clients on days that they were on furlough. you could find people at home writing motions. they weren't allowed to be in office but they were allowed to work at home writing motions, and it has, it's an incredible dedicated group of people and it has an effect on morale, and people get the job done because we have to get the job done. that i would say that 94% of our budget is personnel in rent. we have to pay our rent the gsa, and so if we have to get anything it's personal. we're all personnel. i can't send a computer to court yet, but have to send a person to court to represent somebody. we have nothing else really we can cut. there's very little left in our budget. we don't give grants. we don't have big automation systems. we don't have any kinds of other systems out there that we can

cut. so when we got, it affects the system as a whole. it affects the people in her office. the human cost of this are enormous. the human cost of the defendant because a lawyer might not have caught something they have to spend extra time in jail. the cost to society of that expense as was the prolongation of the sentence, the effect on the person's family. it seems like you read every month, i was every day, but every month about somebody who was wrongfully convicted and has been freed and the immense cost to society of that as well as the individual and their family. and the technologies that turned out to be bogus such as some of the fbi bold examinations. this is especially unfortunate, in my mind, because it affects the minorities and the lower socioeconomic status in this country disproportionately in

the federal criminal justice system. so the affects of the sequestered and soon-to-be, as you were told by judge furgeson, the courts have enough money to run until next tuesday, as of next tuesday or wednesday we will also join in the fertile situation which will make things -- we cut to the bone the federal defender staff has been reduced by 8% as result of sequestration. some incredible dedicated and some of the best and brightest people have had to leave the system either by layoffs, retirements, or taking other jobs because of the situation to every human defect of single parents and people living paycheck to paycheck. we've had employees ask about taking loans from their iras and their savings and from banks because they won't be getting paychecks. but as i said, the great irony of all this is that in the end it will result in costing the taxpayers more money because of

all the problems that arise and the delays that arise as a result of the sequestration, and now the shut down. thank you very much. >> thank you. federal public defender kramer. i now call on the codirector of the voting rights project for the lawyers' committee for civil rights under law, my first visit in the white house as an attorney was when that committee was formed. and we have robert kengle with us who has won awards from the civil rights division, from the attorney general's award for excellence, information technology, adjunct law professor at georgetown law center. and i'm pleased to recognize you at this time. >> thank you so much, mr.

chairman, on behalf of those lawyers' committee for civil rights -- on behalf of the lawyers committee, i'm very pleased and honored to be asked to address you today. i guess my roll is somewhat as a proxy for the department of justice, and more specifically, the civil rights division. i was in the voting section of the civil rights division for about 20 years, and i was out on sick leave during the last governmental shutdown, so i'm not sure exactly how that was handled. but i can tell you that section five work was highly prioritized been and that they were a sensual employees designated to look at section five submissions. as i'll mention a few minutes this picture is a little different.

i understand that the office of legislative affairs has provided some information to you about the department as a whole. my sense is that the civil work in the civil rights division has basically been stopped in its tracks as a result of the shut down. and i'll try to be more specific in talking about the voting rights cases that i'm familiar with. i attempted to get some additional information from my former colleagues in voting section management, but, unfortunately, nobody is answering the phones there. i think the impact has been very severe in the section, and in other branches of the division. my understanding is that approximately 70% of the civil rights division is for load, of the employees who are on

essential status. i think they are concentrated in the criminal section of the division where they have speedy trial considerations, and it's especially -- all of the divisions are important obviously, but in the criminal section it's especially important to keep the cases moving to meet the legal requirements. this is an especially difficult time for the voting section. as you are i think all of where, earlier this year the u.s. supreme court found section 4-b of the voting rights act to be unconstitutional. that was the triggering and geographical targeting mechanism for section five coverage. section five was one of the primary responsibilities of the voting section here and as i mentioned, the section five work

had been considered essential during the last government shut down. as a result of the shelby county decision, section five has now been essentially rendered inoperative. and thousands, maybe more than 10,000 governmental units, cities, counties, school boards, states that were previously covered under section five now no longer have to submit their changes in voting practice for federal notification or federal review. and so the consequences of this is that there are -- there is a very, very substantial reality and of responsibilities and resources within the voting section from staff who are focused on section five to reorient them to begin going out and engaging in affirmative

investigations and affirmative litigation. that is not what the section has to do rather than having issues come to the voting section, the voting section now has to get out on the ground and go out and find the discriminatory voting changes and then prosecute them. so what does that mean? well, in one high profile case that i think, again, you all know about is the u.s. is sued the state of texas over its voter id law. earlier this year, doj filed a section to lawsuit against the state of texas in the southern district. i'll note that lawyers committee is also representing another lawsuit that's been consolidated with the united states case. well, doj, after the shut down took effect, filed a paper with

the court moving for a state of the proceedings, asking that all briefings and responses with respect to the case, and by extension to all the other parties cases, be put on hold pending the outcome of the shut down. and what the department informed the court was that absent and appropriation, department of justice employees are prohibited from working even on a voluntary basis except in very limited circumstances, including emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property. so what does this mean is that the united states case with respect to this photo id law is now really on hold. my understanding, i haven't heard it directly, my understanding is that the deputy chief who was responsible for

supervising the case is limited to about 15 minutes of blackberry time a day. and so, yeah, that's to say nothing of the line attorneys who apparently are all for load and unable to do anything on the case. i'll mention just a couple of the points. one is that there are elections going on today. there are elections going on in albuquerque, new mexico, and in north carolina. as you probably know, doj has also filed a section two lawsuit against the state of north carolina with regard to its recent voter law. and normally in the context of litigation, doj would want to have somebody on the ground

watching voting, monitoring voting in person, especially in a case where there is active litigation involving polling place procedures. but i don't think they're going to have anybody there. i don't know for sure. i think it would be an important question to ask. but i think as a result of the shut down they are unable to go out and monitor elections in the way that they would, or conduct investigations in the way that they normally would. so i think the impact on voting rights enforcement from doj's perspective is obviously quite pronounced and severe, and is going to continue -- is only going to get worse i think until the shut down is in the. thank you.

>> thank you, mr. kengle. we turn now to the vice president of civil legal division of the national legal aid and defender's association, mr. donald saunders who has been with legal aid since 1990, started at one time as the executivexecutive director of th carolina legal services resource center, as well as a staff attorney in wilmington, delaware, a graduate of the university of north to london school of law. welcome. >> thank you, chairman conyers, this thing which members of the judiciary committee. i am honored today to speak to you briefly on behalf of the national legal aid and defenders

association.

nlada, founded in 1911, is the oldest and largest membership organization in the nation, advocating for equal justice for all people in both the civil ad criminal justice systems, regardless of income. on the half of my defender colleagues, i want to endorse the comments of mr. kramer, on behalf of our ceo jo-ann wallace who was former public defender of the district of columbia. we certainly understand the crisis in federal defense, as was the crisis at the state level. however, today i'm here on behalf of the thousands of attorneys and other advocates in the civil justice system dedicated to ensuring our democratic principle of equal justice under the law. my colleagues across the nation work every day, often at significant personal sacrifice, to make that principle of equal justice our reality for low-income families in communities in every corner of the nation. i wanted to briefly today discussed to areas of federal spending and which the impact of sequestration and the government shut down might well have a significant impact on the provision of civil legal assistance to people living in poverty in the united states. those two areas, the first one i want to discuss is funding for the legal services corporation. with respect to lse, the one in 34 grantees of lsc's funding represent the nations promised to justice to millions of americans. analysts see as one of the most successful public-private partnerships in government. federal funding amounts to only 40% of the operating resources

of those programs nationwide. however, given the difficult impact of the recession that has led more people to come to the doors of legal aid programs than ever before, we've also seen the other sources of revenue for legal aid dropped precipitously over the last few years. support from the private bar foundations, interest on lawyers trust accounts, these are very, ververythe important componentse civil justice system. but without the strong support of the federal government and the legal services corporation, that system could not be present in every county in the united states. more than 62 million people, one in five americans, including almost 20 million children, qualify for civil legal assistance from lsc grantees. given that huge population of people in need of assistance, even under current funding, grantees of alice he must turn away a staggering 50% of those eligible applicants who seek their assistance. last year, ellis the grantees closed more than 800,000 cases due to funding cuts over the past three years, however, these numbers have been in steady

decline. lsc funding has experienced a precipitous drop of 19% over the last four fiscal years, from 420 million in fy 2010, the 349 in fy 2013. the 2013 sequester could not have come at a worse time for legal aid programs across the united states. it resulted in an additional i% cut from an already shrinking budget, or over $16 million in vital support to run the locally led to legal aid offices funded by lsc. the most current data indicate that these cuts have led to the total loss of 1000 personnel and lsc grantee programs across the

country, and 11% loss in just two years. 30 offices were closed in 2012 as well, making it even more difficult for clients in remote, rural settings to gain access to program services. their losses also forced 72% of lsc funded offices to reduce client services, which led to a 10% over all big line in cases closed in 2012. the additional cuts resulting from the 5% sequester in fy 2013, even though i can give you very specific information at this point, are clearly going to lead to the loss of hundreds of more additional staff, as well as the closing of a significant number of additional branch offices as their implemented nationwide. the others i want to touch on is the wide array of other federal programs that use the lsc infrastructure across the country to address problems of people in poverty. as mr. t. was suggesting, victims of domestic violence --

as ms. chu was suggesting, victims of domestic violence are a key component of the legal client population. an important study by colgate, the university of arkansas, indicated that legal assistance can be the single most effective intervention in the case of domestic violence. the legal assistance, the victims program funds lawyers across the country to be part of an interlocking network with other domestic violence providers. to provide legal assistance when that is needed in a case of domestic abuse. we've seen funding for the legal assistance to victims program drop from 41 million last year to 38.32 million in the current fiscal year. another area in which legal aid programs are providing keep representation is through the

supportive services to veterans families program. we've been working in north carolina with a series of private lawyers, corporate lawyers, and legal aid program to address some of the needs of returning veterans in a statewide basis. legal aid programs across the country, likewise, are stepping up to address the needs of our returning men and women in the military. again, a survey of social services providers as well as veterans indicated that three of the 10 problems that most affect returning veterans and homeless veterans were legal in nature. and through the good work of the va and health and human services, we've seen a real increase in the number of lawyers that are made available to help these veterans address those problems. we are not able across -- there

are many, many other programs within hud, hhs, we can give a specific impact on those programs but obviously 7% are upward sequestration is going to have a demonstrable effect got in reducing the ability of civil legal assistance to a whole host of people in tremendous need. we have heard that -- i'm sure ms. moyer will speak more about the office on violence against women. we did understand it was going to cease operations today under the shut down. from what we hear from our members across the country, it's just almost chaotic trying to get information from hud or from the irs for a low income taxpayer clinic that many of them run. that the impact so far of the shut down really has been a lack

of continuity in these programs, a lack of the ability to get information. and the longer it goes on, the more chaotic that situation will become. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. they rayburn cafeteria isn't doing too well either, sir, i want you to know. dawn, we remember you when you attended another forum only two years ago and your testimony was very important than. we turn now to the president of two organizations, the alliance, nan aaron, president of the alliance justice, and the judicial selection process. she's worked with the aclu's national prison project, trial attorney for the equal employment opportunity commission, litigating race and

sex discrimination cases. we welcome you to this forum. [inaudible] spent of judiciary committee, thank you, gentlemen. thanks for inviting me to join this important conversation on sequester shut down an access to justice. as president of alliance for justice, i'm proud to speak on half of 100 member organization, all of which are committed to a just system that truly serves all americans. yet today, we see the evenhanded administration of justice being threatened at every turn. even before the shut down, even before the sequester, our justice system was in crisis. the reason will be familiar to everyone in this room, politically motivated

obstruction. today's budget crisis is appalling, but it's important to understand that it is just one more manifestation of the relentless attacks on the courts and their ability to effectively and efficiently dispense justice that has characterized the last five years. as of today, more than 90 federal court judgeships sit vacant. that's more than one in 10 judgeships, federal judgeships across the country. the administrative office of the u.s. court has deemed 39 of those vacancies judicial emergency. meaning there are not simply enough judges to hold caseloads, to hear those caseloads in those courts. when there are too few judges, the wait for justice can be unbearable. individuals and businesses often

have to wait months and even years to stand up for the rights. memories may fade, witnesses may die, financial and personal calamities may be compounded. for example, in the eastern district of california, which was home to two judicial emergencies, and no one was recently failed in march, it took nearly four years for a civil case to get to trial. with weights like those, victims too often give up on ever seeing justice served. obstruction at every step of the judicial selection process is to blame. the obstruction takes many forms. republican senators refused to work with the president to recommended nominees for vacancies in their states. some refused to return blue slips or nominees they previously supported. as we have recently seen in

florida. votes are delayed for months, even on noncontroversial nominees, while huge numbers of nominees are filibustered. the games being played with the budget will do enormous damage to our system of justice, but those problems are being piled on top of a mountain of dysfunction that already exists. in texas, for instance, there are currently nine, nine federal judicial vacancies without nominees. six of which are judicial emergencies. one of those judicial emergencies is judge furgeson seat, which he dedicated nearly five years ago. if you add up the time, those nine seats have been vacated, it amounts to more than 15 years. each day, each month, each year without a judge means justice is being denied to the people of texas. and yet, the texas senators are

all too happy to see these benches emptied. the judicial selection commission, they set up to recommend nominees for the vacant district court seats, have not yet even started interviewing candidates. and now we've added the sequester and the shut down to this already untenable situation. the upshot is a plaintiff seeking to vindicate civil rights, collect disability benefits, resolve business disputes, recover lost wages, or prevent some eminent environmental harm will be stuck in a holding pattern. a. j. kramer adequately talked about the impact of sequester -- eloquently talked about the impact of sequester on the justice system. in ohio, stephen boulter wrote on an alliance for justice watch

blog about why he fired himself rather than to sacrifice his staff lawyers to the sequester. as he wrote, quote, if the intention is to dismantle the gold standard of our nation's public defense system, our lawmakers are succeeding. in fact, the status of the entire justice system as the world's gold standard is at risk. when the courts and the entire judicial system are starved for funds, justice is weekend. but when that harsh reality is combined with a court system already reeling from the effects of political internship and analysts obstruction, we jeopardize not just the ability of courts to resolve disputes and dispense justice, but faith in the democratic system itself if we are to be a beacon for all

people all over the world who long for justice, the obstruction must in. thank you very much. spent thank you. spent can't imagine, my spot has been vacant for five years. i just retired but i took senior status five years ago which opened my spot to an appointment. so that is why i retired just in the last couple of months, but my spot has been opened because senior status for five years. >> sure, thank you very much. scott lilly is a senior fellow at the center for american progress. he's worked here in the house, known to all of us, as the director of the house appropriations committee. very important spot to be in. executive director of the joint

economic committee and former chief of staff of former congressman david obey you're welcome here again. >> thank you very much. and it's good to be here. i am not going to talk about the judiciary but i would like to associate myself with the remarks of the other panelists on a. i think the judiciary has really been hammered. the constitutional prohibition against reducing a judge's salary means that a big part of the workforce can't be touched through sequestration which means the rest of the workforce takes a disproportionate blow. i'm also not going to talk about the shut down with respect to the justice department, not because there aren't big problems there, even though only 50% of the workforce is furloughed right now. there is a lot of chaos been generated. but the problems from the shut down are quite different from the problems of sequestration. and i think that there are

implications for the justice department with respect to sequestration that are different from any other department in the government and need to be more clearly understood. so i'm going to focus on those today. the department of justice has a budget of about $24 billion. it has 124 employees. that's about 20% of the nondefense workforce of the federal government. so it's a huge piece of the pie. the sequestration in 2013 took about $123 billion out of that budget, which created a lot of the problems that we are hearing about -- >> $1.3 billion. it was one aspect that is not well understood. but it had a big impact on what happened at justice last year. there's something called the working capital fund and the is an authority that was granted to

the attorney general back in 1975 to allow him to take money out of the agencies within the department, move it into the working capital fund. and as result, he was able to take budget authority that had not been obligated, had lapsed, was just basically sitting ready to go back into the treasury. and he was able to move close to half a billion dollars into the department. that allow the department of justice to be able to avoid furloughs. that's the good news. it avoided furloughs in part because it had a complete freeze on all new hires, which was very problematic. and it also pretty dramatically cut back operations funds, which made up the other, those two things made up the other 800 million that justice had to do. what that means is, however,

that while most agencies and departments of the federal government will have basically the same amount of money to operate on under the 2014 sequestration level that they had in 2013. the justice department will have about 400-$500 million less. and i think that's going to create some surprising situations, some real chaos, and a lot of important programs. and i think the thing you have to remember about 2013 and why we got through as well as we did was that we had, we had a little wrinkle in the budget that isn't there. that rabbit can be pulled out of the hat again. and so we face some real difficulty. i would particularly urge people to look at the budget of the bureau prisons.

i think the bureau of prisons has been stretched beyond the limit with growing number of inmates every year come and a relatively static number of recent personnel to deal with the. all indications are there at the breaking limit in terms of being able to provide for the safety of both prison personnel and the inmates, and perhaps even the public at large. but i would like to focus mostly on the federal bureau of investigation. it's the largest agencies within the department here and i think some very unpleasant things are going to be happening there. their budget requests this year was for $8.2 billion. under sequestration they will give, continuing resolution rate $7.3 billion. after they miss the money around they will have to operate on basically $700 million less than they had.

61% of the bureau's budget is personnel. and the other 39% is operations. they're going to try to split that cut between the two. that means that they're going to have to continue with the freeze on personnel which, by next march, will mean three and a half thousand two people will be working for the fbi than dead a year and a half ago. -- then did a year and half ago. in addition, they will have to have eight-13 furlough days for each agent, each and ask of each employee of the federal bureau. and that means when you add that to all -- when you add that to what's already happened you're going to have a workforce that's about 13% smaller than it was a year ago.

that has real implications across the board. if you look at a range of activities from terrorism, and i think what happened in nairobi shows we still need to be mindful of that. expanding foreign intelligence threat to the united states, both governments and corporations, the expanded use of the internet for fraudulent purposes, the continuing problem with white-collar crime and particularly with corporate securities. gang violence, expansion of criminal syndicates around the world. all of these things are growing problems that the fbi has to do with, with a shrinking workforce. one agent recently stated in a publication made by the fbi agents association, the hiring freeze has prohibited our team from adding new agents to combat a significant surge in

investment fraud and mortgage modification fraught. resources are stretched. this past week for known fraudsters were advertising in classified ads for employees to expand their fraudulent schemes. however, with our lack of resources and now the additional cuts and furloughs we are not able to address these progressive -- progressing schemes. schemes. so that's what's happening with the lack of personal. the other big problem is there's going to have to be about $350 million cut out of operations resources. the space of the things like gasoline, automobiles, listening devices, payments to informers. that's going to be about an 18% cut in those resources which is going to greatly inhibit the ability of the fbi to do the job that we have given to them. thank you. >> at the very much. the legal to record for the

pennsylvania coalition against rape, diane moyer, who has worked tirelessly to ensure the federal legislation address civil, legal needs of victims of sexual assault, as was to ensure parity in funding for service providers and rape crisis programs. she's received numerous awards in this area, and appears almost regularly on pbs station. welcome. >> thank you, mr. chairman. but i think we could have ended this hearing with what your monthly said was why aren't we voting right now? and that's what i wish you were all rushing off to do. i'm a lawyer, but i probably won't sound like the other guy. i am at heart a victim advocate, and recently one of our programs

it was a six-year-old girl. she was tortured, raped and beaten for five hours. now, she's in counseling. what am i supposed to tell that little girl when she comes to the rape crisis center program for services? congress can't get along? we can't pass this year. i'm sorry, little girl. we just had the violence against women act fight, as mr. conyers well knows over these many years for some reason this seems to be an issue as well. and it was a hard-fought fight this time. and now we find ourselves in the inexplicable dolly ask, mr. bain, the pot is melting. we need to vote. because these programs need to be funded.

you all said that these programs for rape victims, for domestic violence that comes were important. 1300 rape crisis centers across this nation, and they may face shutdowns in a matter of weeks, if not months. our sisters in a domestic violence movement, our brothers are in the domestic violence but because believe me, violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and dating violence does not end because women want it to get it is because in and women wanted to. what kind of a message are we sending to victims when we say the organizations that we have told you my promise you we would be there 24 hours a day, three and 55 days a year is free and confidential, we are telling you we can't get along. we can't pass i see are. we can't agree amongst ourselves so you're just going to have wait to have your drama.

-- trauma. i don't want to be the one to tell that to a victim. i'd like for health and human services to have a hearing like this, because took some money, it's just as important programs as the department of justice programs, which by the way, does include victims of sexual assault. i'm always -- thank you very much. but please, i know the people here in this room get what i'm talking about. you have the handouts, ma and interns better, please go back to your members and say, pass this budget now. >> thank you very much. we're going to start off, and i think everyone, all aided you. the response was so quick and so thorough, but we want to get

straight to our questions and comments and we'll start off with jarret nadler from new york spent a century every single one of our witnesses have said that the sequestration to a great extent and the shutdown to a greater extent inhibits or destroyed our ability to provide justice, to provide constitutional rights, to pray the people, to protect the victims of domestic violence but to do everything but that just to grow and the court system is supposed to do. i have a lot of questions here, prepared by staff for most of which as for elaboration on that. how does this effected, et cetera, but you essentially covered that. what has one specific question. i'm not whether i should ask mr. silkenat or mr. saunders. in particular when we talk about defense of, providing defense

counsel, providing defense counsel in criminal trials. that's a constitutional right to both the sequestration and the shutdown have inhibited our ability to disappear in the shutdown we basically said that guidelines we have are that people who provide constitutional services, that that money continues. why isn't that continuing, given that defense counsel is a constitutionally required service? why is the shutdown not exempting debt as it is for other people in the government to provide constitutional necessary services? [inaudible] >> to also provide an answer, congressman, thank you for the question. we have been told that yes, federal public defender, federal

defender offices, it will be up to the head of the office who declare is essential but because the courts will continue to whatever extent they will due process criminal cases, that some of our office or all of our offices have been cut to the bone already will be deemed as such a butt head of the office because they cases can be processed by the court without defense counsel. so i think that most federal defender offices around the country will be deemed a central service as part of the court didn't agree with cases will be carried on. >> but nonetheless because sequestration there is simply not enough defense counsel to do the job? >> as we've already been cut and cut more, is not only not enough defense counsel, bush ran a complex cases will not be paid,

except somewhere down the road. we also don't have the resources, we have a large number of clients who do not speak english. so we need funds for interpreters. we need funds for experts and other investigation. and that has also been severely cut and hampered, the handling of cases. so it's not just -- it is people as well in the nonpayment of the cg lovers and it's also the lack of resources to properly represent someone of a crime. >> thank you. mr. kengle, you stated that 75% of the employees and the civil rights division have been furloughed. and you said, in all cases -- my notes say all cases are on hold, meaning maybe it was many cases on are on hold. attorneys are prohibited from working. what is the effect of this on

leading, go into effect taxes which may, in fact, be unconstitutional which the department of justice was challenging such as new voting laws increased states designed to inhibit, designed to suppress voting rights? >> well, that is just one of the big challenges after the shelby county decision that i had mentioned previously. that under section five of the voting rights act, discriminatory voting changes were prevented from going into effect, pending federal review and preclearance. now the department, together with private citizens or groups, have to be detecting those things. and so, having a day-to-day presence is especially

important, and once a discriminatory change goes into effect it can be more difficult to undo. and in some cases, the loss of the constitutional rights cannot be undone by a later judicial -- >> i'm focusing specifically in a number of states, north collide, texas, maybe others, challenges have been made to their new voter suppression laws, for some of those challenges should be resolved in trying to block the unconstitutional measures if any are found unconstitutional or illegal before the 2014th election. will this shutdown changed the inability to do that? >> potentially. potentially, yes. i think the scheduling of the cases is something that in the

texas case that's being and i'm? >> yes. they would be the question of whether of whether the case would go to trial or a decision, final decision on the merits but also whether there sufficient it information for the court to issue a preliminary injunction potentially, and you know, the extent of the information and the discovery that goes on in the case, you know, really has

an influence on whether the blanket can go forward and try to make that showing. >> thank you very much. my time has expired. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. nunn-lugar the distinguished gentleman from virginia, bobby scott. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. furgeson, did i understand that you were a judge started in 1994? >> yes, sir. , that's correct. >> then you were sitting as a judge during the last shutdown, 95 half and 96? >> yes or that's correct. >> can you give us a little taste of what the shutdown did to the courts in terms of working with juries, setting so cases as well as criminal cases, the availability of evidence, particularly expert witnesses? >> it had, again, a slowing effect on the ability of the courts to get cases to trial.

to call jurors and for trial. of course, criminal cases take precedent, so civil cases were delayed or postponed. >> about how much longer did it take to get to a jury trial, to a civil trial? >> my recollection where i was, it was months longer. sometimes even longer than that. it took us, again, quite a while to get past the effects. you have to understand that when this happens there's a lot of unproductive time that goes into clerks offices, everybody else to try to plan what's happening. so normal court operations take a backseat while clerks offices, probation, pretrial offices, while the courts are trying to figure out how to make the shutdown work.

it had a debilitating effect. the problem we have this time is there's a sequestration on top of the shutdown, and the sequestration took a very lean court operation, took $350 million out of that lean court operation, and as we continue to have devastating effects. i think the sequestration plus the shutdown today is going to be much more difficult than it was in the mid '90s. >> thank you. mr. kramer, can you say a word about how the furloughs and shutdowns affect on attorneys ability to get his work done, particularly when you're dealing with a deadline, sometimes you miss a deadline, supreme court

cases suggested in capital cases if a lawyer misses a deadline, that's just too bad. can you say a word about the ability to keep up with deadlines and do your work is? >> thank you very much, congressman scott. that is extreme difficult. the workload is still there. we, like the rest of the courts, have no control over our workload. it's was brought in by other people, the department of justice is it's a criminal case and private litigants as well as the united states. so it makes it extended difficult because the case is to guinea pig many times there are statutory deadlines to be met by the court, by the lawyers, and by the parties involved have to be met, and furlough is not an excuse for that. the number of cases did not decrease along with our for those. the number of days that aren't lawyers were working decrease in the thickly in the system, but the work had to be done. and, unfortunately, it does

leave open the possibly that a mistake is made, a deadline is missed because a person has not been at work, has been overwhelmed and missed something inadvertently with enormous consequences for the defendant of course. .. >> is there a rule against volunteering to work when you are on furlough? >> there is a rule against volunteering to work and as a

matter of fact, i know the department of justice attorneys who have on the furlough have had to turn in their blackberrys , they have to turn in their other equipment from work and it makes it extremely difficult if you are furloughed when the government is shut down to do any work to be the during the sequestration, we managed to avoid the worst effect of that but this is going to just magnify everything exponentially >> thank you. mr. scott the distinguished gentleman from carolina. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let me start by telling my good friend how good it is to see him. we go all the we back beyond my days in congress back to north carolina when he was in the

service organization there. i know how long he has been fighting this fight. and it's always great to see him still fighting me because i know that i feel better if he's still fighting the fight. i guess i want to focus more on of voting rights aspect of this and we read in the paper i guess in north carolina before the shutdown that the justice department had either announced or have filed a lawsuit in march carolina -- north carolina in the voter identification measures that our legislature had adopted.

was that case actually filed were just announced. >> yes, mr. watt, the doj did -- the doj did file the case. i just ran the dhaka it before i came over here. doj hasn't filed a motion to stay as they did in texas, but it was filed later and the state has filed its own motion to seek an expansion on the answering of the complaints. so doj, i think they probably feel less of an impending deadline. but if this goes on much longer than i would anticipate that they would file a similar motion. >> and as a practical matter if the shutdown continues, what

would be the practical impact of that on the ability to pursue the case as well as the texas case. >> azkaban at turney you know that the federal litigation of this type is a sequential and sort of orchestrated proceeding. there's a discovery that has to go out and inexpert discovery that is put under way as plaintiff doj will have the burden of put putting its own witness on the stand and the department has to get the underlining information for the experts to analyze and form the basis for their opinions and conclusions. and all of that has to -- or a large part of that has to come from the defendants themselves. there are the positions to be scheduled and documents to be

reviewed. it is a civil litigation and it can -- you know, it has to occur in a particular sequence if this would be affected so if it gets dragged past the election day where the challenge practice is in effect. >> judge ferguson it seems the court would have discretion to take all of that into account. a judge would have discretion to take all of that into account, what did not? but as a practical matter if the next election comes up and this case hasn't been disposed of one way or the other, when would that leave the state of north carolina in terms of in terms of how you would proceed.

>> i think unless the court felt it had adequate information to look at whether or not this was an unconstitutional practice, unless it felt like it had adequate information, it would have to let the election proceed if it felt like there was adequate information and this was an unconstitutional practice that could render a temporary injunction preventing the election from going forward. >> let me go back and approach this from the other end. one of the reasons that this lawsuit had to be filed as i understand it, a number of these practices that were adopted by the legislature were clearly retrogressive and under the preclearance provisions had we still have a preclearance

section that would have been stopped in the pre-clearance process without the expense of litigation. and i guess there are some people in north carolina legislature saying that it never would have passed the statute and the way that it was passed had there been a preclearance. is that your understanding? >> i think it's very fair to say that a lot of provisions in that statute would be very suspect and vulnerable if section 5 were still in place. if you look at the sequence under which the statute was adopted what happened is that there was a voter identification bill that was being considered them the supreme court issued its decision in the shelby county case and all of a sudden these other provisions were added to the bill once the legislature became aware of the

section 5 review blanka was going to be required for the bill. so i think the sequence supports your reading. >> thank the chairman for the time. bottomline being of course that and any one of these areas, there are practical, real-life implications for what we are doing, which is the benefit of building this record. i thank the chairman and yelled back. >> thank you, very much, mr. watt. you are familiar with those circumstances in your state and they are helpful to us understanding what can happen in any part of the country. i am pleased now to yield to the gentle lady from texas, sheila jackson lee. >> let me thank the chairman for this hearing.

the president spoke just a few minutes ago and indicated i think his lawyers would interpret both legal sense and common sense and he spoke very clearly to the american people and said that the unauthorized action of a contingent of the republican party specifically one might call that he party or the right wing is no way to run a country or to do the budgeting process, which in earlier discussions we noticed the parliamentary form of government where you engage in procedures to discuss how you would manage a budget and pass an appropriation. he offered to say that he would talk to anyone who wanted to discuss the running of the government after we opened up. as i heard today, we are not

only in a crisis, but our house is burning down as we speak. i want to pose questions about the element of justice and go first to the president of the american bar association. thank you for your advocacies dealing with mandatory sentences and crack cocaine. those efforts were on the issue of justice. i want to read you some numbers and want you to give me an assessment to date i know my time is short and i want to get to this moyer. right now in the justice department the civil litigation division has cut 950 attorneys 71%. criminal division, 250 attorneys. environment and natural resources, 350. tax evasion, 200. u.s. attorneys expected 4,000. another example, the executive office on the immigration courts

, people's lives are in the of this if you will find hundred 50. mr. president, what does that do to the issue of justice in this country? >> it closes it down. we have heard with the didier effects have been on the services, but the effect on the prosecution side have been equally by year. in my own state of new york my chief judge in the southern district has taken the dramatic step of granting the justice department's request for all the civil cases in new york. if the courts are not operating with this immigration courts, federal courts tall levels, then we don't have a justice system. everything depends on having a fully operating court system all across the country to resolve the disputes that our citizens of. it's charming individuals and that is why we need to fix it

now. >> would you say that we are near collapse as it relates to the federal government having a hand in the justice system? >> i hate to say the word collapse, but it's close to that. we've heard of the steps the courts are taking to get the system going despite the hurdles. but it is the remaining place that is what will happen. >> let me go to mr. saunders. thank you for your service and i want to ask three questions and maybe i will get it in my time frame. we always committed to saluting our veterans and in a matter of bipartisan love but isn't it ironic that you are dealing with veterans services which may be in very serious jeopardy in the dependants of veterans? i know homeless veterans and veterans who are in need of

getting the benefits corrected and we have a lot of problems with that. what you comment on that? and judge ferguson, if i could, you are in the eye of the storm and we wish we could bring you back. i cheer the texas delegation. we've been engaged in trying to get judges, and i will tell you it is more than a mountain to climb with the senate structure that we have. and i would like you to comment on that. but let me go to don if you would on the veterans, please. >> two very quick responses but heartfelt. it's pretty clear the fastest growing percentage of the homeless in the united states are returning veterans. that is simply a national tragedy. there is no other way to characterize it. in terms of the benefit system, the backlog i know the administration and the secretary had made many efforts to

streamline the process. but once again, i think that the sequestration even though it might exempt that with the shutdown is probably backing that up as well. but certainly the back wall and the benefits process is something again that cuts out the representation being available. >> i think the western district of texas and southern district of texas are the second and third busiest courts in america because they are both on the border. vacancies and those two districts are clearly a judicial emergency. and with the need to fill those vacancies is a dire let me also say that they deal very heavily with criminal cases. we are very grateful to the public defender for what they do. private attorneys to accept the critical appointments