ways we see the forerunner to what you achieved a couple of weeks ago. .. it was quite good progress made in the montréal protocol over

the last week. i just finished on friday. i think there's a lot of progress made. this is something we've been working, my colleague at the state department, on this now for years. and it's got to be four, five years ago where there was over 100 countries expressing support for an amendment, such an amendment to face down, not completely out but to face down the use of hse's. to do that under the montréal protocol. there has been some resistance historically about doing that because a bunch of countries who have not wanted to go there have said agencies, greenhouse gas you can only treat these under -- that's not true.

dragging you into too much come into the weeds too much. the hse's were developed as a substitute for ozone depleting substances are they do a good job of not depleting the ozone layer but they do a bad job on global warming. they were created as a creature of the montréal protocol and for that reason, for the jurisdiction confined to do with them. that's just behind but the montréal protocol is by the most successful environmental treaty ever. tit was set up to deal with the ozone hole and this done really well. montréal has one fundamental reason for doing that, it's the face of industry chemicals -- phaseouts industrial chemicals. that expertise. they have a fund, multilateral

fund that was set up and that is funded that helps countries pay for the transition. so it's a very good venue to do this. it saving you that will be effective in doing it. and all of the bookkeeping and accounting and all of that would still have under this. it would not be deprived of its jurisdiction over the greenhouse gas but the actual work in getting it face down is what ought to happen. the discussions last year between president obama and president she and what led up to that is really important. adequately comfortable with the proposition of doing this, using montréal for this purpose. there was a second bilateral

agreement between the two presidents in september which was a step forward -- further to say that we're going to agree specific procedural step setting up a contact group which is a from or in which these countries discussions take place, which is a discussion for new amendments would take place. this is what we're trying to do this past week in paris is to get that group set up to we got pretty close but there still a few countries who were too reluctant to let it go forward, and montréal is a consensus body so if they say no then it doesn't happen. but i think there was really very intensive conversations which countries were expressing the kind of concerns.

not just political concern in the climate treaty but much more specific concerns about safety alternatives, you know, high ambient temperature, and how can this get done. they will pick it up again in april and hopefully will be able to take the steps there. i have no doubt there may be some who will be a little bit nervous about the fact pairs is coming up with the two things are separate and i would hope we will certainly be working hard to get progress made. there's the way in which all of this does interact very important with respect to climate, the climate discussions, and that's the upside potential of taking this action is really very large. what people talk about is the potential to avoid something the

order of 90 gigatons, co two equivalent between now and 2050. that's a big, big number. that's over to gigatons a year, and you sort of look at what the so-called emissions cap and so forth is that people published. that's a big. it's a big, big payoff. this relatively low-hanging fruit. you can do this without spending an arm and a leg. you've got to get everybody there but we made good progress. >> you sort of referenced some other multilateral with the climate does keep coming up on the agenda, the g20. some of my colleagues have looked into whether or not the council might provide the opportunity. are there other -- what do you see as the right balance?

photos effort and, your personal time focusing on terrorist versus these other channels. how do you orchestrate that? >> we have always focused on channels outside of the negotiations at the same time as we understand negotiations are still the biggest event to celebrate. the center ring is involved with. the center of attention is always multilateral negotiations, but we started, you referenced climate and clean air coalition that we worked with five other countries to get going. really an idea that we dreamed up here and cut the number of others interested in and launch with the state department and in 2012. not yet three years later, the

six countries are now over 40 countries and over 49 country members. probably 10 or so. we've been most focused in the u.s. on launching a partnership to reduce methane in the oil and gas industry, and we did announce that on the margins of the u.n. climate meeting the september. we've also done a lot of work using methane from landfills, but there's a whole host of efforts them some of which we are involved in, some other countries are involved in. so i think it has some good potential to the arctic council is another venue as you said. we take the chairmanship of that, i think it's in april. we are working hard on that already.

secretary kerry, no surprise to come is very interested in having climate change as an important part of our presidency. and are chairmanship of the council. he will be working to do that, both i think in some concrete ways in policy and to use it as a platform to public education and send an important message for urgency. we started the major economies for when we first came into thousand nine, -- 2009. it was the countries president bush to pull together in what they called the major economies meeting. it had a different focus and purpose and what we were interested in but it was a big

group of countries. i actually -- i had written an article about the need for something quite like that, for a small group of countries who could meet at high level on a regular basis and have kind of an ongoing conversation on a level of candor and intensity and focus features can find we have 190 countries together. so we took the group of countries. we gave it a bit of a different grant -- brand but we first try to negotiate but also to see whether things could be done, this group of countries could do in terms of low carbon

development. and back in 2000 when i was a leaders meeting, that led to the leaders taking the initial work we had done on the technology roadmaps and charging their energy ministers to run with it. that led to the creation of a growing concern. we work very closely, the dod works with us and we worked with them. we have some ideas about how to carry that process even farther forward and i hope that will happen. there's a number of activities that are important that take place. we've only talked about montréal, and they both go together. the biggest on the calendar this you will be paris.

>> that's what it wanted to ask next. i'm afraid of talking about the countdown that you look at to watch and realize you have time to be here and computer, head to the exit. on the other hand, a year before copenhagen, if you look at where we were, you before copenhagen the president was in a transition -- >> i was working for john podesta in the obama administration. >> the fact you have a full 12 months. i guess the question is, and you actually alluded to this earlier, i think given you have a unique perspective having been involved anyone here through copenhagen and now through the successor to copenhagen and will really be the lasting contribution here, you know, if you could just offer your thoughts about, first of all what copenhagen them by the lessons of copenhagen are your

try to apply here. you talked a little bit about how the u.s.-china relationship has been. are there other things, i mean, that you think are important to maintain that you want to build on, and otherwise we think you will do things a little different? >> well, first of all, the process is quite different. as you said, we came in the end of january, 10 months, on to it very quickly moving train to try to deal with it, where as here we sort of see the underlying mandates and have been working through from early phases, central thesis in the early year or two to the point now where we

are much more in the kind of proto- negotiations, you know, towards what we will turn into text. i think that, in fact there will be elements of what happened in copenhagen that will be visible in what i hope happens in paris to obviously i don't know what's going to happen. but we have ideas, and this is a negotiation that is intended to produce a new agreement that is in some fashion the legal agreement in some fashion that wasn't spelled out in the

mandate. the language in the mandate made it clear that it wasn't fully fleshed out. you can see there's a lot of play in those things. it's supposed to be applicable to all, and to us, everything to a great many countries, that was an absolutely critical few words because that said to us that we weren't doing kyoto. kyoto is in some, you could say in some tactical way it's applicable because all the countries are in some sense under kyoto, but it wasn't. they were new obligations. they were just applicable to

develop in countries. applicable to some but not all. because of the need to have everybody in the game, there has developed, and in this respect i think maybe more than any other, a fair amount of consensus, that it is fundamentally focusing first of all on other issues. mitigation is to kind of the centerpiece. there's a bottom-up structure which was kind of nationally determined. at one point in the discussion, that turned into contributions. there's no other way to do it.

early on there were countries that expressed unhappiness about that structure. when i was said was we understand it's not all -- you can imagine all countries being part of. we've tried to come forward with some ideas and design to product and push countries to the maximum level of their ambition instilled in this structure, and that, the main one that we propose was the notion of consultative period which essentially creates sort of a two-step. countries, the intention is for countries to come forward with their intended so-called nbc's early, so china and we

essentially done that now but to come forward early and to subject what every countries subject what you're proposing to do to full sunlight, right? so the views of other countries, the use of civil society and the press and analytic bodies and everybody else can look to see what china and u.s. or india or europe or japan or italy also is proposing to do, and you take whatever criticism you get, whatever scrutiny you get. the hope is that that structure pushes countries to come forward with their best shot right away because they don't want to be embarrassed. so i think that that is an important feature of the structure. there are a lot of proposals about elements of what we've started to call an accountability system, which is

transparency reporting review, various rules for accounting and how you manage your emission commitments and so forth. as well as important stuff on finance and adaptation. i think you'll see, i think if we can succeed in what we're trying to do, what we would have is nothing that will be perfect, absolutely guarantee it won't be perfect, that if we can get it done i think what we will have is for the first time an agreement that is legal in some important respects that has everybody involved that is more ambitious than anything that's ever, before, that has a lasting structures we don't have to keep negotiating this all the time

that instead you have a structure that is set, and then an understanding that each x. years we would like to be five, a debate whether five or 10, but countries have to be up their mitigation commitments to higher and higher and higher levels, and to have that expectation that it be higher and higher and higher written right into the agreement. an agreement that elevates more than has ever happened before adaptation with the understanding that there needs to be both more planning and more resources to implement the plans that will provide for significant financial and psychological support for developing countries. and all of those things in a structure that can last and that is, again, is not perfect but is it good, strong start.

that's what we're trying to do. whether we get the are not i don't know. obviously, maybe not obviously but one of the things that would be most challenging we will see if -- we see it in paris, the age-old problem of firewall between developed and developing countries. we are as i said more times than i can count, we don't have any problem with the basic notion of differentiation. we entirely supported. we can't take the form of second that you have a bifurcated agreement with two different categories created in 1992 and never changing and determining the nature of an agreement that is supposed to go for decades forward. that will be a challenge, but i think there's a big payoff. >> do you think, you know, that the major announcement that the united states is going to pledge

or has pledged $3 billion to the green climate fund which was a commitment to establish a fund in copenhagen, i think there's been a sense in which that there's commitments in copenhagen have sort of methodically been met. but green climate fund pledges but. they're still working up towards the big $100 billion of public and private funds. that's the 2020 issue. this is kind of, seems to me and demonstration at a big point in negotiations where you are trying to build consensus and cross some historic negotiating divide between developing and development -- developed countries. in use at the green climate fund might come what that means, why that is so significant? >> sure. i think it's a big, big deal, as you said it was a commitment

first made in copenhagen, reaffirmed in cancun that the instrument that was the sort of foundational document for it was negotiated over the course of i think 2011 leading into durbin. and now there's a location. it lives near seoul. there's an executive director, a staff, and as of last week there's an initial capitalization which is getting very close to $10 billion which is what we're hoping we would see. it's not quite there. i think it's about 9.6 not not everyone has been heard from yet. we hope we can get all the way to 10. and the u.s. came forward i think in a very strong way with a pledge of $3 billion. that was, as you can imagine,

there are always an enormous number of needs that are internally, even when, forget about congress, when you're trying to work for you budget internally, there's an enormous number of needs both domestic and foreign that are competing for limited dollars. i think that, i always saw the real importance of the a strong pledge with respect to both to just the substantive facts of what that kind of financing could hope to do in developing countries but also with negotiations, countries looking at the donor group to come forward big, bigger, biggest player in the donor group. so interested i think from the beginning it's very important.

and i think it's a sign of, actually one of the great besides if you think about it but it's a sign of the level of importance of climate change has with the obama administration that we were able to have such a big step up in that funny compared to anything that had come before. as i say, starting with the inaugural address in the second term and going forward to the climate action plan at the speech at georgetown and all the things that happen, the powerplant will and all the things have happened since then, the president has given tremendous, tremendous emphasis on climate. it's been from my point of your terrific, and as pretty dramatically changed the impression of the united states internationally.

>> so i would like to see if we could take a couple of questions maybe from the audience, if people have anything they would like to add so i don't take up all of your time. this gentleman here in the suit. >> david livingstone from the carnegie endowment. i was just wondering, you said in your talk that china is a keen observer of domestic political dynamics and how this change over time and how those constraints what's possible and what isn't possible. i was just wondering, when you're chinese counterparts ask you, what commitment mechanisms exist to carry forward these pledges that were recently made over the coming community of over the coming decades and electoral cycles, what do you tell them about what to expect as inevitably the executive

branch will change hands, congress will change hands between parties, and how will that affect the u.s. pledge? >> yeah, well, thanks for the question. i think that the chinese focus in the first instance is on this period between now and 2025 which is the end date for our target. i think we walk them through the kind of central elements of what we have already announced, which includes on the transportation sector, the power sector, building sector with whole suite of efficiency standards that have been rolled out and that are still being rolled out. as well as action that we will be taking under the methane strategy add-on hfc's, and other actions that are still doable with the basis of existing

authority to usually existing congressional authority. we walked them through what we saw and how, ma in those areas and what reductions we thought were possible in those areas. and that was really the nature of the discussion. so i think that they were, again, the premise was not, and we can get there if we get some piece of legislation that is just speculative, but rather we will need to work hard. we wanted to push, this is a stretch, this is a stretch target for us, but our sense is we can get there using the authorities that we have. and as those will be followed or carried forward by the next

administration, this administration runs out at the end of 2016, that's not news to anybody, but what we're talking about can be carried forward. i think they were reasonably comfortable about that. >> the woman in the tan suit here in the front row. >> what countries are doing and what science is needed to hit ? not just focus on paris but what they're doing now. is that i did just dead in the water? if not, what is left? is at all the voluntary danger talking about? >> you know, i think that there is ongoing focus. there's two tracks came out of a discussion tracks came out of

durbin. one was post-2020 negotiation. i think are still a little focus on the. i don't think that there's not much focus at this stage really in the notion that countries are going to change their 2020 target. i think it's more what are you doing to push forward in every possible way, that includes at the national level. ..

>> engage in long time now until now the first world will run out a fossil fuel.

it seems that both basic are not true. how did you change your strategic thinking how did you change the framework in which kind of public policies and supranational framework do we need to prevent the businesses and states from exploiting this research. >> that is a good question and a

number of different aspects this is an undertaking of the g. 20 but not one that has moved forward very far yet to phase out the subsidies. it's $500 billion a year and the high-end is how much money is being spent on the fossil fuel subsidies and i had a long conversation with the subject at

one point who was the chief economist who said a small portion of that has to do with supporting poor people. if you have between 500 billion or trillion dollars of benefit is 10% or 15% but it is a small percentage that is designed to take care of poor people and you could obviously take care of poor people in a different way if you got rid of the subsidies that would reduce the demand further for other sources. i don't know if anybody thinks at this point that it would be as adequately would run out of

the fossil fuels. the reality is the more positive things that happened with the action in the u.s. and china agreement was announced is a part of that and i think that it would get a successful outcome that would be another signal. there will be companies and investors all over starting at some point to be pricing to be factoring in what the future is.

we won't get rid of them overnight obviously don't. that is a good question and a hard question. thanks everyone for joining us today. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] defense secretary chuck hagel announced today that he's stepping down leaving under pressure following iraq each tenure in which he struggled to break through the team of national security advisers during a white house ceremony the president said that they determined it was an appropriate time to complete the service. the secretary has agreed to stay on until the successor is approved by the senate.

using data mining and artificial intelligence. >> our analytics get more granular than seeing whether something passes them so you can break down on the legislator basis how likely they are to go for a certain bill. there are a lot of opportunities to say here are the 50 people likely to devote and you can start looking at developing the strategy.

we could ask any question but that being said that there is a lot of power being able to combine some of the analytic we provide with the industry intelligence or human intelligence on the ground and so being able to get to the answers that you would like to get to. >> alabama senator jeff sessions the senior member of the committee said senate republicans will not seek to impeach president obama for his order on immigration. he made those remarks friday at the heritage foundation.

>> hello and welcome to the heritage foundation. i'm the program coordinator. thank you for joining us today. you can submit questions by e-mailing heritage@speaker.org and for those of you attending in-house today i want to take the opportunity to remind everyone to silence your cell phone. my closely introducing senator sessions and is a senior fellow in the institute for international studies in the institute for national security foreign policy here at the heritage foundation. he spent time in the george w. bush administration and is the author of a race for the future how conservatives can break the liberal monopoly.

>> last night as you all know the president told the nation he was going to go ahead and do what only a year ago he said an unaccountable emperor could do and that is bypassed to congress on the congress on immigration. the constitution is clear which branch of government has power and that is congress. it is therefore fitting that we welcome today a member of congress who is going to spell out what that branch proposes to do to maintain its authority. senator sessions of alabama. he's been a leading place voice on this issue and he will lay out what options are open to the president's announcement. president obama has the damaging

crisis is now incumbent on the other branches to have their say they told them again and again it's not at the top of their priorities and that includes hispanic americans as we saw recently in the research poll. issues like education and economy. it does nothing on these entire fronts. there are less incentives to assimilate. it's the reason why they are also empowered to the congress. immigrants have been attracted to come here because we have a rule of law and it's the rule of law we have to return to. we have senator sessions i would

like you to join me today in welcoming him to the podium as he tells us what we can do to protect the president seems to intend. senator sessions. [applause] we had a big game last night. the president granted amnesty to 5 million people as congress directly refuse to do when considering that by basically saying i'm not going to enforce the law. if you are the interest of the american people, american workers who had have been here in our looking for jobs.

you have to have integrity and assistance and law enforcement if you want to be able to defend what you've done. i served as a federal prosecutor when you prosecute somebody come the prosecutor, the police and the vendor's need to know that others would also be prosecuted in a consistent fashion or else you lose your integrity and consistency necessary for the legal system to sustain scrutiny. i thought a good bit about that over the years. the american people have asked for something i need to have an absolute right to. a system of immigration that serves the national interest.

what's wrong with that and politicians have refused to give it to them time and time again. they run for office but when the dust settles nothing happens. i learned in 2007 i said it then because it became so clear to me politicians will pass anything that sounds good of immigration as long as it doesn't change anything. the best talking points at one time i said i'm for the talking points, let's vote on them. but when you read the fine print, it is in isn't there. it's another piece of legislation. they allow the interest of certain powerful forces and the

interest of the american people not to be recorded, so it's time for us to stand up with the american worker for a change. one thing you didn't hear last night in their remarks was any concern about recent immigrant salaries, american workers difficulties finding a job that's steady decline in the wages that have occurred in this country that's not what the economic experts tell us. even in high-tech industries that wages haven't gone up since 2000. in fact large numbers of people with graduate degrees don't find jobs that the fact. we did the professors assigned to usa today article documenting it with facts.

it's not been disputed so they sign a letter to the president demanding action that said we have to have more foreign immigrants into the same week microsoft laid off 18,000 workers spending tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars on his agenda and i looked at the numbers is faced with its 7,000 isn't that about right so are you going to tell us now what we need to do but it's not that kind of situation. we are not in the crisis to find the number of workers necessary and i traveled by state and i go around and visit factories and i enjoy that and you see more automation every year.

i don't think this nation faces a crisis of a lack of workers. we have a crisis and a lack of jobs for the workers that we have and we need to talk about that and take our case to the american people and it will resignation because it is right and just. shouldn't that be the policy of the government of the united states lacks we think somehow like some of our business people do they read the "wall street journal" in the morning and see the wages go up and that's bad. some of you never thought that have you? it's not bad for a politician or people that are supposed to help the millions of average people in this country is should be our chalk that wages go up. somehow we are off track.

and the lack of stability in the nation. the national review went to the core of it and we are a nation with an economy, we are a nation and as a nation those things to the people. it owes responsibility to their interest and that the average working truck driver is worth just as much as mr. zuckerburg and who's representing them if you want to be able to lead the american people do serve their interest and we see so much about we need to do something about immigration. i'm against all of this and

nothing happens. but they've been asking for it. we didn't pass the comprehensive amnesty bill the party was doomed to keep her going to lose the hispanic vote and we wouldn't find any more elections the election around before this amnesty it's unconstitutional and we don't support it and it's a statement for the american people before the election is wrong. it's un-american for a president to try to do such a thing. i want to make it clear there is no part of me or were molecule in my body that agrees with the president on executive amnesty. it's wrong, illegal and it's

just the basic fabric of the country we can't allow it to happen and i'm telling you anything we can do to stop it, we will so we have huge victories and got a larger percentage of the vote the voting before so there is a lot of misinformation and a lot of these consultant that had this report two years ago either don't know what they are talking about or they are taking advice. as for the situation so the situation is worse than a lot of you know. the top officials in the obama administration said that for the

routine immigrants in america today unlawfully the chances of being deported were virtually zero. if you get past the border you are home free under obama's orders. it's not to enforce the law. officers in texas filed a lawsuit against their supervisors and janet napolitano claiming to violate the oath to enforce the law. it wasn't returning. there is a law on the books for

over ten years that we should establish an interest system and exit system. we have no idea. so if this is the moral integrity of the law. they are plucking them in and clocking them out.

it's a danger people realize and the question boils down do we bb that open borders where the sovereign state and the exit of the country. so the american people do they want a legitimate system of immigration that serves their interests that's lawful not for one that causes constant uproar and with regards to the ability to assimilate into hard feelings that occur as a direct result of this locality and frustration. i don't think the american people are mad at immigrants. they understand they would like to come to america. they are mad at the government and politicians and that's what the anger is about.

>> i've had the occasion to talk with the official in charge on their immigration system i like what they do. they went to a national discussion about what to do. they develop a plan point system that simply identifies an object of way to ascertain who should begin. they found if you have a college degree or even two years you are much more successful so they

give you more points for more education. if you have people that need workers that's where you're going. they give you more points. those are the kind of things we should establish and we are so far from that over 90% of the people who immigrate to america are not on a scope basis system. we have people from hunger us one of them learned english.

who should be admitted to the country and shouldn't we be acting in what our interest. i remember in 2007 when we had a professor testify before the judiciary committee he said you tell me what you want if you want a system that serves the interest and for people around the globe advances their interest. let me know and we will help you

the friends and relatives and neighbors and people of that work with us that are here. it is objective and fair and serves the national interest and when we get that done it will go out and we will be able to have a much more harmonious system then this determination to execute his vision to the people rejected. 77% of the respondents said their jobs should go to the current workers or legal immigrants and bring the new

immigrants into do the jobs. companies should raise the wages and improve working conditions instead of increasing immigration. there's no doubt about it if you bring in more iron and copper in and more labor the price of labor falls. it was on the wages of the american worker since 2000, we've had a 2,300-dollar drop in median household income. that is amazing. it's more than 3,000.

we have a surplus of labor in my view and i would note he's having a little revival in the interest and we had reached the peak of immigrants in america and we were having difficulties more than it's ever been. it was a rational and sensible explained in a speech to naturalized citizens we want to keep the wages and living conditions good or everyone who is here or may come here. as a nation to first duty must be to those that are already inhabitants.

they did that and they passed a law into the labor market tightens and they begin to grow and have a strong middle-class. thank you for your interest. the analysis of how we handle the immigration in america. i hope you can help us achieve that. thank you. [applause]

i don't know if you have time for questions. >> i am the american people and i do understand the problem. i think the people i know and talk with the biggest thing we talk about with these problems we never talk about solutions and the biggest thing missing is the trust of the president and the leaders and where they have misled us to the point i don't even listen to them anymore and some people don't. we are specific on who you

listen to and that is a shame. i would like to know how we are going to change this environment where we can trust our leadership to do the right thing and not mislead us and lied to us and that it be effective and efficient. >> i thought the talking points were pretty good and i've withheld criticism until i saw it come out that they had no law enforcement people in the room and they had the special groups only writing the bill and and it it cannot written by clever lawyers and it wouldn't work so i think the american people are ready. i think the mood is strongly that way and articulated that

desire and reported the candidates that spoke up like scott brown. he was articulate and strong on this issue so i would say that's you're on the right track and it's time to actually put together some legislation in the senate if we try to do that we can defend intellectually. yes sir. >> i'm going to end each president obama for his actions. thanks. >> no, we are not going to impeach. the president has certain powers and we believe and i think it's accurate to say he didn't

fulfill his role which enforced the law and i worked and was appointed by the president said he doesn't believe the law to be enforced but we do have legitimate congressional power. i was impressed recently by a strong longtime democratic senator that talked about this subject and i think all of you need to know it's good to have one of our most brilliant senators the obama spokesman said this is a tactic used for funding to shut down the government. carl levin said he described withholding funds for the executive orders as he described it as a standard congressional

procedure shouldn't be confused with shutting down the government. that isn't/and burn. that's not bringing down the government, that's a fairly traditional targeted approach to make the policy and i think that you should watch the members of congress talking very aggressively in the various approaches because it goes beyond immigration when they say i don't like this tax law congress doesn't act. although irs agents don't enforce. this is the kind of thing you're talking about and i can't recall such an understanding of them being wiped out, so it is a serious constitutional question

going on and the powers the congress has got to use. >> that was the last question. [applause] >> the big news from capitol hill on the obama administration personnel changes the defense secretary announced today that he's stepping down leaving under pressure following the iraqi tenure which he struggled to break through the team of national security advisers. during a ceremony the president said they were determined it was an appropriate time for him to complete his service. they agreed agreed to stay on until the successor was approved by the senate. reaction from the members of congress as you can imagine they said this change must be part of a larger rethinking of the strategy to confront the threats we face abroad especially posed by the rise of isis.

it has fallen short. and also the democratic leader harry reid offered it is my hope senate republicans will work with democrats to give swift and fair consideration to the next nominee to this critical post. more coverage coming up today. the endowment for international peace will host a discussion on the movements and the increase in violence across afghanistan, serious and iraq iraq there will be iraq that will be like the 3:30 eastern on c-span2. tonight on the communicator's founder and ceo on the technology that predicts outcome to the congressional legislation using the data mining and artificial. spin it or analytics give more granular than just seeing whether something passes them so we can actually break down on a legislative basis how likely they are to vote for a certain bill. that's from a tactical perspective there's a lot of

opportunities for attorneys, bobby is to be able to go in and say lets me look at this bill. here are the 50 people most likely to vote for it and you can start looking at developing a strategy to get at the information that you need so i will say that our analytics don't provide all the answers. it's not a crystal ball we can ask any question but that being said there is a lot of power in being able to combine some of the analytics that we provide the raw industry intelligence or human intelligence on the ground. so being able to combine those should be able to get the answers that you would like to get.

thank you for being here. as you know president obama used executive action to give legal status and work permits to millions of people here illegally in the country. for those of you listening today, i wonder do you think this is a good idea or bad idea. even if you like the policy is this the right way to do it or does it set a dangerous precedent and what is the responsibility. we've invited three distinguished guests to book at these questions in more detail. i will introduce them now and then we will have time for q&a afterwards. we will hear from the professor who teaches immigration and tax law at temple university school of law. assistant commissioner of the immigration and naturalization service of the department of justice in the 1990s and a graduate of oberlin college and harvard law school.

next is john malcolm the director of the legal study of the heritage foundation and is the sherry lindenberg legal fellow. mr. malcolm was a prosecutor at the criminal division and a former assistant u.s. attorney as well as a graduate of columbia college and harvard law school as well. last but not least the senior editor for the national review and columnist at the bloomberg and visiting fellow at the american enterprise institute and a graduate of princeton university so please join me in welcoming the panelists. [applause] >> iger to the president last night like many of us did. i thought that it was a pretty good speech. it was fundamentally wrong starting with his common statement that everyone agrees

the system is broken. maybe there are others here that agree with me. what's broken is the willingness of some americans especially politicians to make the hard decisions about whether giving the admiration and respect into given that we are a nation of immigrants should we admit every single person in the world that wants to come here in search of a better life for alternatively should we enforce a numerical limitation on how many we are going to take every year. that is a hard choice because if you're going to enforce a limit on immigration you will end up saying no to people who want their shot at the american dream who are not criminals and we have to say no to them not because they are bad people but because we have a numerical

system in place and letting them and would violate the numbers that he has enacted into we have enacted into law and is becoming a violation of the law we have to report them. a lot of politicians especially say we can't make that choice. we can say no one is going to get re- elected but we can't bring ourselves to enforce the limits against people who are not criminals or national security risks so they have to turn to a third choice and president obama last night gave us the manifestation of that very choice into the third as i said here before let's pretend. let's pretend we have an immigration system. let's keep the law on the books and say we are going to have a numerical limit on the immigration but don't enforce them. don't enforce them. and to me, that is a formula for permanent dysfunction in all

areas of american law they are not going to enforce them to become manifest. they are dodging the question on immigration. who is opposed to that into the border security it's like motherhood and apple pie. so if all you can talk about is motherhood and apple pie you're not serious. this order is illegal and unconstitutional and as the senator suggest it violates our basic concept of the constitution that we govern

ourselves through our elected representatives through a deliberate process of checks and balances. that is the basic constitutional idea. we don't govern ourselves through the unilateral pronouncements of a great leader like they do in north korea. so it is unconstitutional but the argument is boiling down to other presidents have used a different action in the past. i think the devil is always in the details and i think if we look at all the presidents. and that and the third action giving employment authorization they are all distinguishable and the idea of the prosecutorial discretion is that on a case-by-case basis given the fact that everyone's situation is different they are going to be unique situations where

you're not going to want to move forward. people will stay based on their special circumstances. but they see the numbers don't matter. obviously the numbers do matter so sometimes they say while some of these actions that involve large numbers of people and thousands of people. the exercise of the president's foreign policy authority and that is an area they do exercise foreign policy authority. we are not going to do that and that isn't involved in this executive order. this isn't being done for the

foreign-policy. finally people are pointing in particular. in the action in 1994 the spouses and minor children of the amnesty recipients of the 1986 amnesty and the first president authorized the voluntary departure, extended the voluntary departure which meant they got the work authorization in the united states and so people are saying well that was potentially a lot of people. it didn't involve foreign-policy concerns. what about that one? i feel strongly on this but i know that president bush in 1990 is in a hot and heavy negotiations with congress as to how to implement the 86 amnesty. so first of all he was engaged

in trying to implement a statute enacted by the congress and do they have to do something about the spouses and minor children and as evidence the congress agreed in three months of the executive order congress ratified the order by providing they statute the visa for spouses and minor children of the amnesty recipients in the 1990s immigration act. so that is distinguishable. i just want to emphasize that i think are a few questions we all need to be asking if there are any journalists, print the podcast or online. again as the senator says what is the impact of this executive

order on the millions of unemployed americans in the united states lacks the latest job report says there are at least 9 million unemployed at least 7 million involuntary part-time workers because they can't find full-time work and there are millions of other people who had given up looking because they were convinced there were no jobs available for them in the united states. every month the administration celebrates. we created another small number of jobs in the country but they are overwhelmingly part-time jobs. and we now have 2.9 million long-term unemployed in the united states. the administration is celebrating week of the unemployment, the official rate it down to 5.8% now. but if you look in the african-american community to rate is 10.9%. if you look at american

teenagers who are looking for work, a team .6% of them can't even find a part-time job. what is our answer to them and what are we doing for them when we add 5 million additional workers to the labor pool and allow them to compete openly. the unemployment rate according to the latest jobs report who can't even find a part-time job is 32.6%. they can't even find part-time work. what is our answer to them? so you know that we are living in a part-time economy and the wages are stagnant in america. we are in a world of job insecurity now and you know the president says he's very concerned about inequality, rising inequality. the stock market is hitting record highs every week.

so if if your fortune is invested in the stock market, you are doing really well. but the wages are stagnant. and you think there's a connection between stagnant wages and high profits and rising stock prices and now they just might be. think about that. there might be some connection and so it's not surprising that big business says let's broaden the labor pool so we don't have to give raises to american workers. i just came from philadelphia where the baggage handlers are on strike against the contractor employer saying we need higher wages. the contractor employers are waking up this morning and saying the president will have 5 million people to the labor pool in the united states. we have to get into these workers? let's wait for the 5 million to come on board.

that's the reality so we have to ask the hard question what is the impact of this order on american workers and legal immigrants who are already here who were given permission to come with is the impact of this executive order on people outside of the united states debating whether to come to the united states illegally or not what is the impact when they read about this in their newspapers? i had a former paper that said they may be poor but they are not stupid. they are as capable as anyone in the room of doing cost-benefit analysis to figure out what's in their own best interest and they do it every day. so if we want to limit that the decision of people to come to the united states, we need to raise the cost and lower the benefit. but if we want more illegal immigration or we want this illegal immigration crisis to continue and definitely, we need to lower the costs and cost and raise the benefit and that's what president obama has just

done. so this is not the end of a story. this is the beginning of the story, the permanent dysfunction that i think is coming. we also need to ask what is the impact of this executive order on the qualified legal immigration to the united states we have met more resident immigrants in the united states every year with a clear path to full citizenship than all the rest of the nations of the world combined and we do it every year so that is what the legal system we have. if we don't get any so-called immigration reform all we have to do is enforce it. it's not a perfect system. there's there is room for improvement but we can work for that system. what is the impact on the qualified immigrants waiting in line for their chance to

immigrate to the united states we said we'd store chains don't come in illegally. some of them have been waiting as long as 20 years, qualified legal migrants waiting for their chance to come to the united states and for them to wake up and read the paper and say they are all getting work authorization and we are still waiting in line because they have a numerically limited immigration system so we're waiting for the chance. who's the fool in the system, what is the message to those folks and finally i hope journalist will ask questions of old the people.

thank you for the next >> most people. i won't say everyone. there is substantial agreement about the best way to address the problem. it's no secret that he's a supporter of the dream act that has been brought up and debated in various forms over several years before both houses of congress and it has been rejected every time. instead of doing the tough work of building, trust and the negotiations and compromises for bipartisan solutions, the president has decided to go at it alone by implementing broad swaths of the dream act. setting aside the presentations

this is wrong and it sets a very dangerous precedent. so while the president has authority acting as commander in chief and foreign affairs and national security he is far more limited authority that comes to domestic affairs particularly when the congress has spoken about a particular issue. the president appeared to acknowledge the lack of constitutional authority to engage in these actions. in 2011 to the national council of the rows a president obama said the idea of doing things on my own is tempting. not just on immigration reform but that isn't how the system works. that's not how the democracy functions. before that year the town hall meeting he was asked whether he would grant temporary protected status and he responded the president doesn't have the authority to simply ignore congress and to say we are not going to enforce the law and in february of last year president

obama said i'm the president of the united states, not the emperor. my job is to execute the laws are passed and what i consider to be the broken immigration system without means is that we have certain obligations to enforce the laws that are in place even if we think that in many cases the results may be tragic. what this president obama saying now? if you don't want me to take executive action, just send me a bill that i like. congress has the right that wants to say no we won't, too bad. look at the president let it be known known he thought federal charges were being too harsh in their sentencing and if they refused in light of that pronouncement to hand down death sentences the president liked better what the president have the right to start issuing

sentences to the criminal defendants, of course not. the president has invested executive authority. he doesn't get too exercised judicial authority, he doesn't get exercise legislative authority either. in the famous case the supreme court said in no uncertain terms the president's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he used to be a lawmaker. the constitution is neither silent for a quick call about who shall make the law which the president is to execute. that's the separation of powers. the president may not like that transcends but that doesn't give you the authority to act unilaterally. the authority to ignore the congress with respect to domestic policies was precisely the issue litigated in 1975 case

that was the case of with president nixon tried to enforce or imposed his domestic priorities over congress by ignoring certain laws that congress had passed and mixing desire to cut the deficit and not fund certain programs with subsidized housing, some environmental laws etc. to in town but the funds that were dedicated to these programs. the congress reacted in 1974 for ordering the president to spend the appropriate funds and this was challenged in court. a unanimous court held that the president cannot frustrate the will of congress by telling a program to impound them and the president has to carry out all of the objectives and the full scope of programs. article number one, section

eight gives the congress exclusive authority to establish a uniform rule of naturalization and the supreme court clearly stated the formation of immigration policy is entrusted exclusively to congress and the plenary authority of the congress over italy and is not open to question. this was reassuring to do just a couple of years in arizona versus the united states and the quirks of the congress could fund the state laws preemption doctrine that the competing executive branch authorities could not. ..