targets transit investments, under the leadership of governor patrick we are making strides through implementation of a serious transportation reform agenda including actions to bring transit employee health care and retirement benefits in line with other state agencies. the implementation of sustainable internal productivity and cost containment measures and the deployment of new technologies to improve our overall customer experience. on top of this transportation reform agenda, our governor proposed the way forward transportation program this past year to provide much-needed, increased local funding for our statewide transportation, a self-help plan, if you will, including the mbta and statewide rail and transit including our 15 regional transit authorities. ..

and this increase is a line with inflation to ensure that the level of funding will keep pace overtime. the reason i say these things is we stressed this morning the absolute criticality of a strong federal partnership, predictability of funding and significantly increased federal funding to help, to earn the tide -- to turn the tide on this. i want to make a clear we appreciate and respect at the local level we need to step up and do our part as well. so that's what you see on the part of our commonwealth.

so what i'll say is that things have certainly gotten much better but we, and we're continuing but we are definitely in a great need of continued support by the federal government. on the side of, i want to take a little bit now, state of good repair, fix it first, commonsense must happen. but at the same time we cannot wind up only looking at the whole as i said, and that the donut. that means we also have to make new targeted investment for growth. for us the most notable of those projects at the federal level is our greenline expansion project which we are moving through the new start program at this point in time, and this project will, in fact, wind up for us filling what has been increasing transit link serving some of the most densely populated communities honestly and the united states.

right now those communities of somerville, medford and cambridge are only within, only 20% of those communities are within distance today of a rail station. when this project, and prayerfully, we will, in fact, hopefully receive money for this project. when that's over we would then be able to provide access for what is over 50% environmental justice communities within 75% of those communities will be within walking distance to rail, which will significantly wind up and decreasing their travel time by 65-75% and opening up a tremendous vista, if you will, of new jobs and economic development opportunities for a much-needed community. so at this point, i mean, we've done everything, asset management, thank you federal transit administration for all of their support. we believe that we are

struggling like everybody else but cutting edge in terms of asset management and moving in that direction. performance metrics, this is how we do our work. we are extremely transparent in terms of what we consider the metrics to be in working with the public. we've also a line what we're doing on the transportation side with critical public policy having to do with housing or affordability, cleaning, resilience. it's not just transit for transit sector truly about livability, overall economic competitiveness. so in conclusion as we experience record high and growing transit ridership aren't increasingly aging systems, reaffirming the federal commitment and partnership with the program that has both predictability and growth is essential to making real progress to turn the tide on the state of good repair back on.

this is one that states and localities cannot successfully tackle on our own. federal partnership and investment is key. so with deep respect, thank you very much. >> thank you. mr. thomas. >> thank you, chairman menendez and committee members but i appreciate the opportunity to be a today. my name is gary thomas and that the president executive director of dallas area rapid transit. with a different story. we are not over 100 years old. we are just over 30 years old now. when the voters of north texas voted to dedicate a 1% sales tax in 1983 to create a transportation agency, and today we operate bus, light rail, commuter route, their transit services in the north texas region covering 700 square mile area, 13 cities and about 2.4 million people, providing roughly 107 million trips annually. i would like to add we operate

the longest light rail system in north america. as you can see we've had very rapid growth. opening our first light rail segment in 1996 and operating 85 miles. later this year we will add an additional five miles as we go to dfw airport. will open that door and a half months early and under budget. so while our oldest segments are now only 18 years old, our growth in subsequent state of good repair is closely controlled by a 20 year financial plan that we strictly adhere to. this financial plan by policy ensures we balance our anticipated revenues against our operational expenses, our asset management and our capital expansion. even though we are relatively young we have over 15 years of asset management experience. one of the biggest key components of our program is a regularly scheduled asset condition assessment that we do on an annual basis. once every five years we have an outside consultant verify where

we are and determine if there's a course correction that needs to be made. the good news is that map-21 ensures a more unified approach industrywide regarding the development of transit asset management plans holding each of us accountable for managing our assets responsibly. we are supportive of along the fta to complete the process and industry time to government the new policy before making major policy revisions been a new transportation bill. the good news and perhaps the bad news is that we've created a large appetite for transportation choices in north texas. obviously, this relates to where people live, where they work, and we see that happening, surprisingly, as some people might find, in north texas every day. this appetite requires not only maintaining our existing system but the growth of the system to address the fourth largest and

one of the fastest growing metropolitan regions in the country. over 73% of our capital expenditures for the next 20 years is for sgr, leaving little for growth even though the demand is great. one of her key areas that need of addressing both sgr and growth is what's happening in our core area of our system. right now we have a hub and spoke system, and the hub is a single quarter through downtown dallas. because of the growth of the system and the service we're provide in the growth of that service the traffic conditions is deteriorating faster than we initially anticipated. this means we will start a fortified $9 capital program later this summer, replacing over the next couple of years the rail through this core area. additionally, we are planning a core capacity set a group of projects to relieve the pressure on this existing core. therefore, we are strong advocates initiated in map-21 to

be preserved in the next surface transportation bill. our core capacity project as envisioned provides capacity, flexibility while reducing maintenance needs in the future. so a lot of the new start a new projects go hand in hand with the core capacity as well as a good repair project. mr. chairman, in conclusion, in order to continue to provide transportation choices for north texas, we desperately need a long-term, fully funded transportation to providing stability and predictability for our agency, and more important for our customers. we applaud the sector termed a proposed highway bill and the funding levels integral america legislation. i would hope that this committee would consider both of those and considered the app the recommendation and merge these two together, resulting in a six-year fully funded bill for transit of $144 billion. of course, where public goes,

where public transit goes communities grow. on behalf of our board of directors, our 3700 employees, and our millions of customers, thank you for this opportunity today, and i would look forward to answering any questions. >> thank you all for your testimony. let me first start with maybe a couple of yes or knows if we can. dot is conditions and performance report tells us its recent investment levels are maintained by the year 2030 which is a 16 short years from now, the nation's transit system will be facing $142 billion in deferred system preservation. i underline preservation projects. given that federal funding makes up more than a corridor of the millions of innocent seems to work. just by simple your senators anyone on the panel believe the current funding levels are enough to help you achieve a state of good repair?

>> they are insufficient. >> dr. scott? >> woefully insufficient. >> no, sir. >> and its federal funding remains flat, does anyone believe, or is it a possibility, and deferred dr. scott your testimony about the commonwealth, but does anyone believe if we just remain flat that additional state and local funding alone can cover the costs of starting to pay down the backlog? >> know. i will say that last year the pennsylvania commonwealth passed a transportation bill. it was approximately half of what our needs are going forward to address our state of good repair. so no, the state actually did their share i think, but i think the federal government really needs to step up and do a deal. deal. >> same. not possible. >> we have a large local -- soda with her 1% sales tax which is

not nearly enough to be what we need to do, as we move forward. >> mr. casey, your testimony, particularly acute for large urban rail systems. you noted that the average age of septa's rail bridges is more than 80 years old. 103 bridges more than 100 years old. that's a pretty challenging reality for the system. what practical impact do these needs have on your writers on a day-to-day basis the? we were faced with shutting down a lot of our rail system prior to transportation bill out of harrisburg. from her practical standpoint you first issue slow orders, you slow down the track, and then you have weight restrictions and then eventually shutting down the structure. we have with the funding that we receive from the state, just prior to the funding from the state we had no bridge repairs in our capital program. now that we did get state funding i have 18 bridges that i

am addressing in the next five years. and just to give you the age of some of these bridges, i'll go through, there's 18 of them. the construction was 1891, 1900, 1891, 1900, 1896, 1916. a major bridge was built in 1895. it's significant because it expands nine to 20 feet, one out of 50 feet in the air off the ground. i can go on and on. i have bridges here 1876, 1854, 1834, 1834, 1906, et cetera. we have a very old system and a lot of this was built, you know, penn central, the railroad et cetera, that all went bankrupt. very little has been done to repair these, to replace the structures. we were in dire straits.

the state-funded give us the ability to help dig out of this hole, but as i said with over 103 bridges over 100 years old, you know, we can only address 18 of them in the next five years. >> dr. scott comes to something maybe not about bridges but you talk to you passengers also face challenges. what are some of those challenges? >> same types of things. slow orders, just an inability the -- >> for the record for those of us who may read and not know what a slow order is? >> slow order means there will be a period of on a stretch of the track was silly because of the condition it could be a bridge or tunnel segment or whatever. i've got to really instead of being able to take it at the speech that really could go from a design standpoint, we've got to let them. sometimes you're taking it to a crawl of five to 10 miles per hour which means you can imagine what it means in terms of the commute time for our riders. so ultimately you get to the point where you just have too

literally have to close down a segment. >> let me ask you, mr. thomas, your testimony notes that dark is considering applying to a new core capacity program within the new account. i think there's a perception that the program is used primarily by much older heavy rail systems. can you talk about the importance of a federal court capacity program and helping a new light rail system like a dart maintain a state of good repair? >> yes, sir. the court capacity program in our particular case would be incredibly vital and important as we contend to expand our system. we are at a point now where if we cut your system we can't get more trains through the single corridor because our downtown area. so before we can add anymore to our system, really as i tell a

lot of folks locally, if something happens on the corridor, a fire happened not too long ago, the fire department put their hoses across the corridor. they didn't appreciate the idea of us rolling trains across that firehose. we had to actually stop service during rush hour to make sure that it was dealt with. the core capacity program gives us the flexibility and it gives us the capacity to do that. what we are looking at, and is a combination of projects. understanding that on one hand we got to provide our local match. on the other hand, the core capacity program is limited in size right now. we are looking at how we can reduce the size of the project and may be combined projects to deal with the capacity issue in our downtown area. currently we are looking at replacing the rail in the downtown area because of the traffic, the amount of traffic that we put through downtown. the trains have already warned

through the hardened surface on the rail, and so is eating for the rest of the seal very, very quickly. we are at a point now where we've got replaced that, maintain our sgr, and at the same time to get how to expand the system to give us the flexibility and capacity through downtown we need. so that program ends up being critically important to us as we move forward. >> i have a couple of other key questions but i want to turn to my colleague, senator murphy -- senator merkley. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. and thank you to all of you. i want to ask just a limited question that has come from several of my transit districts, so given your experience on the ground i thought you might have some insight on this. this is essentially a situation where the discretionary grant has been changed to a funding formula in the bus and bus facility program under map-21. and the result of a couple of my

transit districts is there having a great difficulty acquiring replacement buses in the fashion that they did before, which means they're buying fewer, therefore not getting group but discounts, and they're keeping inefficient buses that need high levels of maintenance on routes for longer to the detriment of the agency. have you all experienced in your own respective realms in the challenge like this? invite any of you to answer. >> i haven't. >> i haven't, no. >> i have not at the key but we have 15 regional transit authorities which are much smaller systems and other keep a good overview from the product commonwealth level i can say that it is more challenging. >> thank you. >> from our perspective, again, i think it really relates to the site of the agency and the wherewithal in the forward

planning on the larger agencies come in many cases they can accommodate that and the smaller agencies quite frankly they can't. the trickle of money doesn't buy a bus. you can't save it up that quickly. >> thank you for sharing that directly from the frontline, and i'm listening with interest to the questions my colleagues are asking. i'm going to pass this on. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'd like to ask a question from a little different direction, and that is about the economic impact of our transportation infrastructure and the state of our transportation infrastructure. as i see it the economy turns on transportation infrastructure. this is how people get to work. is that businesses get their goods to market, and without a transportation infrastructure or a detained transportation infrastructure, the whole economy is in trouble.

dr. scott, you mentioned the green line extension and i'd like for just a minute to talk about that. this is an extension of the "t" that would go to one of those densely populated areas in the country. principally to somerville, massachusetts. i was very pleased to see that the president had included $100 million in his fy '15 budget in order to get this expansion of the "t" but what i'iwould like to do is start wih this question, dr. scott. can you talk about what the lack of basic infrastructure has done to the economy of somerville? then we will talk about the others. >> i would tell you that what extent is it stymied it, okay, from one standpoint just let me talk about the jobs portion of it. it's made it much more difficult for people within the somerville

area to be able to access good employment opportunities. that's both outside as well as a development within somerville, it's made it much would difficult for somerville to be able to attract employment and business opportunities. what i can say to you is that i just always look at things are what they are. so just with the knowledge that this project is coming, and were absolutely committed to this project, just look at the development that started to take place already. you go and, in fact, we're delighted that secretary foxx actually took a little time to come through to actually see the project at northpoint, okay. right there where we have 2.2 making in terms of development, office, residential, multi-use. at union square another 2 million square feet of development. this is the government that absolutely would not be taking place. they are both absolutely right there where the transit is

literally at the union square, the station is actually right there were the development is. and then you look at what's taken place at places like max pax. the growth and development and that is just been categorized if you will by the green line extension project, it's just absolutely unbelievable. >> i've walked through. >> i know spent i've seen it but it really is terrific. i was going to ask the other half, and that is, it's expensive up front to make these investments, and yet study after study shows that when we do we get enormous economic impact. we get a job growth. we get economic development. so i want to thank you. i want to thank you for your advocacy on behalf of the green line but also your advocacy on behalf of uphold transit system. enormously valuable. >> thank you, thank you. but just the american public

transportation association at the gross level has been work on this for every 1 dollar that once of going into transit, the multiplier, at least $4 the wind coming in terms of we call that broader impact. not just in terms of property value and residential development and all of that, but in looking at as well in terms of job creation. i see numbers, for every billion dollars we're looking at something like 32000-42000 jobs the wind at the being created. so it's the engine. i always laugh and tell people that it's not the infrastructure but it's the outcomes and the benefits that we have for people and communities. >> let me extend out over to dallas. i've been looking at the studies there as well. you have had amazing growth, gone from zero hard rail the miles and miles of a system in 30 years. i saw two recent studies by the

university of north texas that estimated that $4.7 billion is spent between 2002-2013 to expand light rail in the dallas system has already generated over $7.4 billion in regional economic activity, including tens of thousands of jobs that paid in excess of $3.3 billion in salaries, wages and benefits. you made the point also in one of these studies that more than 5.3 billion private capital transit oriented development projects have been built or are under construction, or are planned near the dart rail station. we are overtime but if mr. chairman will and told me for just a minute. i want to give you a chance,

mr. thomas, to talk about based on your experience capital investment and rail transit can stimulate economic growth and whether or not your experience in dallas can be replicated in other places around the country? >> it's been fascinating to watch, send it to come what's happened in dallas. when we first orde started we're focused on getting the rail on the line. there were other people who understood the value of that infrastructure, the value that they could take advantage of quite frankly and take advantage of it in a good way for our community. once that started, once people started realizing now as we look to other areas and the expansion, it certainly is to move people but it's also the air quality opportunities, the congestion mitigation opportunities. and then the economic development opportunities. there was a point in time when the economy got a little soft

and we had to start talking about the delay. we literally have buses of people showing up at our board meetings to explain to us what it was not a good idea to delay those projects. in large part it was due to not just for transportation by the economic development opportunities that were thought about and planned but as you mentioned a study that was recently completed by university of north texas was an update of a study that have been done previously. that was a very, very narrowly tailored study because it only looked at projects that were on the tax roll. so public funded projects, the big hospital expansion, the new civic center, those weren't even on that the list. so it's pretty incredible to see not only the projects, the economic development, but also the rental rates as part of the study and shows the increase of rental rates within a quarter-mile of the station. we are seeing it over and over, proving out the 41 benefits that

the apta study has also shown. >> mr. chairman, would ask that you would be all right to ask mr. casey to weigh in from septa prospective? >> absolutely. >> we have a very old system and the last number of years we have done a lot of expansion. what we're seeing is a lot of investors wanting to build facilities, whether it's homes, you know, apartment buildings, et cetera, around our stations and utilizing the benefits of transit for their development. it makes it much more attractive. but again there's a lot of interest in us expanding the system. there's one particular project we have a line one of our heaviest lines wants to extend into the former navy yard, which is attracting tom pernice from all over the place. so that is an expansion. i just want to say that more and more people in philadelphia are

opting for wanting to take public transit. in the last 15 years we've had a 50% growth on the regional rail system. 50%. the only thing limiting us from even further expansion is capacity. the number of vehicles that we have on the regional rail has increased a little bit but it's a minor. those cars are filled up but there's parking. before i was able to invest, there's a question in my mind you would see easily a double-digit growth in the utilization of those services. >> i want to thank you all very much. thank you for your indulgence, mr. chairman. i think dr. scott makes exactly the right point. transportation infrastructure is powerfully and the board but not at the end it's up to it is powerfully important because this is how we help our economy move forward. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. just one last set of questions for the panel.

if you are sitting here instead of there, and being able to write the new transit provisions of map-21 outside of the funding issue which i think we collectively agree on, is there anything that you would change or add that doesn't exist in the law today? >> as far as i'm concerned, i just think we just need to invest more money into the transit, and whether -- with issues from the older properties, but the smaller operators with the buses also have issues. the pot just really has to grow. it's been insufficient for us to maintain our current system. >> what i would stress is that, and we've begun to see the threats of it, but i think a focus in terms of performance and not rewarding bad behavior, i think that that's important. i think the connecting of the

dots of state of good repair with things like going for full funding grant agreements i think the more we do those kinds of things that are self reinforcing. i'm a person when people ask me what other things that keep you up at night, i'm going to come back to workforce. making sure that there is funding, intentional funding to help in terms of the workforce development. we do less than probably 25% in terms of training and development of our people. the kinds of things that keeping up at night, and i can assure you everyone of the operators that are here are the issues in terms of we are not going to have excellence in terms of the system without the people. i don't want to overdo this, but with 6200 employees full-time. i can tell you today there are 800 folks who have the time and the years to be able to retire, over 30% are in my specialist maintenance areas. when i tak think that number fie just enough it becomes 1800

people who will have the time in the years to be able to retire. 38% of them are in my specialist maintenance areas. signal, track, real controllers. you can replace a general manager faster than we're going to be up to do that. so to see some synergy between this bill and education, workforce and labor would be absolutely unbelievable. >> mr. thomas, any idea? >> yes, mr. chairman. it's flexibility. as we've seen this morning, each one of our cities is different to each city across the country is different. we all have different needs. we are all in different places, and so making sure that the bill going forward offers the flexibly to each of us to do what we need to do in our respective cities, to grow the economy, to provide opportunities for people. i think that's critical moving forward. forward. >> i appreciate those answers. mr. casey, let me ask you.

new jersey metropolitan rail discussion group, and one of the groups principles is that funding should be prioritized according to need and national importance. as to what extent do current federal programs adhere to the principle? what changes would you make in that line, if any? >> i think it's a recognition of the older systems and i think when you look at our system and our needs, and in philadelphia with the number of bridges, and i think people are shocked to learn that we are responsible for 350 bridges. and i think those infrastructure needs are different than, i hate to sayit, maybe dallas might not have those infrastructure needs. i think those issues have to be part of the discussions. one thing i didn't discuss is our substation, power substations that are dealing

with 19, 20 technology is out there, they been in operation since, in some cases, the 1920s, 1930s. and generally they are 40, 50 years past their useful life. those critical issues really need to be addressed as we go forward. it's not just one or two of them. i mean, i have 15 of those substations that really have to be addressed at one time. and if i have a failure on that, i just can't, there's, i can get the parts. if i fail, it fails and it's down for a long time. >> dr. scott, my understanding is that the mbta is working to develop an asset management plan for a number of years, well before any federal requirements recorded -- required in map-21. can you do the committee some details on how your asset management system works, and has it helps your agency better target its investments?

and by any chance is the fta asked you or talked about some best practices that can be considered a new federal asset management requirements? >> absolutely. first, i do want to fta has been right there at the table with us from the very beginning and we were some of the first pilot programs that they helped to fund in terms of being able to develop the databases and things of that nature. what i will tell you is that it is radically reshaped, i'll be quite candid in terms of how we that are capital planning. it's no longer -- i mean, this is really a robust involvement on the part of all the departments. you have to be very, very clear in terms of exactly what is the need, what is it going to wind up being the benefit that winds up coming from it. we are beginning to do, particularly as we bring our maintenance management systems, we are beginning to actually moving to being able to look at life cycles so we can change the

method in terms of how we do procurement. you have to have the data to be able to support being able to do much more in terms of lifecycle procurement. so it's no capital project comes to the table without there being a full look in terms of not only the aspect of safety, but innovation, resilience, accessibility and also the people implications and the long-term operate implications of those investments. none of that would've happened if we had not been much more thoughtfully and intentionally looking at both of the data as wasn't just a change in our decision lends, if you will, in terms of how we do resource allocation. it's a work in progress, but very, very different than what we had done in prior years. >> mr. thomas, you state that darts capital program has mechanism built into deal with funding volatility.

given years of trust fund instability, the uncertainty of the annual appropriations process on the transit new start account and even in the past the government shutdown, how has the ball to impacted darts ability to provide reliable transit service and how are you preparing for the possible concern as it relates to highway trust fund speak was certainly as i said, we have a 20 year financial plan and that 20 financial plan anticipates all the revenues and all the expenses over the next 20 years. we adjust that annually. we don't know exactly what's going to happen for the next 20 years, but we have several economists that work with us to help us identify what's going to happen from a local funding perspective. then we take a very conservative approach from the federal participation. however, if the trust fund is

not funded after the end of this calendar year, then it would require us to make significant cuts as we move forward. we are already in the process of looking at what that would be. what those of us impacts would be, and starting to determine where that list is and to communicate what that list might look like to our constituents in the north texas area. >> let me ask you one final question. i don't know if senator warner has any others, but i assume that in some shape or form you survey or deal with your ridership in trying to understand both the views of the operations of your present systems, the views that they may have about any potential expansion or curtailment. so if i were to ask you, switching my roll from this

position to sitting on the senate finance committee which has to find a way to fund this, would your ridership support an increase in a revenue source if it's dedicated to the transit system, what would you say? they would say. >> i would suggest. i think the bottom line on riders want improved service. they want more frequent service. they want better facilities, and in the region i think, you know, as happened in the state of pennsylvania, at least our region was almost unanimous in supporting a transportation bill. and i really think the riders and the citizens of that region would support the same. >> dr. scott? >> i absolutely believe that our public would. i think that there are two pieces to that. however, i think they will support but they have to be very

clear about what the outcomes are that are intended, and it's much more than ridership, okay. and the other is, and i just think that people want accountability, okay. and so the issue, the focus in terms of performance and transparency, but absolutely tied to outcomes that they can be real clear about what they want. and with really good transparency and accountability, i believe. and i have another one i would like to just, i forgot to say. and that is, you asked the question, i think at the federal level, to make sure that every dollar that we do, and you can force this, okay. is to make sure that we make smart investments. so for every dollar, let's make it a smart dollar and so that means that everything we can do in terms of technology, we need to be looking at and also what we can do in terms of resilience. along our corridor, anything

that we do, i tell this in the capital program, the water tables are changing. don't you bring me stuff that was built a hundred years ago. we have to be looking for the future. so those are, once again, gains in terms of outcomes that you can drive at the federal level to make every investment we make smart, and also that means that on the research and development and we are woefully behind in this country. and making investments because there have been slashes in our research and development, funding for transportation. and it is sorely sorely needed. >> the voters within our service area certainly have proven over the years that they are supportive of transit and dedicated funding. when they initially voted to approve a 1% sales tax in 1983 to create an organization that at the time they had no idea what they would do or what they would be capable of doing. and the subsequently have voted

by large margins to allow us to issue long-term debt and other opportunities. so yes, sir, i believe so. >> let me take advantage of one final, i promise this will be the final. you know, we have a debate in the committee as it relates gas tax dollars, which the advocates for highway and, of course, we're always going to have highways as part of our overall system, but they say, well, a gas tax dollar shouldn't be used for transit purpose because, you know, it's the drivers who pay the gas tax who ultimately are funding transit systems. increasing, however, we've been seeing general fund dollars be used in this respect for funding the overall transportation bill. it seems to me as we use more

general fund dollars, that argument is increasingly dissipated at the end of the day because general fund dollars are paid by everybody. any perspectives on that? i don't know how you deal with it in your respective states. >> i have two comments. the vast majority of our riders also drive automobiles, and they are paying the tax also. but the investment in transit -- >> so they take the transit, let's say, to go to work with and they have the car -- >> or the drive to the parking lot and then take the train coming and. but the vast majority of the people that still use it, benefit from transit from a congestion standpoint, getting riders off the road. it works hand-in-hand. and i can tell you, there is not sufficient highways within philadelphia currently to handle all the automobile traffic without transit, you know, it would be literally a parking

lot. so the transit benefits everyone, everyone in the region, whether it's the people riding transit of the people on the highways. >> have the own economic consequence. if you end up in a parking lot you're not getting your salesforce to sales. you're not getting workers to work on time. does anybody else want to comment on this last question? >> i would just say ditto. i don't get out of that old thinking, office silo and this is a row dollar and this is a transit dollar. we're all talking about mobility and access. nothing is free. everybody come and we're also integrated in interconnected that i just think that that is totally old thinking and we just need to step it up and move it up do not disregard it, but don't get stuck in it spent welcome we may have you visit some of our colleagues. you might want to think about how you answer them in that regard. mr. thomas? >> some of our strongest partners in north texas,

understanding is, as mr. cases it is collaborative opportunity spend absolutely. >> let me thank all of our witnesses for appearing before the committee. is very helpful in developing a record on some of the issue that will undoubtedly be debated among members. i think that's what makes a powerful case for strong investment to bring our transit system to a state of good repair. i will look forward to working with all of you and others to develop a transit title that can begin to meet some of these needs for the next surface transportation bill. this record is going to remain open until a week from today if any senators which is that questions for the record. we would ask our witnesses if you do receive questions to please, to respond to them as expeditiously as possible. they are helpful india with some of the questions that we have. and with that this hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations]

>> we've got more like programming coming your way today across the c-span networks. in about 30 minutes come and look at the korea and u.s. national security issues hosted by the institute for korea in american studies. that gets underway at 1:15 p.m. eastern live right here on c-span2. president obama expected to make personnel announcements later this afternoon. news reports indicating people that only in cancer to become the next housing secretary. the current secretary, shaun donovan because the next white house budget director. that investment takes place at 3:30 p.m. eastern live on c-span. tonight we started annual coverage of commencement speeches. will kick things off at 8 p.m. eastern with remarks from louisiana governor bobby jindal. other speakers tonight include john lewis.

is a brief look at his comments. >> when i was visiting a little town of troy, visiting montgomery, when i was visit birmingham, i saw signed that said white man, colored man, white women, colored women, white waiting, colored waiting. and i would ask my mother, askey father, my grandpa and my great grandparents why? that's the way it is but don't get in the way. don't get in trouble. but one day in 1955, 15 years old in the 10th grade, i heard about rosa parks. i heard the words of martin luther king, jr. on our radio. the words of dr. king. the action of rosa parks inspired me. some of my brothers and sisters and cousins and we went down to a little town of troy in 1956 to

the public library trying to check out some books, trying to get library cards. we were told by the library in that the libraries were for white only and not for colored. i never went back to that library. on july 5, 1998, for a book signing for my book "walking with the wind." and hundreds of blacks and whites citizens showed up, signed a lot of books, had a wonderful reception. the ending of the books i can the the reception, they gave me a library card. that may not sound that important, but when people tell me nothing has changed in mississippi, change in american south, i say come and walk in my shoes. >> watch all of this speech as well as for others tonight starting at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span.

the american enterprise institute held a forum thursday on the conservative domestic agenda of yg network's new book, "room to grow: conservative reforms for a limited government and a thriving middle class." take part in a panel discussion on the book and the concepts of solving america's problems. the forum exam solution to the rising cost of health care education, changing the tax code and creating jobs. we will show as much as we can and to the program on u.s.-korea in security gets underway at about 1:15 p.m. east turn. >> -- 1:15 p.m. eastern. we are not done yet. there's more to come. we have an all-star panel to discuss the things we been talking about the solution to poverty, solutions to building a better middle-class. the world of ideas and the happy war for the american people.

kate o'beirne will be running our next panel. and it is a great panel. route from the new times, you all effort from national affairs and ethics and policy center. ramesh ponnuru from right here. and teeth from ethics and public policy center. i will turn it over to kate o'beirne. [applause] [inaudible] -- is going to be talking specifically about the policy proposal in trenton, the agenda being unveiled today. with both contributors to the project and observers whose reactions we would like to hear.

i was very briefly introduce this panel because so many of them are well known to you. ramesh ponnuru is a senior editor at "national review," a fellow here at the aei, a visiting fellow, and a columnist for bloomberg. you fall within -- yuval levin, our coast for this morning's program, and a herzog fellow at the public policy center. a columnist, a contributor at cnn, and he has been advising yg network. and peter is also a fellow and a veteran of the past three republican administrations. i thought i would ask shortly the question of each one of our

panelists, and get the quick responses and then leave time for questions from the audience. let me begin with pete. pete, who are the middle-class and white an agenda focused on the middle-class? >> good morning, everybody. i'm happy to be with you. [inaudible] >> people to my right are going to do political philosophy and public policy. i'm going to do with semantics and polling. so deal directly with the question, there's a technical and practical answer. the technical answer, people making summer between 39,000-$118,000 a year. the practical definition is practically everybody is part of the middle-class but everybody in the audience probably

considers herself a number of middle-class. people appear to as well. 85% of americans consider themselves as part of the expanded definition of the middle-class which is lower, upper, or just simply middle-class. it's basically people who don't consider themselves rich and the don't consider themselves for. they can imagine their fortunes going either way. that's who we are dealing with. so why the focus, an agenda on the? because we're talking about a broad-based of the country, any successful political party or political movement needs to be seen as addressing their concerns. and, frankly, that's not happening right now. i just wanted to touch on several takeaways i had from some boards i did for this book, "room to grow." one is the dominant mood of the middle-class is inside and in

security and unease. they have reason to be that way. the last decade and a half they are working harder, more hours, but wages are stagnant and the cost of living, especially in health care and higher education has gone way up. so they're working harder and losing ground. secondly, the middle-class is increasingly pessimistic. two-thirds of americans think it's hard to reach the american dream than it was for the parents. and three quarters think it's going to be harder for their children and grandchildren to succeed. third, who does the middle-class hold responsible for the problems that they face? short answer is the political class. fully 62% put a lot of blame on congress. that's followed by banks and financial institutions and corporations. so congress is viewed institutionally as the biggest problem and biggest obstacle to what they want.

fourth, finally, the news is particularly bleak for the republican party. whether you like it or not the middle-class is more likely to say democrats rather than republicans into their interest. a few data points to 62% of those in the middle-class say the republican party favors the rich. 16% say that of the democratic party. 37% of those in the middle-class say the democratic party favors the middle-class. 26% say the republican party does. this one when asked which groups are helping the middle-class, 17% had a positive response to republican elected officials. 46% were negative. so the challenge for the gop is to explain how a conservative vision of government can speak to today's public concerns, and then to explain how that kind of vision would translate into concrete policies that would actually improve areas of our

life. that is what this book a test image. for some of those answers i will turn it over. >> let me ask yuval first. before we get too specific policy proposals, conservatives, yuval, agree the government is way too big and too intrusive. so what's the proper role in addressing the anxieties and ambitions of the middle-class? >> first of all, thank you, kate, and aei. i like the we put the question because i think thinking about in terms of the role of government helps us to avoid the trap of starting immediately with the size of government. so basically any up in an argument about how big the liberal welfare state could be which too often is where we've ended up. i think this book shows that a conservative governing vision, which would lead us to a leaner

and less costly and more effective government begins with a different idea of what government should be. not just of how much it cost. the core of the idea and the protestants i think is that beyond national defense and public safety, government exist to enable society to better address its problems. which is an important role but a supporting role, supportive of the role of families, communities, civil society and markets. government exists to strengthen the state to which the social institutions can thrive. the space between individual and the state and to help people benefit from what they do. that means government exists not to administer society, but to empower people to meet the challenges that they face. that's in contrast to a vision thathat is common on the left ts is government exist to manage the size, to run the key institutions, to organize the distribution of resources, to tell people what the place and

function ought to be. i think that's a very misguided idea of the role of government and one that doesn't work very well. it's more and more out of step with the realities of american life. it's the difference but when a bottom-up and the top down idea of american life. rather than, in a sense it's about a theoretical difference but it turns out it translates into some very practical differences about how to solve problems between left and right. conservatives tend to think that society can't really be run from the center. that no one has the knowledge to solve big social problems in a technical or technocratic way. experimentation, a violation and evolution. what that means is that to meet and meet or deal with a problem we first let people try different ways of addressing the we let consumers our citizens

choose. we keep the ones that work, drop the ones that do. it's fairly straightforward but it's the sort of process that is the way in which we make ongoing and criminal progress toward solving complicated problems. that's what government should help facilitate. that is often how markets work by creating a huge incentive for providers to try to let consumers choose them by letting failures fail your that's why conservatives often talk in terms of more market-oriented solutions. not always simple markets, but many times markets, but always this process of solving problems. this incremental way of dealing with complicated problems. that's not how government works. for the most part today. options are limited by a prescriptive bureaucratic way of thinking, the recipients of services don't make choices, and failures never go away. a lot of what people are calling the concert reform agenda is involves moving from the welfare

state model to more like a market-oriented model. so that the role of government would be to enable that kind of problem solving, to enable society to do what it does rather than to try to stand in for it. sometimes that means of setting goals and leading providers compete. sometimes it means creating the conditions for competition, making sure it's there. sometimes it means providing people with information about their options. sometimes it means helping the poor, full of people have the resources or market power to participate but it means rather than using government to substitute for the process, that the core of so much of what american society does well, and just running things from the center, instead using government to facilitate that process. which gives him people were option, more freedom, more control, a better chance to find actual solutions in an ongoing way. that's a lot of what conservatives have always had to offer. ..

is exactly the way of thinking much more modern and effective in the 21st century also the same time a more traditionally american idea at the relationship between the citizen and the state.

what should conservatives be saying about inequality and is this agenda relevant to that debate lacks >> i don't think they should say a lot about inequality. i think that would be a mistake that conservatives should change the subject to things that are more substantively and politically important than the inequality. on the political front of the thing that always struck me about this debate is with a a lw concern and a quality is if you ask people what issues concern them, we've done this for years and years, basically if the president had been talking for equal with you for two months straight, you can get the number of people that say it is their top concern all the way up to 4%.

and i'm guessing -- i strongly suspect that 4% is not composed mostly of people persuaded by conservative ideas. i think that the evidence suggests that people are a lot more concerned by the kind of cost-of-living issues that our book talks about. if you look at the evidence pete leaves oulays out in his intrody chapter in the book about why people feel as though they are running in place, it's because of the cost of high ticket items that are very important to the future and their families cost of raising kids and cost of higher education, the cost of healthcare. and these are all things we can tackle with conservative reforms. some of those reforms might reduce inequality and some might increase them and a bunch of them might leave it unchanged but i think what they will do is help create the conditions for the broad-based prosperity and

that's what we should think about is how people at the bottom of the income distribution and people let the middle of the income distribution are doing that i don't think it is to conceive of that in terms of economic inequality. and that in a way a political opportunity is opened up by the fact that the contemporary left is so obsessed about this question that is just not a pressing concern from most middle class americans. >> a final general? the conservatives hold a -- do you think conservatives can hope and agenda like this has the potential to shrink the government? first of all, thanks so much for including me. since i'm not one of the co-authors i am created to stand outside of the schism and reform right here and right now and that is what i am planning to

do. but i think -- i guess i will make a sort of semi-pessimistic case in the way that i think that in part this is an agenda that conservatives can look to in the hopes of substantially restring the growth of government, and that that in certain ways that's obviously a more pessimistic frame than how can we have an agenda to substantially reduce the ti thes into the scope of the government, but i think that it is a useful to recognize both as a political and as a policy matter that what's happened over the last 30 or 40 years in american life has threatened, hasn't threatened but has in fact shrunk the natural constituency for conservative ideas. the family breakdown and the sort of social crisis in lower middle class america that charles murray among others have

written eloquently about. all of those forces tend to undercut the building blocks of the conservatism and the institutions that you were talking about and the state of the individual, the church, the voluntary organization and so on and they've created a situation in which many americans feel in their own lives as though they need not just of th to the exisg government but a larger welfare state and that is the political challenge that house built with unsuccessfully in the last two presidential election cycles but going forward i it is a basic policy problem for the conservatives that limited government conservatism to persist in american life and while american exceptionalism which is bound up in a more limited conception of government then you see elsewhere in the westerthewestern world at the

exceptionalism to persist you need a broad base of support for those ideas come and to have a broad base of support in those ideas, you need to have a large percentage of americans that you like the system is working for them. there is an element of almost triaged and this is the pessimistic frame, but triaged him of the proposals are trying to tackle, particularly in terms of how they look in the struggles of the families raising children in the downwardly mobile working class men that are getting this attached to the work force and so on. there is a sense in which some of the proposals are targeted towards populations that would have been republican or conservative constituencies in the past are on the verge of becoming democratic and liberal constituencies for the foreseeable future. and this is i think sort of from a traditional conservative

perspective probably the most controversial part and i think that if you could hear some of that in the question that senator we received about the policies and so on because there is an element of the directing resources in the intertwined areas of work and family coming and i think that in a certain way the strongest case for doing that kind of resource direction for trying to help people who are working on helping the work paid in helping people that are trying to raise kids is if you don't do it you won't have a constituency for the conservatism at all in 20 years. so yes i suppose that is the sort of grim but hopefully realistic way of looking at it, which might be useful to think about. >> thank you. [laughter]

>> i'm going to give you double duty if i might. react to anything your fellow panelists have said and when it comes to the agenda i would love you to react specifically to the higher education reforms. do they hold the promise the kind of reforms talked about here to reduce the cost and maybe improve quality? >> i will start on a personal note to say i have a good fortune to finish college and i was able to finish without much debt because the whole time i was growing up, both of my parents worked two jobs and every moment i got to spend with the most precious because they were working two jobs and they did that because it was important to them that i could to college and my sisters went to college and he loves you might have heard that there is a

trillion dollars of student loan debt weighing down americans that's actually more than a credit card debt. is andrew kelly in the room of 8aei? he wrote about higher education in one of the things he points out is pretty disturbing. they finish college, they are earning more money because of it, fair enough, but actually here's the thing the college completion rates in the united states is not 100%. it is nowhere near close to th that. it is lower than half and so what that means is that there are a lot of people who are taking on this nonrecourse student loan debt and guess what, they aren't even getting a degree out of it.

i made a huge difference in my life that have enabled me to do this kind of job that would have been a complete fantasy in the perspective of my 16-year-old self that meant a lot for me but there's a huge number for whom t promises not actually being realized. when you look at the way that we talk about the higher education generally what do we hear about? we need more subsidies. we need parent plus loans. we need to create a situation in which parents can take as much debt as the colleges charge tuitiocollege's chargetuition wl be able to carry that so useful for the liquidity problem and lets parents that love their kids take out loans after lone after loan but frankly they can't necessarily afford to pay them and then their kids are not actually finishing because you have got higher education institutions that are failing young americans. and so that's the thing. there is one perspective that says look we've got this systemm

lets not mention that it's completely broken. let's let them get away with failing young people again. that is the way that we are the good guys. we are going to let you, the parents take on more debt and then we are the good guys but actually to think about what you've talked about before. what we need is a middle space between the individuals and federal government to create new institutions. we need to see the colleges and universities are accountable for students and parents. we need to see to it they have a reliable sense of getting a degree in sports management is not necessarily going to translate into the lucrative career that's going to get you out of your parents house when you are 25-years-old. if you don't have the connecti connection. they actually have bigger

barriers. they don't come from intact families like the ones i came from. so that is what andrew kelly writes about in this book. it's not about giving more money but it's about rethinking these institutions. so there's going to be a lot of people that stay with the reformed conservatives want to help her people. what is the difference in what liberals want to do? it's different is that we want these dynamic processes of rethinking these institutions. we want choice and accountability. we don't want to give more money into tax dollars to the failing institutions. we want to think about those people like my parents who are frankly facing a wage crunch and sometimes you're not the two parents that make these choices. that's what we've got to think about. this isn't -- this is about america the way that it is right now and people like me, children of immigrants.

that's what this book is about and you've got to read it. thank you. [applause] >> you note know to play osu was speaking a team of assassins stood out across the nation and assassin and a godfather style bloodbath. so bear in mind. >> pete, you have a reaction to some of what you have heard? both of the policy proposals are very important, and i commend them to you. but the thing that you heard of here that is important to the conservative movement is that isn't just about policies, it is a different cast of minds. it's not a radically different cast of mind but it's how you approach the process of these institutions and it's into thef creativity that is at the core

of what is animating a lot of what goes into the banner of the conform to these kind reform of conservatism. there is a move from the conservatism that is backward looking and simply saying stop and its forward looking and saying these are the conditions facing americans in the 21st century. and we've got these institutions and policies and programs many of which were created in the middle part of the last countries to that is an important sort of bedrock of what we are talking about but it is a cast of mind that will drive these reforms. >> ramesh? >> i want to make two points about the size and scope of government. the first is a political point which i think that you need to have some kind of a direct middle-class agenda if you are going to be in the position to

do some of the other kinds of government limiting steps that i assume everybody in the panel wants to do. it doesn't appear to cost them anything politically, but it's also i think not in itself a vote winner. you've got to build a bigger political majority of you are going to do that important work and i think some of the policies are helpful in creating that majority limiting the government. second, we shouldn't think about limiting the government purely in terms of the budget outlays which we sometimes do. say for example the idea is on healthcare and wasn't going to cut health care spending in fact go they are if they were implemented. if you get rid of things like the attacks on people who don't buy health insurance and the essential benefits plan and reform medicare so it's not plus prescriptive.

it doesn't affect how much money the government is spending and for a lot of others a real run at occupational licensure which is one of the most positive things to come out of this book and come out of this morning would be a huge difference in people's lives that comes from race training the reach of government. >> let me try to point to and answer the horrible pessimism. a jewish optimist is someone who says things can't get any worse than this. i will give it a shot. i do think part of what i disagree on that view is it takes for granted the sustainability of what we are doing now, which i do not think we can take for granted. it assumes there are people that are drifting towards the democratic coalition because they are comfortable with the benefits they are being offered and the like.

i think that it's something rather different and that neither party has done a great job at quite recognizing it, and that we have got a democratic party that always thinks it is 1965 and the republican party that thinks it is 1981 and i think that if they came to see where we actually are in america the republicans would find themselves looking at incredible opportunities and the democrats would find themselves looking at serious problems because america in the ways in the mids way is a transition in the way of life that is built around large consolidated the centralized institutions, big business, big labor, media, cultural institutions to the way of life that is built out of the smaller and dispersed and diverse institutions where we have a huge array of choices in every part of life and they get to define their options and enable improvements in the choices they make that happening everywhere except in government.

the approach we have in the government is becoming less and less useful to our society. this change is great promise and advantage and improvements in life and also offers great risk and great dangers that are economic and cultural and structural and affect people's lives in ways that can lead them to hope and fear. i think that the left today is stuck defending broken systems that are built for that kind way of thinking about american life where the big government and big labor and big business do manage the economy where it's possible to think that this kind of centralizing tendency of the welfare state are ways of addressing the social problems that we have come and be left again and again finds itself trying to build on failure and avoid changing to insist that this isn't happening. but the government can do is prevent this from happening rather than what the government

should do is allow people to benefit from the advantages and protect them from the risks. the right obviously has its own problem but going forward, our instinctive way of thinking about the role of government and about how to solve problems is very well-suited to the challenges that the country faces now and to the way of life that we are going into now so i don't think we should be thinking from the static place where the problem is liberals are winning, conservatives are losing. that isn't what is happening at all. both parties are exhausted at the same time so that this moment is not like the late 70s, and it's not like the late '80s. it's a much were complicated and challenging moment in a way. what we should offer the country and the voters think his piece number suggests either party offer them anything.

and the conservatives are in a much better position to offer americans a way of understanding where we are headed into making the most of it than liberals. we are going to bring the audience into the discussion now. the entire book is highly readable and well documented. the individual subject matters are terrific but i commend the opening chapter where he elaborates on the moment the conservatives are in getting his conviction that the liberal progressive agenda is spend. there is nothing new and we are seeing it discredited almost on a daily basis, most recently the department of veterans affairs. so he talks about what a moment it is for the conservatives. so i recommend the entire book to all of you but sure pay attention to the philosophical case. >> we are going to start with

questions. we will take two of them over here. >> thank you. i am an attorney and writer and i've always been involved in politics and one of the things i remember from my early -- [inaudible conversations] [inaudible]

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible] and also about icas. icas is not an agent of any government and icas is not an agent of any principles. we are fully funded and principled by voluntary contributions. as a way of declaring this

disclosure, i want all of you to be aware that we have no support from any government whatsoever, that this is the important distinction that we have. thank you.

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[inaudible conversations] good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. the proceeding well comments very shortly. the associate daniel is a human rights attorney in washington and daniel will introduce the first speaker. >> introduced the first featured speaker general seung jo jung.

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen it is my great poor village anvillage in the pleasue latest and beside the most distinguished gentleman in washington voluntarily but particularly to introduce the general seung jo jung does become a subject of north korea's military threat and the u.s. alliance today. general jeong is the chie chieff staff for korea and a retired iraq army general and liberty foundation distinguished fellow and a senior associate distinguished fellow for international fellows. from the iraq military academy in 76, general jeong began a career that expensive for 37 years. general jung served as commander four times for the first iraq

army to the second quarter and for the first infantry division. for the third army he was chief of operations as major general general jung is the director of cervical and psychological operations for the chief of stafchief ofstaff, director of y planning bureau for the natural events and the commanding general of the peace and reconstruction division and thee multinational division of northeast in iraq. general jung is decorated with the national security metals, the order of military merit medals and u.s. legion of merit. the general received his master of science degree in management from the graduate school and is a graduate of the iraq army staff college in the united states army war college. on the heels of north korea's recent ballistic missile testing threat of an impending nuclear test rising tensions in asia president obama's recent trip to south korea in reconsideration of the u.s. iraq transferred,

general jung will present on a timely. given general jung's extensive service it's safe to say general jung is positioned to comment on the north korean threat and the alliance. we look forward very much to your remarks. please, general jung. [applause] >> thank you daniel. your introduction seems to make me look much more than i am >> ladies and gentlemen, can you hear me? is it okay now? it is my great honor to have the

opportunity to speak in front of the distinguished audience here in the symbol of american democracy. iab -- i believe most audience in this room are in support of our alliance and i appreciate your great support on the alliance. more so i would like to extend my sincere gratitude to icas for hosting this wonderful event. i'm sure this will highly contribute to the betterment of our grateful nation's. if i may introduce myself a little more of course, daniel made a good introduction and i put on my service uniform january 7, 1972.

i was a soldier for 41 years 18 months and seven days. until i retired from my last position as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in octob october. it's already been more than half a year, but i still feel like a man in uniform although i am in civilian clothes now, ideally that's my speech today will have a tendency to be the protected data military officer. i would like to begin the situation investment of the neighboring countries surrounding the peninsula. the u.s., japan, people's republic of china and russia. afterwards i good for the north korean military threat and that is in the capability postures in

the response to these threats. the republic of korea particularly the response to the threat is based on the combined defense. therefore the situation in the united states is security policies and strategies that are critical to the security of the republic of korea. i believe that you understand the situation in the united states much better than i do. i believe the u.s. will put forth the majority towards the election in november. the key agendas like healthcare or immigration reforms will be closely monitored in a secure perspective. the u.s. will continue to pursue the rebalancing policy while it focuses on the issues and other

military issues. i think that the u.s. is trying in the cooperation among iraq, the u.s. and japan during this process. from a military perspective, the sequestration in the reduced budget the military would have to focus on maintaining high-priority military capabilities such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets and be strike assets, the reduction in the defense budget is hindered in the united states armed forces as a whole, but the u.s. is likely to overcome. in the midst we anticipate the amendments of the constitution and the three principles of transferring the defense as the

position of the goodies to strike the enemy bases. through the amendments to the us-japan guidelines, japan found its role in the region and it will bring some concerns from the neighboring countries. if japan continues on the wrong policies such as the distortion not only would it create difficulties in normalizing the relationship with china and korea but also the true mother of cooperation among iraq, u.s. and japan more difficult. from the military perspective, the most prominent phenomenon is the defense budget. japan actually facilitates the integrated capabilities to apply to mobile defense concept. they also make efforts to establish the operation system and obtain the maritime

responsibility and that is china. the people's republic of china are focused on the social stability is in the national consolidation with stable management of domestic political affairs. they intensify the economic reforms as well as anticorruption policies. china will work to the independence movements by the minority ethnic groups while expanding political dialogue and economic exchange with taiwan to save the national consolidation. in terms of foreign policy, china will have an influence in line with national power. they will try to raise their international status while maintaining a new relationship with the united states. the military cooperation with

russia in response to the rebalancing to the policy of the united states. china will increase the budget and military capability buildup and maintain only diplomatic efforts to the sovereignty over the south and east china sea. with regards to the development of a nuclear weapons, iraq and the u.s. will be about to cooperate with china. militarily, china has assumed that the u.s. is applied in a policy in response to this china will continue to modernize the armed forces. china already possesses an effort kerry are and they plan to hire more. also china will announce the ballistic missile capabilities in the space programs and

continue to arguments that military capabilities. in areas with north korea to have deployed the military forces and they have emphasizing areas with concerns about the possible innovation and the in s of crisis in north korea. finally, russia. russia seeks to obtain the events in ukraine. they want to raise their status in the international community. russia will try to prevent them from exercising influence over the old soviet union countries and also in regards to the situation in the iranian nuclear issue they are renouncing the efforts to curb the u.s. under the cooperation and the prc. through this effort the putin administration will seek the

environment for the stable domestic politics. militarily russia will continue to modernize while advancing the capabilities and russia will also use military power to maintain sovereignty and obtain. what i have said so far is the summary of my understanding for the situation for the poor neighboring countries surrounding the peninsula. now let me move on to the north korean military threat. the biggest concern for the security is not a military threat. in 1945 we had restored or independence with the fall of japan however the global superpowers of the time lack the knowledge in th of the region ad decide to separate event on the 38th parallel.

they neglected to set his data thebettertheater than one counta thousand years. this marked the beginning of the republic of korea has never been free from constant military threats from north korea. some of you may believe that the korean war was the beginning of the thread, but in actuality, north korea has been threatening long before. even after north korea has been violating and continues to threaten the security of iraq. putting it the past three months, north korea has been displaying serious threats and i would like to list some of the instances. north korea fired before rounds of artillery from the east coast

although the they feingold to te fired them into the sea this was clearly a demonstration. they filed to get the fired four rounds to the sea. on march 3, they fired to short-range ballistic missiles from the east coast and on mar march 7 they fired it is speculated to be their new artillery. they fired a 71 rounds of the short range missiles. on march 26 they fired the two brought the vessels into the sea. the broad missiles have a range of roughly 800 miles. it is northwest of the island's. they exercised 100 rounds per

thousand. the north koreans conducted emphasizing the same on apri april 29, again, while the south koreans were mourning the instance. they fired against conducting the very routine mission at the south. aside from these, north korea had the airspace at least twice for the reconnaissance. they also showed signs of the first nuclear test before the end. although they have not conducted it yet they maintain the posture to conduct a nuclear test and fire long-range missiles at any time.

it can be categorized into three. the first one is an all-out war against iraq, second as is provocation and the last is the probability of the stability within north korea. although north korea may have limitations i would ask that north korea has the capability, the willingness and the posture to conduct a war against the public of korea. some experts have said that north korea doesn't have the capability to conduct the war due to the economic gap. however i am skeptical of this. at this moment, north korea possesses 1.2 million active-duty troops. roughly 402 tanks, eight -- 8,000 artillery, 4,800 rocket

launchers and 800 -- i'm sorry, 825 aircraft. although their equipment is out of date, according to the dynasties population and the troops were less than 10% of the dynasties at the time. we cannot ignore the possibility that north korea may attempt to conduct an all-out war again. the next category of threat is provocation. the provocations have the highest likelihood compared to all-out war they have limited in terms of location, intensity. north korean provocation can be military or nonmilitary provocations. however it may not be meaningful

to distinguish the two. the major provocations in the recent years include march 2010 and november 2010, the third nuclear test the missile launches etc.. aside from these provocations, north korea may also conduct publications with artillery from a mature public in areas into the northwest islands with special operation forces through the land and the sea. the international community is interested in money in the west end testing of long-range missile launching however from the perspective the threat of artillery fire that can cause mass civilian casualties and the

tests that can cause societal confusion as well as others are also considered to be serious threats. in today's speech i would like to focus on the threat of the missile launches into the nuclear tests in the international community. i would like to begin with the missile threats. north korea began to develop the missiles in 1970. they achieve that a planet of 300 kilometers range with the 500-kilometer range in the 1980s. in the 1990s, north korea tested a launch and deploy a missile with a range of 1,300 kilometers. in the 2007, they deployed a missile with 300 kilometers and north korea had a direct strike

capability against not only any part of korea but also japan and other neighboring countries. north korea began to develop long-range ballistic missile test launches in 2006 with a range of over 6,700 kilometers. in 2009 and 2012 and 2013, they test launched the missile on the satellites. in addition, they are currently developing the range of over 10,000 kilometers. in this fight on north korea they recently completed the expansion from ten to 13 stories. they continued the activities

and the expansion of the sites are for the large ballistic missiles in the range and magnitude. next we have the threat of the north korea nuclear development. north korea began the complex in the 1960s. they focused on the refinement conversion and reprocessing firing in the 1980s they secured nuclear materials through the reprocessing after activating the megawatt reactor and utilizing this knowledge that they got through these activities they conducted the tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. there are 40 plutonium.

also in 2009, the north korean foreign minister spoke on the enrichment program. the uranium enrichment facilities in november 2010 say that north korea is pursuing a highly enriched uranium program. north korea showed significant activity related to the nuclear development and we continue to detect a nuclear reactor at the facilities since august of last year and we also invested that they are continuing there is uranium enrichment activities as well. in a nuclear test sites to conduct any time. if not, they determined that there is a political need for the nuclear test they are retained to conduct one. if they conduct the fourth

nuclear test or attempt to try something different from the previous three tests first of all they would try to show up there diversity of nuclear weapons by utilizing a highly enriched uranium to hold the nuclear test. in particular considering the fact that they possess only for the programs of plutonium north korea is in a dire need. north korea has 26 tons of uranium deposits in 4 million tons are rated. in the bomb testing there is activity that advocates the capability towards the international society. second, there's a possibility that north korea conducts a test that has boosted the technology

this way they may try to increase the intensity by two to five times compared to the third test. third, north korea may attempt simultaneous or continuous nuclear tests rather than a single nuclear test before. when we look at the test site it has several. they may conduct of war into nuclear test at the same time or conduct them in order to show their abundance of nuclear material into the city have diversified their capabilities. fourth in the nuclear tests we cannot exclude the possibility of long-range ballistic missiles. this way they will demonstrate the ability to reduce the rate as well as to directly target. if not a fourth nuclear test and achieve their desired goals of

threat would become enormous. if north korea secures nuclear capability that includes not only plutonium but also the highly enriched uranium than they would produce nuclear weapons. if they obtain nuclear shooting capabilities north korea would be able to produce highly highly intense like the high georgian bomb. they would possess a number of nuclear weapons and combined them. it would only not threaten korea but also would be a threat to the continental u.s.. even limited levels north korea will likely pursue strikes against the u.s.. they are trying to intimidate

the south with nuclear weapons at this moment come good i comee future north korea will try to blackmail the entire world. next i will speak about the threat north korea poses instability. instability. there is a diverse opinion on the scholars and experts however if the game stability occurs in north korea, this causes a significant threat of course it also contains the element of the great opportunity at the same time. there are several types of stability in north korea that we can anticipate. there may be a humanitarian crisis in the economic depression in this case large-scale detections may provide land and sea with a huge societal problem. if a large number of people become than it woul then it woue a big international issue.

the regime seems to be stable at this moment. however it is through we cannot conclude the power structure is completely stable. i is the leave that the struggle between the military as well as its members continue for the time being. if the situation is combined in the economic hardship, it may be in a large-scale humanitarian crisis and comfortable on the wmd. however we must be wear wary of thinking that they suffer and stability by basing our assessment on just for fun on that appear. in 1994, most experts believe that north korea would fall

within years. however, kim jong-il consolidated power in the regime. although kim jong ill is young he consolidates power and in a a democratic society of the congressional war, it is a highly unlikely. however, for the north korean citizens, we have never experienced the democratic change of power that seems to remain loyal to the kim family to the level by most. if stability may or may not occur in north korea but the alliance must remain vigilant for the possibility. ..

stronger than ever before. the alliance could be city was born through the mutual defense navy in 1953 after the korean war. however, the relationship goes back way farther than that. in may,