>> their other horrible diseases. once make women more likely to contract aids. yet at the 2015 budget cuts it, down to 86.5 million. there is other money that is coming in from a 14% cut that is something that is

extraordinarily important. as far as a bullet goes, more for the record, i know five cdc people arrive and this is different. this is unprecedented and we have a lot of infectious bass diseases. doctor ben from washington dc, he's help to cure over 5000 kids in uganda and i have introduced a bill and we have asked you repeatedly look into it. we are talking about getting this involved and this is a situation of kids who are dying horrible deaths and i have seen the kids and i have met the

children and i had one of the neurosurgeons testify from africa. and that is part of the vision to grow the capacity of the resurgence in africa. >> i just want to thank you and i want to thank you for your leadership on all of these global health issues. we have set a tone for american leadership at this point tremendous results. the thank you goes to you for these results. on may 22 we will have part of this policy and we a have been designed to take the thousand days approach targeting pregnant

women in young children it can improve their nutritionals that is so that they are not stunted through the rest of their lives. in dozens of countries, countries themselves are creating the plan and making their own investments and then we match that. and we have a quantitative target for the number of kids and we will achieve the reduction country by country and it will be an integrated policy for a few the future program and our larger global health efforts. and it will be the operational plan that makes real plasters commitment i made on behalf of the obama administration of the g-8 summit in london. with nutrition specific investments over the next three years. with respect, we will provide a more detailed answer for the record. and i just want to know that under the obama and minute edition we have scaled up significantly the private sector to contributions from a number of key partners as well as their

contributions to the community training of health workers and deployment of health workers. and there's a lot of overlap in the countries of great need. i'm confident of our we have had to make the trade-offs in certain budget ones, investing in the systemic approach to survival of children, bringing these drug donations into an integrated supply chain will help us effectively achieve those goals and we will have more detailed discussion on that. we have been supporting the world health organization and the utes see in this effort and we have done to bring them as well as in the headquarters, providing protective equipment to front-line workers so that they are protected from disease themselves in providing emergency financials or if it is needed as well. it does have really dire potential and we will continue to work with it.

and i understand why pat untypical and part of the difficulty is that we have such a laserlike focus on community health and efforts to reduce this is because large-scale mortality and morbidity and we haven't had the resource flexibility given the extraordinarily tight budgets. is there something we can do to be helpful, i would like to make that commitment to you and i understand the data that you are citing and the commitment that you have shown. and i would like to thank you for that. >> would go to the general of new jersey, the ranking member of the subcommittee on the western hemisphere. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i would like to first associate myself with the words of my colleague has mentioned. what i do want to talk a little bit about, going forward in cuba

and elsewhere. >> well, maybe i can just three things. the first is, it is clear that this program, which is directed and mandated by congress and implemented within 30 tight direction, it is a part of our portfolio of activities and i do want to have a conversation with congress about how we are managing this in with this includes how we are executing the program and i note that in countries all around the world, standing up for democratic values and improved governance and anticorruption, and open

civil society access to information which is critical to achieving a broad range of goals. that being said, we are open to the dialogue that you are suggesting and i would like to

>> that is creating significant pressures and we have less overseas contingency in the fiscal year 2015 request. that is creating downward pressure. in that context we are doing our best to prioritize and we recognize how important that is.

i visited personally and met with the president with leaders there in the private sector and civil society. and we are embracing new partnerships. we launched a big effort with starbucks to reach 25,000 small-scale coffee farmers and to help to connect them to a high-value market. these are specific farmers in these affected communities in an effort to get the economy going. precisely in those rural areas where we know that this is important and we want to make sure it is sustained. we will do our best you know this is a difficult year budget wise overall. i always hope that congress can provide greater resources for america's foreign engagements around the world. i believe these investments are the frontline of our own security prosperity. >> at the time that we are

negotiating, it seems that we are cutting. i don't know if that sends the right message, but thank you, mr. chairman. >> enqueue. we will go now to mr. dana rohrabacher on emerging threats. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. mr. minister, could you tell us you're asking for $20 million for your budget this year. is that right? >> 20.1 billion. >> 20.1 billion. okay, how much of that is disaster assistance and how much of that is long-term country building a? >> well, sir, it depends on the accounts and one thing that we have tried to do is use disasters the instance of longer-term systemic developments on the philippines. we have the energy system and the water system back up and

running and we do that using a combination of the saucer funds and developmental assistance. but in general the humanitarian accounts are the international disaster assistance for peace and another of other accounts and they probably total may be 4 billion, three to 4 billion in total depending on which accounts. >> about 20% would be disaster assistance of what you're asking for in the budget. >> i would not state it that way, but we can come back and be precise about the answers. but yes, it is a portion of the $20 billion. >> let me just say that i believe that the american people are not stingy people and we have our own heart for people who are suffering anywhere in the world and certainly when people go through natural disasters or even disasters that are caused by human action, lending a helping hand to get

over that emergence he is certainly one thing that the american people would oppose, even though we are $500 billion in the red every year and the overall budget, we are spending 500 billion more. but for disaster assistance, that is under tenable. long-term country building eight, however, at a time when we are borrowing this money to have our own economy survive, it does not make as much sense to me if i would like to have a part of that. and i at least requesting

$882 million in aid for pakistan. so let me just note that pakistan is still holding and brutalizing the doctor who helped us identify and locate osama bin laden, who is responsible for this slaughtering 3000 americans and i consider his continued incarceration to be a hostile ask and i don't see how anyone else can think of it as anything else. but worse than that we have, apparently since 9/11, we have given pakistan over $25 billion

and of that, $17 billion have gone to pack his hands security services, which we know now have been in cahoots with terrorists who murder americans and even worse, perhaps, we have been providing these billions of dollars to pakistan security services and they are using billions of dollars of military equipment that we have been giving them in order to conduct a genocidal campaign against the people in pakistan as well. so how can we justify providing more aid for a country like pakistan that is using our aid in our military aid to murder in great number of people of these areas maxtor, let me come back to the budget.

the majority of the remainder is spent in child survival, hiv and aids and treatment for aids patients. including the be the future program. our education effort focuses on girls and getting girls basic education in the early years as well as water and getting water to people who otherwise suffer without. so for each of those areas we have strategies and goals as well as metrics and we measure outcomes and i believe that we can speak about the effectiveness both in terms of achieving the subject objectives and stability so that we live in a more peaceful world because of this effort. >> the only other thing is that we are borrowing the money from other people in order to achieve a very fine objective like that. so perhaps in the past we could afford to be number one towards other souls that are not in an

emergency situation, but we something some people out and we could be benevolent and think that borrowing the money is okay. so perhaps we have reached a now that it threatens our whole economy. so pardon me for interrupting. >> with respect to the usa program, it focuses on health, education, agriculture, a stabilization program that has built schools and communities and clinics as well as road infrastructure and each of those areas we put 3000 megawatts on the grid. we believe those efforts are building and helping to move communities towards a better perspective about how to engage in the world and giving those who otherwise wouldn't have basic opportunities as is our goal for all of our efforts around the world to succeed at having local capacity replace.

>> we are putting our money into those wonderful rules and they put their money into murdering their own people and helping terrorists kill american troops. achy so much. >> we go now to the ranking member on the subcommittee on the middle east. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you guys for being here today. i would like to thank my colleagues for the works that you have done to make this more efficient and transparent over the years as well as the transfer that has been done in promoting american interests around the world. the united states provides foreign aid not because we like one country over another but because we like security and global health and all of the things that have global impact on our own security and i commend you for your efforts. i would like to follow up on an exchange that i had lester with the assistant minister who is doing fantastic work.

the branding of usaid in syria, at the time we were seeing a stream of press reports. , we had no idea that the united states was the largest provider and there were flags of other countries on refugee camps tense and hardly any u.s. flags at all. so i understand the risks being inside syria places on aid workers. but i do understand that it is appropriate and we have been given a number of things like plastic sheeting and nutritional biscuits as well as a test into syria. i'm wondering if you can give us an update to let the syrian people know that we are there and that we are helping. >> i think we have tried to do our best to talk with the work that we are doing and we

appreciated for america's generosity and the results that they are achieving and we have tried to balance that with some of the very specific risks that some of our partners in particular, including doctors face because we know that they have been targeted by the regime. so with that in the few examples would be, as we are moving to providing these voucher and debit cards to refugee families that are registered in jordan and lebanon and turkey, those are branded and as i noted earlier, nancy lynn burgess sat with a group of women who said this represents our dignity and an environment where we have lost their homes and we have osterhaus and so we have lost or asked a ton of kids are not in school. so thank you to the american people. in other contexts.

>> how are they branded? >> they have a grandfather from the american people, which is part of our branding effort, which has been actually studied and is also quite effective and is sometimes represented in both locally which as well as her own. and so anytime we provide cash assistance or food items or nonfood items like the plastic sheeting, those fingerprinted and identified her as we have expanded over the last two years efforts to use podcasting and other tools to help people see what we are doing and also to kind of learn what the needs are so that we are both projecting an american image that is more effective from a public diplomacy perspective and gathering information and helps us improve our response. communities in need were changes in that context. so in general i think it is now recognized that america provides a lot of critically needed life-saving humanitarian assistance in syria and

certainly the communities that i have been with in lebanon and in turkey. >> i appreciate that. and i hope that the issue that we have heard about last time, that there are clearly displaced areas that are helping to a much lesser than the united states, that those now include american individuals as well. i want to commend the good work of the american schools and hospitals abroad program. which is helped american organizations maintain programs around the world. for the past few years demonstration is usually recommended a little around $50 million in the budget and congress has appropriated around $22 million. this leader 2013 budget for this program has been reduced again. and it would be helpful if you could just walk us through the reasoning for this continued production and what is a successful program at least my understanding. >> thank you and again, we really respect the american schools and hospitals abroad

effort. since 1961 we have provided almost a billion dollars in health and education assistance to more than 300 organizations and we continue to be a critical vehicle and we have host did their international conferences to we could two ago. we have reached more every year with this effort and we have had to make tough budget determinations especially because of the dire humanitarian consequences of what is happening around the world right now and the downward pressure that comes from both the budget agreement and the control levels and the efforts to make this as part of the report. so this is one of the tough trade-offs and we recognize how important this effort is and i think that these are important efforts. we just have had to make very

difficult decisions. this is a program that i respect and value and i think over time we will absolutely sustain. >> i appreciate the trade-offs that have to be made. and we consider the merits of this program relative to the relatively small investment that is being made and that analysis is important. >> please go ahead, mr. chairman. >> enqueue, we go to the gentleman from ohio, chairman of the committee in asia and the pacific. >> thank you, mr. chairman. as we consider to see government spending across the board, it is critical that we ensure that taxpayers are not being wasted on an affected corrupt

governments or any other organizations like that. so i have a few questions. in february i have had the opportunity to visit the philippines with other members of this committee in order to is us the devastation was caused by the recent typhoon. while there we learned that if you locater was used to track precisely where assistance is being delivered and by whom. it was indicated that these locators are being used in order to help reduce the overlap of financial aid. so how effective has the method bad and the typhoon hit areas and has this technology been used in other countries. and if so what are the cost benefits of implementing this kind of tracking method? >> thank you, sir.

i don't have the data to be to the cost benefit of that specific strategy. >> can you provide that? >> absolutely. one of the things we've done over the last two years is really work hard to improve coordination and our lead role with the u.n. and with a range of other situations as well and often it is including civilian and military actors as well. so this is one technology that we have used and we have used others as well to make sure that we are kind of swift and aggressive with how we respond to things so we know who is receiving aid and where the pockets of need are in the midst of a crisis. >> thank you, sir. you could provide that cost-benefit information, i would appreciate that. my next question is the asia pacific subcommittee, which i

had the honor to chair. we did quite a bit of work regarding cambodia last year in the run-up to elections, which is not surprisingly part of, and at the time i introduced legislation calling for more accountable foreign assistance for cambodia, that legislation stated that if the elections were not deemed free or fair, cambodia should be an eligible for direct u.s. assistance to support its military. and they should jointly reassess and reduce appropriate assistance for cambodia. the consolidated appropriations act of 2004 think teen restrictions due to its human rights situation, which has not improved. as we began the process of reassessing assistance and also, would you please describe what

the u.s. assistance in cambodia has actually achieved as well as which areas it has been least effective and how have the actions of this regime impacted u.s. aid in the assistance from other countries as well if you know. >> thank you, sir. on the asia specific situation in general, this has been part of the president's pivoting to the region. we have had, despite all of the difficult trade-offs that we have made, we have had modest increases in budgets through that region in aggregate for the asia pacific. with respect to cambodia in particular, the strategic direction we have taken and we appreciate the guidance that you have provided and it has been to increase the war for democracy programs for civil society in efforts to improve governance in the fiscal year 2013 request includes more than $12 million for governments and transparency

efforts. >> how much resistance do you get on that sort of assistance? >> you know, we support civil society based upon a set of principles that we believe is part of partnering with america and we should be engaging with all parts of society and not exclusively just the government. so these are open programs as we have discussed. and from time to time we get some type of comment. but nevertheless we have support for civil society is one of our or values around the world. i will say with respect to effectiveness the efforts have been in the past directly engage over 22,000 and young cambodians and indirectly reach tens of thousands more. and they do provide support for them to document what happens during elections to mobilize young people and stand up for values about open society.

we will continue to provide that support as well. >> thank you. my time is expired. >> thank you. we go to mr. davis of rhode island. >> enqueue for joining us today. i want to begin a compliment can you on your powerful and moving words at the national prayer breakfast. you are obviously not instructed to enter the stage and we thank you for that. and we thank you to you and your team for the work you are doing especially in the face of diminishing resources. we are also very proud to welcome you to rhode island and i want to thank you revisit to the producer with nutritional products and i'm so pleased you were able to see firsthand the innovation to treat and prevent malnutrition in creating good jobs and they are currently drawing up plans for a larger

facility that they hope can help them reach over 2 million children each year worldwide. and i know that they would welcome the return next year as well. i want to acknowledge also usaid's efforts to be part of these individuals i know the senior coordinator started a few weeks ago i look forward to a hearing about the great things that will be done going forward. as you know, this is an especially important issue as we have passed severely important laws that can have mythically hampered our efforts purchased the past week there were press reports of a police raid on the u.s. a id project and it is a critical component to create an aids free

generation worldwide. so i have three questions i would like to go through quickly and i will give you an opportunity to answer them. worse, talk a little bit about what usaid is doing including life-saving interventions and medications as other global health programs. second, in 2010 they launched a procurement to increase contract awards for small businesses and ngos to streamline these processes to provide more funds directly to make sure that the products they purchased or of the highest quality. can you talk about the progress that is emitted on these initiatives. finally, how does usaid work. ..

aids free generation if they are allowed to hamper the effort for our program beneficiaries to receive services in an environment that is safe, that is opened, that respects their dignity and understands that this is a critical point of access to critically needed and lifesaving health care. so we are currently undergoing

the review of all of our uganda assistance programs and how to best engage. we have made some adaptations already to programs based on particular organizations and their behavior with respect to all of this. i have talked to my counterparts in the u.k. and other european capitals so we have a coordinated response that carries more efforts, force as we talk through how we will do what the consequences consequences of this but our commitment is to make sure we are able to reach the lgbt community in uganda with basic services for health and hiv/aids and we are working to as secretary kerry has noted work to highlight how regressive and repressive this law is. with respect to small businesses and ngos i am proud to report that over four years we have nearly doubled our commitment to new partners and ngos in particular. the percentage of funds used to be 9%.

i think it came down to obey and we are hopeful for another a but i will knock on wood and not commit to that until scoring the scoring comes out this year. our teams have been and the reason we pursue this effort is we believe we should have diversified partners that all of our partner should have access to the opportunity to take this mission forward and small businesses and geo-civil society often can get at a lot of value at a very efficient price point so we want to engage in that and finally on ngos and gender-based violence, i was in eastern, a few months ago and the use of rape as a commonplace practice of conflict and war and that environment is just devastating to interact with.

to meet young girls and young boys who have been a part of this is just extraordinarily difficult. i'm very proud of our teams that have not just had targeted gender-based violence programs to reach survivors and to protect them and make sure they get fistula repair operations and other critically needed and specialized services and this is happening in difficult contacts but also to really look at the broad range of what we do on humanitarian efforts on hagrid cultural and health programs and ensure we are focusing on reaching girls protecting girls giving girls an opportunity because we know in many of the parts of the world doing that will change the character and sufficiency and prosperity of society over time and every bit of effort we can make which while by its definition is not enough is an important manifestation of america's values. >> thank you and i yield that

mr. chairman. >> we now go to the chairman is the committee on terrorists in nonproliferation and. >> thank you mr. chairman. it's good to see you again and thank you for what you're due. i want to talk about taxpayer money that is spent through the state department specifically than three usaid. when americans think of boring day they think of all the money that the state department spends but there is a state department budget and the foreign assistance money that goes to foreign countries but let's start with the state department and why so many including me people are frustrated about american money. the state department understand has an arts division that buys art for its embassies. this is a million-dollar stack of bricks in my opinion. i know nothing about art. the london embassy that taxpayers spend state department paid for it and we spend it on

yourself that the london embassy for million dollars. to me that's quite a bit of money. recently the state department has decided to purchase this camel and send it to islamabad and put it in the american embassy in islamabad. this is about $4,400,000 in the embassy the state department said said it could've been more but we got a discount. so we got the camel, the stack of rex. i understand that's not foreign assistance but that's money that goes to the state department and the little concerning that we would spend american money that way. if we want art in our embassies why don't we get schoolkids to paint pictures that we can put in all of our embassies throughout the world. i think schoolkids could do that and it could be better. so let's narrow it down to foreign assistance. recently the associated press has reported that the state

department cannot account for about $6 billion over period of years. some of that money is foreign assistance. some of it is not foreign assistance. but for the record i would like to put the "associated press" article into the record. >> without objection. >> i'm not sure where all the money came from but it's about $6 billion that the state department says well we just can't find it. which is a little concerning as well according to a report that the office of inspector general did in the state department and that frustrates me is a member of congress. it frustrates the citizens. we are talking about real money even for the federal government. which leads me to the comment i would like to get from you. accountability is to me very important. how we spend taxpayer money. representative connolly and myself have introduced

legislation, the foreign aid transparency and accountability at which basically says when we give foreign assistance we need to be able to measure if it's working or not working. programs that work let's maybe keep them. programs that are not working let's get rid of them and as you know many nongovernment organizations support the legislation, even organizations audited by the state department or by the support and audit is what i call of the foreign assistance. i personally think that would bring credibility on how we spend our money and maybe we shouldn't be buying art. i know that's not foreign assistance but you have commented in the past on the specific piece of legislation so from your point of view as the administrator of usaid talking

about specific foreign assistance, and talking about state department money, do you think if we eliminate the security portion of it and just evaluate it this time foreign assistance security that's a different issue. weigh in on that for me if you would and i have one other question. >> as we have discussed before and i very much appreciate your comments on the evaluation and monitoring. we have taken the precepts that underlie the legislation and actually implemented them so over the last four years we have put out a new valuation policy. we have trained 40 -- 460 of our staff. we have increased the number of evaluations that we do and publish every year from 73 to this last year to edit and 34 and the quality of those evaluations which we now track and measure has also gone up significantly consistent with their new policy. >> i'm running out of time

dr. subthree and i have questions i will submit for the record and since you always respond i appreciate that. one last question if i may mr. chairman i understand that we give foreign assistance to armenia and belarus. those two countries specifically voted against the united states in the u.n.. they agreed with basically the invasion in my opinion of the russians in the crimea. maybe we should reevaluate giving money to countries that support russian invasion. just a thought and i will submit the question to the chairman for the record for dr. shuck. >> we go now to dock your ami bera of california. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you dr. shah for your testimony. it's good to see you again and also thank you for your leadership and transitioning usaid from just being a donor organization to one that is a capacity building organization.

india is a good example of the country that we have built capacity and now they can actually donate and help develop countries in africa and other places. as has been mentioned before when we look at our overall budget we are spending less than 20% of the budget on foreign aid so we should keep that in perspective. we also know that these are remarkably important investments that not only extend the goodwill of the american people globally but also have dramatic impact on health and relief of human suffering. as a reflection of our values as americans. they simply want to focus in on the 8.1 billion usaid and state department allocate for the global health programs. in particular the 538 million in family planning and reproductive health. as you have already mentioned usaid has a major focus on

maternal and child health in 24 countries where more than 70% of the maternal child deaths occur. quoting another senator former senator or another former senator bill frist, he talked about family planning as being a key engine for global health achievements. he also noted that when women base their pregnancies -- space their pregnancies out in three years years by these volunteer planning they are more likely to survive residency in childbirth. their children are more than twice as likely to survive infancy and as doctors we know that pregnancy spacing is incredibly important. we also know that research has shown that addressing the current unmet needs for modern contraception if we are able to meet that need that we prevent 79,000 maternal deaths and over 1.1 million infant deaths.

from your perspective how is usaid insuring that we better support effective family planning tools to advance our shared goal in preventive child and maternal deaths? >> well thank you congressman. thank you for your leadership on these issues and global health in particular. we do have a significant proposed investment in family planning and voluntary family planning. this has been a part of opal health and foreign assistance legacy for now more than four decades and it has been extraordinarily successful in bringing down and taking update contraceptive prevalence rate in bringing down the fertility rate in country after country. one of the biggest successes in the program is most of the programs transition to country ownership management funding and implementation after the capacity is billed as you point out over years. president obama has been very

committed to this issue increasing budgets relative to the prior administration significantly and we have a very careful process to ensure that everything we do thought was a very letters of the law. i think they are three things i would highlight as you point out. one is this is one of the most effective ways to save women's lives during childbirth and the most cost-effective way to do that. the second is we don't achieve the end of preventable child death unless we make these investments. the third is the demographic shift that comes with ringing down child death in bringing up voluntary family planning together is what gives countries the capacity to be more stable ice from a population perspective and then to grow their economy. all of these things have been proven which is why we have engaged in this administration a partnership with the private sector with australia the u.k. and the bill and melinda gates foundation to get others to do more with us in genuine partnership. >> you are playing off of the

hearing that we had last week about empowering young girls and women and particularly on the education front. we know as we are prone to say in our own country domestically when women succeed society succeeds. i would like you and the remaining few seconds just to comment on some of the strategies that u.s. a.i.d. is engaging in. >> we put out a new women and gender policy a few years ago. we now really take an aggressive approach with the new gender coordinator coming on board. we have really restructured the way we do this work so we support the national action plan on women in peace and critically important in all of our major programs we try to measure what the benefits of our efforts are reaching women. the future program which works to reach 7 million households we measure the income improvements that come from better agricultural production going to

women and the reason that is important is they do most of the work. you know that a dollar of additional income for a woman in that context is far more effective getting kids into school in reducing child death rates and improving community development outcomes than at the same dollar goes to a male so by measuring and reporting those trends we have actually helped to lead this issue not just for our own foreign assistance but in the community of our partner country agencies. >> the a gentleman's has expired. the gentleman from illinois is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you for being here and thank you for serving our our country in a difficult capacity in a difficult time and world history i believe so i appreciate having you here. i want to touch on to different areas iraq and afghanistan. when america withdrew its forces roam iraq after 2011 i think usaid and the state department was left scrambling. i will say i've been critical of

the administration. if of the withdrawal from iraq was one of the biggest lenders in the deck aid in foreign-policy. that said you are left with a presence in which it had to figure out with no u.s. troops here how we would go forward. it seems like since that kind of opening day of the no u.s. military presence a.i.d. in the state has been scaling back its presence figure out the right size. what lessons have we learned in iraq is pled to afghanistan as we look at the post-2014 and what is the number one lesson you plan to apply to that? >> thank you. i think there are three and one is we have to review our programs continuously to ensure that they are sustainable given the political context and the underlying economics. second is we have to protect our people. we have to make sure we can get eyes on projects that we are using third-party monitors that we are using in some cases satellite data to look at crop

fields and other ways to track outcomes but our people need to be able to evaluate progress and also be safe. the third is that the cost of operations goes up. i would say with respect to iraq what i think we need to be focused on as we take down our presence in our investments which we have done we transition the responsibility of paying for programs to the iraqis. there has been an extraordinarily successful set of transitions where a major programs have been picked up and continued with iraqi local resources. i think in afghanistan we are implementing those lessons and we recognize that for the two to 3% of the cost of the overall war without was usaid's component investment we have 8 million kids in school and 3 million girls, we had the fastest reduction in child mortality maternal deaths the largest increase in human longevity anywhere in the world

over the last decade in the 2200 kilometers of road we have built out in the improvements in customs at the border posts. all of those sustaining those gains is critical to capturing the promise of peaceful and more secure afghanistan for the future so that is what our focus is. >> would like to say recently visited south waziristan in pakistan and was able to see some of usaid's projected terms of dams and road building. although there are huge problems in pakistan we know there are huge problems the pakistani government needs to address. when you bring economic prosperity to people and give them an opportunity to sell their fruits in goods they turn away from terrorism and turn away from extremism and turned towards peace. i think that is ultimately the key here. what is the current usaid footprint in iraq and your personnel presently able to go outside of the wired visit projects and what do they do in terms of security and stuff like that and how would that apply to

afghanistan as well? >> and iraq is diminishing and that is by design. the goal is transition the programs to look low investment ownership and we are in the pats do that successfully. in afghanistan is different because in afghanistan we have large-scale programs and investments. the fy15 budget calls for sustaining at a slightly reduced level of restored terms those investments and we really are working with the community of international partners according to something we call the tokyo usual accountability programs of the afghan makes the right choice is free and fair elections efforts to fight corruption efforts to replace foreign assistance with domestic revenues collected and transparently provided we will continue to work with the international community to make sure they have the resources to sustain these important gains. that's important for women and girls in afghanistan. that's important for community

community -- grimm amenities and part of the solidarity program that has been evaluated by harvard and m.i.t. and proven successful and support for continuing to build civil society and civilian capacity in the afghan government. we are encouraged by these efforts. we know it's been very tough in and our people in that context as you know take tremendous risks every day to carry out that mission. speak it in my travels i've seen a lot of what your organization does in terms of helping to rescue them -- rescue women and girls from situations that we could never ponder. again thank you for your hard work create i know we look at the budget only do that if very big way but i think the organization is a force multiplier. without mr. chairman issa back great. >> and almonds time has expired. the gentleman from the commonwealth of virginia mr. connolly's recognize. >> thank you and welcome mr. mr. shah. can you bring us up to date?

we asked questions last time we were here about the relationship of aid to the proliferation of other aid like entities in the united states government the millennium challenge the african aids initiative and so forth all of which seem to have the effect of diluting the centrality of a.i.d. sir lead development agency. that is of concern to a number of us on this committee a concern shared with you last time you were here. can you bring us up to date on how that has been coordinated and perhaps reassure us that doesn't in fact dilute the role of agency and u.s. government. >> thank you for your leadership in foreign assistance and how we project the values around the world. >> does that mean you are endorsing my age reform bill lacks. >> we have talked about this and i value the underlying concepts of that bill. i will say over the past

president obama started this administration issued a policy directive and said we would commit ourselves to rebuilding usaid to be the worlds for mayor development institution. time will test whether we have done that but i believe we are strongly on that path. we have rebuilt our policy. we claimed and to sign their budget. we take accountability for our decisions. we have shut down 34% of all of our programs around the world to create the space to invest in food security in child survival and education water and a more results oriented way and did all of that during a. of relative budget neutrality. we measure and monitor programs and we lead in forms including next week's developmental -- in mexico. our ideas that run civil society public or together to tackle really big challenges are

leading the sector in space so i felt confident that we have rebuilt usaid's capability including with your support the hiring of nearly 1100 new staff that has given us all kinds of new technical capacity deployed around the world. with respect to mcc and pat farr we work with close partnership and i feel that partnership is a lot better now than it was when i started. that is true whether we are working in liberia with fcc to figure out who does what and to get our timing and sequencing right. it's true whether we are assessing each other's programs and sharing information and it's true with pep art where we have a joint goal and to create an aids free generation and bring technology and science to the front lines of that fight. so usaid implements 60% of pepfar so we are doing our best in the constitutional constraints constraints that define and exist to ensure that

we operate as one team. we deliver one set of extraordinary results. we are clear about our leadership around the world and we project that this is an important way for america and the obama administration as it was for the bush and administration before to project leadership to protect the world's most formal blog. >> i appreciate that and it sounds like everythineverythin g is funny in the neighborhood that when you ask yourself what can go wrong mr. shah when you don't have clear organizational lines of responsibility may be you and your colleagues get along just fine and maybe the next to want and frankly from the united states government's point of view it seems to me it ought not to be up to only the relational capacity of those who hold these jobs. there ought to be clear lines of responsibility and an authority and who reports to whom. in some cases may be a dotted

line responsibility is what we'll have to settle for. i asked a year ago if you would work with us on the reform bill that her form and chairman and i have worked on. i haven't heard anything, not a word in a year and the intent of the legislation is to be helpful and to streamline and to remove the encrusted particles that it builds up in 50 years and it seems to me not an unreasonable proposition that we actually need a new and streamlined legislative framework moving forward that takes cognizance of what you are doing and the changes in the world. i re-invite you to please come and sit down with us and go over that legislation so that we can move forward together. >> the gentleman's time has expired. with the chairman allow mr. shah

to respond? >> let me just say i endorse the concept. we do need a new framework and i think enough has changed and how we all operate especially embracing science and technology and private partnership in the nation. the world out there is changed or medically. it used to be our agencies where the bulk of investment going in poor countries and now we and now we are the morty of investment so we are not structured to partner well with the private sector with other sources of local revenue and resources. we won't succeed in the mission which is to end extreme poverty and keep our country safe and secure into that and i will personally sit with you and i will be eager to do that. i know my colleagues at pepfar would be eager to have that conversation we are realistic about the timelines it takes to produce long-term outcomes on that aces. we value your leadership and i and my colleagues will speak with you about it. >> i very much appreciated i thank the gentleman.

>> dr. shah the request, your request for the office of transition initiatives has around a 17% increase. i have looked at ots web site and it states your mission is to quote help local partners advance peace and democracy in the priority of conflict country seizing critical wonders of opportunity oti works on the ground to provide fast flexible short-term assistance targeted at key transition needs. now if you go to the state department's relatively new bureau of conflicts and stabilization of operations, csa, it states and i quote that they offer rapid locally grounded conflict analysis and countries where massive violence

and instability looms. csa helps develop prioritized strategies to address higher risk. such a selection or transitions. csa quote move swiftly to mobilize resources and civilians response for conflict resolution and response. the state department's inspector general just last month issued from what i understand to be one of the most critical reports ever issued siting problems of mission management's accountability and more. ..

>> thank you, senator, i am happy to follow the range of programs. and we are helping to support and this includes assyrian oppositional council.

i'm sure that this firsthand in haiti come after the earthquake is a difficult situation all the time and they have worked hard to make sure that we are not duplicating that are coordinating our league. and is that going on an official basis? >> and we will be launching this and that would be a vehicle for doing that.

do they have any programs currently going on in russia. >> so no come out we don't currently run the programs in russia. our partners in the state department continue including a broad range of civil think by the in that context and i can't speak to the details about that. that usaid is not currently present their. >> all right, thank you, mr. chairman. >> a gentleman your back. and within pakistan i tend to

focus on the province as it is. and we have historically marginalized these areas impact of van and usaid has been a number of projects in the same province and i want to thank you for that effort and i want to push for more. >> i hope that -- well, please provide for the record a comprehensive list of your current projects either ongoing or completed over the last year. and please include and not a discussion of whether we can find women teachers to teach girls and there are enough qualified women teachers and afar area of this, especially if you can, with how we have dealt with the recent famine and drought there.

and it is marginalized with pakistan and the hindus are even more marginalized. according to human rights activists, the hindus they are and then elsewhere live in fear of forced conversion or being pushed off their land if they don't convert. is usaid cognizant of and sensitive to the unfitness and religious minorities of pakistan and the vulnerable populations, and we focus our effort for those populations? >> thank you, congressman. thank you for your support for our efforts in pakistan all around the world as well. i think that the program is a good example of what we can get done when we take a results oriented approach and a few years ago we restructured our

work there to focus in health and education and also powered. in education we noticed that we have built upon our target to ensure 750,000 kids, mostly girls, are learning to read early grades and will conduct a performance testing of those kids to ensure that that is the case. and we are following up with details and that includes these energies and we have supported more than 200 health care workers to provide these to 25,000 women across 14 districts and that has been one of our most effective ways to help reduce child deaths and promote maternal survival during childbirth. so i think that programs when well-run can be effective or that i'm not as aware of our specific effort with minority

communities. so i appreciate you raving mad and i will look into that eventually at the start come back you. >> i want to thank you for your responsiveness. i have been working on this for several years and to have an administrator that up-to-date, doing all of the good things and to have an administrator that knowledgeable is such a good result. so with the aid come i hope that you provide for the record the aid that is being spent for fiscal year 2014. particularly focusing on what has been done to reduce landline explosions and provide clean water to villages. we have seen the tragedy of in

syria and i know that eliot engel, ranking member, he is already focused on trying to reach those very vulnerable population. and obviously jordan and lebanon have absorbed the bulk of the international displaced persons. a lot have gone to armenia and i wonder whether we were providing aid through the government of armenia to handle the refugees that have gone there. so since my time is about to expire, i will ask you to respond to the record because i finally want to focus on the region of georgia. over the last 20 years we have provided over a billion and a half dollars of his us and to georgia and some of the poorest regions of georgia. some 28 of us have signed a

letter urging the with the u.s. assistance to georgia, at least a good percentage of that goes to this region. since my time has expired, i will go ahead for the record. >> a gentleman's time has expired, but you can respond to the record. so we will continue funding for the fiscal year 2015 funds and we can provide a more detailed response about the 10 specific programs that will be supported in that context. i would just like to note that in the fiscal 2013 budget the resources to support that effort are labeled in the eurasia regional accounts. so our team will follow to make sure that it is clear how we are going to deploy it to resources and the specific results and we have already achieved and expect to achieve this in particular, will which have been the areas of opus for that implementation.

we will just continue to work with your office area and thank you for raising those concerns and i hope we have been responsive in the context of the prior dialogue. >> the gentleman from florida is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. doctor khanna i appreciate you being here and you have impressive credentials i look forward to talking to you. you started at the end of 2009. is that correct? >> guest committee of the naming of seeing a lot of things and i'm sure you know a lot of different things that we can do and i commend you for streamlining the agency. when we go back home like you have heard many members talking about when we are kind of suffering a little bit, the beginning of january of 2013, the fiscal was going to end and then we had the sequestration and we have furloughs and then people were being laid off in my district. and towards the end of september and beginning of october, the government shutdown and it was over money and he and it

certainly wasn't from an excess of money. so we are in a tight budget constraint. when i see is the way we are spending this money and i understand the concept of creating good well and economic development. bringing these countries so hopefully they become our allies. but i see so many times that we do that and it's like the movie groundhog day. you story over and over. and we're not getting the results that we intended to do. so reading an article about the $1 billion a been to afghanistan and the special inspector general said that there's hundreds of millions of dollars are unaccountable and i'm accounted for. can you explain what happened to that we met because we talk about transparent the and accountability. but this is a recent thing but just happened. and we don't have that.

i want to hear your thoughts on what happened to that and how we can prevent it. >> let me just say that afghanistan in general. the usa component of the investment has been about two to 3% of the total cost of our global engagement in him. so for that two to 3%, we have helped to ensure up to 8 million kids go to school hooting many girls are then we have helped to make sure that 65% of the population has a thick access to health services and not comprehensive higher-order health care of vaccines and clean water until something like that. and that has led to the fastest and most sustained reduction in child deaths and maternal death and a huge increase in long cavity women's lives based upon those programs. we've helped out loud so many

kilometers of road. and we have seen trade relationships blossom across the pakistan afghan border and we have also improved and this is very important. their own collection of customs revenue transparently so that they can go back to the governments of the government can pay for more of their country's own needs themselves. and we have implemented a system that has allowed us to assess who is doing what and the insistence on tighter monitoring. we consisted with this review and took off the books products that we didn't think could sustain into the future where an american presence would be significantly diminished. so what we are left with, i believe, is a program that will

hopefully be able to sustain some of the gains that have been experienced on behalf of the afghan people. 60% voter turnout and higher than expected percentage of women voting. the afghan institutions have been supporting this for years in terms of conduct of the election and there is a lot to do with his success. >> is two to 3% helps our country greatly. and i appreciate your efforts to advocate supported it. >> time will tell how well that turned out. but again in my own community we have over 500 or perform except it takes because of money and we just met with someone with disabilities and they can't get the services they need because of a lack of money. so i guess i would like to say, please us know what we can do to

help you be more effect than an ocean coupled everyone more accountable so that when we do give money out to get the result that we we want to but we are not. your talking about another hundred million dollars loss and i would love to see this word go, or is it not that the way it is supposed her. so we can bring into this these kind of lost funds and i appreciate you being here. >> thank you. determine from north carolina is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, gentlemen. this is the last row here and i want to say thank you for your leadership. as well as many other staffers who have taken notes impatiently been behind everyone and thank you for your work as well. there are a number of people across the world that will never be able to tell you thank you. so on behalf of van, i want to say thank you.

as we start to look at priorities and that is really the subject of this hearing, there's a couple various things that are troubling to me so i don't want anything taken as not being appreciative of your work. we've had the executive director here and i am a huge fan see some of the work that he has done and truly some of the reforms that have been made to make sure that every dollar goes further. it appears that there's a little over $500 million tested for global climate change initiative within your agency. would you say that your agency is the best one to be implementing that? because it's not just her agent even a number of agent these throughout the federal government that has requested

money for global climate change initiatives. and yet when you look at the or principle of this, that doesn't seem to mind with your core mission. so can you address that? sure, and thank you. i would first passively follow up on this to the debate number. and we will follow up on that. but i do want to note that in this portfolio are some efforts are actually quite critical to be successful at any thing. one is the component to support a legal divorce station and we work with the consumer goods companies and make sure the supply chains they are supporting are not causing problems in indonesia in colombia. >> so how do you coordinate that with the other agencies? >> as an effort called the

tropical forest alliance and the white house is critical to bringing other agencies together and we present one consistent interface to the major companies that are part of the group public conservatism. >> was usual for that particular program? i'm not sure. >> my question is whenever you get a pot of money and there is more than one person managing a pot of money, it becomes very difficult to manage it. it is like giving your wife the same checkbook and never reconciling. you spend over the same checkbook and you never reconcile her in so how would we reconcile that the max remark so i think there are different component and responsibility. usaid takes responsibility for the tropical or is alliance for resilience effort and we measure and monitor the risk of disasters coming from droughts, for example, and then we can track what the climate impacts are on our communitarian for olio and we have a clean energy

program and we talk about some of these programs that help to provide off grid renewable energy. >> all of those are worthwhile. i don't want to go on record to say they are not. do we have people dying and we have people that are right frankly don't have food and yet we are seeing something and doing something that is way out in the future instead of meeting those individual needs right now. so is that a top priority or should that even be in the top 10 priorities? >> let me give you one example. we work to create this improvement in east africa so people can perform better in environments. >> said that comes under global chat on track climate change? >> i think so. we do a lot of attributions here

and so i think we have counted some of that in the context of this. >> i have a real concern that the core mission has creeped over into one that might be better suited for a different agent. and i'm running out of time. i'm but i'm very troubled with the amount of money that we give to the palestinian authorities and that money they are paying $46 million for, additional two terrorist as well as applying their effort as heroes. saying that terrorists are heroes and it's hard to justify when you go back home that we are giving money and yet they are taking part of their money is or terrace. so because they said the secretary of state needs to certify this and those things are not happening, i need you all to just and i appreciate the

patience of the chair please go had a response. >> i would like to point out that the mechanisms that lee's first word in that area are very precise area and we have a betting system that ensures we know who is receiving the information as well as the cash transfer that is actually done in payments that are so during israeli bank and structured carefully. so i will have are to follow up and i can assure you on those they have been carefully scrutinized and they require the secretary's clients as appropriate and we can show you exactly how money moves. >> thank you. determines time has expired and rethink the administrator for his time here and we look forward to following up on these critical issues. if there are no further business subjects to come forward, we are adjourned. >> thank you.

>> if you continue to send people here who have no real world experience or hardship, no real difficulty or successes and life outside of politics, then we will continue to get the same results. and that's that is why i think we need a constitutional convention. once you put this there, you eliminate a lot of the careers and the other thing is that will open up a lot more seats for a lot more people who actually have real world experience to be competitive. but that is only one part of what you can do to fix it. you're not going to fix it in washington today area i'm convinced of that and i will have spent 16 years in congress and i continue to be disappointed every day at the lack of foresight and judgment and long-term thinking as well as critical decision-making that occurs in congress. >> senator coburn on his career,

politics, and reasons for retirement from the senate. sunday night at 8:00 o'clock on c-span "q&a." >> up next, an update on the west virginia chemical spill that took place in january. this is 40 minutes. >> on wednesday we will take a look at a recent magazine article spurs series. today the cover story for national journal, the headline inside the piece, is the water safe? the contaminated water supply in the long wait for answers and west virginia. the writer at large for national journal traveled to charleston, west virginia. thank you for being here today to talk about your piece. let's just begin with reminding viewers what happened in charleston, west virginia. >> yes, on january 9, residents woke up to a strange snow all

around town. sort of a saccharine and licorice scent. and there are a lot of chemical plants all over the region. it sometimes known as the chemical valley. and no one really thought much of it at first. but by midday investigators were on site at this chemical storage tank farm and they were beginning to suspect something was really wrong. so by that evening the governor was on tv telling people not to drink the water. don't even it, don't do anything with the water. and suddenly these people are thrust into a situation which they were very am used to in the united states. where they didn't have access to their public undersupply for upwards of a week. >> what still? >> a chemical that is used in washing and what people discovered is that this was

something they knew very little about what this chemical dead or what the long-term health effects with you. they are one of 8000 chemicals in this country that we know next to nothing about. in this event sort of highlighted for people just how little event. >> might we not know much about this chemical? there is no law hiring do we really have to know about it. and it is sort of as a catchall law. if it wasn't going to be regulated by the fda, like food, pesticides, this is all of those kinds of chemicals. they had this thing called unreasonable risk and they determined that about 62,000 other chemical poses a risk. the end result is that we now have house in the thousands of chemicals that we talk about

everyday and there's a real possibility as there was in this case we know nothing about. we only have a few studies from the manufacturing of the chemical in this case. >> so this is what you write. under the 1970s the toxic substances control act, the epa must present evidence that poses health risks before it can request safety information from manufacturers. as a result the agency knows little about the thousands it is was regulated. please join us. >> this bill is in need of an update and it was passed in 1976 and so much has changed. we have so many chemicals come on the market. plenty of chemicals that we dealt with as well that have become ubiquitous now. and so this is a very new set of challenges in congress worked on

updating it in senator lautenberg was one who sponsored the bill and stored as stalled out after he died. so this is an opportunity to sort of re-examine and they didn't think that oppose reasonable risk because they never intended 300,000 people to have this leakage into their wallet or periods when this happened they were totally caught unaware and then oftentimes it falls upon the states to regulate. so west virginia didn't have those other structures in place to make sure something like this didn't happen. >> so the chemical spills, who is responsible for making sure that didn't happen? >> that's a good question. we think of environmental protection is the one that will interface on a daily basis are and where we had only been out to this once or twice in the proceeding of the couple of decades and maybe a neighbor

complained about the smell or to make sure you permit was up today, but they really want coming out and doing very serious inspection. and these tanks were six decades old and they were sort of getting a little rust here and a little older and that is what happened in this case. there was a wound in one of the tanks that allow 10,000 gallons of the chemical to leak. >> what does the manufacture of this chemicals they about the dangers of a? >> so at first after this happened they didn't want to release a bunch of information about what it was because they knew that they had a lot of mass confusion. if you look to have a chemical safety data submitted for people to look out and it only has a couple of hotties done on rats in the 1990s. and we know that it is hazardous to humans and potentially harmful if swallowed. there's a warning saying that

seek medical attention if you have ingested the in any way. but then the revealing thing to me is that for so many different possible health effects, long-term, no data is available under this. >> no data available. experiments have only been done on a and you write in your piece that a human experiment is taking place in west virginia? >> yes, that is the thing they said to me. i wasn't something i even thought of until i got there and i got around that i met with people and several said that we are lab rats in the largest chemical experiments in the country and they were unwillingly to did to this thing. it's interesting to hear all. i talked to one individual on my first trip to talk about the chemicals in the showers and

that is what really scared him. and he referred to it as like a gas chamber and i said, before this happened had you ever thought of your shower in the gas chamber, and he sort of looked at me and said no. of what's not. but this is the way that people have been. >> so more than six weeks later or people drinking the water? >> no, they are not. people are doing what they can and everyone has a different way to decide if they will drink it. it's been a couple of months. and in the case of the family that i focused on a lot of the friends and people that they talk to, they are not trusting the water in the families to me that three that they will never trust the water again. the information that they got was so confusing and conflicted. they just feel like they don't know they can only take that risk to not drink the water again. >> talk about the simile does every morning.

>> very interesting. the man of the family has an engineering background and he is sort of a creative type, someone that would survive in a situation like this and come up with his own way of doing things. so the family immediately got a giant water tank and they drive 20 miles away to fill up with a different water supply men every night after dinner he will haul buckets into his house and they will heat up 530 in the morning and some of this will be used for washing and doing the disher and cooking and the other buckets will go upstairs where they are showering and he has come up with a really good set of and he drops it into the bucket and then you touch it to oppose. so it's almost something resembling a real shower. he and his wife use a water jug they poke holes in their holding it over each other's heads and

sort of using the water that way. now i know that it has been a couple of months and they are eager to get back to their lives and experiment and see if the smell is there. but the situation has gone on for months. >> we have a line, five oh host: before we get to the first phone call, marian, is t >> we have a life or independents, republicans, and democrats as shown on your screen. this is the vienna state sort os interesting legalese to describe it. i think nowstarti >> they have started to describe it. the government funded some independent scientists. they felt like they didn't trust

what they were doing so they brought in independents and they are starting to release results now indicating that this level of the water is very low or nonexistent. so they have been responsive but throughout this crisis they have said they are not going to 100% say it is they. and that was also pretty unsettling for people. it was a response to a realization of the public that they didn't really know. >> to go to georgia where amy is watching us. hello. >> good morning. i just finished reading an article in the new yorker about this being a subject and i was left with the impression that the residents of west virginia have really voted for this in their policy and politics

undergo regulation and they are really protective of this industry so as of the is the government that is the issue where the people? >> okay, yes, that is a great question and a chicken and egg question as well west virginia has a new model called open for business and they are very protective of those in a race that they have provided jobs for them. and that news article was great. what was interesting is that they did a really good job explaining the dynamic of how the industry has worked to improve this sort of cultural debate and it is a cultural war are protecting industry means protecting our way of life and that is sort of how you explain the conservative culture that

you described in your comments. >> viewer says wasn't a chemical that spelled required to burn coal now and not a natural chemical in the coal mining process in a so is this chemical used today to watch cool? >> yes, i think it is. these are like very specialized industries and this is basically made to act as an eager media re-for other large investors in that area and they are sort of the middleman when they take these chemicals and it's more than and they buy them from companies and then they sell them to other industries. so fits into this very small niche that most of us just don't think about me or thinking about how to regulate the start. >> okay, if a person comes toxins in the water today face other penalties?

is this company being investigated? >> they are being investigated right now by a u.s. attorney in west virginia with and very quiet about what is happening other than to a that there is an investigational the way so we will have to wait and see what happens. >> is the fbi involved? >> yes, they have and this includes the company that has been in charge of cleaning it up. so will be very interesting to what becomes of this. but as of now, we kind of don't know. >> just as in spencer, west virginia. where is spencer in relation to charleston imax. >> in between parkersburg a little bit to the east. i'm about orting five minutes away from charles and. >> so were you impacted at all? >> no, i was not. >> okay, go ahead. >> okay. first of all the woman from

georgia hit the nail on the head. this kind of stuff has been going on in west virginia for years and years. and it's not just the chemicals. all along the river the coal industry is always reaching out to the water and there is no way that any fish caught in a river or stream could be part of this. and i think it was the second week after this happened, with we had freedom industries that filed for bankruptcy and we are done with it and we filed bankruptcy. and it's like you just said, west virginia is open for business and we are the dumping ground and the politicians here,

they whip it up and all of west virginia is creating jobs and the folks think nothing about it. when i go to charleston about three quarters of a day there, my eyes dart to burn. and so it is an atmosphere where i live is 45 minutes away by the time i leave charleston my eyes are watering. and so until the state is itself together, the will keep happening and happening. so you could write a whole book on some of the stuff that is going on here in west virginia and the local news hardly even covers. waste management was dumping some of this cleanup in a dump in a small town and the mayor

didn't even know about it and the people started calling the local news channels to complain about that's not. >> okay, jeff. i'm going to leave it there. >> i'm glad he mentioned that it's not just all sin. because actually he is right and people in other parts of west virginia have been dealing with the drinking water issues for a long time. and it's something that is really hard for the rest of us to imagine because that is a unique culture that they have their and i think if this had happened in northern virginia, we would see a very different sort of reaction nationally to this. >> what do the residents here from the federal government? what does this tell us about disaster readiness? to relief reached the people in

this way? >> the national guard to come in after obama declared a state of emergency to help distribute water, after which point the 80s we was concerned about what was a safe threshold for drinking water. because they didn't have a ton of this, this information, science had to make the most educated guess about what would be safe and they came up with one part per million and immediately a lot of scientists criticize it because they didn't think that that was a new threshold at all and this is all sorted exacerbated by the cdc. saying by the way come you may not want to talk about it at all and the public freaked out, saying if it's not good for pregnant women, why would it be good for my kids are for me or for my parents.

>> the centers for disease control and prevention. what do they base their recommendation on? >> okay, so they basically took the studies that were provided and they sort of ran it through a computation that scientists sometimes use to find the appropriate level of material in the water where you could drink it and not suffer the consequences. so it is a scientific calculation and again it is based upon a couple of studies that were done in the '90s which sort of serves to highlight how inexact sciences. >> independent car, you are on the air. >> hello, thank you. we were filming our upcoming serve in locally and the point

that i think is important to make is that this is 150 years of this and it was created during the civil war and given to the union to preserve the united states of america and in return people have been powerless and forced into this powerlessness. and the list goes on and on. and so protesters finally sought out. so people are afraid because they know that it has happened

and we are the canary is in a coal mine in the fact that this country does not even look at us in this way, is this happening in any other part in the world? if so it they would be outraged. >> she is one of many west virginians who refers to this as a colony. and he terms it as an appalachian fatalism. this idea that there is this powerlessness they are. one of the interesting things is the decline in voting there over the last of all decades which was huge which is not so good of eligible voters participating in elections. so there is, i think. i think that they would tell you

there is the sense this sense of fatalism where people feel like they can't stop this sort of stuff and not actually, in talking to a lot of people that i talk to in the story. i thought this family was really representative of the broader story and several of them spoke to me about this and how this was their wake-up call. >> what is the other option? to live in the industrial modern world? >> yes, that is exactly right. and for them on a much more basic level, are you just never going to interact with your water again in a imagine how difficult it is when the water goes out of your home for an hour. so stretched that indefinitely and even if they are not going to drink the water, are they not

going to breed? surveyor faced with all these impossible choices and the broader agenda we started with. because they relate to is going to buy property there? and how can you just pick everything up and leave. >> hasn't had an impact on the housing prices? >> it's a little too soon to day about the housing prices. most people say that they are taking a huge hit. but the big thing is the sort of restaurant industry and everyone had to close for a week. you had all of these restaurant employees and the kids have school canceled for a week and they can't access the water and you can serve them lunch and now they have lost a weeks worth of work and they are trying to feed their kids at 25% less income and it's had a huge impact on people. >> mark, can you tell us your

story? is on the independent wine. >> i will. the photograph that you showed with the river between, it is the u.s. were 19 which is my road near to my house and that is about three minutes away. you don't have to live that close, you just have to be nearby and he does have to be on the water supply of this particular plant. so let me just say this routine that is being pushed here and don't get me wrong, i watch c-span all the time. this land, this guy from spencer, ye you see this kind of thing go on all the time. come on, guys. i'm a military brat i've lived all over the world and i've

lived here the last 30 some years. yes, it is called a chemical valley and there are some dangers of that. but any state or township or anyplace that has chemicals being transported by water and automobiles there, they are asked as to the same dangers or did the story that needs to be told is that these were built that in the 40s, the '30s and 40s. and so this company declares bankruptcy, we need to find out where this money came from and let's make sure that people pay attention and we have the entrance to cover these kinds of things, bankruptcy or no bankruptcy. responsibility is stated early who is responsible for this and the government is responsible to

see the owner is responsible. and i'm telling you that if you ran a small motorboat, it would just take a few minutes and we should've picked up on that a long time ago to deal with that kind of thing. but hindsight is part of it. so i never drink a lot of water from the tap anyway. and we have been showering and washing with water. i question what is used in example and prior to this incident we are trying to make sure that this water is up to par before that. and we found some of these water

companies have called it here and it wasn't quite as pure as we had thought it was. and so this was a tragedy, no doubt. and the one thing that i learned him in a red you can't necessarily trust the supply and it's not just in this water plant. but you have to be careful. the water went so fast. >> how much water you have in your basement? >> well, probably about a good amount of eight to 10 cases.

and that didn't work all the water. the intention was to pass it out so people would have water to get by the first couple of days. and then we were having truckloads of water and everything. but i think there's a lot to be learned and we have been a democratic state for years and i think as far as voter participation goes, just wait until the next election and see. and it's not going to be just because of this water thing that because people are waking up with what we have seen in this state and you have the water issue and how it affects the economy.

>> i'm a mechanic and i work as an independent. >> okay, he raises a couple of good points. everyone in west virginia, they have been forced to think about it. they now have eight to 10 cases of water in the basement in their house. this includes any others that weren't prepared in this raises a bunch of questions. because not everything can be smelled in the water all over charleston. as for the issue of responsibility i think that it is the responsibility of the

company. especially a week after the spell. they went into bankruptcy and they then disappeared with evidence to people that they couldn't trust that company and therefore the government needed to step in and that was their broader critique. >> are they being tossed those at clinics? >> they were initially. people were getting dizziness, burning eyes, the skin burns or allegiance to look like sunburn. was not an issue of people out sunbathing.

so what is the long-term effects is what it is doing over the long-term and we just don't know. >> the cdc doesn't know, the epa doesn't know. >> to manufacture this and knowing no one does. >> gene in miami, go ahead. >> hello, good morning and thank you to c-span and for this wonderful show. it's a little bit of a reality check. and we were really floored by the florida department of environmental protection. and so that at least you have the choice to take a cold shower instead of a steam shower.

and i have another story about one individual be used to make agent orange. and i got into a conversation with him and he said that one of the things that would have been is that certain things are deemed very controlled because they are dangerous. but take that chemical and find a mile fuel to it. and then you get to the process of having that be back on the market again. and these are reality check and thank you so much. the point is that they are often not as drastic in terms of how many people are effective in

terms that they couldn't use their water for a week. though we have seen this in recent weeks and months as the environmental issue of its kind. and i don't know as much about that. but i do know that chemicals are something you have have amount of data on until people have the ability to prove that it is affecting him. >> is the water safe yet? a toxic chemical leak that contaminated the water supply in a long wait for answers in west virginia. we have a few minutes left. here's the independent caller in west virginia.

where are you in comparison to charleston? >> i am at the other end of the state. >> i was a wastewater operator about 25 years. some of the water was not inspected. this is nothing new in the state of west virginia. the problem is that everyone has went there and try to get the state to pass laws and i think west virginia was really surprised to find out these tanks were not being inspected. and stuff like that. they do some really stupid things in the problem of it is that the legislators don't care and they are being paid by the corporation to these companies

to get elected. they're all paid until you get the money out of politics, i don't care where it out it's out of what state it is. with north carolina. look at the spell that they have had. we have had anything in the state and they never do anything until after something happen. then they jump through all the hoops and the only thing they have done the sooner state legislature is talk about it. they have done nothing and for us to find out that our department of natural resources is not stuffing these tanks, going way all the way through estrogen and especially around st. mary's. you can look on the other side of the grammar and trent river with all of these chemicals and chemical plants. it's not just west virginia but

ohio. you have to stop the money coming from the corporations. >> you say that these plans are not inspected at all or how often are they in a fit? >> we found out that these particular things were not inspected in years and the date knows what it holds. you have to report this stuff and whatever chemicals that you have on hand. given the wastewater systems have to do it. the state of west virginia or anyone else in the epa, for them to say they knew nothing about this, they knew nothing about it because they closed their eyes to it. to. >> you have a response when asked in a they really were on y other about a neighbor complaining of smell. it seems crazy in retrospect.

>> that is right. they really weren't inspected. give her 60-year-old tanks. they were sitting a mile of the water intake site. so they really had no inspection. the legislator had passed a bill mandating inspection of the aboveground chemical storage tanks in the implementation of that is coming after this event. >> a democratic caller, mike, you are up next. >> this incident here is why i became a journalist. basically this kind of thing takes it up to a different level the cancer rate has gone up tremendously better.

there are so many worries. and some can no longer use the water. .. documentaries. will love to see local and other films about this. it seems to be does all the way things are in west virginia. everyone in that area are throwaway people more or less. spreading those things in west virginia. not just here but it is terrible it happens the wait seems to be in the extent in west virginia. host: tracy in salem, massachusetts. democratic caller. caller: i wanted to call in and say we lived in west virginia our entire lives.