before a drug can get to market, you're going to have a population of 1000 or more people that you treating. and there are also other requirements that they can't have had an antibiotic within 24 hours of the start of the trial court one point it was three days i think until we got down to 24 hours. but you're going to have a limited population of people that have these diseases, and when they get to the hospital sick as heck, the first thing the doctors wanted to come the emergency room physician, is there going to hang some antibiotic, even if it's wrong. they're going to start treating them. and then all of a sudden they are not eligible and you have limited number of people. if you wait into the get 1000, it's too late.

so if you were kind of take that a step further and discuss that for us. >> thank you. faq, and mr. green, for your leadership on this. i think it's very important. yes, there is a range, and i think that's what people have to recognize. there's a range or develop programs that are needed for common conditions. outpatient pneumonia. with a lot of drugs out there that still work. they wanted larger development programs and that's true for many. but for these very rare, fortunately, resistant organisms that are multi-drug-resistant, there's almost nothing to treat them. these cases are occurring sporadically here and there, or in outbreaks in icu or something like that. and we have to think of different ways of evaluating new treatments. we can't just set up a trial and wait for all this happened and

expect we will be able to thousands of people. it is true, in fact, if we enrolled thousands of people it would be too late because this would be a terrible thing. so it is true that all antimicrobial drug development is very difficult. in addition, the economic problems there's a huge difficulty in doing trials, especially people who are really sick. you can't use a placebo obviously. you don't know because a problem with diagnostics, you may not know for a few days what organism they are infected with. there are all these technical problems that make it very difficult to antimicrobial drug evolvement. because we have a tremendous unmet medical need for people where there is no treatment available, typically what we do in that case is we have, we accept more uncertainty. that means novel trials but we

might do. >> dr. woodcock, speaking of that uncertainty, i think that's probably why, and i commend the president for this in his executive order of just yesterday, the $20 million award for the development of these point of care diagnostics, so someone could take a pill or a piece of tape or something and then put inside the mouth. it returns a certain color you know what you're dealing with right there and you don't have to just shotgun approach. you can immediately go right to what you need. i think it's a great thing. >> i agree. if we could bring diagnosis of infectious disease into the 21st century, we would have made a huge advance and et cetera to the department of therapy. so that is a good thing. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> now recognize the ranking of the full committee five minutes

for questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i also want to say to dr. woodcock, this may be the last thing were you under will have the opportunity to publicly talk like this, which you've done a wonderful job at the fda and your responses to questions from both sides of the aisle have been very, very thoughtful and i want to commend you for the work you have been doing, and thank you for it. i want to echo the comment by mr. pallone about the importance of strong labeling statement, or logo, in the context of the adapt act but i think it's essential that the drug they're a prominent statement describing the abbreviated pathway by which he came to market. without this requirement i'm not sure the whole thing would work. it would be much less likely to achieve its purpose of fostering and facilitating the development of critical new antibiotics for life-threatening resistance pathogens. additionally inappropriate or injudicious use of the drug

developed through this pathway could result of inpatients harm and a more rapid loss of the drug to antibiotic resistance. i just want to underscore that point. i want to ask you about a concept that you mention in your testimony designed to spur developer of new and vioxx, the linkage you guys understand it under this model the sale of antibiotics would be delinked from the returns on investment. after all, we don't want, we will more antibiotics sold. we want to make sure the antibiotics that are sold and use our antibiotics that will stay effective for as long as possible. some other funding mechanism would be created besides the traditional way of selling more drugs to ensure that a company was able to make a profit in developing and antibiotic. as others have noted, the usual pharmaceutical business model doesn't fit very well in the case of antibiotics.

we need to, however, recognize companies need to be able to recoup their investment and make a reasonable profit. others have raised the notion of a wildcard exclusivity. i mentioned in my opening statement i think it's a very dangerous idea. we want to force patients taking one for the drug to fund the development of another. so ensuring that antibiotic developers can still make a profit without linking that profit him which antibiotic is actually sold seems like a brilliant way to approach this problem. could you elaborate on this, tell us more of a what ideas you have along these lines? >> yes. because right now we have incentives that actually went against our objectives. our objectives are that we have the most judicious use of anti, new antimicrobials possible. and yet the incentive, if you've spent $509 developing the drugs, you need to recoup that amount

of money and a fair profit to stay in business and develop the next generation. -- 500 million to pick these incentives are sideways twitch of the or counterfeiting. and so that's what i did that has been raised that we mentioned to delink they need to have a large volume of antibiotic used which would then lead to faster development of resistance. so if that were delink from -- >> do you have ideas on how to do that? >> idea. as i said no, i would not go to financial matters and so -- >> we depend on you for everything. economic advice as well as pharmaceutical and food and other things that fda does. let me talk to you about another issue that's the stewardship. using antibiotics judiciously. it seems to me this is a critical component of any effort to address the antibiotic

resistance problem. the just released report on combating and about resistance rom the president's council of advisors and science and technology, or the pcast, stresses the importance of increasing the longevity of current antibiotics by improving the appropriate use of existing antibiotics. it discusses the need to look at both human use and animal use of existing antibiotics. we know there's a lot of inappropriate use of antibioti antibiotics, both on the human side and i believe on the animal side. the pcast report describes the important role the diagnostics can play in reducing this type of inappropriate use. do you agree that diagnostics are an important for stewardship efforts? you alluded to this earlier, but can you describe how the widespread adoption of diagnostic tests would help preserve existing antibiotics? is fda taking any actions to foster the development and use of these tests? >> i believe the diagnostics should be the foundation of

therapy. unfortunately, in the infectious disease space, often you were treating well before you know are before you ever know, like what the person has, and this is a fundamental problem. like, i believe the advent of rapid strep testing has really reduced the use of drugs for presumptive strep that often is cold, cold or something, upper respiratory infection of one sort of another. so if we could get more certainty into the diagnosis early, be able to reassure the doctor and the patient or family that no, this is not a dreaded bacterial infection that needs an antimicrobial, we could go a long way i think to lowering this inappropriate use. so diagnostics are the key. it's just we are far away from that right now. we need to stimulate the. >> are there more incentives for that? >> i believe so. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> now recognizes the vice chair

of the senate committee, dr. burgess, five minutes for questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and dr. woodcock. again, welcome to our humble little subcommittee. your last statement, diagnostic a sort of the key. this is not part of this discussion today but we have had discussions on diagnostics and i realize it's not your part of fda that is talking about increasing the regulation of testing particularly laboratory diagnostic test our laboratory to build the test rather, but that factors into the equation. we are talking about the length of time it takes drugs to get through the pipeline but if it also takes a testing long to get to the pipeline, we are actually making things harder on ourselves, are we not? >> yes. well, we have recently, for example, we've had a workshop with brookings on this issue as the codevelopment and technical issues, the final guidance that

we put out recently on codevelopment and companion diagnostics for life-threatening disease, we are going to go ahead and approve the drug even if the test isn't fully baked yet. there are technical problems in getting these tests developed right now. and i think all of us believe that for many of the genomic tests that next generation sequence is really going to be a key and really rapidly improve the situation. so i have great hope that that will be coming soon because we are facing it now. every disease, take cystic fibrosis works have appeared actually there are 150 different communications in that chain. each of which may translate to a slightly different phenotype and prognosis. and so we need ways to rapidly -- that goes with cancer and many other diseases. and so we really need to rapidly get to a point where we have a true standard that we can all agree upon so that we know what we are dealing with.

and yes, it will rapidly improve development of drugs for these series conditions >> i share your enthusiasm for genomic testing. i am somewhat more pessimistic because it seems like i could remember in my first term on this committee which was many, many years ago, talking that some of these same things. it's sort of like the jetsons flying carp or we are still waiting for that to happen. on the issue, and at hhs, you did your stood on antibiotic initiatives, the incentives for development of new drugs, vaccines and rapid diagnostics for bacterial diseases. talked about moving to neil in monetary terms for companies by a reduction of the time for political trials, correct? >> yes. >> is it really possible to move the needle on that? >> well, i believe more, say, the limited population, antibiotic use, that is

possible. that's only one factor. but if you have a very high bar getting on the market, then you're going to need much stronger incentive. i believe for those very rare, right now, resistant organisms we could have very small development programs and every societal agreement that having a treatment available for those is better than having nothing. and so we get every small development programs to we would like to have a signal than to say that clinical community, no, that this is different. no. this didn't have a huge develop the program. we are offering you a tool but you ought to be where and provide good stewardship of this tool. so we do believe in most cases it is possible, and even for, diseases, we have worked with new guidance to try to lower the cost of the development program so that the pipeline can be more

robust. >> on the issue of judicious use and stewardship, i hear the words that are sent on that, but when you talk by choosing things outside the area vindication, we tend to think of the world in which we live. but, i'm from texas, and just a little bit south of texas there's a different world where there's not a prescription required and people simply go to the pharmacy and say i need this and the pharmacist may direct them to a particular drug, or they may just simply come in with a recommendation for a family member and make a purchase. so it's obviously harder to control that jurisdiction in the united states where it's happening outside come is that not correct speak was totally agree. everywhere is right outside with modern air travel. so we're getting soldiers back from combat who have acquired

very direct system to infection. where travelers are coming back in the united states who have been -- there are many countries where antimicrobials are used very freely and may be available to consumers without intermediaries. >> it concerns me that we want to put the onus on doctor treating a patient in emergency room with a concerned family, we are putting all the onus on our position here when the greater wide world none of those constraints exist. i agree with labeling. i agree with making the indications well known. but i don't think we should ever try to put the federal government in a position of second-guessing a judgment of a physician. >> we agree with that. because treatment is empirical we can indicate, you know, you can indicate. it has to be suspected. you can't say you can't treat a

patient because this wasn't study and clinical trials if there's nothing else available. or clinicians must use their best judgment when a patient presents before them. we agree with it. we want to give the best direction and information to the clinician so they are aware of not only what clinical situation there dealing with but how much information pertains to the drug and what kind of drug it is. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i will yield back. >> chair thanks the gentleman and recognizes mr. green for five minutes. >> thank you, dr. woodcock, for being here this morning. it's always good have you before our subcommittee. i want to commend you and the fda on efforts to government gain act. i know of at least two drugs that have been released and also want to thank you for your expert on the adapt act legislation. i cosponsor with my colleague and good friend dr. gingrey. when dr. hamburg participate in last year's roundtable she spoke about the troubles of large clinical trial design in the

antibiotic space. can you tell me your thoughts on how the unique nature and incentives or even disincentives inherent to the antibiotic space can sometimes make large clinical trials prohibited? >> certainly. not only is it kind of hard to discover new antibiotics, it's expensive to develop them. and the reason is it's really what dr. burgess was talking about. you have a patient before you with pneumonia. naked of all sorts of different organisms causing the pneumonia. without rapid diagnostics you don't know what is causing the pneumonia. so when you're trying to do an investigational drug, you have a sick person in front of you, you have a prolonged consent process where you have to have informed consent. people are not going to wait often they go through that process to start a sick person on antibiotics. and so then have the issue their pretreated with different things until they get into the clinical trial and then you have all the

heterogeneity. and then you have existing therapy. it's not ethical to treat, to have the comparison group have no treatment usually, our right, and so you have to compare it. you do comparative trial against existing 30. those are particularly called non-are particularly called non-answer your exotic as you may not expect to be better than existing therapy. usoco want to show you are statistically as good as. so those challenges tend to increase the number of people enrolled, needed to be enrolled in a clinical trial for a very large number. they are hard to get. they are hard to enroll because clinicians often don't want to take sick people and go through all the paperwork to get them in a clinical trial. >> the adapt act envisions a scenario where more adaptive clinical trust may be used to help drug developers seeking to create the next antibiotic effective against drug-resistant bacteria. could you tell me our thoughts

on how the pathway laid out in the adapt act may benefit drug companies in pursuit of these new and novel antibiotics? >> yes. we envision that you can trade off like a medical need, and we do this in many cases. so if you have a tremendous medical need, people are going to die quickly, and yet nothing to treat them with, then you will accept a lot of uncertainty about the estimates around safety and effectiveness in exchange for something that may work for the nation. that means you can have shorter, very small development programs if they need is huge. on the other hand, if we're talking about another drug for pneumonia, we are not talking about that. we are talking about resistant organisms where there's really very little. we think there are multiple development programs that could be done, depending on this level of need. in some cases you may only have 10 infections in the united states a year of this certain

organism. in other cases you may have hundreds. you could get a more robust program but then you're going to be exposing more people when you approved the drug because there are hundreds of peoples, maybe thousands out there who have the condition. you would basically match the development program and the medical need together and put that together. but then we would like to have a very strong signal or symbol or whatever, not a fearful signal or whatever, but informative said into the coalition that the drug had gone through this kind of develop and pathway so they would understand that. >> thank you. i hope, you know, with this entity and we will be able to move the of that act across the line in the future, in the coming weeks and months i expect to continue our dialogue with interested parties and stakeholders including our second debate on ways to strengthen this proposal and complete the next and fighting our public health crisis. i want to thank you and your

stuff for hours spent working with the office of during the august recess. i know we can continue that effort because this is important. again, thank you for being here and i yield back my time. >> and i thank you for your leadership. >> the chair thanks the gentleman and a recognizes the gentleman from new jersey mr. lance, for five minutes of questions. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. good morning to you, dr. woodcock. as members of the committee we have heard firsthand the urgent need for greater incentives, to encourage new drug and diagnostic development in the antibiotic space. some of the witnesses on the second panel has recommended a wide range of incentives that would encourage greater development. do you believe that incentives we identify in the antibiotic space might also benefit other areas of unmet needs, such as rare diseases? >> well, as i said earlier i believe there's a trade off

between vincent -- the incentives you offer. there's always some trade off there, and the our various orphan diseases for which there are many, for which no development is occurring. so i think you have to determine whether those trade-offs, economic trade-offs, and i'm not qualified to say what is the right course. i think that's the position that congress makes those decisions but however i can tell you that antimicrobial development is urgent and is a public health issue. the orphan drugs those people are suffering from those have a tremendous need for their these to develop, be developed, and many, many are not being developed. we are doing some things such as what with the national organization for rare diseases to get better natural history studies that would incentivize develop and and make it easier to understand what is the course

of this orphan disease, so we understand what's needed to study. however, there are still major financial obstacles. >> thank you. as you know i chair the rare disease caucus on the republican side and i have in my office virtually every week parents of children who suffer from rare diseases where there are no medicines at all. as a society we have to do a better job. i've read the testimony of those on the second panel, and i hope we can move forward. you say you may not be qualified but i think you are one of the great experts in the country on all of these issues and we look forward to working with you in that area. yesterday the president announced an executive order on a five year plan to combat antibiotic resistance. what role, dr. woodcock, with the fda play in helping to facilitate the president order? >> yes. well, we've been working with the planning group on this, and

the fda has a wide range of responsibilities. everything from the animal health and those issues, surveillance activities which are done of antimicrobial resistance which is primarily cdc lead, but fda for example, the norm system which is mentioned in those reports which monitors the antimicrobial resistant organisms in food and so forth. and these things are intended to be strengthened. in addition we will work on a better, doubling our efforts to incentivize antimicrobial development and, obviously, there's an interest in better diagnostics which is put forth in that report. so we have a multiple role to play. >> thank you. and, finally, dr. woodcock, me but now when all of its games in football this on except of course against lehigh.

i yield back the balance of my time. >> thank you spent the chair thanks the gentleman and recognizes the gentleman from illinois for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. dr. woodcock, it's good to see you back here again. i think you're being too coy. the business, the business model, whether it's going to be in diagnostics or testing is the same business decisions that we make in our home. it's simple, about risk and reward. and so what's the reward and what's the amount of risk, under the jaw will play a big role in that. we would hope that you will work with us to do that. i've been very excited about this debate of the diagnostics space, and in your opening statement, and i had to go onto

the world wide web, on new technology, allows us to do that without telling step to go find it and get it back to us. louis pasteur was born in 1822. shortly, if they could recognize our testing procedures now, we've got work to do to ramp it up i think. and that's the whole, but a similar debate, and the genetic markings and all this other you know stuff that's going on. so i'm very, very excited. also i've been involved and helped along, following dr. gingrey's lead, appreciate the work you've done. and gene green, i look forward to working with him as we move forward in the next congress as we're having discussions to do that. you are getting the same questions from us. and so i think what we really want to do, and we will hear from the next panel, is let's

get a handle on this risk and reward. i'm not so adverse to incentivize in the private sector in something that they're moving on that is going through the process of helping them do that. but then they're going to take and then go, you know, into places that no one else is going to go. so one of the first questions was, as you have seen companies leave the field of antibiotics, are they small, medium or large? how would you classify them? >> well, i would say that the larger companies, most of them have left the area or better pastures, so to speak, to where they see a business model return on investment. similar with many medium companies. there are many small startups that are trying to get into the antimicrobial space. that's good news, but must recognize they are not always successful and they may have one

product they're trying to develop. >> we talked a lot about the that act today, and there's been some success in that process. -- adapt act. do you think are some additional things we can do to incentivize like the ldap, what other things can we bol bold on to encourage additional incentives for the adapt act or other processes that we are talking about? >> i think you have to think about what are the alternatives. i know there's some government development, there's government awards but those are usually under contract. they are for certain entities, so there are few of those. but what are the other ideas to develop a robust -- you need drug discovery effort and that means people, scientist working full-time in laboratories trying to figure out the new molecules. this is way before you get tested in people, and it doesn't really involve the fda. what i understand from the

committee, the discovery community is actual at the microbial discoveries become hard. and i didn't know that until i talked to them, that they have screened like large numbers of molecules and this pathway so forth. it's harder, it's hard to find the new generation. and so that means if a robust scientific effort has to go on in the basic science of microbes, and also in discovery of these new molecules. and to do that somebody has to have the space that they're going to make money from that 10, 15 years down the road and they don't have that space right now, i can tell you. so i don't think whatever has been done is enough because you to consider if it's not going to be commercial development, how is it going to happen? where is it going to happen? >> would you help us as we go through this process, help us, this committee, to identify ways we can help incentivize?

>> absolutely. >> because you are talking to these folks and we will but we need a lot of years on and going to end with this. this labeling debate, the way i understand, we went to this debate with the paper labeling and information on pill bottles, and no one reads these things but everyone knows that. so labeling for the web and labeling through -- there's got to be a better way than just keep putting stickers on pill bottles or things because they are just overwhelmed. ..

>> but most of the world can easily get that information at drugs@fda, at many other sites. >> chair thanks the gentleman and now recognizes mr. bilirakis five minutes for questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman, i appreciate it. and thank you for your testimony, dr. woodcock. we asked some questions, we submitted some questions for the record in november, and to my knowledge, we haven't -- the committee hasn't received many responses, so i want to ask you one question again. can you tell me how many treatments were approved used for the first time within the last five years? have any approvals occurred with a novel marker and never been before treated before within the last five years?

how many new biomarkers did the fda accept for first-time use in the past five years? if you can provide that answer. >> yes, we will. we're working very hard on this. that was a very provocative question, and actually, we had a long debate last week among our senior people on the definition of a biomarker and which of these end points such as fev1 which is how fast you can breathe into one of those machines, is that a clinical endpoint or a biomarker? clearly, in my opinion, it's a biomarker, but not everyone agreed with that. the answer is, yes, we have approved -- we approved a large number of drugs on biomarker endpoints all the time. a very significant proportion are based on that, and we have approved on novel ones in the last five years. but to get you the count has taken a little bit more effort because we had to resolve these

definitional issues -- >> when do you think we might get some answers with regard to the -- >> i'm not in control of that time frame, but i can tell you we're working very diligently, and i believe you will get this response. >> okay. we'll continue to follow up. >> it was a good question. it really provoked some thought internally. >> thank you. there was approximately 450 million in direct funding in fiscal year 2014 to address the antibiotic crisis across the v.a., fda, dod and usda. about 75% was applied to basic research with the rest towards stewardship and surveillance. currently, how do these various agencies coordinate their efforts? >> well, there's been a hongstanding antimicrobial task force at the agency level across the government that was headed at hhs, and fda has been a part of that. the executive order conceives -- directs formation of a higher

level task force in the government that will direct the implementation of the strategy that was announced. so, but there has long been coordination across the, um, government agencies, and i believe the pcast report discusses that. >> okay. on this -- how is the u.s. coordinating with the world health organization and other organizations as well as other countries working to combat antibiotic resis taps? >> yes. we do have, we, the fda, cdc and many others have relationships with world health, and i think the executive order yesterday and the strategy conceives of much tighter collaboration with who in a very concerted way. >> thank you very much. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> thank you. >> chair recognizes the

gentlelady from colorado, ms. degette. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i think this has been an excellent discussion, and i just wanted to ask you to clarify one thing, dr. woodcock. a witness on our next panel is going to report on initiatives by the eastern research group, and what that report concludes is that shortening clinical trial time frames is an unlikely contributor to innovation. we've been hearing counterarguments to this, that without something like the approach taken in the adapt act that i'm a co-sponsor of, it just isn't feasible to do clinical trials on drugs intended to treat the most serious pathogens. so from that perspective, it might be a necessity, but not a sufficient condition for developing the most-needed antibiotics. but also it would need to be paired with other incentives to

spur investment in that area. so i'm wondering if you can just spend a minute giving us your views on this issue? because really it seems to go to the heart of whether we should even go forward with the adapt act. >> well, clearly, there are multiple barriers to antimicrobial resistant -- drugs for antimicrobial resistance. i do agree that i think the, i think the streamlining of clinical trials for resistant organism will stimulate development this that area. why? partly because developers have told me that. two, because we know from experience thatwe have a clear path to market and people understand that, they're or willing to put their money down on a, you know, on a kind of bet that they will have a molecule that can get through. but this is clearly not sufficient. number one, we're only talking about the most resistant organisms here in a small cadre

of drugs to treat them. we also need a robust pipeline of discovery that will lead to new drug candidates for all different kinds of infections. so the limited population idea and the streamlining of clinical trials which wouldn't just decrease the time frame, it'd also decrease the cost and the, you know, the number of people needed. so it would do a number of things. that is one thing that we can do at fda that we think would be beneficial and beneficial for patients. but it's not going to fix this problem we have of investment. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> i think that concludes this round of questioning. we'll have follow-up questions, i'm sure, from members. we'll send them to you and ask that you please respond. but, again, dr. woodcock, you

are a terrific witness. thank you for your being so forthright, clear in your answers, and we will now take a three minute recess as we set up for the second panel. >> thank you. >> in oregon, democratic governor john kansas city offer is facing another debate with dennis richard soften, and joining us on the phone is chris lehman following the race for oregon public broadcasting. thanks very much for being with us. >> guest: you're welcome. >> host: how would you size up the race? tell us a little bit about dennis richardson. >> both of these candidates are political veterans in oregon. john kansas city hopper is seeking an unpress kepted fourth -- unprecedented fourth term as gop's governor. he was elected twice in the '90s and then he was term limited and came back and won a

third term in 2010 and now going for a fourth term. nobody has ever done that in oregon before. and he is a former e.r. doctor and longtime democratic politician in oregon. he has been running, recently, as a centrist candidate and tries to talk about his ability to reach out to republicans and come together to find agreements on issues including education and health care. now, he's been criticized for his handling or perhaps lack of oversight to the state's health insurance exchange which had a troubled rollout. but generally speaking, he has fairly solid democratic credentials and expects to do quite well in the upcoming election. dennis richardson is a longtime state representative from southern oregon and a republican. those are two marks against him politically speaking, number one, that he's from outside of the most populated area of the state and, number two, that he is a republican.

no republican has been elected governor of oregon since 1982. that was the last time that happened. as there are no republicans holding any statewide office currently in oregon. so, obviously, richardson as a republican and as somebody who is not very well known on the state level despite his terms in the statehouse, he has an uphill battle ahead of him. >> host: we have been tracking some of the ads in this race. has it been particularly negative from your standpoint? >> guest: this has not been an overly negative campaign so far. of course, there's still over a month to go, and i say that part -- comparing it to our u.s. senate race between jeff merkley and monica webbe which has gotten fairly nasty. the governor's race so far -- first of all, there really haven't been a lot of ads at this point. i think we can expect to see a lot more in the coming month. both of these candidates are very good at talking policy, and

both of them have a tendency to do it in a sort of wonky kind of way. so put them together in the same room, and, yeah, you know, both of them will probably try a zinger or two. but they're probably going to stick fairly closely to the issues and have a fairly civil discussion of them. >> host: oregon is unique because it's the one state that has mail-in voting, so explain for the rest of the country how that works and what that means in terms of overall voter turnout. >> guest: you might think of it as permanent absentee balloting in the sense that everybody gets their ballot delivered them, to them through the mail. and so you have about three weeks or so there the time you get your ballot until the time that you have to turn it in. and so you can fill it out in the comfort of your dining room or whatever, you could mail it back in or if you don't want to pay for a stamp, you can drop it off at some local elections offices.

and, you know, it's fairly easy. you don't have to request the ballot be sent to you, it just automatically comes to you as there are no voting booths on election day. in fact, we almost don't even refer to election day as much as we call it the deadline to cast ballot in oregon. because your vote counts just as much whether you send your ballot back in the very first day you get it or if you wait until the end. postmarks do not count, so if you put your ballot in the mail on election day, it's not going to be counted because, obviously, it won't arrive at the elections office until at the very earliest, the day after the election. so you do have to watch for that. if you're getting close to the end, you're recommended not to trust the postal service to deliver it in a day or two, but instead to drive it down to the elections office which quite a lot of people do can. >> host: so bottom line, what is the race all about? what's the race for the

governor's claim to seek a fourth term? what is he telling vote ors, and the claim by dennis richardson who i know in your story pointed out that he's hoping the public is tired of the current governor. >> host: the governor is pointing to the state's improving economy. now, of course, that's been part of a national trend over the past four years, but it is certainly true that the unemployment rate has low lowered since the time he came into office four years ago and, you know, he says he's got the experience to carry the state forward for another four years. and he does acknowledge that the rollout of the health insurance exchange wasn't the most brightest moment for the state, but he says that despite the web site that never did work properly, some people -- a lot of people, in fact -- did manage to sign up for health insurance who didn't have it before through pen and paper and other meds. methods. and he says that was a result of some of his policies. and, you know, dennis richardson

says, well, you know, we could have done things a little bit better. he points out the $250 million or so of taxpayer money that went towards this web site that didn't really work. that web site is cover oregon, it's the subject of some lawsuits right now between oregon and its technology vendor, oracle. and i think dennis richardson is portraying himself as more involved, hands-on governor. he says he'd actually live at the governor's mansion, something the current governor doesn't do most of the time right now. he just portrays himself as a more pragmatic problem-solver kind of person who, by the way, is also a social conservative which is something that is probably going to cost him some votes in the more populated and liberal parts of the state. >> host: chris lehman is with northwest news network and oregon public broadcasting. thank you very much for being with us. >> guest: sure, you're welcome. >> today the candidates for

oregon's governor's seat face off in a debate. incumbent john kansas city to beer faces state representative dennis richardson. we'll be life starting at 2 p.m. on c-span. today, outgoing attorney general eric holder speaks at the congressional black caucus 44th annual legislative conference. you can see his remarks live at 9 a.m. eastern on c-span3. >> this weekend on the c-span networks, tonight in prime time on c-span the values voter summit. featured speakers include texas senator ted cruz and kentucky senator rand paul. and saturday night at 8 p.m. eastern, a national town hall on the critical and historic impact of voting. and sunday evening at eight on q&a, washington post columnist sally quinn. tonight on c-span2, just before 9:30 daniel green and william mullen, two