spent in 2003 "new york times" reporter judith miller wrote several stories on the lead up to the invasion of iraq and weapons of mass destruction in an effort to reveal her source vice president cheney chief of staff scooter chief of staff scooter libby purchased out into the court and imprisoned at a federal jail for 85 days to sunday on q&a she talks about her time in jail as well as her new book, the story, reporters journey. ..

that i really didn't have much choice. >> sunday night 8:00 eastern and pacific, on c-span's q&a. >> here are a few of the book festivals we'll cover this spring on c-span2's booktv. this weekend we will in be the maryland stayed capitol for the annapolis book festival. we'll hear from former attorney general alberto gonzales. in may we revisit maryland for live coverage of the gaithersburg festival. with former senior advisor to president obama david axelrod. and then close out may at book expo america in new york city. where the publishing industry showcases their upcoming books. in june we're live for "the chicago tribune" printer's row. we have pulitzer prize-winning author lawrence wright and your phone calls.

that is this year on c-span2's booktv. >> former president bill clinton spoke about the importance of life in public service tuesday. the 42nd was at george town university in what is called the clinton lectures. wresident clinton graduated from the university's foreign service school this 1968. this event is an hour and 25 minutes. [applause] >> well, good morning. my pleasure and privilege to welcome all of you to gaston hall, for this in the third of clinton lectures at georgetown. i wish to thank all of you for being here and offer a special word of welcome to our distinguishes guests in attendance including honorable tom vilsack, secretary of

agriculture, and congressman john delaney. we're honored to have you with us this morning. we've had the privilege over the course of the past few decades to welcome president clinton back to georgetown on a number of occasion, notably for a series of lectures in 1991 while he was the governor of arkansas and democratic candidate for president. on the steps of old north for an address to the diplomatic corps in 1993 just days before his inauguration. and now for this series. in his first lecture of this series president clinton spoke about the significance of those 1991 lectures. now known as the new on responsibility and rebuilding the american community, economic change, and american security. not only to his campaign but there is for his vision for our future. he explained that these lectures

enabled him to quote, think about where we were, where we wanted to go, and how we protested to get there. we come together today and two other cocations in this series to engage the wisdom and sign sites of one of the most accomplished global leaders of our time and hear his perspective gained from a lifetime of service to our nation. as president he presided over the longest economic expansion in american history including the creation of more than 22 million jobs. the reform of the welfare and health care systems new environmental regulations peacekeeping missions in places such as bosnia, and a federal budget surplus. in the years since his two-term presidency the first for a democrat since president franklin dell dell know roosevelt, he focused his efforts improving global health, education and economic development around the world

through the bill and hillary chelsea clinton foundation which he founded in 2001. in these lectures he brings to bear these experiences and those of his youth and early political career. in 1968 alumnus of our school of foreign service a rhoades scholar, a yale law graduate, attorney general and then governor of arkansas. father otto hence long time and beloved member of our theology department who taught president clinton during his first year at georgetown, he described him as someone who quotes, thinks deeply. the father said speaking of president clinton when people are well-informed and deeply reflective and gives them security and freedom to listen to a wide perspective of opinions. clinton is not a man closed in his thinking because he thinks deeply. it is only fittings for that this lecture on the theme of

purpose, father hence will serve as our moderator during the question and answer session that will follow president clinton's remarks. with this theme, purpose, president clinton turns to each of us as he did during those formative new covenant speeches, to speak to all of you future leaders of our nation, to think deeply about our own responsibilities, about where we are, where we want to go and how we propose together to get there. he asks and i quote from his 2013 lecture here, what is required of us? how do we compose and live a life where service is important. today we come together to consider enduring questions. how do we understand our purpose and our responsibilities, our service, to the common good, and to each other. ladies and gentlemen it is now my privilege to welcome to the

stage, the 42nd of the united states, and a true son of george town president bill clinton. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you. thank you president degoia for having me back. thank you father hens for agreeing to ask me questions. i will give better answers than i did 50 years ago. i hope. thank you all for coming. student, faculty friends of

georgetown. secretary vilsack, thank you very much for being here and your long career in public service. congressman john delaney who is a shining hope for the possibility of bipartisan cooperation. he has got a bill to repatriate all the loose cash hanging around overseas has as many republican and democratic sponsors i think. some people think there is something wrong with that i think that is pretty good idea. so i thank him for that. i want to thank my classmates and friends who are here and get to show on the road. two years ago i came here in april intending to give a series of three or four lectures on composing a life in public service. whether that is in elected or appointed office or in the private sector or working for a non-governmental organization. in the first talk i said there

are four essential elements to any successful service. a focus on people, policy politics, and purpose. in that first lecture i was primarily focused on the importance of people centered service. on necessity of understanding how different people view themselves and the world they're living in. without understanding people, it is pretty hard to develop the best policies and to build and maintain support for them. as i said then, i grew up in a story-telling culture. so i told you stories about people who taught me that everybody has a story and kept me focused on how to help other people have better stories. i told you stories about my family and my teachers,

beginning in junior high and running through georgetown. about people i had worked with over the years. people i'd met who were dealing with their own life struggles. the second lecture covered policy-making and the compromises that are almost always involved when trying to do what mack developly called the most difficult thing in all human affairs, to change the established order of things. we discussed how policy making was done when i was president and developing economic plan in 1993 which reversed 12 years of trickle-down economics and gave us the only period in 50 years when all sectors of the american economy grew robustly and the bottom 20%'s income rose 23.6%, the same as the top 5%. we talked about crafting the welfare reform bill of 1996.

what compromises were acceptable, what wasn't, what's worked over the long run. what still needs to be changed. and we talked about the pursuit of peace in the middle east. i hope that talk convinced thaw policy actually matters. that ideas when implemented have consequences and different ideas have different consequences. a great deal of political rhetoric is devoted to blurring that, to pretending if it something good happens and guy did it was an accident. if something bad happens and you did it well, it couldn't have been because you pursued the wrong policy. and because so much of our voting habits today are determined by the culture in which we live, and the conditions in which we experience the world we tend to

blur all that. so i hope i convinced when ever you try to evaluate policy you should try to ask yourself, is there a difference between the story and the story line? always look for the story. sometimes it is in the story line and sometimes it's not. there is a difference between the headlines and trend lines. typically, for perfectly understandable reasons, bad news makes better news than good news. but sometimes the trendlines are much better than the headlines. so and we may have occasion to revisit that. today i want to talk about the purpose of public service. driven by concern for people, manifest in policies one is advocating and about the

politics of turning concern and good policy into real changes that fulfill your purpose. for obvious reasons i don't intend to talk much about electoral politics. but it is important to remember as the secretary vilsack and congressman delaney can tell you, there is plenty of politics when the election is over, in trying to implement policy, and there is plenty of politics if you're not in elected office. if you're working in a private business or you're working for an ngo. that is the kind of politics i want to talk about. how do you have the skills to actually turn your ideas in action. in every public service success leadership requires a vision of a better future where the purpose of public service is made plain in the circumstances of the moment. a clear understandable plan to realize that vision, and the

ability to actually implement the changes. if at all possible by the inclusion of all the stakeholders in the process. this is becoming more important than ever before. in an interdependent world whether we like it or not inclusive politics is necessary to have inclusive economics. inclusive discussion with various stakeholders is necessary to effect positive social change. asia has three interesting very vigorous leaders at the moment and the president of china president xi, who is trying to gee the chinese economy intern anymore and modifying the one-child policy and trying to eliminate some of the corruption that has been endemic to the system, and prime minister abe

of japan who is trying to overcome his own country's reluctance to alter their culture by allowing widespread immigration, by putting more women into the workforce and enabling people to work longer. and, prime minister modi of india who has written a book called inclusive politics, inclusive governance. and who recognizes that his country's big problem is, it is grown like crazy for the last 20 years in and around its tech prosperity centers but only 35% of the people are being reached by that effort and that india needs to develop the ability to aggregate and deploy capital so 100% of people of india can have a chance to benefit from the enterprise that is now driving dramatic prosperity for just 35% of them.

so this inclusion issue is going to become bigger and bigger and bigger in the lifetime of the students who are here. let me try to illustrate the success of leadership and the pitfalls with a few recent examples. recent in my terms not the students terms. helmet cole was the chancellor of germany when the berlin wall came down. he had a vision born of a lifetime of experience that included obviously living through world war ii. of a united, peaceful and prosperous germany and a united, democratic peaceful europe. both these developments may seem normal to you. they were virtually unimaginable

for most of european history which germany was not a separate country but city states united under bismarck. kohl became the second longest serving chancellor in germany in pursuit of his vision, second only to bismarck. he had a strategy which he pursued with extraordinary discipline. it was first to unite germany after the wall came down which required very large transfers of money from west germany to east germany to begin the long process of equalizing the economic opportunities on both sides of the former divide second, to expand and strengthen the european union. he wanted all and central eastern europe to come into the

e.u., so germany would be middle of europe, not on the edge where it had been a source of instability and conflict throughout the 20th century. third he wanted to expand nato and strengthen the transatlantic ties to the united states because he thought that was important to building a prosperous democratic future for germans and for the rest of europe. fourth often forgotten, he became the most vigorous supporter of russia after it is economic building and increasing cooperation with the e.u. and the u.s. it is hard to believe given today's headlines but that was the order we were trying to build then in the 1990s, and it worked for quite a while. the beginning it worked very well but there were two central

problems with kohl's vision after he left office. one is, although much of the european union not every member adopted euro as a currency. they had a eurozone currency which was adopted before those in the your ozone had a common economic policy, common social policy and a common public investment policy it worked great when greeks could borrow money and european interest rates essentially. when economy turned down it didn't work so well. german voters didn't understand how much gain they had gotten all the good years when spain and portugal and italy got to borrow money at common interest rates and buy german exports. germany, by the way, is still

the number one rich country in the world percentage of its gdp tied to export and side to manufacturing. in no small america sure but a good less on to the united states, because of disa the ma i can success involving small and middle sized business in the export market having continuous lifetime training program and having a program that pays employers to keep people working instead of paying unemployed employees unemployment benefits. so it works fine. but when greece failed and ireland failed, and spain had skyrocketing unemployment. slightly different reasons. basically it was a real estate boom going bust in ireland and spain. and portugal and italy had their own troubles.

the automatic response of the e.u. was try to impose austerity on greece because they had government that made promises to people for years they couldn't keep. and because they had a country in which rich people didn't pay taxes. in fact constitutionally the shipping companies are exempted from taxes. something very many, a lot of people don't know. so that if you were a cab driver in athens, or a fisherman in the agenian, you felt like a chump if you did pay your tax. but greece began a program of austerity in 2009. when they started their public debt was 120% of gdp. today they made all these payments and their public debt is about 180% of gdp. which means that the fundamental laws of economics have not been repealed. if inflation is lower than interest rates there is

insufficient demand and more austerity will get you in a deeper hole, not get you out of it. so that happens. and there was no provision made at the creation of the eurozone for how to get out without collapsing the whole. or without spooking the markets. and that was probably an error. if they weren't prepared to have common economic and social policy and some sort of investment they should have made an exit strategy part of the beginning then the market hazards wouldn't have been so great. the typical thing for a little country the kind of trouble greece is to devalue take all the hard medicine and start growing again. that is what iceland did which is not in the eurozone. iceland was a particular tragedy. it is banks were far more leveraged than american banks. but they also had more self-made

millionaires, mostly in tech and retail businesses than any other, as a percentage of their population, any other european country. so they devalued and started building again and got out of this mess they were in in a hurry. so, it doesn't mean that kohl's european idea was wrong. and the e.u. and strengthening of it, and, for many older europeans, even the boring and bureaucratic nature of the cumbersome machinery in brussels of the e.u. is a godsend. far better than uncertainty and war. and indless intrigue -- endless intrigue with destructive consequences. the other thing that happened to kohl's vision of course, russia took a more unilateral and authoritarian turn as manifest most vividly what happened in ukraine and what continues to happen there.

but, on balance you would have to say it was the most important european leader since world war ii because of the good things that happened and the bad things that didn't happen and i still believe over the long run we will return to the path that he advocated for so long. second example. the founding prime minister of singapore recently passed away at 91. i was asked along with henry kissinger and tom donlan to represent the united states at his funeral because i had known him and had a lot of contact with him, so i went. when li took office more than 50 years ago in 1962, he was the leader of a small city state after few million people with a per capita income of under $1000

a year. it had recently broken off from malaysia. and there was a lot of uncertainty about two things. one was whether this little city-state that was heavily majority chinese with a big malay minority and smaller but still noticeable indian minority and filipinos and others in this diverse state could ever make a go of it. and two whether a state that small could withstand the debilitating consequences of the corruption which was then endemic to most of the asian rising countries. li had a strategy. he wanted a first his vision was to have a prosperous, unified, secure nation and he knew that singapore had the most important thing of all at the time he came of age.

location. it was located in a critical juncture for all the major sea lanes in asia. he knew the asian economy was going to boom. he wanted to be there. to govern citizens of all equal treatment regardless of their background. there were 10 speakers at his nuon ral. his son speak about his leadership. his second son spoke last about what a good father he was. in the middle there were representatives of every ethnic group in singapore who talked about you who he made a home for them. inclusion. he also was so rigorous in the pursuit of corruption, from

cabinet ministers to minor functionaries overcharging people for fines that he allowed people who were part of his own political movement to go to prison but he got rid of corruption. singapore soon gained reputation as a place to invest, a place where people wanted to be, where everything was on the up and up. things were on the level. it made a huge difference. the third thing he wanted to do was to have an alliance with the united states for security purposes but to get along with everybody in the neighborhood. which he proceeded to do. and, finally he launch ad constant organized effort to modernize the country. educationally, economically technologically, and to maintain social cohesion. with methods that most of us in

the united states often thought were pretty severe including caining mall doers. but it worked. i remember once there was a lot of joking in the press about the fact that singapore banned chewing gum. they got mad because kids were leaving chewing dumb under desks and under seats on public transportation and things like that. but they got rid of the problem. and, they built by consensus one of the five best education systems in the world. a few years ago small country with only six plus million people allocated $3 billion to biotechnology research, same amount of money spent to sequence the human genome. did it succeed?

when he took office the per capita income was under a thousand dollars. when we celebrated his life at the service singapore income was $55,000. one of the most remarkable economic success stories ever. ernesto dio became accidental president of mexico. the person his party favored for the presidency was killed. early in the campaign season. he was picked to succeed him. but he was a very well-trained economist. and he wanted to build a modern economy for mexico and a modern political nation. that was his vision. so he set about building a modern economy by opening mexico to competition and investment and promoting responsible, more honest behavior. early in this effort through no

fault of his own, they had a horrible economic crisis. they were about to go broke. the united states stepped in, i was president, it was 20 years ago, i stepped in and gave him a loan which on the day i gave it was opposed by something like 80% of the american people who thought about mexico's yesterdays instead of its tomorrows. he repaid that loan to the united states three years early with more than $500 million in interest. he is one of the best investments we ever made. we still have disagreements with mexico but think about your own life. it is one thing to have a disagreement with a friend and another to have a disagreement with an adversary. the consequences are dramatically different. maybe more important he recognized that his country could never become fully modern unless it was more politically competitive. and, his party, the pri enjoyed a monopoly on power for 70

years. he opened the field to competition. had an honest election. it was won by vicente fox. he handed over power peacefully for the first time in seven decades to a member of the opposite party. did it work? well, mexico is not free of problems but it is worth noting one of his successors, built 142 tuition-free universities. last year they graduated more than 100,000 engineers. and that the economic growth was sufficient to keep mexicans home between 2010 and 2014 for the first time in my lifetime, there was no net in migration from mexico. nelson mandela's vision was to build a modern democratic state that would survive and thrive after the end of apartheid and the end of his term.

his strategy included, his now famous reconciliation commission where people who committed crimes even murderous crimes during the apartheid era could come testify make their actions a part of the a public record and then be reconciled to the rest of the country so they could participate in the future. it was an astonishing thing. we, we don't have time to build anymore jails and worry about this we have got to go forward. something that was copied largely in a different slightly different form through local community courts by rwanda after the rwanda genocide. and capacity that is beyond the culture of many other countries. interestingly enough we're now seeing the ongoing efforts of the president of colombia president santos, to resolve the

last remaining conflicts there with the farc and the big hang-up is, who is going to be held responsible for what? and, this something we all have to deal with in our lives and we have to deal with in other cultures but accountability is important but so is going beyond. and different people, different cultures draw the balance in different ways. there is no doubt in my mind that mandela did the right thing for south africa. the second thing he did which was arguably just as important, was practice the politics of radical inclusion. that to most of us was symbolized when he invited his jailers to his inauguration. far more important that he put the leaders of the parties that

supported apartheid in his cabinet. you think, well that happens all the time, national unity governments. mandela ran for president with 18 opponents and got 63% of the vote. first time black south africans had voted in 300 years and his whole term occurred when i was president. so we had a we did a lot of business together and i always let him call me late at night because of the time difference. he liked to go to bed early and he knew i would stay up late. so he would call me late at night. so he called me one night and he said oh, they're giving me hell. and i said who the boors? i always kidding them about the africanners and their whole history. no, my own people. what are they saying?

they are saying how can you put these people in the government. you won 63% of the vote. they kept you in prison. while you were in prison they were beating us up, shooting us, killing a bunch of us. now you will give them government ministries. i said, what did you tell them? he said, i said, well, you know, we just voted for the first time in 300 years. so let me ask you can we run the financial system all by ourselves? can we run the military all by ourselves? can we run the police all by ourselves? is there one thing in this country we can run all by ourselves? the answer is number maybe some day. this is not that day. if i can get over it, so can you. we are going to do this together. you would be surprised somebody gave a speech like that in washington, wouldn't you? [laughter] it is important to recognize not to be too sanctimonious here mandela had paid a

remarkable price and learned astonishing lessons. and he had the stature to do that. and not fall. there was a third now often overlooked part of his strategy, which is why it hasn't worked out yet. he named as his deputy president, a much younger man mbeki, who is the most existed economist in south africa. because he wanted the, he knew it would take his entire term and he was determined only to serve one term. he was already well into his 70s. he paid a pretty stiff physical price for the first years of his imprisonment. the other part of the strategy was to be succeeded by mbeki so he could build a modern economic state and increase trade and investment across africa in a way that would stablize south

africa. that part of the plan didn't work for reasons beyond his control. south africa first became the epicenter of the world aids crisis. it was made worse by the troubles in zimbabwe and other places which led to even more people coming into south africa who were hiv-postive. meanwhile, still to me and somewhat mystifying, mbeki denied for a long time the nature the dimensions, the cause and the remedies of the crisis. i knew this because our foundation helped them to come up with an aids plan. they were doing fine in the cities. they had prosperous cities and great health systems but they really had to get out into the country side.

when we settle greated mandela maybe 80th birthday. 80th or 85th birthday, i was down there and we had 50 people who worked with our health access initiative, dressed up and ready to go to implement a plan that the government the cabinet had adopted and it all was canceled. it was a bizarre story of local politics gone awry. the third most important person in the south africa's political hierarchy after the president the deputy president, is the treasurer of the national african congress because he funds all their political operations. it was effectively a one-party dominant state. his wife was health minister. she was trained as an physician in the old soviet union. she thought aids was western plot to make pharmaceutical

companies more money. said all this could be kurd by eating native roots and yams. sounds crazy now but they believed that. and mbeki felt, perhaps accurately. that he couldn't let her go and hold on to power. even though he had a wonderful woman working for him in his office who wanted to do something about it they didn't. the most important thing remember whatever you do, he took office intended to build a modern economic state. he was gifted enough to do it. knew enough to do it but he didn't deal well with incoming fire. when something happens you didn't intend to happen, aids explodes. you can't play like it didn't happen.

i always say when president bush and al gore ran in 2000, nobody asked either them what are you going to do when the twin towers are blown up, the pentagon is attack, another plane aimed for the capitol crashes in pennsylvania. he could have said i'm sorry i didn't run to do that i ran to reverse bill clinton's economic policy. you are laughing but that is basically what happened in south africa. that is important to remember not just in politics but in anything. there will always something that will happen that you weren't planning nor. you have to learn to deal with that and pursue your original vision at the same time. but mandelly still deserves history's applause. south africa is still a do he mock sy. it is still doing a lot of good. the president who has his own

problems, is great dealing with aids really great. mandela proved inclusion is better than constant conflict. so i think all of that works. let's talk about some non-state actors he died a couple years ago. died in 2004, won nobel prize for creating greenbelt in kenya. she was a good friend of hillary 's and i's. she was a amazing woman. she knew the kenyan tree cover had gone down to the 1% of the land t was eroding topsoil. destroying productivity. it would cause endless political conflicts in the country fuel corruption. she had a vision of repairing that damage so that kenya could take its considerable other

strength and grow in a way that pursued broad based prosperity. but what she won the know pell prize for, i need to figure out something everybody can do to advance this vision. i don't need just to be in the parliament advocate these changes. i need to do something that would involve everyone. so she got thousands and thousands and thousands of people to plant trees. tens of millions of trees. single-handedly from the grassrootses up she began to try to reverse a debilitating trend that they're still working on today. so her vision, as a citizen organizing an ngogo she didn't have power to do it herself. the government is supporting policies to map the country

plant in strategic way, to do things. they asked my foundation to go there because i think our long friendship with her and what we'd done, but that's a way to look at her life and say, she made a real difference and she did it by empowering individual people to do something they found simple and do it on a scale that would catch the attention of the world. give you another example. a republican american businessman. now sadly passed away a few years ago. in the early 1960s ken iverson found ad company called nucor. it was a steel company. his vision was to make steel not in original casting the way it was largely done in and

around pittsburgh but by melting down existing steel and then reforming it. and the technology was developed so the steel could then be rolled in one inch thick rolls instead of four inch thick rolls, making it much more malleable, much more suitable for conversion into a variety of purposes. that is not the important thing. iverson decided that if he wanted this company to last for the long run, and to be able to adapt, that 40% of their success would be rooted in their technology and 60% in their people. so he adopted the most radical egalitarian culture of any company of which i'm aware in america. and, like i said, and the reason i know this, i recruited the company to arkansas and i liked him. i'm pretty sure he never voted

for me because he was a really conservative republican. he didn't want the government to tell him to do this but this was a communities dream what he did. first of all when he had 11 steel mills in america. they had no corporate headquarters. they rented office space in an office park in charlotte north carolina. they had a grand total of 22 people in the central office of the, with 11 steel mills. the workers were paid a salary that averaged 65 to 75% of industry average but got a weekly bonus based on production totals. line production workers got a bonus based on another formula. in addition to that there was a profit sharing plan of 10% of the profits unavailable to top

management. everybody else participated. in addition to that if you had a child, who wanted to go to college and you were a nucor employee they would play the equivalent of a year's tuition in community child college for a child to go. one man in darlington south carolina educated eight children working for nucor. it had no adverse effect on your pay or your bonus. in addition to that they had a no layoff policy. so i still got the letter ken iverson wrote to all of his employees in the only year of the 1980s when nucor made less money than they did the year before. they never lost money until the financial crash but their profit margin went down. sew sent a letter which said something like this. as you know, the world steel business is in a terrible slump

and so our sales went down 20% this year. this is not your fault. you did everything i asked you to do. it is however my fault. i should have been smart enough to figure out how we could be the only company in the world not to have our profits decline. as you know i have a no layoff policy. so everybody's income is going down 20% this year. but since it is my fault, not yours, i will cut my income 60%. it was a big article in fortune or "forbes" of, it was kind of mixed tone, pointing out how he was now light years the lowest paid fortune 500 company executive in america. he wore it like a badge of honor. when i was president he wrote a little management book called plain talk. still my favorite one. i can two down the street in new york where all the corporate offices are, watch people go to work and look at them five minutes at their desk tell you whether that company is

succeeding or not. and he said, long before it became the problem it is today, i don't want short-term investors in nucor. they want somebody committed to turn a quick profit they should invest somewhere else. we're in it for the long run. and it is very interesting to see, he had a very inclusive process. there were only three management layers below him and the employee making the steel. and every employee had president's phone number and his. you could call him on the phone but only if you would you can talk to your supervisor first. the point is, he created a culture of radical inclusion. and it worked and it is working today. they have the same culture today except now in the education benefit is higher, and if you got a spouse who wants to go to

college, your spouse is eligible. if you want to go after work, you can do go. and none of it takes a penny away from either your wages or your bonus. so, i'm would say that guy was success. by the time i became president nucor was the third biggest steel company in america. he did it with a vision, with a plan with execution and radical inclusion. and, give you another example. bill and melinda gates, they have a simple vision. their vision is, that every life has equal value and therefore we should create a world where people have equal chances. that's their vision, simple. they have a strategy. we got a lot of money.

and we're going to invest it to achieve that vision. but we're going to invest it through people who do things that we can't do. we don't want to hire 100,000 people to implement all these things we fund. so, for example melinda gates and hillary recently announced before she left the foundation that they were going to, that all this data research they had done on the condition of women and the disparities in the conditions of women and men in the united states and around the world. bill gates and the gates foundation invests a lot of money every year through our health access initiative to solve problems and i love the way he just he is totally icon classic. he just wants to do what works. he said to me a few years ago he said the world shouldn't need what you do. the world health organization ought to be able to do this but

it can't. and so, we do it. but it's very interesting to watch how a person, if you listen to him, he will say we find it harder to give this money away than it was to make it because our goal is simple and clear. we want to create a world of equal chances. and they, i think have been most successful in their health investments around the world where the millennium development goals have been succeeded for mortality declining maternal mortality and any other number of measurements there. give you one other example or two in health care because they're important. i recently went to haiti where i've been working for many years, to visit a project i supported on the grounds of the oldest aids clinic in the world the first aids clinic the world

was established in port-au-prince haiti by a doctor named bill papp. who is a native of port-au-prince. port-au-prince was a city built in a bowl for about 200,000 people and now three million live there. a lot of people live essentially on fields. 100,000 people live in what should be out on the water. this makes the possibility of water-borne diseases much more likely. and that is what cholera turned out to be. actually when it basically entered the water stream in haiti. because the country doesn't have good sewer and water systems. so bill papp took the money that he got from a straight roof sources and built a modern cholera treatment center. most important thing is this.

this guy spent his whole life treating aids. then when the earthquake occurred, all the land he had around his little hospital he gave over to a tent city. he realized cholera ould be just as debilitating to his country. so he designed a hospital to maximize the success of treatment, maximum light sanitation, no infections. and he treated the water and the sanitation above the ground because of characteristics i just described. he developed this absolutely beautiful treatment system covered in plants and greenery which got 899% of the -- 99% of the bacteria out of the waste system and then they covered it with chlorine and got up to 99% before it could ever be released

into the ground. this one man and one place, doing something at an affordable price that could be scaled and could save countless lives around the world. paul farmer, my friend who is on the board of our health programs founded partners in health with jim can who is now the head of the world bank. he figured out how to serve an area of 200,000 with a health staff that would normally only serve 20,000 by building one good hospital and satellite clinics and then beyond the satellite trained community medical workers. and then he went to rwanda at our request and worked with our foundation and built a hospital in every region of the country.

they had all been destroyed except the one in the capitol city during the genocide. the last hospital near the uganda border is the only serious cancer treatment center in that part of africa but they're all the same thing. simple system that can be affordable and repeated by countries at income levels way below ours. if you have a vision and strategy and you have the support of people at the grass roots level because you're inclusive, these kinds of things can be done by ordinary citizens. these are things we need to be thinking about in america as we work to restore broad based prosperity. as we work to define our role in a world of competition, from new and different forces to define

the future. arguably the most interesting non-governmental organization today which proves the importance of inclusion, by its shortcomings but is formidable is isis. isis is a terrorist organization an ngo trying to become a state. that is, they don't recognize any of the boundaries of the middle-eastern countries that is legitimate. they were all established, drawn largely by westerners after the collapse of the ottoman empire in world war i. and so when they go capture a place, they set up their own judicial system. they set up their own rule makings. they set up whatever their social services are going to be and the only thing is that you

can't disagree with them or they will kill you as we have seen. sometimes they kill you, they will allow just as the ottomans in caliphate times they will allow a christian or a jew to live if they agree to pay a fine, or a tax every year to live within their hallowed kingdom, but if they decide you're an apostate, they just kill you. why they authorize the killing of other muslims. why they went after that tiny 2nd of yazidis who were totally powerless because they viewed them as an inherently apostate. only book i'm going to recommend today. fascinating book written on the minority religions of the middle east by a retired british civil servant fluent in both arabic and farsi called, "heirs

to forgotten kingdoms." all the minority religions in the middle east. there are still two hundred how samaritans there. so -- 200,000 samaritans there. so certainly there is a good samaritan. it is fascinating. but the point is, isis is the opposite, they have a vision they have a strategy they think they're right. but, they are anti-inclusion in the extreme. and people are voting with their feet as you see. it will not be the future but it can not be ignored. it has to be countered. so as america charts its course in the world and tries to restore broad based prosperity and opportunity at home, tries to get back more in the future business to accelerate all these great technological and

biological developments going on, it is well to remember that we need to make our purposes clear, with a vision that inclusive of our own people, and also gives other people a chance to be part of constructive rather than destructive partnerships. for me personally, i have always had a pretty simple purpose. i always wanted, at the end of my life, to be able to answer with a resounding, yes, three questions. our people better off when you quit than what you started? do children have a broader future? are things coming together instead of being torn apart? to me all the rest is background

music. and, i tried to develop the political skills and the ability to constantly develop policy that would enable me personally to say that. which meant at given times i might have a different vision for what the country had to do at this point in time or what my native state had to do at that point in time. all of you have to do that. . .

so the great joy in life was a constant search for the truth. and it was a journey that gave life dignity and meaning. so i can't tell you what your purpose should be but i can tell you that it is bigger than you. a couple years ago right as the enemy of our global initiative was beginning i was notified that a young woman who worked for our health access initiative in mozambique and her fiancé a gifted architect had been among

those murdered by al-shabaab in the attack on the mall in nairobi. she was a dutch nurse. ironically at all these years i've been doing all this work around the world we have only lost two people to violence, and they were both dutch nurses. at this woman was a dutch nurse it was so good at what she did she took time off from work and ask him would like to auburn and got a ph.d in public health and came back to take a management position in our efforts in africa. her name was alice. she was eight and a half months pregnant. she went to nairobi because it's the best place in that part of africa to have a baby. and she and her husband were just strolling down the mall and they were killed.

the people who killed her dallas think they are righteous people. but if you believe in an inclusive future an interdependent world, it doesn't belong to them. nigeria has a new president because a majority of people in nigeria don't like boko haram. they believe in an inclusive future. they don't think of of her right to kill everyone who disagrees with you. so anyway when i set the global initiative i was very moved by this because i did with that woman six weeks before she was murdered visiting our projects come and she was beautiful and very pregnant. and i said i am a mama's father committed have an emergency just called into play. we were joking and having fun. six weeks later she was gone.

her life had purpose because she had a vision. and she develop a personal strategy to make a difference, which she did. so i told this story just told you, and what i told the story come another woman came up to me and said, you know, more than 20 years ago i was that young nurse. i was in kenya. i was working in africa, in an ngo and i was pregnant adequate to nairobi to have my baby. she said my baby was born healthy and i was blessed. but a few years ago he was shot several times into virginia tech shooting.

and she said thank god he lived, and it changed his whole life and all he wants to do now is work in a nongovernmental group to give children a safer future. we all find our purpose in our own way. but if you work at it, it will come. i wish you well. thank you very much. [applause]

>> [background sounds] >> mr. president the students have submitted some really excellent questions. i think very stimulating. the first one is a softball, and i can't let you talk too long on it because it's going to be great fun i think but there's some other good things coming along. it's the teacher in me. what did you going to georgetown mean to you? how did it influence your purpose? >> i'll try to give you a short answer because i think i told this before, but when i wrote my autobiography, my editor make me take out 20 pages that i wrote about georgetown.

they're still on in there about it, he said you can't possibly remember all these people. all the teachers in everything, but i do. and it had a profound impact on me personally because i met people from all over the world, both my teachers and my fellow students that i'm never would've met otherwise. our class our class was the only graduating class and i think in american history that produced three presidents in three countries. when i became president, my classmate alberto christiaan was president of el salvador. when i left office, my classmate gloria was president of the philippines come and hold on i was there, our classmate was a bit of a saudi version of the cia. later ambassador to the united states come ambassador to the united kingdom.

so i was here with fascinating people. i was here at a fascinating time. but it affected me mostly because of the teachers i had. and the people of what the school with the conversations we had about what was going on in our classes and the debates we had. it was very different from now. we didn't have in my class can we did not have a foreign service, and elected course until the second semester of our junior year. big controversy. but i loved it. it, i doubt very seriously if i ever would've become president had i not come to georgetown. and i'm certain i would not have done what every good idea do i would've done less well if i had not been here. >> thank you. this is from a sophomore in

college. sort of a two-pronged. word you see this generation of young adults going? and what weight is our path going to be different than before? >> what has happened in technology to this date will look like child's play over the next 20 to 30 years. i think most of you will live to be 90 years old or more, and less an accident befalls you or you have an environmentally caused cancer we don't have a treatment yet. i think that you will live in a time where the technological revolution will extend into artificial intelligence and will be able to do things we never imagined being able to do before. i think the combination of

nanotechnology improvements and the continuing mysteries of the genome will lead us to affordable, four times a year health exam that were basically involve going into a canister in being scanned. i think one of the biggest debates in medicine within 20 years will be for example since we all have cancerous cells rooting around in our bodies all the time and and most of them are just destroyed by the operations of our body one of the biggest question for me that we can see this microscopic tumor, should we sabotage now or wait until later? your life will be dramatically different. i believe that you be given one final chance to figure out how to avoid the most calamitous consequences of climate change and i think it would be even more economically beneficial ways to do it than there are now

that i think you'll have to worry a lot about water. i think california is a canary in a coal mine but i think i will be a big issue. i think you'll have to worry about how to feed a planet of 9 billion people come if we actually go that far. if we modernized enough in the developing world we may stop at 8 billion, because the one thing that across all of the cultures slow the birthrate is the education of women and economic development of the poor. so i think you will live in an exciting time. i think that it is unlikely that these ideologically driven conflicts we are having now with nonstate actors will be fully resolved. i hope and pray that we will leave behind a system where we

can say with some confidence that we can keep really big bad things from happening. that's what this negotiation with iran is so important. maybe for reasons that haven't been much in the press, for example, if they get a bomb then there are four or five arab countries that can afford one. you have six more people with nuclear capacity, they are expensive to build and maintain and very expensive to secure. and if you're going to have a bomb that you can use them you have to have access to solve material and that's what you'll have to watch. what about the excess? because any country that uses a big bomb knows that it can be annihilated. but that fissile material, i consider it a minor miracle of the modern world that the fissile stocks of pakistan as far as we know even though mr. kohn give all the nuclear

technology to north korea and others come as far as we know their materials have not been stolen sold or given away. so i think you don't have to worry about all that. but i believe that you will live longer, have more options and you will we will probably not have fully resolved the problem between growing productivity and adequate employment. but i do think we will do a better job at a time you are raising own kids and living our lives. i think we will do a better job in figuring out how to come and more fairway a portion of the wealth that we are creating i think there will be more shared prosperity. but what nobody can really tell you is whether we have entered a period where the technological changes are so rapid that we won't be able to create enough employment in a conventional sense for 40 hours a week to keep the populace employed and

so we'll have to think about it that happens, let's think about some radical changes in the arrangement of labor and capital. it was said the other day he thought sometime in this new century we would maybe be down to a three-day work week just because of the breathtaking increases in productivity. and so have at it have a lot of fun with your leisure time. [laughter] spin this may be the thesis question for the toughest. what were the most difficult decisions as president or otherwise? you can pass on that if you want. >> the ones i had to make? >> yes. >> welcome interestingly enough they were not the ones that were most politically unpopular.

like i said 80% of the people were against what i did in mexico, easy decision. 74% of the people were against my first act in the international arena as president, which was to put together a big aid package for russia because they were then so poor and 93 they couldn't even afford to bring our soldiers home from the baltic states. a majority was against what i did in bosnia when we started. the most difficult decision were my version of i'll come back first i ran for president because i thought trickle-down economics was wrong. we had a robust economic climate for most of the 1980s and ordinary people were not

benefiting from it at all. poverty had gone up. wages were stagnant and i wanted to give the middle class a tax cut. invite before i was elected, the government said oh, by the way the deficit is going to be twice as big as we told you it was your goal, by the way. -- oh by the way. i could play like it didn't happen and present my original plan or go back to the core strategy which was to get america going again we had to bring interest rates down because even then we had a normal academy, economy, interest rates were getting high, and it was going to drive, and they were higher than inflation. so mike campbell as if i did interest rates down it would be this huge amount of private investment which would overcome the contraction impacted

economic plan presented which call for both spending cuts and tax increases. but i hated to give up something that i really wanted to provide and i had to choose that are doubling the current income tax credit, which benefited primarily lower income workers who have children. and i just don't think a society as rich as ours should allow anybody to have kids in the house and work full-time and still be in poverty. i just think that's wrong the so i did it but it wasn't, so all i heard, continue to break my promise on the middle-class tax cut. the interest rate declined was worth $2200 to the average family and lower mortgage rates credit card rates. we passed a balanced budget bill can we also passed the middle-class tax cut. that was the hardest decision. it was hard for me not to act alone in bosnia.

we all knew what serbia was doing in bosnia and i sent my consecutive state warren christopher around to europe and asked them to help and they didn't want to do it. thousands of reasons why, and i decided i shouldn't do that because it wouldn't be sustainable. the europeans had to buy him. they had own the fact that if they wanted a europe that was united democratic, and free for the first time in history the balkans were going to be part of it. and so i waited until we could get a unified response. but it was a painful way. a lot of people died on that weight. and some of the decisions that i regret most were not hard but

were wrong. like we didn't even talk seriously about whether we should send troops to rwanda, because the public was exhausted with what happened at blackhawk down and somalia and because we were involved in bosnia and that was much more in the news. and, frankly, we didn't have any idea they could kill 10% of the country in 90 days with machetes essentially. so sometimes the things you regret most were not hard at the time. they should've been a little harder. i will always regret we did have a long, drawnout debate on the we didn't even really discuss it. and i spent my drive -- i spent my life trying to make it up to the rwandans, and i'm about to get there. i'm working on it. >> this is a question i wanted to ask, early on when you committed yourself to look

service edge outlined your fundamental purpose a vocational commitment like that, did you ever go through a time when you really question, to say, what am i doing? and attempted to withdraw speak with you mean come to give it up? well i did when i was governor. i was governor for a long time. at least i proved i could hold down a job last night but you know, i served a very long time and people of my native state were good enough to elect me five times are based on recent events i don't know if i could win again down there but so there were times when i just got burned out, you know? but i never wanted, i would always find something new to do.

i told people one of the reasons i love being in public life it was like peeling an onion that had the end. there was always always another layer always something new, always something interesting, always something to engage the imagination and to stretch your capacities. so i didn't, and when when congress and the president were all hot on that whitewater business out of realize it wasn't on the level, it was nothing to it and that there couldn't have been, i invested in a land deal and lost money, like i later went in the s&l this is a failed. i didn't ever borrow any money from it. it was a made up a deal. it was heartbreaking to me to see otherwise central the

people, treat it like it was something but it never made me want to quit. i was raised come i had an unusual upbringing but i was raised not to quit. we are not big on quitting and my family. you may have noticed that. [laughter] so it was awful, but i learned to kind of just wall it off. and i think you know i also felt maybe that was maybe it was eric and and i shouldn't feel that way but i spent a lot of time when i was president reading the history of other presidencies, including not well known presidents. and i realized that the success of a given president is it is

first determined by the time which you live. washington was either going to be a great president or a flop if he decided to be king. he made the right decision or even though the government had nowhere near the range it had to do than it does not. he was a very great president and he made really good decisions on the big things. lincoln became president when the whole question was whether the union would survive or not. a lot of people thought it wouldn't. a lot of people thought the south of mortality generals and that we would not hang around. the union wouldn't hang around long enough to do it. he was calm and roosevelt had the depression and world war ii but it also depends on whether the skills and the psychology of a person and a given leadership position, these are not just politics, actually fit well with the challenges of that

particular moment. and when i read all these histories of the less known presidents, i realized some of them were really well suited to govern when they did and others might've been quite successful if they had covered at another time and i think i'll give you an example. a lot of people think franklin pierce is one of the worst presidents we ever had. and if you measure that because he was elected right before the civil war and he couldn't stop the countries drift towards war and he couldn't figure out to stop the spread of slavery that's absolutely true. but he was an immensely successful soldier in the mexican war. he was a successful member of congress and went home and became governor of new hampshire the the only other governor of a small state to be elected president. and he was on his way to be inaugurated with his only child,

presidents were and are good in march. he took a train out of washington. on the way there was a train wreck. nobody was hurt very bad. for a couple of broken bones, except his 11 year old son who fell on his neck snapped it and died. nobody else got nothing more than just a little broken bone, and that's how he began his presidency, with his wife and a virtue in a catastrophic -- if he had a different circumstance he might've been quite a successful president. ruled in a more calm time. and i'm not sure that was in the cards for anybody to succeed before the country split apart. so anyway, that's what i think about, but i don't, by and large i think when you get tired and want to bag it unless you're old and you think i've got three

years left and i like to spend it doing something else you want to hang in there and work through it. if you believe he made the right decision in the first place and you ought to go somebody will push you out. >> but you ought not open the door if you think, if your vision has not been fulfilled. i'm not big on quitting. i would rather hang around and fight it through to get me to go, somebody will kick you out. >> all right, mr. president, we will allow one more question. you have obviously read very wisely over a long time. if you had to recommend one book, what would it be? >> one book? >> that's all you get. dimension ones earlier, but -- >> the meditations of marcus are really does. >> you did it. [laughter] [applause]

thanks. i really appreciate it. [applause] >> today, the senate finance committee holds a meeting to mark up the trade policy bill. the legislation would impact congressional trade authority. you can see that live starting at 10:45 a.m. eastern on c-span3 c-span3. >> the annual white house correspondents' dinner is saturday. will have remarks from the president. our live coverage starts at 6:30 p.m. eastern live on c-span c-span. >> she was considered a modern for her time called mrs. president by our detractors and was outspoken about her

views on slavery and women's rights. is one of the most prolific writers of any first lady she provides a unique window into the colonial america and her personal life. abigail adams sunday night at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span's original series first ladies, examine the public and private lives of the women who fill the position of first ladies and influence on the presidency from martha washington to michelle obama "sundays at eight" p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span3. as a covenant to the series, c-span's new book is now available. "first ladies," presidential stores on the lives of 45 iconic american women providing lively stories of these fascinating women creating an illuminating entertaining and inspiring read. it's available as a hardcover or an e-book for your favorite bookstore or online bookseller. >> c-span2 providing live

coverage of the senate floor proceedings and key public policy events. and every weekend booktv now for 15 years the only television network devoted to nonfiction books and authors to c-span2 created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. >> ascended about to gavel in for the day. they are expected to complete work on an anti-trafficking bill that would impose fines and other penalties against persons convicted of human trafficking. they will take a couple of votes on the built about 10:40 a.m. the senate agreed last night to begin formal debate on the loretta lynch attorney general nomination. a confirmation vote could happen as early as tomorrow. and now our live coverage of the senate it on c-span2.

the president pro tempore: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. immortal god, you are the meaning and mystery of all that is, was, and is to be. thank you for your sustaining

love and for the opportunities to learn from each other. thank you also for the challenges and difficulties you use to test and refine us. lord, give our lawmakers the wisdom to trust the unfolding of your providence. may they embrace a humility that seeks first to understand instead of striving first to be understood. deliver them from a false patriotism that would render unto caesar what belongs to you. guide them with your powerful

hand until the potentates of this world acknowledge your sovereignty and might. we pray in your sacred name. amen. the president pro tempore: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. mr. reid: mr. president?

the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. reid: yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of an incident that tragically changed the world. on april 21, 1915, near the beginning of world war 1 a german army introduce to the world large-scale chemical weapons. mr. president, as that gas swept the battlefield people died suffered enduring pain and were -- those that survived, with rare exception suffered the rest of their lives. tons of pouring gas nearly devastated the allied line in belgium. the world would never be the same. the use of poisonous gas proliferated in world war 1 bringing death and did he devastation to millions until the military

and civilians. following world war 1 nations joined to support the geneva protocol of 1945 declaring chemical weapons were so barbaric so evil that they should be prohibited from use. but the use of chemical weapons has continued. the world will never forget the atrocities perpetuated by hitler as nazi germany used chemicals on millions of jews. during the nazi regime, the beginning of it, five men -- one name started with s one started with a one started with r i and n invented sarin gas. so mr. president the world won't forget the atrocities perpetuated by the hitler regime during world war ii, as nazi germany whose chemicals in the genocide of millions, millions of jews.

the iraq-iran war of the 1980 was another terrible instance of lethal gas being used as a tool of warfare. in 1980 saddam hussein unleashed a poison on his own people killing thousands of kurds. with those pictures available see those people laying there: old men old women middle aged, babies. the world witnessed these events in horror and decided international action was absolutely necessary again. in 1992 the chemical weapons convention was adopted in geneva. the chemical weapons convention that requires the destruction of chemical weapons. i voted for that ratification with pleasure. i ratified -- voted for ratification which was ratified here in the senate, the convention to do something more

about these chemical weapons. but in spite of our efforts the use of chemical weapons endures. 100 years has passed since the fateful day in belgium and the world has yet to end the evil of these poisons. today bashar al-assad and his regime and forces loyal to him in syria are responsible for horrific violence that violates basic decency and violates international laws of war and has shocked the global conscience. it's no secret that assad has repeatedly used chemical weapons against syrian people. the country over which he dictates. mr. president, even after syria was compelled to accede to the chemical weapons convention in 2013, there is clear evidence that assad has continued to

reign terror over his own people by using barrel bombs filled with chlorine to indiscriminate ly wreak havoc. mr. president, i don't usually watch "60 minutes." it is a good program by i usually have other things to do. but i watched because the promotion on sunday evening they had graphic pictures that had never been shown before of what this be evil person who runs this country of syria did to his own people. mr. president, sadly, in addition to the use of chemical weapons, the assad regime carried out all manner of atrocities throughout the course of the four-year civil war in syria. mr. president, as we speak about 400,000 syrians have been killed and he's responsible for the vast majority of those deaths.

and that doesn't take into consideration the millions of people who have been displaced. the regime has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starvation, systematic murder, torture race sexual violence and forced disappearance. if there were ever, ever something that is evil, bad wrong, it's what he has done. the action of the assad regime has resulted in the deaths, as i've indicated of countless innocent civilians and has sown discord and disarray around the region. yesterday assad has lied to the world about -- yet assad has lied to the world about using chemical weapons. he loves to get on these shows where the united states goes, and journalists all these lies

about what he hasn't done, and there are dead people, hundreds of thousands of them there. barrel bombs cluster bombs and he targets civilians. he starves them demonstrating again and again what a terrible person he is and someone who cannot be believed about anything he says. i'm going to introduce senate resolution condemning the actions of the assad regime and its military forces for these crimes that they've carried out against humanity. mr. president, this legislation will express the senate support for the referral of these evil acts that assad perpetuated and perpetuated by other syrian officials and of course military

leaders to the appropriate international tribune. mr. president, also i have to say that it turns my stomach to hear people talk about making a peace deal in syria and having assad part of that deal. how could we do that? this resolution will make clear the senate's opposition to any role for bashar al-assad in that civil war. i'm confident my senate colleagues will join me in condemning the assad regime and its unthinkable campaign of evil against its own people. i suggest the absence of a quorum mr. president. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. mcconnell: mr. president are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that it be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: mr. president we'll have a busy dave voting voting -- day of voting today. senators should expect two roll call votes at approximately 10:45 this morning and up to six roll call votes at 2:00 p.m. to finish the anti-trafficking bill. i filed cloture on the lynch nomination last night. that vote will occur an hour after the senate convenes tomorrow. i understand there is a bill at the desk due for its second reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the title of the bill for secondary time. the clerk: s. 1035, a bill to extend authority relating to roving surveillance and so forth and for other purposes. mr. mcconnell: in order to plaits bill on the calendar, i would to be further proceedings. the presiding officer: objection having been heard the bill will be placed on the

calendar. mr. mcconnell: now mr. president, help is finally on the way for the thousands of enslaved victims who suffer unspeakable abuses in the shadows. these victims often have nowhere safe to sleep. they often have no safe place to turn to. and if they do tray to escape -- and if they do try to escape, many risk being treated by the justice system as criminals instead of as the victims they truly are. this is a human rights bill that victims' rights groups have called the most thoughtful piece of anti-trafficking legislation currently pending pending. we're relieved we can finally say it will pass today and that the senate won't violate

long-standing precedent in doing so. let me be as clear as possible: there was never a logically consistent rationale to the filibuster that held this bill up and the non-congressional nonpartisan congressional research service backed up that there are no private funds in this bill. thankfully the filibuster is finally at an end. today is a new day a new day. today we'll finally vote to deliver much-needed resources to the victims of modern slavery with all.there's nothing new. simply a reaffirmation of the status quo. we know that today's outcome would not have been possible without the herculean efforts of my colleague senator cornyn, who was absolutely determined to

see justice for victims and we really can't thank him enough. he negotiated across the aisle in good faith never gave up, not even in the pleekest hour, and today the real focus of all our efforts the victims of trafficking and modern slavery can see that help is finally on the way. so we thank senator cornyn, we thank his negotiating partners from both parties we thank chairman grassley for his superb work on this important bill in the judiciary committee as well. we look forward to this bill's passage in the house and its signature by the president. and once the justice of victims of trafficking act passes here in the senate, we'll turn to consideration of the president's nominee to be attorney general just what i pledged we'd do, and that's what we will do. now one final matter: i believe we're going to be hearing from the chairman of the finance committee shortly.

senator hatch will be here to discuss bipartisan trade promotion authority legislation which is important because we know that trade is the key to supporting high-quality american jobs and exporting more of the things american workers make and exporting more of the things that american farmers grow. congress is working again and this bipartisan bill is another sign of that. no legislation will ever be perfect, but chairman hatch and ranking member wyden along with chairman ryan in the house put together an agreement that we can all be proud of. it protects and enhances congress' role in the trade-negotiated process while making sure that presidents of either party will have the ability to negotiate good agreements that can increase growth in our american economy and support many high-quality american jobs. they're marking that bill up today. i wish them the best of luck.

we look ford to having it on the floor -- we look forward to having it on the floor in the very near future. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order leadership time is reserved. under the previous order the senate will resume consideration of s. 178, which the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 26, s. 178 a bill to provide justice for the victims of trafficking. mr. cornyn: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: mr. president i just want to say very briefly because i know the distinguished chairman of the finance committee is here to speak on an important matter, but i want to express my gratitude to the majority leader for his determination to see this justice for victims of trafficking act come to completion here in the senate, which it will do this afternoon. it would not have happened without his determination to make it happen. mr. president, i withdraw my amendment number 1120 and offer amendment number 1124.

the presiding officer: the amendment is withdrawn. and the clerk will report the amendment. the clerk: the senator from texas, mr. cornyn, for himself and mrs. murray proposes an amendment numbered 1124. strike section 101 -- mr. cornyn: mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed. with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. cornyn: i will be back to speak further on the act but for now i will yield to my friend and colleague the chairman of the finance committee. the presiding officer: under the previous order, there will be one hour of debate equally divided in the usual form. mr. hatch: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. hatch: i thank both proliferate my colleagues who have spoken -- i thank both of my colleagues who have spoken this morning senators mcconnell and cornyn. and i want to take a few minutes minutes this morning to talk about congress' role in advancing our nation's trade policy. while i know that trade policy

can be very contentious here in congress, there are two simple facts that are beyond dispute: number one more than 96% of the world's consumers live outside of the united states. and, number two, in order to be competitive american businesses need to be able to sell more american-made products and services to those overseas customers. in order to do that, we need to tear down barriers to american exports. at the same time, we should lay down enforceable rules where our trading partners -- for our trading partners so that we can be sure that american workers and job ceeforts are creators are competing on a level playing field. in order to advance our global interests in the marketplace congress and the administration need to work together. most people acknowledge this reality. yet there are differing views as to what mechanisms should be in place to facilitate cooperation between those two branches of government. in the end, there is only one

legislative tool with a proven track record, and that's trade promotion authority otherwise known as t.p.a. t.p.a. has been a cornerstone of u.s. trade policy. t.p.a. is a compact between the senate the house and the administration and under this compact, the administration agrees to consult with congress as it negotiates trade agreements. in return, both the house and senate awill you -- for a number of reasons this compact is essential for conclusion and passage of strong trade agreements. put simply, without t.p.a., our trading partners will not put their best offers on the table because they will have no guarantee that the agreement they reach will be the one that congress actually votes on in

the end. the most recent version of t.p.a. expired eight years ago. while trade negotiations have continued since that time without t.p.a. in place our negotiators have affectively been negotiating with one armed tied behind their backs. we need to real estate new t.p.a. sooner rather than later in order to give these negotiators the tools they need to reach the best deals possible. the stakes are really high. very high. currently, the u.s. in the midst of negotiating some of the most ambitious trade agreements in our nation's history most notably the trans-pacific partnership, or t.p.p. if we want those negotiations to succeed -- and i would hope most of us do want them to succeed -- we need to renew t.p.a. last week i was joined by my colleaguescolleagues in flowferg the

bipartisan congressional trade and accountability act of 20156789 this legislation would renew t.p.a. and promote the advancement of 121st century trade policies. later today in just a little while in fact the senate finance committee will be marking up this bill as well as other important pieces of trade legislation. it is really -- it has really taken a long time to get here. as you may recall, mr. president, i along with the two farmer chair merntion introduced a bill to renew t.p.a. early last year. that bill had bipartisan support in congress and was broadly endorsed by the business community t also had the support of officials in the obama administration. when republicans took control of the senate this year and i became the chairman of the finance -- senate finance committee, i made renewing t.p.a. my top trade priority for this congress and set out to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

this legislation that we'll be marking up today is the result of that hard work, and i'm grateful to my colleagues for working with me to get us this far. of course, the effort to renew t.p.a. really began a long time before we introduced our bill last year. the discussion and debate over a new and improved t.p.a. began even before the last iteration expired in 2007. we've been talking about this for a long time. now is the time to act. over the past few weeks as we've been preparing to move our legislation forward some people including some of my colleagues, have expressed concerns about t.p.a. and trade agreements in general. so i want to take a few minutes this morning to address some of the specific issues that have been raised: constitutional and sovereignty concerns. some have argued that t.p.a. cedes too much power to the administration and undermines

congresses' constitutional authority to make laws. i know that people have heard the presespresident claiming that the trans-pacific partnership will be -- quote -- "the most progressive trade agreement in history "-- unquote -- and they've heard him brag about the labor and environmental standards the administration is shooting for with the agreement. the question inevitably becomes will president obama try to use this or other trade agreements to advance unilateral changes in u.s. law and policy? and even though we all know that no trade agreement could go into force without congress' approval given this administration's track record on executive overreach people are right to be concerned about these issues. fortunately, our t.p.a. bill addresses these uncertainties. rather than ceding authority to the executive branch, our bill empowers the congress at every step from trade negotiations to

final approvement of the agreement itself, our bill makes what objectives a trade agreement must reach in order to be approved by congress. in fact, the bill contains the clearest articulation of trade priorities in our nation's history. it includes nearly 150 ambitious high-standard negotiating objectives including strong rules for intellectual property rights and agricultural trade as well as protections for u.s. investment. in addition to setting negotiating objectives, our legislation constrains the administration in a number of ways. for example it ensures that implementing bills for trade agreements will include -- and i'm quoting the text of the bill here -- "only such provisions as are strictly necessary or appropriate to implement" trade agreements. additionally it makes clear that any commitments made by the administration that are not disclosed to congress before an

implementing bill is introduced are not to be considered part of the relevant agreement and will have no force of law. our legislation clarifies that trade agreements must be concluded within the t.p.a. time frame and that any substantial modifications or additions made after that time will not be eligible for approval under t.p.a. procedures. so while i understand and even sympathize with those that might be suspicious of this administration and its tendency to push the boundaries of constitutional authority our t.p.a. speaks to these concerns. there might be those who worried that the it trade agreement could undermine u.s. sovereignty our bill addresses those issues. the bill makes clear any provision of a trade agreement that is inconsistent with federal or state law will have no effect. second it states specifically that federal and state