a thing. we will see if they really want to do it. it would mean ten, 20, maybe more highly complicated legislation added automatically to the legislative calendar every year and arriving with privileges at a time and place of the presidents choosing. it's with some regulatory decisions under obamacare and other things where republican feelings run high. it will not be signed by the president unless he finds himself in a fix as the decision both on the federal health subsidies to the federal health insurance exchanges in the summer.

.. and other agencies, creating the very best bailout protection we could have in the future would mean that the equity holders, not the taxpayers, are standing behind financial risks. senator brown of ohio, a liberal democrat come and senator vitter of louisiana, a conservative republican, have backed just

such a bill. the second is to free these amazing new innovations in personal health information, such as smartphone monitoring apps, and personal genetic profiling techniques such as those up 23 and me from fda pre-marketing controls. senator deb fischer of nebraska, republican, senator angus king of maine, independent, democrat he caucuses with the democrats have been it is pretty good piece of legislation along those lines. i have a particularly colorful phrase in my article. i said if these acts were to pass and actually take power away from the regulators in these two areas, they would be great victories for bipartisan, smart populism over the forces

of faux expertise in crony capitalism. how do you like that? so i'm for pursuing opportunities here to take lawmaking right back to congress. i think that we should be prepared that congress, in thinking about the balance of powers, should be prepared for some surprises in the next two years. i think this conventional media idea that the president is a late-term or, a lame duck, he's very unpopular, he will try to pursue some foreign policy initiatives, that's what presidents do in the in game, but not much else. i think that may be incorrect. he's a man of strong ideologic ideological, systematic views. he's very smart. he's intensely determined, and if you look at the things he's done such as immigration and other areas, it's as if he came to washington with a list of about 10 things that he told us about during the campaign in

2008, and he determined to get them done, and he doesn't actually have to be popular to get them done. he can just get them done, given the powers that the executive branch has a cumulative. i want to give an idea that everyone will think is unbelievably fanciful. consider the idea that the president obama has advanced several times since the beginning of his national career and most recently an amazing statement he released shortly after, i think it was shortly after the election, in any event, it was in the last month, month or so. and that is the internet ought to be converted into a national public utility. under comprehensive controls over price, entry, terms of service and come in particular, this is called net neutrality, that service providers should be converted into common carriers who must take all commerce at the same price, regardless of

the different prices and values of the services that are being provided. essentially to treat begin at the way we treated railroads and airlines in previous ethics. it's an unbelievably limited retrograde idea. but it's got some support in the faculty lounges, and the law schools around the country, in some economics departments but it's got some support in the business models of some big firms, and the president is deeply attached to this idea. moreover, he says he can't do it by himself. it's up to the fcc. that's exactly what he told us several times about immigration policy before he just came out announced, well, i'm going to do it myself. could the president make the internet and nationally -- national publicly rated utility just by himself? i think you could.

first of all the electromagnetic spectrum, which is a key scarce resource in the internet, if something that is by declaration owned by the federal government. has been ever since herbert hoover said so in the 1920s. most of that spectrum is allocated by the fcc, but the government could take that allocation back in the way i'm going to tell you in the second. and in any event, the executive agencies, defense, commerce, others, they own a huge spectrum that they didn't use themselves that can provide enormous bait for the enterprise i have in mind. moreover, the government itself provides many things directly like geostationary positioning systems for our apple and gmac devices on our phones. that actually is based upon a government enterprise. this is the democratic party has

sort of a proprietary feeling about the internet, has from the beginning. al gore told us that he came up with the idea to begin with. many people in the party believe that it was singularly responsible for the president's 2008 victory. most of all, the executive branch is not able to act unilaterally with enormous power and lack any kind of apologeti apologetics, and doing things that would've been considered impossible in the past. i have in mind the administration's position in the quote managed bankruptcies of general motors and chrysler where it simply rearrange what had been the traditional legal rules of priority. in the bp oil spill, where it simply called up somebody from the white house called it bp and said, please send us $20 billion

immediately. we are going to use it to administrator -- administer our own compensation fund. something that he gets it before, can a president just do this? people said no, he can do that. but he did it and it was a popular cause and it worked. most recently these amazing, the amazing developments in these so-called conversion international mergers where there was some very solid financially sensible mergers that have been prepared, agreed by the boards, and people at the white house got on the phone with some of the directors and have some candid conversations, and the boards announced they were abandoning these initiatives to everybody's amazement. if the white house called together the major internet service providers, and the major firms that provide major internet matters, and forged an agreement for net neutrality and public utility controls, that

everybody was going to agree to, and everybody kind of understood that they had to because there were tax and other pieces of business they had before the executive branch that would be taken into account, and it was taken over to the fcc for a little rubberstamp approval in the beginning of a program, and, oh, by the way, nobody it feels. we want to keep the judges out of this. i think it could be accomplished. i don't want people to think i'm paranoid. this is not a prediction. i want to use this idea simply to dramatize the astounding amount of discretionary power that has a cumulative in the executive branch and how it could be used for us counting purposes in the next two years. last word, i am not unmindful that congress has many vices of its own. a republican congress reconstituted along the lines i have sketched out would without

doubt be the source of some excessive and horribly wasteful spending, tax and regulatory provisions that benefit narrow groups at the expense of the public. those are part of a larger policy and institutional problem we have in our politics. but the immediate problem is that our constitution depends on robust competition among the three branches, and in particular between the two political branches to keep the federal power relatively constrained, under control and on this between elections when most of us are not paying attention, and to police the inevitable corruptions of concentrated power. the republicans have many big and worthy policy reforms that they wish to pursue. and many of us feel very strongly about them and hope that they do well.

but my point is that even as they do that, it has fallen to them to do something larger, and that is to restore some badly needed constitutional balance. thank you. [applause] >> when i first read chris's article, i immediately said, this is an article that deserves to be a panel discussion at hudson, it needs to be something that will interject deep into the debate about the role of congress, past, present and future. and it did this for two reasons. one, out of a measure of my respect for my colleague and friend, chris demuth. the second reason because it was a sneaky way to get to meet don nickles. don nickles, to me, i will

always think of him as a sunny, saying face of the republican senate during those divisive years of the clinton second term, of someone who always seem to have the right thing to say, who always seemed to be on the one hand supporting causes and issues that i as a valid conservative supporter. but at the same time did it in ways that no liberal could accuse of being threatening or as being dangerous to the mean-spirited or dangerous to the public good. and so i begin to sort of wonder, is it really possible that here in washington there could be someone who is so good and sane and calm and intelligent, with the kind of

integrity that he seems to have? everybody that i talk to has said yes, that's a don nickles. a little biographical information for you. and, in fact, the more you read his biography the more you're going to like him. and particularly in my case. like me, he's a small town guy, grew up in ponca city, oklahoma. like me, he attended public schools. to pay for his education at oakland state university he and his wife ran a professional dry cleaning service. janitorial service. do you still have that this is? no, you don't, okay. then in 1978 don nickles ran for the oklahoma state senate, and one. two years later, he ran for the united states senate and was elected as the youngest republican ever elected to the

united states senate. in his years in the senate come he isn't a series of leadership post, which i won't summarize for you here, but he certainly was part of the encircled in shaping the future direction of what a republican senate should look like, the kinds of issues to take up, the ways in which to build the kind of, that will be necessary for republican senate and a republican congress that comes up in january. and for that reason i think it's extremely important to have don nickles here as part of our commentating on the issue of the future of the congress and what takes place. as you may know, congressman nichols is now retired from the senate. his place was taken by tom coburn, who also seems to me as being a model of the kind of legislators that we would want

them to consider we want in the future. i just want to tell you that i have enormous respect for tom coburn. but don nickles is the original coin. and so with that i want you to welcome, please, senator don nickles. [applause] >> i'll just make a few brief comments and then join you. one, i want to call them at chris for his outstanding speech and say, i share many of the concerns that he touched on. as was mentioned i came into town as a senator in 1980. i will say things have changed a lot. leadership in the senate, for example, just flipped. it's flipped seven times since i've been attempted it's going to flip again. it's not all that unhealthy when it doesn't change.

crass talk about the natural tensions, or there should be some tension between the legislative branch and the executive branch and from the judicial branch. i believe very strongly in that, and others in the senate for 24 years. i always felt like he was part of my job since i was in leadership for most of the time to protect the legislative branch. protected from the executive branch, if they were legislating, and even if the judicial branch, if they were in the legislative business, which they have done on occasion. but the real problem in the last several years i think with president obama's administration is i think there's a real disrespect, or a lack of respect, for congress. i know he served in the senate for two years. he came in just as i was, just as i retired. voluntarily i might add. and i complemented him. and all members, all members of congress, all members of the

house and senate, and the president, when they are sworn in they take an oath to uphold the constitution. and i am absolutely flabbergasted that some of the comments and some of the statements that are president, who sometimes says he's a constitutional scholar, makes in just grossly violating the constitution. grossly. the constitution, article one of the constitution says basically constitution will make all laws. all legislative powers are granted here into the house and senate. all legislative powers. the only exception to that is in the 10th amendment which basically gives all other legislative powers to the states and to the people. all legislative powers on the federal side are delegated to the house and to the senate. and been reserved to the states into the people. it doesn't say, mr. president, you like the fact that congress

has legislated on immigration, you go ahead and do it anyway, and then maybe hope that congress is going to address it. if you're happy with it you can sign it and it will supersede the while you just implemented. that was his statement not long ago, right after the election but interesting, he made that statement after the election. but i thought, did he just say that? did he really just say, i'm going to pass a law and i know it should be done by congress and, frankly, for the last two or three years he said it should be done by congress when people were telling him, hey, we want you to do more on immigration. he said, i am not keen. i can't do it by -- congress has to act. he was right in saying that. and he said it several times. and then ride out the election he said, i'm going to do it, full speed ahead, and i want congress, i challenge congress to supersede what i just did. doesn't say that. it doesn't say when it comes to health care bill.

here's the law that congress passed. pretty unusual circumstances what it has to, but i won't comment on that now. okay, congress passed the law. some of it is unpopular in some it is going to come up before the election so just going to suspend the individual mandate. not going to enforce it. i hate to say it but he supposed to faithfully execute the laws. it doesn't say suspend those that he doesn't like, don't have to enforce the ones that really maybe are uncomfortable. in this case he is totally responsible for. because of my political repercussions. and you could just go on and on. you know, oh, you mentioned the consumer finance protection board, cpb. all, unbelievable delegated powers to one individual, more or less made as our, subject to senate confirmation but he couldn't get senate confirmation. he did a recess appointment.

and this individual the way congress passed this law, talk about congress delegating powers, congress passed laws that said they can get a percentage of the revenues come from the fed added boils down to several hundred millions of dollars a year, not subject to a congressional appropriation. so no oversight, no board, no commission. in this case didn't have the confirmation process. again just sticking their finger in the eye, i think, of the center. is nlrb recess appointments on individuals he couldn't get through the senate that were defeated in the senate, were not going to be confirmed so we did a recess appointment. in this case the courts said, you exceeded your authority. then he came back, was able to get him in because the santa rita change the rules of the senate. wow. i mean, -- senator reid change the rules of the senate.

disregarded the constitution as it's written. is trying to intimate his policies as if he is a star or a cane. there's a real reason why our forefathers had the wisdom to separate the powers and that the balance of power, to have the checks and balances. and what happened after president obama was elected he ended up getting 59 votes in the senate and then 60. all of a sudden he could get almost anything to. i almost think, ma god bless them senator burr was one of champions in the senate who would defend the legislative powers or balance of powers and it was in his later years, and i was gone, and anyway, there were able to railroad it through. and they didn't railroaded through. past i think on december 24 or something in the first year. imac. mama. it really bothers me. and i hope and pray -- let me just, i want to be positive. there is new leadership in town,

and senator mcconnell the new majority leader beginning in january, he is going to return to regular or the one that thinks chris was advocating was that congress would do its job. for whatever reason with the democratic leadership in the senate for the last six years, and i want to separate the two. the house basically did its job. they passed a budget bill ever you put it past most of the appropriation bills every year. he didn't pass in the senate. when chris was talking about the senate doing continue resolutions, the senate last night passed, well, last night, a couple of days ago passed an appropriations bill that had most of the appropriation. that's the first time the senate has acted on appropriation bill in years. i think for five years they want a continuing resolution. this bill passed and yes the appropriations in the house and senate worked out most all of the bills but they didn't have any of the bills on the senate

for subject to amendment. the thing i'm saying is, good news is i know senator mcconnell. and i know his new chief of policy worked for me the last 27 years. is going to do a fantastic order. they will have appropriation bills but they will have a budget. i was on the budget committee for 24 years. every year we tried to do a budget. we didn't always get them done but we always had one on the floor. we always marked it up and we usually had hundreds of votes in the process of passing a budget. for the last six years, president obama's first you when you this super majority did get it through and use that to pass, frankly, obamacare. and a trillion dollars stimulus program. since they need another budget except for one year the house said, you don't get paid if you don't do a budget, so the senate did pass a budget but it was not designed to do anything but come it wasn't designed to actually come up with a budget. now they're going to come up with a budget. it is not easy.

i was budget chairman for a couple of years, but i was on the committee and if you do budget you are doing the largest budget in the world. you're dealing with everything. in the senate the way the rules are, you've unlimited opportunity to amend it. senator sanders kids i want less money for defense and more money for education. you've unlimited number of those amendments and so you can see it is not an easy process. but it's a healthy process. i will guarantee, i will bet anything in the next year the senate will have more votes in 2015 than they've had in the last six years of combined. they're going to have lots of votes. they're going to have lots of opportunities to do some good, to do so that can do have some mischief but they're going to be working. i bet you, it may not be pretty, i should've forewarned on that. legislative process sometimes is not pretty but it will be working. they will do a budget. they will have appropriation bill. they will have lots of

opportunity to make amendments. whether they will be successful, this idea of okay, republicans we don't like what the president, he's trying to pass a law on immigration, so how do you stop that? we find out how to have the money coming in automatically. can they change that? that's going to be our because he might veto it. you might have a lot of things like that. where congress is trying to reassert basically congressional authority. you all know he has enormous budget in the trillions of dollars, but congress only appropriate about 30% of the. the rest of it is kind of on automatic pilot through entitlements and so it. congress can shape those, control them, can pass laws to change them but it's not easy. this president may veto those but it's only sense i think we have a reasonable cost-of-living adjustment, not one that's overinflated, it can save a lot of money. it can help save social steady, something that everybody just did anything knows it should be done.

but can it happen? maybe not because of senator reid said over my body we want to do. you could have some big things like that. might be very healthy, be very positive. it can get done. can't get pass the senate? can't get past the white house? who knows the next couple of years. lots of tension but that's okay. that's healthy. that's part of the process. so i'm actually kind of excited. i think you're going to see a return to the legislative branch, more or less standing up to the executive branch. hopefully to reclaim some of the authority and powers that have been granted, but mainly to push back from the white house right now that is trying to usurp the powers well beyond what the constitution allows. and was going to be a very interesting, very -- certainly hotly contested but this is part of the process. and i think it's going to be kind of fun to observe in the next couple of years. and hopefully, prayerfully in

the long term we will return to real what i would call constitutionally balanced basis of government between the three branches of government. so anyway, thank you for letting me participate. [applause] >> as moderate i.t. to claim privilege to ask the first question. the first one for chris, second one for senator nickles. my question for chris is this. in your list come your agenda for what the new congress must do as part of this clawing back its powers and its role, constitutional role, the one piece of legislation for the obama administration that has been a major source of contribution here in what's taken place is obamacare. and yet you didn't mention it. explain yourself.

>> in obamacare, the policy action has basically moved to the courts and to the states for the time being. last week congress did something that nobody thought possible. it actually revised, substantial revised to provisions of dodd-frank. that was thought to be invaluable. -- impossible. that wasn't quite sure what partisan enactment that obamacare was, and to think it still is the case that the administration would veto any effort to change obamacare. however, there are several strong constitutional challenges, including in particular the one coming out of the d.c. circuit, the virginia

cases and others regarding the provision of tax subsidies to the federal as opposed to state exchanges. that will be decided by the supreme court by the middle of the year. i think it's fair to say that there's a significant chance that that act will be held to have been beyond their statutory authorities. >> it's a pretty potent challenge. >> and if so, senator nickles is a health care expert so i am hesitant to say too much, but i believe that if the decision went that way the administration would be in something of a fix and it would really need some legislation which would open opn things up a little bit. obamacare also requires a lot of cooperation from the states, and revenue sectionalism in our politics now. we used to have the south versus

the rest of the country. that's long gone, but we now have the heartland growing generally conservatconservat ive states versus the coastal, generally liberal, generally not growing states. and it's a pretty sharp sectionalism that is making this cooperation difficult. so we have these two other constitutional checks, the courts and states, and they think congress has been disabled by the fact that the senate was democratic. it's still going to be somewhat disabled because a change is going to require the president's signature. but we have these other two backstops, and i think whatever congress may do, if they can do anything effective, the administration first needs to need its help, and the sequence of the state decisions or court decisions could be the antecedent to that. >> part of this is because

allegedly process wasn't followed. this is the biggest change, frankly, in entitlements since the creation of medicare and social security. and yet the senate, world's most labor to the body and deliberative body, they did have some both on and the finance committee, but they did not vote on in the thing. never had up and down vote on the bill on medical device that is, on individual mandate come on employer mandate. you can keep her health care plan if you like it, grandfathering in all the health care plans which president obama campaigned on. president obama said he wasn't for an individual mandate, that he insist is no part of -- lots of those, never had a vote in the u.s. senate. think that. never had a vote in the last six years. never had a vote. that's i think really the reason why senator reid qaeda block this whole senate because he knew if i ever open up an amendment process we will do all these tough votes and i'm not sure, you know, obamacare passed

by one vote and now you see senator harkin is come out and said we made some mistakes, and others. so this going to be lots of votes, lots of vote. i think voting is a healthy process. i always told my colleagues if you're afraid to vote, why are you in the senate? don't run for the house and senate did you can't take tough votes. but it able to pass it by one vote late at night by before christmas come and a lot of it has been very indefensible. so he was afraid -- chris is right. is court decision, this is over i think well over half the individuals in the country as well as will they be entitled to subsidies? have to come from state exchanges, not from federal exchange. i don't know what's going to happen because justice roberts was pretty creative in his original ruling, which kind of

surprised me because i worked hard to get them confirmed before he was confirmed. but anyway, i think this is a big deal. if the obama administration loses, they will have to come to congress and say help. and so there'll be a major rewrite if that happens. if not, you may see congress pick up pieces of a common medical device tax. you might have a grandfather, you might have -- administration said we can just be for the mandates, until the next election. well, congress could pass different of the mandates. the mandates are going to individuals this next couple of months. and that's just a couple hundred dollars. it's 2% of your payroll. so if you're making $100,000, that's $2000 penalty but it's not insignificant. and so, but the president, by

executive action suspended that part of the law and to of the election. congress can pass a law to with indefinite suspend or to suspend or repeal the. congress is going to have that chance. the president can veto it. it takes two-thirds to override veto. you have a lot of that going on, my guess congress make an effort to totally repeal the. i don't know if it gets to the senate or not. the president will veto it and then they will probably come back and make some more discreet pieces of it. probably starting with medical device tax. the votes might be there to actually pass that, but i would expect you'll see a lot of those on obamacare because never voted on in the senate. also interesting, the senate did pass by 60 votes. only 30 members who voted for originally are in the senate. there's been a big turnover and whole lot of those been elected in the meantime have not become the biggest proponents.

>> it's not their legacy. >> they don't have to defend but those who did defend it, many became former senators. >> now my question now for senator nickles. this is a crystal ball question on key issues that are dear to me. one is how the new congress, the new senate will act on keystone pipeline. and the other one is how they will handle the issue about lifting an oil export ban and what the repercussions there will be spent on keystone, leader mcconnell has already announced that's going to be top of the list. you may remember that harry reid wouldn't allow the senate to vote on it for years in a way that it might have a chance to get to the president's desk. he did after the election, before the special election, i

think special election, and one of the louisiana which was just last december the fifth or sixth. and so mary landrieu did have it, and so he was able to give her vote after senator mcconnell will get a similar vote up, probably early next year. i would expect it would pass with a good margin. question whether they'll be passed with the necessary votes, or the president would sign it. it makes every kind of sense to do it. i mean, it's cheaper, it's safer, it's more environmentally sound to transport by type than it is by real. canadians are going to move it by rail. i'm on a board of the biggest refinery in the country, and we move a lot of oil by pipe and we move a lot of oil by train. but it's going to one way or the other. this is one are you nobody makes. i find it very troubling that we keep sticking our finger in the eye of one of our best allies in

canada. >> i totally agree. >> the canadians have been with us on everything and this is part of, i don't even think it's a close call. and even the state department has pretty much said as much, but the president i think, i even said sometime ago, i said he doesn't move on keystone he's bound to lose the senate because you in montana, north dakota, colorado, arkansas, louisiana, all those states were directly impacted on keystone but he lost every one of those states. so i kind of think, anyway, i think congress will pass it. whether or not they can get the votes or have some leverage with the president. you know, it's one thing to pass freestanding. another thing to have it connected to something the president wants or needs. a lot of times you mary legislation with other items. so that's part of the process. >> exports re-fi? >> i think it makes economic

sense. congress has looked at it a little bit. senator murkowski, chairman of the energy committee, she's in favor of it. i would expect that the votes would be there in the house and the senate could do. or some people opposing to the. going through a lot of turmoil now with the price of oil declining, about 50% in the last six months. so that's the biggest shock wave. and, frankly, that has more weight on it the most of been able to see. the waves are permeating all the way into russia and to the middle east and countries and so on. it's a very significant thing. the positive thing, and people need to realize, america to some extent because of the fracking revolution and because of the enormous expansion of oil production, the bakken and eagle for another show place in the united states -- eagle ford come is on the verge of breaking the back of opec for the first time

since the early 70s. and many of you will remember there was oil lines in 71 come in 73. we have shortages of oil that was going from $8 to $40. it was enormous, negative repercussions on the u.s. economy. opec had as kind of by the throat at that time. we end up importing more and more and more. now we are importing less and less. we will be totally independent of imports, certainly conclude canada and mexico, and so that to me is very exciting. the leverage that opec has had over us is disappearing. and also russia's currency opportunities, he is being crushed right now. and so this is going to have a significant come and, frankly, it's because the u.s. exploration that really began by independent oil companies, and it's just remarkable. it also gives us economic

advantages for manufacturing natural gas. we will have lower natural gas prices and the rest of the world for some time. >> and as you said, oil shock in 1973 had a huge damaging impact on the economy. and also had a huge damaging effect on the american psyche. and i think that we on the verge now of really wiping away that legacy. should we open up the debate for questions? please. when you do, when the microphone comes to you, if you could just identify yourself and whatever affiliation you care to disclose. right here. up in the front. blue shirt first and then to the right. >> thank you. i am retired. it seems to me it wasn't that long ago that the big complaints in d.c. was about congressional earmarks and congress trying to micromanage spending. and now the current continuing

resolution that was just passed is well over 1000 pages and as a whole bunch of provisions that has actually nothing to do with spending, most of which we haven't even learned about yet. it seems to me congress hasn't given up his powers, and it seems to me that when people unhappy with the way, with what's being done, they find some part of the process to complain about rather than complaining about what's being done. >> i would say you make several valid points. the good news is it's going to change. instead of having one bill that didn't ever go through the senate, so you never had one senator able to offer any amendments on that bill, you are not going to 12 appropriations bills. i remember the old days when we passed them. we would pass them, i said it's not pretty. you would probably work on the bill all week and a handful of amendments monday, tuesday, maybe more on wednesday, a lot on thursday. usually we would say we are

going to go home when we pass the bill. and so everybody's got their amendments. this will shock you but harry reid and i did this. we pass most of the appropriation bills, this is frankly from 2004 back for several years. we would come who's got the list of amendments? by thursday night late, about 9:00 those amendments start falling off. about 1:00 everybody said enough, let's go home. people had a chance to offer their amendments and they had a chance to have exposure. and, frankly, if you didn't like it, you would try to find the weak parts into do. you would expose it if you found something that doesn't really make sense. so the amendment process is a healthy process, and it's an educational process. and time-consuming searches people, okay, here's the bill. here's the bill for the interior department. it funds every little part in everything in the country. they managed millions of acres. so there would be a amendments on, can you have oil and gas drilling your?

can you do this? all those things, to me, that's part of governing. having the bill on the floor for a few days is a healthy process. so instead of, you know, at midnight or something passing a bill that's this deep that no one can be totally aware of it, you will have 12 opportunities to i say you, the committee and members of the senate and the house and, frankly, the american people because it's going to be debated and they will have it and it's going to be available, you'll have it on the floor. people nowadays can go online and get a copy of it. they can enough remember, what in the world is this? it's going to be a much more open process. >> continuing resolution is not legislative process. this is not complaining about process because you don't like the results. a continuing resolution simply continues what was done the last year, but then it has lots of things that are thrown in. the appropriate in committees,

the budget committee, if you went back to last, i guess it was september, they pass a continuing resolution through december, the appropriators had no idea what was in it. they hadn't seen the bill. people voted for it without knowing anything that was in it. the only thing that is known is that it has to pass. that's the one thing that is known. it must pass. and the result is that the leadership is highly amenable to particular earmarks. a lot of things do get thrown into. a lot of things get thrown into appropriations, but if the appropriation is actually a deliberative process, collective choice, as don nickles says can you take lots of votes. continuing resolution there's just one vote. and i'm exaggerating a little bit but just so you understand. it's done in the majority leader's office. is tightly controlled.

it is a game, usually there's a game of chicken going on with the executive branch. it's the whole government of the united states, absent all of these independently finance agencies. it has to pass and a lot of things get thrown in. so it's very different from traditional legislation. traditional legislation, sometimes it's not that pretty and you need a little vigorous to pass an appropriations bill, but it's done at a smaller scale. there's more voting, more to the situation -- more voting, more participation the people working their way up, the committee structure, they are participating rather than just, you're a republican, you're a democrat, you're going to vote for, you are going to vote against it endlessly to make a few little tweaks by helping with a couple things you care about. >> so i think it's fundamentally different. >> the difference, if you're doing a continuing resolution, one, it's admitting he failed to you didn't has all your a progression bills.

and also because it's 12, there are -- they are a lot more digestible. you can have the 12 individual bills instead of 1.1 a trillion bills. that's hard to get your hands on, even if you been doing it for a while. so a lot of the solution to the problems, legislative problems, in my opinion can be summed up as return to regular order. regular order basically means following the law. it means doing a budget. interesting the administration as part of this they're supposed to introduce their budget and i think the middle of january, no later than february 1. they have been late every year do so by a month or so. congress is supposed to pass by april 15. i actually passed one on time, that's the last time that happen. i was in 2003 or 2004. that's not easy. >> that budget by the way isn't

the museum of congressional history on display there. >> but that sets the parameters. is both houses passed it, then that tells the house appropriators, okay, here's how much money you have. they allocate almost the committee and then they are ready to marking up their bill. that is regular order, and i know that all the principles players are saying we're going to do the. i've had a lot of democrats, new democrats in the senate come up and say we want the senate to work. what do we do? i tell them, regular order. a lot of them are frustrated. some of them feel like that even cost them control of the senate. because they were able to separate themselves from the president. because they never voted, their voting record was 98% in line with president obama, who is not very popular. if they would've had appropriations and lots of votes they could of said wait a minute, on that health care bill and i didn't support the

individual mandate, or i didn't support the medical device tax. i wanted to make sure you could keep her health care plan. if you like it, you could keep it. we were promised that. that disappeared when the bill was enacted. if they would've had a chance to vote on it, they might have been able to give themselves some protection and maybe pass a better bill and maybe not be so beat up during an election time. the president was the egg around most of the senators who lost. he wasn't out campaigning in louisiana and colorado and so on for a lot of a close senate races. more votes, i'll still people, don't be afraid to vote. it's a healthy process. and your opponent always going to plenty of ammo. i mean, you're going to cast lots of votes and most votes, you could run a good ad against anybody on almost any issue and if they're any good they're going to have to be able -- but that should be okay.

>> next. >> i'm sorry, the gentleman with the sunglasses and then we will come down front. >> senator, you hit on two things. >> i'm sorry, we didn't catch the name. >> i'm been no rudy. him on the board of the advisors of the federation for american immigration reform. so going to get to an immigration question. i'm not speaking for the organization. you hit on two things, senator. one, you mentioned robert byrd. and the other thing that you mentioned is how the process works through regular order. robert byrd was a great defender of the senate as an institution. and was not afraid to stand up to the executive, even the executive of his own party. and at the end, and he passed away, it seemed as if there was

nobody left in the senate who is able or willing to do that. senator levin stood up to harry reid i'm getting rid of the filibuster, but he was the only one the only democrat. why do you believe that solely every turn the regular order will undo the damage that it appears that the senate has done to itself, and that congress has done to itself, to weaken itself vis-à-vis the president? do you believe it's even possible for the congress to restore the historic balance, given the way that the senate has caved in to the president,

almost harry reid, almost himself protecting the president at the expense of the power of the senate? >> two or three things. excellent question. i think it can be restored, and i think return to regular order is 90% of the. i think senate rules are very important. i hope to go back to a 60-vote majority on confirmation. just you an example. that is a humongous transfer of power to the executive branch, to go from 50 -- from 60 to 51. humongous to harry reid ended up getting all those nominations. nlrb, epa or any of those. if you are president and your old liberal left and so you want to appoint somebody -- old straw liberal left -- someone who happened to be on organized

labor's payroll for the last 20 years and so on, you probably couldn't get into it republican senate or even, even if the democrats controlled with 55 or something, probably couldn't. so you have to get somebody a little more mainstream. but hey, if you've got 51, full speed ahead. you can put in some really radical on the epa or nlrb because you can future people into i always kind of figured that whoever won the election should be given great latitude on putting in the people and so on, but in some cases where you have this administration put in activists and people who are really far to the left, you know, a 60-vote threshold would've stopped that and it would've stopped a bunch of nominees in the last couple of days. so i think, and interesting, you mentioned robert byrd. he and i both testified before the rules committee against changing the threshold from 60 to a majority. all these, not all but whole

bunch of new democrat senators who have been in the senate for a year or two or three, we have to change these rules. and i thought, you don't understand the institution. and, frankly, having 60 makes the senate be more bipartisan. if you're 51, you have the majority, you can railroad anybody you want. you have to at 60, very seldom does either side of 60. democrats had it for about a year, that's all. that's about it. you would have to go way back. lbj time before anybody had over 60. so if you have 60 that mentioned to reach out to the other party. so it makes you be more bipartisan and to make sure nominees beat maybe not quite so much on the fringe. so i think restoration of rule 60, not just come on nomination as well, would be a good thing and regular order with the most all the difference. and i will tell you, this is interesting, people haven't picked this up. this election is going to do

that. it's going to be, you're going to see the senate functional. part of your question you said congress hasn't. i always take, and i love the senate. i never served in the house. but to the houses plus, john boehner, they have done regular order and he has allowed committee chairman basically to markup their bill. he hasn't tried to impose the senate just the other, we have an aggregate order and in many cases on really big bills, harry reid our democratic leadership to the bill away from the finance committee and said, we're going to rewrite. that's what they did on obamacare. max baucus markup obamacare, had a bipartisan vote out of the committee, olympia snowe voted for it, and had a lot of input, lots of amendments. took the bill and said we've got 60. we don't need any republican. and basically rewrote the bill in the leaders office and they didn't allow any amendments on it. so no republicans voted for.

house or senate. none of them had any input on. you know, if you get to amend it and you win, hey, you have a little ownership. your kind of interested in the you help shape it. you don't detect any input, you are kept. i wouldn't want -- kicked. i would want to be in the senate if i could offer in a minute. there were people that ran for election, for reelection this year, been in office in the senate for six years, never offered an amendment on the floor of the senate. wow. i don't know how many hundreds of amendments i was involved in but it was in the hundreds. hundreds. and so i just, i can't imagine being in the senate and not having an opportunity to do of amendments. it's surreal. and so abnormal, so out of normal. but that's going to change. i will tell you right now, that democrats are going to like it

because they are going to have more votes that they get to offer than they ever had in the last six years. so it's going to be a big change, and i'll bet you, you will see some real positive things come out of it. i think you'll see a return to the camaraderie. the senate has always had a special camaraderie, a special admiration and work that goes well beyond partisanship. and a lot of that was, hasn't happened. i think it's going to restore. and i hope and pray does because it's a great place to serve and to work, and maybe some of you have worked in the senate. it hopefully will have a real return to, i think, its better days and i'm excited about that. >> sadly we'll have time for one more question and that would be the final one. >> thank you very much.

michael, department of agriculture. i'm listening to what you're saying and you begin with the comments that in 1932, franklin roosevelt came to power, and since then the executive has usurped the power of the congressional. and yet you spent the last hour attacking obama, attacking obama, attacking obama. is he the guilty party? what happened to the other 75 rulers when he was not in office? is that when congress give up its power? i find this one-sided article here against the obama administration. granted, he's taken some of the powers and so on, but he can't be the only one who change things so radically in the last three. the second one if i may just ask the senator, of course. we saw with franklin roosevelt elected four times and we put term limits on the. why aren't there term limits on senators? max baucus who i had lunch with in beijing a month ago, said he

served i think six terms in the senate to usurped for terms. why aren't there term limits on the senate? perhaps to terms on the house, maybe five terms. change the whole culture. thank you very much. >> i could answer either of those. i will answer the second one since and was directed to me. i personally would be, your three branches of government. only the executive branch has limitations. and that was after fdr was elected four times. so we limit the president to two terms. it would be fine with me if we limited the other two branches. and i say to, not just the legislative branch but also the judicial branch, with some limitation to i'm not sure, i don't think it years which a limitation on the executive branch, maybe 12 or something for the legislative branch and the judicial branch. if you do it though you have to do it the way the executive branch was limited to it has to be constitutional. and some people do it unilaterally.

i encourage colleagues, our future colleagues or something, not to do it unilaterally because basically that is ceding the field to some people who are just there for ever, and usually the ones who take i'm not into years, some of them are very good numbers and maybe the more conservative, free enterprise dealt. and some people go into congress to redistribute your wealth, and take a stay there for a long, long time. so i want it to be, if it's constitutional it will apply to everybody. then i think you could have a limit on the other two branches, to be healthy. >> on the first, actually the emphasis of my talk was not, the interests of the talk was very much on congressional delegation as opposed to presidential usurpation. i would say that over the years presidents have been more or less aggressive about doing

things where they didn't have statutory power. franklin roosevelt, i think this was, i don't know if it was right before or right after pearl harbor, it was clear at war was coming and he wanted to have some national industrial controls. just war related price, weight control. he gave one of his talks and he said i want congress to pass a 44 national production, wage price controls. and if they don't i'm going to do it all by myself. and i'm going to do it out of my provocative as the repository of the confidence of the american people and i will be doing it on behalf of the people, and when we no longer need these powers i will give it back to the people. it was amazing, you know, beyond anything that president obama said. so you can find examples of this but in general i would say in

the past 30 years, the major impetus has been congressional delegation. if you look at the creation of one after another agency with and its discretionary power, that's really new forget anything that happened during the new deal. things have changed recently. i would mark the change actually to the end of the bush administration during the financial crisis of 2008. the administration did things that were far beyond anything in precedent. plus the administration form an alliance with the federal reserve board and made unilateral de facto appropriations of hundreds of billions of dollars. everybody in congress said i didn't know they could do that. so i mean, that was, that was a pretty big deal. and then president obama i believe has been much more exorbitant in his unilateral claims on things that is really

cared about, especially in obamacare, and several of the appointments in the immigration matter. although i think obamacare decisions are the most amazing, and some examples i gave, managing the bankruptcy, just kind of stepping in and saying here's how we're going to allocate the assets in bankruptcy, these tax inversion. never seen anything like that before. so i don't know, just beyond, you know, i've got my political views on these matters but looking at institutionally i think it's too soon to say whether the obama administration is a blip or a trend. i really don't know. ..

asserted that presidential authority when it came to international moscow on domestic. i also think that all including president clinton had a greater respect for congress. i went to the white house about. i went to the white house unlocked when both were present. i went to the white house more often in any of those terms as part of the leadership in the last six years. i probably went to the white house more in the one year then he went to the white house the last six years. he's only been invited to three or four times in six years. i used to go every week. so there was much greater

dialogue and respect for the institution from president clinton and both. ronald reagan and bush and cheney were very assertive on international authority. and so it is a little different and then the one thing was the financial bailout right at the very end of president bush's terms. and that was also kind of the more. i never wanted the treasury secretary to have such unlimited powers but i was also worried whether or not the bank would be able to cash checks. it was a scary time.

i do remember secretary paulson went up and said here is a piece of paper i want this authority and the congress did rewrite but they still ended up getting a hell of a lot of authority. but that was a scary time. that was we've already seen the stock market. you had a crash that went from 130 to 40. you had a lot of things happening in a very short period of time and people were worried are we going to have a financial collapse that we have never seen in our lifetimes. i want to thank both of the panelists for a fascinating discussion. [applause]

the funding of the new congress in january offers an opportunity not just to pass the legislation but also to restore some of the powers and in the constitutional congress and i hope that in this discussion people have a chance to review it and if some of the legislators will have the chance to realize that they have a way to go forward. >> [inaudible conversations]

indiscretion on the effectiveness of diplomacy and regions of conflict followed by a look at the policy towards carriere in the fight against isis. the institute of peace hosted a discussion on the use of diplomacy in the regions of conflict. the group diplomats looks at the effectiveness of special envoys

until and how the job can vary from country to country. this is one hour and 20 minutes. >> i'm for the diploma review and both of the american the american academy of diplomats have been invaluable part is as we've been looking at strategic questions relating to the state department and usaid and this is a topic that has come out from a few angles both of on the issue of proper use of special envoys and representatives and also the issue of overall operation in areas of conflict has certainly been at a great deal. i'm going to open up to the the authors start with the ambassador, former ambassadors of many places including the secretary for fares and with that i will let you tell us the findings and the wisdom.

>> i'm a senior adviser here. assistant secretary i want to talk about the origin and the methodology and then get into the substance but as mentioned the use of the envoys particularly in the conflict situations is a fact of life and that administrators have used in the past and while there is controversy over the amount of the effort the fact is they are an important instrument and we wanted to get into study together how to mate with more effect if, what are the issues that arise and how do you make the use more effective? i came off of the two years for

sudan and south sudan. but in doing this study, what we did together was to first develop a set of issues that we thought were the relevant issues to review the terms of reference if you will and make sure that we are targeting the right issues and then following that and revising it we set out to interview more than 20 people that had worked or selected envoys and then we reviewed a lot of the memoirs that had worked on the conflict situations. i want to mention that we focused on special envoys in conflict situations. there are a lot of other special

envoys. some for the islamic outreach and climate change, etc.. some of the recommendations may be similar but we focused on them once because there was a special characteristic. they are dealing with life and death situations and usually they attract very high levels of political and public attention. after the interviews and the memoirs of several of the envoys covered a lot of conflict areas from the northern ireland to the middle east, the balkans, south asia into several situations in africa so we tried to reach out and get a perspective of people dealing with these issues in more than one administration and in various parts of the world. some of the turned to bob to talk about the basic elements.

>> let me begin by thanking the u.s. institute of peace and princeton. the opportunity has been great and i do appreciate. touching briefly on the structure of the report and what we tried to cover, i served as the special envoy to the administration just over 20 years ago now and i later went back to bosnia as the head of the mission. we begin by looking at the purpose, and how are met and the policy authority. what this means is what is the mandate come is it a broad or narrow? we then looked at empowerment. what is the authority that the special envoy has or wishes that he or she had?

but as the relationship to the foreign governments. and what are the relationships with the u.s. government? after empowerment, we turn to policy authority. what is the role on the formulation of the special envoy has or does not have and what are his or her channels into the decision-making process? the next issue was dealing with unfavorables. sometimes it is the special envoys responsibility to deal with people because government ordinarily wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. but when you are in an immediate post-conflict situation, these are the people who are still relevant and helped define the relationship and how do you tell

washington what you're doing? i dealt with some others but it was necessary to get past the conflict. be going to that at some length and then there's the issue of structure and turf battles. exactly what kind of team can be envoy put together if any? where is the envoy going to be working from? we say in the report they are physically located in the state department. i was in a broom closet in sarajevo but i did have a window and i got to know everybody at the embassy because my room cause that was the only access to the bathroom. succumb either you have a staff in my case i served both as the special envoy and the affair, so

there was some gray area between what the embassy did for me and with the embassy staff did for the special envoy. we played that game i think very well. so, the battles are taking place in washington and there are turf battles between the authorities in the field and locally. and it is another kind of turf battle between talk about later. the conflict of the civil society basically doesn't play very well worded and 20 years ago in the former yugoslavia.

and in some cases to create the basis of the civil society which then we hoped would take root on its own. so those were the areas the report covered and that's princeton said, we have the opportunities to talk to the current and former special envoys and compare against our own experiences. >> if you agree we might share some of our experiences. but we start with this question at the end power mac mandate and authority. if you are a presidential authority everyone wants to know are you really the president envoy. that is are you being speak to the president's backing or does the president spoke to you in

that regard and that comes from the substantive relationship and also the appearances. one of the first things i get is a full envoy is president obama coming to new york the general assembly and i was sitting right behind you. the visible characters are important. you know the cases where they are empowered, not forgotten but they don't show up. but then the question of the authority and the mandate. if we are going to have authority as the leader in the policy situation you have to have credibility. you have to show respect for all of the other actors in that situation, the bureaucratic actors from the substantive actors and then you have to come up with credible policy

recommendations. we have been running at the same time. he's working to prevent south sudan from going back to war and we have to get the cooperation to allow for the independence and south sudan. blocking the two lines we had a lot of differences over shading etc.. it's important to respect the interest of the office of the department that they are a democracy of people and the human rights people and at the same time it gives me enough leeway to be credible. it's going to be that country as

well as how sudan. so how you use the authority has a lot to do with how you act and the situations but also starting with the empowerment student from the president from the secretary of state. >> that contrasts with the situation that i encountered in the series nato when i arrived in the summer of 1986. there was still some shooting going on. the u.s. military had come in heavy. the 50,000 american troops. a country about the size of west virginia with a population of 4 million. also 1 million refugees and 200,000 casualties. we also have a holy writ. it's called the dayton accord. the dayton accord.

it had an effect the outline of the government which did not exist. in fact the dayton accords were signed in the two cases out of three by the non- bosnians. they were signed by slobodan milosevic and the only bosnian to sign them was the muslim leader. so they have given cover because the neighbors signed it, but we didn't want to deal with the local war criminal at least as a government. i however was in the position they were later indicted and ended up in the hague.

we had a structure, we the united states and peace implementation council which was the u.s. plus canada posted european union )-close-paren shock and turkey representing the organization of the islamic conference is. to put together a country that did not exist. so we didn't have to worry much about the purpose. the purpose i tend to call it nation building and state building to build a viable state. as for empowerment of the lead at the process working hand-in-hand with u.s. military we worked very closely with the event to start general named david petraeus. for the policy authority it was all here. we had the authority.

we worked together with his man on the ground and spend my time shuttling between the catholics and the muslims and then they added them to the list of people. it was a joke of an exercise because there was no resistance. we called all the shots. it is important to weigh out the rest and have an understanding whether it is worthwhile or not

to engage. so it isn't necessarily the thing to do in every case. i wasn't allowed to speak to the president in sudan. it is clearly limited to a large extent the role in the situation. i reserve the right to ask for the policy to be reviewed if i felt a potential i never reached at that point because there were risks in opening that door. but it would have to be an issue on the table. if you feel that you have the right authority and you feel that it's necessary you have to take some risks doing things that may not have received all the blessings in the world. if you take those risks, you ought to be ready to take the blowback. but i think some risks and giving the special envoy some

latitude in that regard. it's in the normal representation activity and therefore it doesn't come they same recognition with whom you are engaging. when you go to the question of relationships in the bureaucracy , this comes up all the time and one of the most sensitive areas with a special envoy even a secretarial envoy is the relationship to the department of state to the mechanisms that are there all the time dealing with the diplomacy. and particularly the regional assistant secretary in the regional bureau. there is no cookie-cutter way to resolve those issues. it depends on the structure of the situation.

it means that you respect each other and the importance of the role the embassies play. in my case i was recruited by the assistant secretary. we work very, very closely. at the request of the department is department of us actually to help investigate white house over who controls the policy. and i made it clear that i wasn't going to engage in that very much on one side or the other. at the state department and said would you coordinate our representation on these issues which i did, and that pursuit of

the state department's role working closely with his assistant secretary. it's important that that relationship be understood and that it has inherent rivalries that they can be overcome if people really make an effort to do so. it into white house direct engagement i think it is fair to say that president clinton hesitated to the events of 1995 to the bombing of the market in syria to end it became the first television war if we saw a whole lot all the time. the consequence was that there

was pressure to do something and that's when he got them together at the wright-patterson air force base and even ohio. so the objectives were basically to find his people. he was the assistant secretary of state for european affairs. it was based in washington, mostly in the general terms and to me on the ground for the specific execution of what we had envisioned. he stayed on for a while as the special envoy, but the assistant secretary book came out every couple of months. my job was to create the federation for him, which was a

group so catholics and muslims because these things are always seen in the confessional terms who have been fighting each other having started as as analyze the end up fighting each other and this post to get that half working again. they met virtually every week. my staff consisted of me and embassy officers. i will leave it at that for now. >> next question of the structure of the envoy within the state department. and as bob mentioned, we looked at the various situations. some had the regional bureau and some had little. there have little. there are three instances we deal with in every part of the significantly autonomous offices under the special envoy.

currently for afghanistan and pakistan. and the office that i directed in south sudan. in my case, they were under the office as well as the cadre of the specialists and others contracted by the stabilization bureau. i attend of millions of dollars of resources to spend. i have a lot of control over the machinery of the policy support which is helpful but there is a danger in that degree of autonomy. you can get separated too much from the rest of the structure, as i mentioned the importance. in my case i found a strong embassy. they don't pay enough attention and the resources are helpful. they were hopeful in my case but we also strayed into the areas that were better than by the

u.s. aid and that we sometimes have the oversight for the running projects in the field from washington. so i think that there are pluses to that kind of office but there are warnings as well. >> why don't we shift to you and get some of your experience in how we might be thinking about this. >> this is a very important report and i want to commend princeton and bob for giving us something to work with what is now organized and very well structured and embraces the issues that need to be thought about and in a sense can provide a guide for an administration thinking about deploying it on the way. what we had have today are examples of successful envoys but they are successful in part

i think because both of these gentlemen came up through the system. they were both experts before being appointed envoys and in the areas and areas and fields that they were asked to focus on. they had experience in the field and they knew how washington and the department of state and the system worked. that hasn't always been the case in all of the conflict situations where envoys had been appointed and as they were suggested in the report himself. so therefore the series of case studies on the way the envoys worked in different situations could be quite helpful. as some of you know, i spent much of my career in the middle east particularly focused on the conflict area of the ambassador to egypt and israel and i saw 15

envoys over the course of about 30 years and if you could review the names of those envoys, you're talking about what we could call in all-star list donald rumsfeld, general leonard , richard fairbanks, dennis ross, tony, john wolf, george mitchell. you would expect if we were using our baseball and now the now achieved at the scoreboard with a would look pretty good but the scoreboard shows no hits or runs or errors which suggests that this is one of the case studies which needs to be undertaken to find out whether or not it is the idea of an envoy in the situation or the individual selected as the envoy, the conflict itself for the criteria that the report has

suggested. was it an absence of empowerment by the president or absence of authority. i think you'll find if we did a case study and we have not done it yet but it's certainly certainly not report it should stimulate it and i am a granted the opportunity to do it myself, there are a combination of factors that suggest even some of the smartest and most senior people selected for this job were not necessarily the right choice and not necessarily the right choice for this conflict. if you look back at the last 35 years and conflict resolution process for there have been three american successes but they've all been shepherded by the secretary of state and by presidents. they've not been shepherded by a voice.

part of this may be a problem we have created ourselves. we have raised a level of engagement to the point where the parties simply don't pay much attention to an envoy below the level and sometimes not even to the secretary of state waiting for the president. that may be a major factor in play but it also suggests the context specificity, and i would add and i want to say this carefully because we are talking about smart envoys, the understanding of nuance and details. not all of our envoys into the job knowing what the arab israeli conflict is all about. and many of them left the job of knowing what the era of israeli conflict was all about and what that does is not only represent a waste of an american asset which is the power to do diplomacy, but it also weakens

the ability to pick up the conflict resolution process ones that envoy has left the job. i had an experience when i was serving as an ambassador we had an envoy that was appointed to the monitor the compliance of the parties with the roadmap. with the state department official who was asked to drop his drop and political military affairs and come out for a few month's and john was a strong diplomatic but had no background at all in trying to resolve the conflict and it was a series of errors and problems over the course of three months, some of which actually impeded the efforts of the israelis and palestinians to reach small agreements on what we call them called them the roadmap that the president george w. bush has unveiled a short time before.

during the-i came back from a couple of days to see the events of cute geek who -- the deputy. why don't you appoint somebody that didn't know anybody for this trouble/and for those of you that no, he said that was exactly why i did it. he wanted somebody who would be [inaudible] now, in some situations, maybe that works. it doesn't work when you are dealing with the entrenched parties and in the conflict. they've been at this thing for decades. they know each other far better than they know us and they deal with each other far better than we assume they deal with each other. and then in walks somebody from the words and doesn't really help resolve issues. i could go on. we've had other situations reference in this report. for example the fact when dennis

ross was appointed a special middle east coordinator, one of the things he demanded is that that office be taken out of the normal biography and the state department. and in fact, in 1992, 93, 93 actually when that office was created by the serving as a deputy assistant secretary in the near east bureau and the day of the announcement when i went went in to see the assistant secretary and i said i'm sorry you're leaving your post. he said to me i'm not leaving my post. i said they've just taken one of the jewels of your portfolio away from you. why would you remain as the assistant secretary when you no longer have responsibility for one of the most critical issues in the portfolio and to suggest to you the bifurcation of the responsibilities was a problem and the outset and it became a

more pronounced problem over time because what they have to offer was the expertise and experience of a lot of very good officers who'd served in the field but for now became separated from the conflict resolution process and it ended up hurting the process over time. we are still living with this problem. we have a special envoys who for many years been to deal with the represented organization because of the american policy. in fact to the united states government for many years was talking through the cia, not through the state department. so, we have a channel that organization that was unfavorable but it was a channel that wasn't helping us at all

deal with the conflict resolution process. we have the same issue for hamas that if you are going to appoint the arab israeli issue, for example as martin was appointed or now frank is acting it doesn't make sense not to be able to talk to all palestinians it doesn't mean we like them or support those that are engaged in tech or for some but if the envoy doesn't have the mandate or the scope of responsibility to reach out to all elements within the two societies in which he or she is working how effective is that going to be how can it be agreed and implemented? so there are a number of issues taking the case as a case study that suggest using the five

categories or criteria that this useful report has given us could be important to understanding whether or not this thing works. whether the envoy process works in the particular conflict situations. i would add as a closing sentence, my own biases that in the israeli conflict, the presidents and secretaries of state will be fooling themselves to believe that they can outsource this conflict resolution process to an envoy. it doesn't mean the secretary has to run to the region every week or two. they may want to comprise the team of his own experts to pursue this which means they are waiting to see that the president and secretary of state r. and h. in that process and an envoy simply is not going to

substitute for the presidential power and the secretary's prestige. >> thank you so much you've seen this in the community and you know some of the dynamics as well. talk about what lessons you feel we have learned over the last several years and any actions to report as well. >> thanks so much to you for inviting me to participate in this panel and for the authors laying out some interesting ideas. i came away from the report feeling somewhat like dan did that there were some interesting studies that to really understand the issues, you have to go more in-depth and i think that one issue that needs to be on the table is why do we have special representatives and a special envoys. the report does talk about that to some degree that if you go back and look at the history we have always had special envoys

and special representatives. if you go back to 1789, george washington had a personal representative that went to the court of st. james to represent the united states with what has to be the most important relationship the u.s. had at the time and congress didn't even know about it until a year and a half later. you could go to woodrow wilson who had a bad relationship and the colonel edward to negotiate peace and europe. this was a central issue to keep them out of the war and the president sent basically a private figure working in the white house but who did not have relationships with the state department agency and of course harry hopkins is an example that i won't spend time talking about. i think the report does raise a number of issues and again while i accept what you say about trying to get deeply into the conflict i think that the arab israeli conflict in some ways is unique in this kind of conflict because of the very deep mystic

dynamics. one of the areas that i was involved in them is the democratic republic of congo in the appointment of senator feingold as a special envoy. if you look at what was happening before that, the policy with respect was somewhat in disarray and we had conflicting views and the administration regarding what was the role. the congress shall members of congress were interested in this issue to appoint a special

adviser as it was reflected to the ambassador. it was a stature and committed a special adviser and was frankly not the kind of dynamic individual that was needed. so there was a big push to have more significant individuals about in-line and impact people were in fact people were very surprised when the senator agreed to take on that position. and i think that someone like senator feingold in that position can do things that are important. so come if you look at the africa affairs bureau and the scope of the jurisdiction thereof huge problems for the secretary has to deal with. the nigeria that could collapse the entire continent and if it goes down, it has been -- it has zimbabwe. kenya came out of the cusp of

the violence violence of the new half and then you have south sudan and the central african republic just last year. so they have multiple crises that have the political attention. bringing in a special envoy can sometimes i think be a constructive approach to deal with it. in this case though i think something the report indicated was important which is when the senator can and can't he have a policy structure to go forward. you have to peace and security cooperation framework that basically was the roadmap that a detailed roadmap, no. implementation of the roadmap was going to be critical in order to succeed. and therefore, having someone who could go in with the stature to indicate that he had a personal relationship and to the plate had been studying these issues as a long-time member of the senate foreign relations committee did understand the building at least to some degree

and was able to fit into the bureaucracy in a way that i think most people see as fairly constructive. so, i think that the contrast between the before and the after where there are multiple different pieces is important to think about. on the other hand, we see the envoys mandates constructed for them and part of the advocacy and the communities that were failures. so, it is interesting to look at the list of envoys that are on the american foreign service association list of the 25 envoys and we have the two envoys for north korea. we have the envoy that is supposed to negotiate on the issues around the north korea nuclear section but because congress felt there wasn't enough attention you have the north korean ambassador for human rights, the special representative. so how does that work or in the case of sudan as i'm sure we will remember in the context of the north and south negotiation that was the focus of the special envoy view there was

little attention being paid which was kind of an intractable situation in many ways at that time so there was the push to have a senior the senior adviser with the special representative on darfur. that was not successful in my hindsight. there were reasons you could differ whether it was a good idea when we were pushing for it and at the end there was a good result because the u.s. went dressing for implementation on a separate peace agreement that would never go anywhere. it was a comprehensive approach to deal with its conflict. nonetheless there was a significant way to a total waste of bureaucratic time and effort and i'm not sure that it was a positive thing. there was something strange about the whole envoy deal. people come in and see what the state department doesn't have enough focus on this issue.

we need someone to bring these people together. so our answer is to create more fragmentation with the staff that may not be very significantly knowledgeable about the area. the attitude is interesting and i was going to tear up the presenters put on it today. i think there is a challenge in the paper about this. if you believe the only way to have an effective envoy is to have sometimes been -- someone seen as important in the policy authority, then how is it that they are outside of the command or outside of the political challenges that can be faced with the need with the unfavorables? this points to a challenge that

i think goes very much i agree with princeton in the analysis that there is a risk reward issue so we had issues we had a debate between the two of us about one of the president's advisers who had been involved in the genocide. princeton had met him in khartoum and most of us have no problem that they would invite them to the united states people got very much an armed and it was under my organization they called me in the fashion. the question immediately was what is the risk or the reward and the questions were what is the strategy if you are going to bring in to the united states but are we getting for it and will you be able to do something

constructive and productive because it is going to be the legitimacy of that individual. it is going to be the propaganda for the regime that you hold the strategies around the isolation. so i think that this is a tough issue and i think that it is one of the reasons why i think there has to be some significant conversations around those willing to take the risk. it is a knowledge of the department and people have had negotiating experience. you need people that are willing to collaborate. and you need people that have multinational experience. i think one of the things princeton benefited one was the assistant secretary for the international organizations because in the context of the

very complicated way to be dealt with them in a un security system had a very important role of the peacekeeping missions in the trees are very capable and the representatives. in most of these situations come it is really critical and has viewed a lot of the service experts career ambassadors that had that kind of experience. but at the same time, the individuals who were outside of the system. they -- i would just make a couple of brief comments.

i think that the chemistry matters issue is very big and it's very interesting about where there are complex dynamics it is a real question about whether it is an addition or subtraction to have a special ambassador. but not sure to talk about the experience in a state where the hell there were some very frosty meetings and they were frosty because the state department chased the responsibilities.

we can kind of negotiate through the outrage issue is another piece we will have the envoy it is volatile if there is a huge amount of civic interest being able to negotiate the holes of congress is critical. they had at the challenges on both of the scores and that really undermine that role.

>> i have questioned by really want to open it up. i want to come back to this issue. go big or go home. the tension of saying it is just another seat at the table seems to be the intention which is the buildings that really bbs in working things out through the building and working through the clearance process etc. and the consensus or what for what seems like the co- consensus building up through and the effect is as you noted you have to be able to sit down with the head of state or the minister and people know that you are in charge. so is this one of those things that if you are not willing to

give that authority you may just end up with another cook in the kitchen. >> you shouldn't bother. we have cases and we will elude to them in the report where that has happened, the authority or the end government has been undercut by the secretary of the president. i think a dealing with this question of the structures it depends a lot on the nature of the conflict that you're dealing with and this is the end case the issues on the ground by laterally were integral to the peace process. in other words, that isn't necessarily the case. i found it very valuable the outreach of the ambassador

system. but there were other cases where that isn't quite the case and the bureau supports to the envoy is sufficient so we have to look at that in terms of what is the nature of the conflict and the mandate. >> i would like to go along with it. >> of the bureau played a very big role in the post-conflict situation in bosnia for example and that was fine. secretary of state was comfortable, the president and the nsa were very comfortable and as i said before we had a clear roadmap on what we were supposed to be doing there. they largely called the shots. so it was more executing a policy but doing it on the ground and understanding the issues and ineffective building the country which didn't exist in 1996.

>> my question has to do with those two cases. >> i don't pretend to be an expert in those two areas. but i would have thought on the question that you already have a major negotiation underway on the nuclear and a separate envoy on the overall relationship. but beyond that, you are leading up to that that might have been useful. the special envoy might have been useful before hand but now

that we are establishing the structure i thought that would be necessary. >> i would just underscore what princeton said. you are talking about two different types of issues. it seems to me that it's a mix in and china issue reversing many decades long policies and so in a sense, there had to be not only complete coherence and how you're going to run it, but the policy issues really do need to be run out of the white house until the point that president has announced the change where it can enter into a more normal building of the diplomatic infrastructure. with iran we are still in the middle of that. you had an interesting case study of the utility of multiple tracks that are very well

integrated at the source. you had the professional negotiations in a certain track and you have a secret channel also run out of the state department by the secretary of state coburn's with white house involvement come, and the two were connected at the hip. so, if we did our case studies this might prove to be one of the most efficient uses of a variety of envoy types. but it would also approve the idea that you need people with the improvement, expertise and the system to be able to maintain the integrity of the efforts. >> let me put a punctuation on the particular comment because i think it is something that we haven't talked about. there was a special envoy it was