the push of a button. he blew out his candles on his birthday cake on friday, and he said what his wish was. i wish i could say what it was but i don't know off the top of my head what i do know that 19 million people got the post and five at half million of them watched the entire thing. on television that would've cost a lot of money. >> i hear you saying that it happened a candidate who's good in corporate boardrooms and has raised $125 million for your super packham we won't name anyone, but that is an asset that may not be as powerful as it was in the past? ..

>> yes. >> small donors? >> fifty dollars the average donation. >> and these are donors that can come back again and again and again because they're not going to tap out? >> i love sending out emails and seeing the dashboard. >> talk to us a bit about the campaign, i don't know if it was a couple months ago, several weeks ago -- >> yeah. you know, this all happened because the champagne chairman is one of the people that hired

me that had been at the announcement, had been leaving and three weeks later it was a news story. 80-some people today. we have reasonable people, reasonable finance people. we have the camp own tour bus of america. social media named it. [laughs] >> yeah, we are doing great. >> so talk a little bit about iowa specifically, asking the typical question, do you have to win there, one. two, checking out in iowa a couple of weeks ago, multiple people ben carson has a real organization here, he has, i believe, an organizer chairman and all 99 counties. how are you in terms of structure in iowa and how

important is the state? >> we think it is very important. three tickets out of iowa. we are going to get one. data-driven campaign world that we live, 113,000 -- 13,000 people in the month of august that attended. i think the caucus will be expanding this year and -- at least that's what we are going to try to do. typically 25 thousand votes will win the caucus. >> so when those people come to an event, how are you establishing the connection with them that you'll maintain over time? are you getting phone numbers, emails? >> emails, phone numbers, text

numbers. it's so much better than e-mail. the computer start talking to them. we find out what motivates them. little things like to lease a campaign bus, we leased maya angelo's bus. >> maya angelo had a bus? >> we leased the bus, $130,000 to lease the bus for 10 months. what if if people put kids' names on the bottom so carson every day sees the reason. we paid for the bus in about three hours. you know, south carolina, filing fee. lets ask the people of south carolina if they can pay for the

filing fee. 120 grand. >> so i would be rejected from the journalist if we didn't talk about muslims today? >> why today? >> so does dr. carson believe that it's not possible to have have any muslim who is capable of believing to be president of the united states? >> what he said was that -- they asked him if islam and the constitution could be put together. he said that if a muslim ran for president, he couldn't advocate for them until they supported religious freedom, other states not in the central tentant of islam as we know but willing to,

you know, not support those kind of silly things, that would be fine. >> so the doctor's plan -- the way he has addressed the 11 illegal immigrant already here is to say perhaps, many of them can come workers. that's just another word for amnesty, am i wrong? >> i believe so. it's no path to citizenship. the problem with deporting everybody as donald trump supports, we should start with deporting congress. for 30 years they haven't fixed the border. maybe we should start there. but if you were going to deport them, one you have to find them, you have to find out where they are from and the nation that they are from to get them to accept them, fly them. i mean, it's incredibly expensive. if they will come out of the

dark, pay taxes, pay taxes going forward, we can give them some kind of worker visa and they can go about their lives but they don't get to vote and become citizens. >> so you care whether trump inflates or deflates, you have your unique appeal? >> there's certainly some commonalities. i think donald trump is our best contrast, we'll just let him continue to contrast. >> i've asked everyone this and i'll ask you as well, what is the moment in the campaign that any campaign has had where you thought that was really smart and what is the most enduring quality of this enduring man ben carson that we might not be aware of outsiders?

>> dr. carson -- he's incredibly humble. i've not seen him raise his voice, get angry or anything else. he is -- you know, if i call him, maybe we could talk about this in a slightly different way. he says, that's a good point. >> that's unusual for a politician. >> yeah. i'm not overly proud that i ever worked for but i'm very proud to be associated with him. as far as what other campaigns have done that i thought was brilliant -- >> come on, you can think of something. >> something. i thought cruz announcement at liberty was pretty good idea. >> going for -- >> audience. yeah. we are going to speak there next month. i thought that was certainly a lot cheaper than what i paid to put together an event.

>> thanks so much. we really appreciate you taking the time. [applause] >> thank you, rich, like any good campaign manager we probably need a cocktail, right? please join us at 5:00 for cocktails. >> thanks, everyone. >> pope francis continues his tour through washington, d.c. today and speech to congress this morning, the pontiff to submit spirit of cooperation to help the poor, save the climate. pope francis lift up as provocative figure and announcing the global arms that is drenched in blood, invoking martin luther king.

you can see all of the pope's remarks before congress on our website c-span.org and our conch of the pope's visit tomorrow from new york. that begins at 10:00 a.m. eastern. at 11:30 multireligious service at the memorial. c-span3, you are able to see it -- i'm sorry, hear it on c-span radio and online on c-span.org. we'll continue debate on vehicle for a short-term evolution, current spending levels, and would freeze federal spending for planned parenthood for a year unless planned parenthood says they will not perform

abortions. 60 votes will need to advance. live coverage start at 1:00 p.m. eastern. >> weekends full of politics, nonfiction books and american history. the pope's visit to the united states continues saturday as he travels from new york to philadelphia. live cof -- coverage. the pontiff attends the festival of families which is part of the world meeting of families. moving to our road to the white house coverage, join us sunday evening at 6:35 harvard professor talks about his decision to run for president and his suggestions to change the political system. and on c-span2 book tv saturday night at 10:00 fox news host bill o'reilly speaks on newest

book killing reagan. on sunday afternoon at 1. on american history tv on c-span3, saturday evening starting at 7:00 eastern live from college to mark the 125th anniversary of eisenhower's birth discussing political career with his grandchildren, susan and mary eisenhower. a film documenting business of king and queen of afghanistan to the united states which includes a meeting with the president kennedy and parade through washington, d.c. get our complete weekend schedule at c-span.org.

>> sectary of commerce for economic affairs mark doms here in washington gave examples of how some agencies like the census bureau and cities like chicago are using data information to communicate with communities. this is about 45 minutes. >> good morning. my name is hershel chandler. i am representing iayay, it's a public private partnership dedicate today improving government to the application of information technology, provides objective, trusted form where government and industry executives collaborate issues in

our government. we have volunteers from dozens of companies in government agencies collaborating to access data challenges in a vendor-neutral and workshops have been produced and made available to the public. check out for all of our outputs. so it's a great pleasure that i'm able to introduce a keynote speaker dr. mark doms. for the first three years he served secretary in the economic affairs in department of commerce, in that role he had three main responsibilities, first mark led the economics administration, which includes two of the data organizations, the census bureau and economic analysis. agencies collect information on dynamic population and economy

publishing vital data to nation's citizen, leaders. the census bureau and bureau of economic analysis combine have over 10,000 employees and have a budget of over $1 billion. the responsibility of being top adviser, open data, trade, manufacturing, taxation, innovation, immigration and education. his contribution was often about what data can be used to better understand the issue at hand. his third responsibility was leading the commerce responsibility strategic plan for data transformation. he developed a strategic plan making sure it's optimize to benefit american businesses and people. dr. doms served as chief economist. frequently met with business leaders from across the country listening to their concerns and

providing overviews of the u.s. economy. prior to joining commerce dr. doms spent most of his career monitor federal reserve system. he is a resarnlger and experts in the areas of innovation, productivity, wages and price measurement. he received a bachelor's in maryland and ph.d in wisconsin, madison. he used data to answer questions or made data available so others can do like can wise. if that information wasn't enough to convince, he has separate computers, join me in welcoming dr. mark doms. [applause] >> thank you very much, thank you to data transparency coalition for inviting me.

so we are going to sit here for just a second and see if this works. there we go. so if we can go to the first slide, please. what i would like to do is talk for about 20-25 minutes and let's just open it up for conversations. the main things i want to talk about today is data and what's happening in our country and what role the data transparency fits into that and the role into that. if you look at this map, this is a map of street closures because of the pop's visit today. the reason i'm showing this is ten years ago producing this map would have been really hard. this map exemplifies. making maps like this is a lot easier than it used to be. you see a lot more maps.

there's a huge demand for information. people will always want to know what is happening where and how that relates to other points geographyically speaking. so if we think about this industry, we often seen a huge explosion to make these maps. we have seen explosion in the people with the skills to make the maps. you have people with the right skills, you have the right software tools and you have the data. with all of that combine you produce better outcomes. in this case now in today's world produce more and more maps to get information that people really need. always keep in mind that ten years ago making these things were really hard. today they are a lot easier, and again, the concepts behind making the maps are concept that you heard our previous speakers talk about.

let's go to the next side. so the summary -- next slide. the picture of my cat. you don't want to see it. [laughs] oh, great, okay. i think we really if we think about data of revolution, we are at a tipping point of society to really benefit from this. think about what's happening over the last couple of decades, we seen huge explosion in computer technology and software technology and communications technology. now with those key components in place, we can really take advantage of the huge explosion of data that's occurring. how quickly is this going to happen, how quickly are we going to see benefits from this. first, it depends on how quickly we make really important data accessible and when you say, accessible you hear about different concepts about the

data being in standard format, there's a lot of bingo, you can play with this. making data accessible and also usable. and also what i'm seeing repeatedly in application after application across wide variety of data fields is not only do you need data, you also need people who know how to analyze data. we'll talk about that a little bit more. so one reason that people are getting so excited about data and you hear about it all of the time and you always see these graphs. these graphs have on vertical assess some measure of data volume and maybe words you never heard before petabytes. something like that. some huge amount of data that's always increasing. the horizontal, you always have

time what's happened in the past and projected? the future. and you see the line how much data there is going to be. what the lines show is they are occurring up. the amount of data accessible by people is accelerating. usually the arguments you here for the academy -- accelaration that's accessible. two, if you think about the private sector t private sector is gathering and proassessing more information than ever and what gets people excited about the future is the internet of things, how much data is going to be gathered. it's going to be really huge. there's a huge amount of information, whether it's about information on governments, on the private sector, whether it's

information from somewhere else. the question that i would like to talk a little bit about is why do we care? why is this so important? okay. and basically when you look at data we want something from it. so the pres -- previous speaker talked about how we want more sunlight, more information about how the government is spending the money, for instance. i'm also asking these questions not just can we have more insight, but how is this really kind going to help our country. if we are thinking about all this data and getting outcomes whether it's better knowledge of our citizens and better gdp or something like that. what i would like to do is present a simpler model. three single steps. i'm going to start with the last one first. this kind of data to outcome model, okay, how do we go from

data to get the outcomes that we want and simplified it and you'll notice the acron -- doms. we want better outcomes, okay, so we want -- they usually fall into three buckets. first one is what i call smarter governments. so we heard, again, previous speakers talking about being able to meet mission, to do with -- that with less resources. so we have the government, trillions of dollars, double digit percentage, state and local governments and working in commerce we actually do a census of state and local government. how many states, local

governments tr there? -- out there? >> there are 50 states. the number is 91,000. 91,000 local governments out there. one for every government. 3,000 county governments. there's 91,000 state and local government. that's just really huge so we want smarter government. but again, as the previous is talking about, state and local level. okay. secondly from a perspective we want the businesses to benefit from this data, we can benefit in two ways, they can use data themselves to be more efficient, more competitive, two as represented by a lot of the people in this room, their businesses and the data business as is companies that are represented here. and so it this is an industry

that's important and the u.s. has comparative advantage and something where we want to trade surplus and these are jobs that pay really well, so this is an industry that we really want to support. and finally as also we heard earlier, citizens, working about benefits of data always think -- better government, we want more competitive businesses, we want a stronger business community because that's where our economic growth and welfare comes from or we want kind of more informed citizens of how our governments are working so on and so forth. that's the outcome that all of us are looking towards. how do we get there? we get there -- the proceeding steps are the analysis of data. all this data out there. how do we analyze it. we have the software tools. if we look at the map that we presented in the beginning, there's a company who has a line share of the market who has done

tremendous amount of work to make data standardized. it's really easy to make these maps and on the side now that i'm unemployed -- first 30 minutes was kind of fun, after that it gets frustrating. so i think i'm just going to hire somebody to do that. if you think about the storage capacity, you think about cloud capacity, these things are now a commodity, you know, ten years ago the stuff was a lot more expensive, but the prices have just really fallen, and finally the point i was making before human capital, okay. and so human capital, that's an economic, what it means is the skill of workforce, we need not just kind of data scientists and programsers, but -- programmers but people that know what's going on, you still need to know

people who know how government actually works, for instance, to really make sense of that data, and if you can get really discharge data sets, and i'll put my hat for a moment, the bigger the data set, the more correlation you are going to find just by chance, okay. so as we get more and more data, you're going to have more and more correlations. how do you filter those out to find out what's going on? when i talk to people in the health care, i talk to people in the private sector, people that are looking criminal justice, for instance. there has to be coupled with knowledge of what's happening in the industry, and an example of this is where you just need that kind of -- when you need that common sense. i'm going to tell a data joke. there's not a will the of data jokes out there so forgive me. but it's a little bar. there's three out hunting,

beautiful day like today and they see this duck hundred yards away. gets out the riffle, squeezes the trigger, bullet goes 5 feet to the left of the deer. second goes, rifle, takes a shot, bullet goes 5 feet to the right of the deer. third, looks like we hit it. [laughs] >> that's an example where you need to understand data and understand what is really going onto make the right inferences. we need better governments, we

have to analyze data. we have constraints there. what we also need and the data transparency coalition has been great at this is we need the data itself, the building blocks. to hear about data, and i use the word integrity often. there's a lot of junky data out there. the agencies i used to oversee they prided themselves of producing high-quality data and the data is exploating, there's real questions about data. what do we actually know about it. when you look at complicated questions you have to get those types of answers. and then i talk about common formats and standards, you want to reduce the costs combine -- combining the data sets. if you go to data.gov it's

hard. it's exploding in terms of size and number. and then, the ability to merge data. this relates to the standards because combining data is where you get the real batta. you can have a single data set and you put the things together. that's where you get the big value. look at the map we just showed. there's information about roads closed and the city maps of d.c. ..

they're the folks who monitor our oceans, monitor our fisheries, they monitor solar activity. just the weather data alone is about 30 terabytes a day. and they had this problem of how do you get 30 terabytes of data a day out the door? been working with the private sector in new and creative ways to do that. that's just accused physical challenge that they face. and how do you make this data

accessible? it's a huge problem that we've talked more about later. then we have bea, the good folks who produce the number of gdp. i think a lot of you have heard about that. think about the current account deficit, what are our interactions with the rest of the world, how has that affected the economy? when you think that gdp that's a relatively simple number. when they released their annual provisions, go back in time, they release 5 billion data points on the us economy. it is a lot of detail and do that over time. it's just a tremendous amount of information and it's hard to get this. how can we make that information easy to get? you may have a question about consumer spending in a specific category. how can you as a data customer quickly find that information without wading through hundreds of pages of documentation's? that's a big challenge.

think about th the census burea. the census bureau is the definitive source of information about our people. this is where the good data comes from. when the collected data on from people they care about everybody in our country. when yo you see data from a lotf these kind of private sector sources, you have to question, account representatives of the date of the country? sometimes you see it in public polls and put it at the pollster who doesn't have access to or can't use cell phones which is a big issue, those numbers can be quite skewed. there's a lot of polls doubled off. when you look at data about people and looking at it from the private sector sources, there's huge questions about the quality of that information. the census does a great job of that. if you go to the website the date issued are defined. what do we do make it much easier to find what what does your community look like? let's say you are moving to the d.c. area. most undiluted bigots like what

does falls church look like go to decide the festive. how to set compare? are there people, those communities, to get characteristics are looking for? you should find it easily. right now is pretty hard. then we have ptl, patent and trademark office. when you're an inventor and making inventions and all sorts of things which is so hugely important to the growth of the u.s. economy if you look at the patent database. right now a lot of that data is very unstructured. it's not machine readable and not all the data that the patent office has is out to the public. i think for a lot of the data hud's and an company are askingr terms of financial conditions, in terms of financial interactions, there's a strong analogy with your city a bunch of data that hasn't opened up here. that's exciting but these are the efforts were doing at the department of commerce but the a very common themes.

we want to get the data out to people can find it and use it. let's talk about the analysis of data. i mentioned one of the biggest constraints we have as the country opposes you can the private sector, you probably have a hard time hiring people who have the skills of kind looking at this data. when we looked at this, there's a lot of people in our society, over 10 million, who are kind of data instance in the day-to-day job. there's 150 million people in the workforce who work for employers, and there's about another 20-30 million people who are self-employed. 10 million are very dated in tennessee. we expect that number to increase over time as our society becomes more data intensive. we need to develop more people with these skills who can actually look at data and make the right inference from the. i know the department of

commerce, 50 people who had the ability to large data sets and to do something intelligent with them was hard to do a special on the federal pay scale. when i talk to my friends and the private sector, salaries are really high for this so we have to do better job of educating people to get into the pipeline to do this type of stuff. so better outcomes. as they set a smarter government. we could talk about smarter government just all day. if i'm speaking from economics point of view about where we really going to prevent you a lot in our country, where data can really help, they'd often helps with a lot of uncertainty we don't know stuff. we've all been, with all that experience in the health care sector for ourselves. right now sharing information across the health care industry is very difficult. precision medicine is somewhat impeded by the billy to share information about our dna, for instance.

this is an area that is ripe for future improvements because of data. health care is about 20% of gdp. this these huge. if we can improve health care just a little bit, we can make it more efficient, that could have huge benefits to our society. i can a good friend of mine works in the criminal justice area. there is so much we don't know. we think of all the financial records across state and local governments and all these agencies and how they don't talk to each other, in different formats. the iminal justice system is much, much worse. think about all your state and local law enforcement agencies, even within those agencies data doesn't talk to one another. my car was stolen july 3. that's how i celebrated july 4. my car was still in front of the house you're so i call the police and they come and has anyone ever had a car storm before? so the police this in you just

forgot where you park it, okay? once you get over that and you tell them you were not drinking too much that before, and they drive around your neighborhood to see if they can find it, my car was actually stolen. and then they are like well, it's sold at the chop shop or tear out your ride and it will pop up in a couple of weeks. fine. i'm talking to a neighbor and she said my car was stolen. what i did is i went to the d.c. government website. the one part of d.c. government works really, really well is parking tickets, right? everyone knows this, right? really efficient or they said what you should do is going to website a couple times a day and see if your car gets a parking ticket and you will see, it means it wasn't at the chop shop. shirley neff at it. they got a parking ticket for license plate removed and a new a ticket on exactly where the car was. i went there.

the car had been moved, but the data systems out the parking folks in d.c. government did not talk to the police department. so the person issuing the ticket had no idea that the ticket their issuing two was a car that was stolen. so that's an example of like the criminal justice system where you have these disparate data system that are not talking to one another at all. there's so much room for improvement. if we think about we have all these big questions today about incarceration, what we should do, what our laws should be for certain violations. what are the effects of all these laws? we really don't know. it's amazing we're making such profound decisions about people's lives in an area where we just don't know very much at all. we are making big steps towards the. let me talk about what other example of merging data to really understand things. one of the last things i was

able to do before i left office was to start this process of merging data on our veterans with the data on their employment outcomes. why do we care about that? we really want to know what happens to veterans when into the workforce. we want to know how to there is depending on how many tours of duty you did, how long they were in the service, which he did you in the service, which service you're in. want to know the relationships between all these things and what veterans programs he received. we don't know how efficient, we don't know the outcomes of all these veterans programs. the va budget is $163 billion last year. we just don't know very much about the efficacy of all these veterans programs. maybe they're all great. maybe they should be funded more. maybe there are some that are not having outcomes we want. we just don't know but i merging these data sets together we can

figure this out. and then as i mentioned, more competitive business. if we look at the u.s. economy, the economy has been growing too, 2.5 is in the last few years. one of the really big questions we have out there is productivity growth. most of you probably don't think about productivity growth that much. think about how fast the economy grows, how fast our labor force is growing plus how efficient our economy is the country if you add those up. so efficient that we become people were we become people were saying these last four years productivity growth has been averaging less than 1% historically that is low. kind of targeting. why are we growing faster in this revolution will be at all different things that didn't? there's this big conundrum. maybe what it is is with all these businesses are gathered all this information and they have against materialized the benefits from all this data.

are very michael perspective that's a huge, huge question. so how much all the biggest ever talking about, how much can this improve the u.s. economy? i just went from just a couple rough numbers. there's lots of studies out there who always talk about trillions of dollars from billions of dollars on so and so forth. i find it was hard to understand. i'm an economist. i've been studying economy most of my professional career. i can understand 1 trillion don't maybe if i was one of it i could understand $1000 but he has yet to adopt me. let me put a couple numbers in context. think about all this data stuff. if this could improve the economy just by 1% can think about improvements in government that we get from this. think i think of as we get and the private sector 1%, not very much companies that? 1% of gdp is $175 billion. i can $175 billion.

that's hard to relate to because it's such a big number. that's $543 a person. that's a $1300 per typical american household. that's a lot. the median household income is about $52,000. that would be a nice big bowl. that's if we could improve the economy one percentage point from this data revolution. let's be more optimistic. let's say over the next couple of years this data revolution can improve our economy i 5% which i think is actually a conservative estimate. if it improves it by 5% you're getting close to $1 trillion, i get a concept that is hard to understand but that's over $2700 per person. and begin this about 2.4 people in a typical american household. now all of a sudden you're talking over $6000 per household increase. that's what everything that you were doing come everything everybody out there is doing in

this data space is just so important. because the better information that we have, the better way we can analyze it, the better decisions we can make and get better outcomes. we get better outcomes because we get better government, because our businesses become more productive, we have businesses to thrive in this data space. what's not quantified is better -- our citizens become better informed i'm not sure what donald i can put on that but that's important as well. let me repeat the main take away, which is i think we are at the tipping point. we have more and more data, more and more groups like this who are advocating to make data accessible, to make it usable and make it more actionable. but how quickly we breathe these benefits and the benefits are huge. the numbers i gave you just a moment ago that i think those somewhat kind of conservative it

that so much of a stretch goal to get there but it could make a huge improvement in the quality of lives of just only hundreds of millions of people who live here. we have to make our data more and more accessible and we also have to, one of the biggest constraints were facing, when i talk to people and private sectors with invest in the country and to the skills so we can take advantage, so we can leverage this kind of data revolution. so with that, thank you very much. [applause] >> all right. thank you, mark. we have time for about 10 minutes of questions. i think i will start out with the first one. you just finished six years in government and you have been advocating for fact-based decisions. you been advocating for the release of high quality data. what's next? >> i'm single some looking to

marry an heiress. i don't work for them anymore so i don't care. more seriously, one thing i think about doing is writing a book. what i'd like to do with this book is to talk about all these different areas where david and will improve the quality of our lives and will improve our stature as a country. what i noticed across all these different areas where they are talking about accessibility updated and the government on the skinny side with health care data, veterans day to talk about, that all these common challenges, and how to get all those data together while maintaining privacy? so when the when and we have the stability to take all this data, many different aspects of our lives, combine it so we can answer these important questions. i can just think about the

fetish example. how can we do that -- veterans example. maintain privacy and the perception of privacy. the american public is getting very concerned about information that the government has on them and also at the private sector has on them. we want to use of this data on people for good, okay? if i got data on veterans, for instance, if i could combine that with her labor market outcomes come if i go look at their credit scores, how much debt they have, are they making their mortgage payment, i could better design veterans policies. i could better designed programs while there within the department of defense so that they've better outcomes when they leave the defense department. but to do that i would have to combine data from lots of different sources. our society is grappling at that the question about how do you do that while maintaining privacy and also just this perception of privacy. on one of people give a lot of their private data to the

personal data to private companies like facebook knows a lot about me. facebook provide a service in return for that. but when it comes to the government doing this or even the private sector getting more and more data, there's this real fear. i think the interesting balance on one hand the more data we have the better decisions we can make. the more data we have the heightened anxiety of people. health we have this conversation with folks in order to do this? this is something i would like to try to work on in some capacity at some point because again i really do think that if we can leverage all the information out there we can move the social do quite a bit. >> if you have a question raised your hand. with a couple of mic. right here is the first one i saw. >> my question goes back to your model. one of the things i noticed was a little bit absent from that

model was the very beginning, the visioning or hypothesis making before the data is examined or collected. so to the extent that data analysis and data decision-making is a science, to what extent, doesn't have to be active in relation in terms of extreme edition to get the data you need to make the decisions you want to make sure that decisions on the right decisions? >> that's an excellent question. when it comes to hypothesis to testing that's what earnhardt. when i thought about having experts in this field that's where you need that expertise because again you get these big data sets. you'lyou will find lots of correlations can find a lot of patterns. there's a big phrase we've all heard which is correlation does not equal causation. there's lots of examples of that. i think what's going to happen then is you've seen this before in slow motion, it's a process

that goes back and forth which is we have the data and look at it and said what hypotheses can attest with the dataquick the music what data do i want? an eagle collect that data. and then a as a new has been big data sides before, on my, that was really cool. but then they ask, the number of questions begin to multiply even more than the data sets themselves. as the country with to be more adept at saint okay this is information we have, this is what we can glean from it but we have to ask the question of based on those hypothesis that we can't answer what data should we be gathering. have to make sure the causality goes both ways. no, hypothesis today at the data data back to the hypotheses. >> this side of the room. >> i think you a lot of very good point. i'm curious, you said 97,000 local government and the potential to impact every

citizen. when we talk opened it would talk national or international level, broad skills. what a waste of make as part of the vernacular the weight every citizen or business thinks and acts and the smallest local government to consider how they change their processes, policies in terms of making data accessible as well as investing as well as investing in open data analysis to improve the local outcomes? >> when it comes to local government, i think we've had some groups here that represent local government. we travel around and spoke to lots of different local government organizations. as one of the previous speaker said, some of the big cities, for instance, released data in a pretty good way. so there's a company or two here, they work a lot with kind of local government in making their data accessible. i think what local governments are still in the early stage

defined outcome what did people want? might assist and i went to the city of chicago couple times. they are the vanguard of the open data. they have this active community of -- what do you call them? they would basically have pakistan like once a month what it would bring in these people in the city of chicago theaters are data can do something with it. i think what they found is that sometimes there some data set that people like there's not much use for that. sometimes they were data sets that they found really interesting. and so for instance, one example i think of local government doing good local seven chicago, take a picture of a pothole, descended into the public works department in chicago, it is those on the department of chicago's website so they are accountable for filling in a puddle in a timely manner.

because everybody knows when a pothole was posted on to the website. i just don't like that was a great example of making information available have been made the government accountable to addressing the concerns of the century. that shouts we face is -- citizenry. a lot of the local governments don't have the resources to do this type of stuff. talking data sides making did open, analyzed the data, a lot of these local governments are just really hamstrung to look at the most recent, one of the biggest drags we had on our economy coming out of a recession was state and local government sector. employment just plummeted of the state and local sector because they were hurting in part because of housing prices. property values went down, tax revenues went down. i think what's happened at the state and local government level to shift some that are kind of

the vanguard, some that are not. the ones that are not are often, the art because they are hamstrung. maybe what we really need are kind of standards suggested best practices across all the space. that we've been doing this pretty well for a couple of years facilities larger entities, they beginning to learn what these best practices are. we need more. i've spoken to many of these local government agencies. they did this but at the state and local government level, again a human capital constraints that they are really facing. >> i'm the director of intergovernmental relations for the association of government accounts. one of the questions that i have in human capital aspect that

came up in the last question is relevant to this. all the data stuff, as you mentioned, is taking place at the same time where people are getting frustrated with the cost of higher education. and at the same time we need people trained in this data stuff. what implications do you think that house for our educational system, in terms of, what's the best way to educate people who are knowledgeable on the data step? >> i worked in administration for sixers and one thing they pushed at the federal level is the community college system to get a look at community colleges across the country, i think they're doing a better and better job than that are working with local businesses to better match the skills of workers with those businesses. when you survey businesses what you often see is that there is

this skills mismatch issue. businesses were not hiring because they can find people with the right skills. for having millions of people are in that mismatch category? it's literally in the millions. when we think about getting the skills to do this data stuff, we have to think i think outside their traditional kind of for your college degree. the concept society always pushes its lifetime when he. how can we learn these skills. literally i'm teaching myself a data processing language. what i'm surprised that is there's been a number of online courses that basically don't cost anything for me to learn this. that requires a certain amount of dedication and also i have to do a lot of people who know a lot about this stuff some kind of pointed in the right direction. fundamentally we know that the cost of higher education has far

outstrip the rate of inflation elsewhere in the economy since its very high. one big answers to your question would be kind of the community college system is just really huge. and also you see even at colleges, carnegie mellon is a case in point, in your first year now you take a computer programming course. they just view it as the way to think. this is something anyone should be familiar with. when i was in high school a long time ago i took for trends but that was the exception, not the rollback and. what can we do to teach kids today the things about coding? i can put us under secretary chertoff on quite a bit but it was a lot of fun because there's a lot of these camps where kids would learn java and then make an app. that makes it really fun for kids because i think the way computer science used to be taught was done in a really nerdy way. wasn't done an exclusive way. i heard the same thing about math education as well.

not only is it not where you get your education but it's also where, how this stuff is top which i think is fascinating as well. if people respond differently to different types of education. >> great. thank you. does a great question to wrap up our keynote, so thank you very much, doctor dom's -- dr. doms. [applause] >> pope francis has been a washington, d.c. since tuesday. he leaves in about three hours from new york. tomorrow c-span will take your life for his remarks to the united nations general assembly at 10 a.m. eastern and then onto cinema after 9/11 memorial and museum at the world trade center the world trade center. life at 11:30 a.m. you can watch both events live on c-span3. >> a signature feature of booktv is out all day coverage of

affairs and festivals from across the country with top nonfiction authors. here's our schedule. >> that's a few other fairs and festivals this fall on c-span2's booktv. >> we will take you live to the senate where members are continuing work on funding for the federal government, at 10 weeks the art that would run through mid-december.

the measure includes language to freeze funding for planned parenthood for one year unless it agrees not to perform or fund abortions. current funding expires next wednesday september 30. centers will vote to advance that legislation. 60 votes needed to movees forwa. . the chaplain: let us pray. eternal god, the source of all wisdom, thank you for the reminder at today's joint meeting of congress that we should practice the golden rule. may this marvelous rule inspire our lawmakers to do unto others as they would have others do to them, bringing more civility and cooperation into our legislative process.

may our senators see their legislative vocation as an opportunity to do good for all people, defending and preserving the dignity of humanity, as they learn to see your image even in the most vulnerable in our world. may the golden rule motivate them to reduce violence in our world, to give hope to those trapped in cycles of poverty and to build bridges to overcome historic differences. lord, help us all to seize this moment in history to serve your

purposes for our lives, leaving the world better than we found it. we pray in your loving name. amen. the president pro tempore: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to our 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.

the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. reid: today, members from congress from both houses were honored to attend a joint meeting of congress and receive an address from his holiness pope francis. the holy father's visit to address the joint meeting was made possible by the foresight and efforts of speaker john boehner, as well as the hard work and dedication of the house and senate sergeant at arms and the entire congressional community. everything worked out just fine. pope francis captured the heart and consciousness of the world with his message of love, compassion, respect and goodwill to all. mr. president, sitting, listening to the speaker of the

day, his holiness, pope francis, this is, i'm told, the longest he has ever spoken at one time in english, and he spoke slowly. you had top listen very closely. so i went back and got a copy of the speech so i could read in my own slow way what he had said. and just a few things he said were really stunning. you are called -- he was talking to us -- to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. to me, that's good. and he said this -- he wanted to enter into a dialogue with the many elderly persons who are a storehouse of wisdom forged by experience. he said a delicate balance is required to combat violence

perpetuated in the name of religion, ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms. we know that an attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. these are really visionary words. he said a voice of faith needs to be continued to be heard, for it is a voice of fraternity and love, which bringsous the best in each person, in each society. we need more people speaking out just as he did, about the importance of faith. he said if politics must truly be a service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to economy and finance. we, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners because most of us were once foreigners. now, i'm not taking this line by

line. i'm just skipping through some things that stuck out in my mind. if we want security, let us give security. if we want life, let us give life. if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities. deadly weapons sold to those who plan to do untold suffering on individuals in society. and he talks about fundamental relationships are being called into question as is the very basis of the family. mr. president, i just was so impressed with the intent of his remarks. i thought he did an extremely good job, and i was very happy

that i had the opportunity to be there and listen. i admire the conviction and heart of his holiness bruce it brings every effort that we do i think to the forefront of what we try to do to live up to what he suggests we should do. he inspired me, i hope all of us with his commitment to compassion and consideration for the less fortunate. this should come as a shock to no one, given his humble beginnings. he was born in buenos aires, argentina, immigrant parents. pope francis worked as a janitor, a bouncer, a lab assistant for a chemist before he started his seminary education. since the beginning of his ministry, since the beginning of his papacy, pope francis committed to addressing the needs of the poor, giving mercy to those in need and restoring

joy to the world. pope francis was once asked about his view of the church. he said that he viewed the church as a field hospital after battle. this unique approach to leading the world's 1.2 billion catholics has captured the attention of billions, catholic and non-catholic alike, inspiring us all to live to our highest values. mr. president, i am -- i was forced to remember today my mentor from my high school days to my time in congress who he was -- became the governor of nevada. we ran independent of one another. we wound up being governor and lieutenant governor. he was a devout catholic. the values he instilled in me stem from his faith. he was the most honest man i ever met. he was a devout catholic, as i indicated, went to mass virtually every day.

he died -- every place he went, it was early. he got to morning mass, 7:00 mass early. hadn't started. the priest hadn't come out yet. he put his head on his shoulder and died. he was such a good man. those of us who knew him. and so many people knew him. i know that he enjoyed living in a time where his holiness is known not just for his influence, knowledge and righteousness, but for his good deeds and kindness to those in need. he was -- my friend had a lot of those same traits. mr. president, in just six days, the united states government will shut down unless we figure out some way to fund it. we know how it should be funded. but instead of voting today on a

bipartisan way forward, we will still have another failed vote, even though the senate has already spoken on this issue. instead of wasting the senate's precious time, republicans are causing us to move forward. on a wasted vote. republicans should abandon their commitment for foolish votes and pass a clean funding bill to keep the government open. as reported in the press, there is conversation going on now with the white house, with house and the senate leaders to have funding until the end of the year. not for a few weeks, not for a few months. i think we have done our part over on this side of the aisle to communicate our priorities and tried to sit down at the negotiating table. we're ready to keep the government open. by inserting into this debate a meaningless, losing attack on women as just a waste of time.

but they have decided, they, the republicans, have decided once again to place partisan ideological agendas over the well-being of the nation, drag this partisan attack on any further when we're facing a government shutdown is not responsible. republicans should change their tactics. when republicans gain control of the senate -- gained control of the senate, we were told that there would be no government shutdowns. do we need the fear of a government shutdown? shutting down is bad, the threat of a shutdown is not good. but here we stand days before the funding for the government expires, wasting time on publicity stundz. every moment, republicans squander on pointless votes bring us closer to an unfunded federal government. wasting time also leads to a void for shutdown advocates. just last night, all over the news, it was reported the junior senator from texas is going to

extreme lengths to underline complete funding of our government. he is circulating better seeking support for a failed strategy, only have one outcome, a government shutdown. i hope my republican colleagues would not join in that, not for a minute, not for any period of time. i say to my friends on the other side of the aisle stop this brinkmanship, instead work with democrats to make sure we have an open and funded government to serve the american people. mr. president, i see there are senators on the floor. would you be good enough to announce the business of the day? the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will resume consideration of h.j. res. 61, which the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 170, h.j. res. 61, joint resolution amending the internal revenue code of 1986 to exempt employees with health coverage under tricare, and so forth.

the presiding officer: under the previous order, the time until 2:00 p.m. will be equally divided between the leaders or their designees. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: i rise today to pay tribute to elder richard g. scott, a member of the quorum of the 12 apostles of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, who passed away september 22, 2015, at the age of 86. richard g. scott has the razor sharp mind of an engineer, fused with the tender softness of a disciple's soul. a graduate of george washington university in mechanical engineering, who did post graduate training in nuclear engineering, he had a brilliant mind with an uncanny capacity

for formulas, projections and calculations. yet, he became known throughout the world for an enormous heart with an equally uncanny capacity to love and to have empathy for people from every walk of life. elder scott's gentle voice invited all who had lost their way, who had given up hope or who had wondered far to come home, home to the faith, family and community that would bring them real peace and lasting genuine joy. countless individuals around the world heard his invitation to come home and rightfully felt that he was talking directly to them. ever in search of the one who was lost, elder scott's words and witness of jesus christ served as the lower lights upon the shore to gently guide many a

wanderer home. elder scott had an extraordinary depth of empathy, particularly for those who silently suffered and anxiously sought for relief, redemption and renewal in the midst of life's storms. he himself was a man quainted with grief, having lost two young children and later his wife jeanine to untimely deaths. he understood the feelings of deep discouragement, overwhelming you uncertainty asl as the overlarge of inadequacy that can descend upon the human soul during difficult days and traig times. yet he continually stoods a beacon of hope to those who struggled because he knew with an absolute certainty to what source we should look for strength and security during such days and at such times.

his complete love for and belief in the divine potential of each and every soul led him to speak plainly, powerfully, and often with tender, heartfelt personal feelings. he urged the struggling, as well as the faithful, to cast asued any behavior, habit, or belief that weighed them down or kept them from living up to their full potential. members of the l.d.s. church all around the world often felt as they watched him speak that he was not only speaking specifically to them but also that he was looking straight into their souls. in truth, he was really just speaking with such love, empathy and general compassion that he empowered his listeners to look into their own hearts and see what their savior saw in them.

elder scott saw people not for where they were currently positioned on the road of life but for the potential each person had to do, be, and become more. he once declared, "we become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day." elder scott's vision extended far beyond the struggles of mortality. he focused on raising our heights to grander place placesd more noble thoughts. elder scott often expressed his belief in the unparallel power and influence that a man and a woman equally yoked as husband and wife could have on children and communities. he taught that in marriage oneness is not sameness and of

vital importance -- and a vital importance of valuing our differences. to illustrate, he once declared, "i may not know what it means to be a woman, but i do know what it means to be taught by one and to love one with all my heart and all my soul." his love for his wife jeanine was legendary and was forever sprinkled into his sermons. i take comfort knowing that elder scott has gone to that heavenly home he has so often pointed to and is once again united with jeanine. one of his colleagues described him as a clever teacher p. his formula was not of the engineering variety. but he followed a pattern by lauren wheelright entitled "help me teach with inspiration." "help me teach with inspiration, grant this bless blessing, lorksd i pray. help me lift a soul's ambition to a nobler way, help me lift a

friend in dark in help me guide him through the night, help me find thy lamb to wander, help me bring them to my keep, teach me lord to be a shepherd, father, help me feed thy sheep." elder richard g. scott was indeed an inspired teacher, leader, and lifter of people. his amazing mind and compassionate soul enabled him to help engineer a path for all of us to return home. thank you, mr. president. a senator: i would just like to -- mr. flake: i would just like to second what has been said about elder scott. one of my fondest memories of being in congress was at one

point showing elder scott around a bit of the capitol. he knows it well. he's been here before. but it was my privilege and honor to be with him at that time, and it's been my privilege and honor over many, many years to hear him at other have en yours exhorting people to follow the example of christ and to love their families, love their wives, and to just -- and to just see him pass now after such dedicated service for so long truly is a wonderful thing for him to be reunited with his wife and for his family to reflect on a life of service. so i thank the gentleman for his comments and want to add my own. i yield back. mr. lee: i thank my distinguished colleague from arizona for his kind remarks regarding elder scott. and i also would remark just

briefly that my late father, himself an arizonan, would be pleased to hear me referred to as a senator from arizona, given that i was born there. thank you, mr. president. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: mr. president, i think many of us here have been struck with a sear yaw serious f deja vu. with a government shutdown looming, some republicans continue to pander to their base with a political show vote instead of working with democrats to prevent a budget crisis. and once again it's women's health that is being used as a tea party political football with republicans attempting to cut off women's access to care. and once again workers and families across our country are watching congress and wondering whether their elected officials can do even the absolute bare minimum. mr. president, the government shutdown that republicans pushed

us into in 2013 did nothing to help them repeal the affordable care act, but it did have real consequences for families and communities we represent. workers didn't know when they td get their next paycheck. businesses felt the sting of fewer customers. families across the country lost even more trust that elected officials in washington, d.c., could get anything done. in my home state of washington, thousands of employees at joint base lewis-mcchord were sent home with no end in sight. national parks likes mt. rainier shut down, kept a way from true national treasures and customers away from small businesses that rely on their tour i am. -- tourism. after all of that, mr. president, i really had hoped that republicans would learn their lesson, especially because once that

economy-rattling exercise in futility came to an end, i was proud to work with republican budget chairman paul ryan to do what we shouldn't have needed a shutdown to get done, negotiate a two-year bipartisan budget deal that prevented another government shutdown. it restored critical investments in priorities like education and research and defense jobs and showed our families that government can get something done when both sides are willing to come to the table and compromise. that deal was an important reminder that governing by crisis simply does not work. so, unfortunately, mr. president, now it seems that some of my republican colleagues have forgotten that, because instead of working across the aisle on another bipartisan budget deal, as democrats have pushed them to do now for months, some republicans are once again using a looming fiscal deadline as an

opportunity to pander to their base, to matter what that means for our workers and families who are wondering whether government will still be running in a few days. well, mr. president, since they clearly need another reminder, attacking women's health does not keep the government open, and these shutdown threats will not work. didn't work in 2011 when house republicans tried to defund planned parenthood in the budget at the very last minute. it didn't work in 2013 when extreme members of the g.o.p. were deadset an repealing obamacare, and they will not work today. mr. president, i am going to be proud to vote against this partisan attempt to defund planned parenthood and take critical health care services away from millions of people. and then i hope that finally republicans will remember what they should have learned last congress: accept that enough is enough and make sure that women and workers

and families and our economy are protected from a completely unnecessary crisis. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from indiana. mr. coats: ever since february -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. coats: i ask unanimous consent that the call of the quorum be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. coats: thank you, mr. president. since february, i have been coming down to the floor every week on the senate floor to talk about the waste of the week. you know, back in 2010 when i made the decision to answer a call to run for the senate again, one of the primary

reasons for my decision to go forward with that was my alarm over the plunge into deficit and debt that was taking place. and, mr. president, at the time the national debt of this country was a little over $10 trillion. it is alarming that i stand here five years later and our debt has nearly doubled. it's close to $19 trillion, in just the five years that i have been here. now, there were alarm bells ringing in 2010, and those alarm bells were saying that we cannot stay on this course, that it's going to come back to haunt us someday, it's going to affect you're economy, it's going to affect our credit rating. someday the taxpayer will be at the -- the bill collector will

be at the door of the taxpayer saying we have to pay up big time or we'll go into default. so what took place going forward from that was a series of efforts, some of them very equally bipartisan, by both republicans and democrats, alarmed at where we were and wishing to come together, working to come together to persuade the president to work with us to put us on a path to fiscal responsibility. it involved any number of proposals, iterations. remember the so-called gang of six, the committee of 12, the super committee, various others had plans and it was the dominating issue of our time during the first couple of years of my return here in 2011 and 2012. after the election of 2012 when the president was re-elected, at

his own initiative, he reached out to a few republicans. i was one of them. and said i'm willing to sit down and try to work together to deal with this. this is a major issue affecting the future of our country, affecting our economy, and i was encouraged that after the election, no longer seeking any further office, the president would be willing to seriously work with us, and we did serious work for several months period of time. three appointees, head of office of management and budget, his chief of staff and his political director met with eight of us on a regular basis, both here in the capitol and both at the white house. we had agreed we would not have any public meetings. we would not have staff. that it would just be member to the president's designated

individuals, and we would not broadcast what we were doing because we knew it would become public and then political and therefore perhaps end up in the same fate that all the other efforts had resulted in. so we got to the end of that, and in the end, even though we had conceded an extraordinary number of concessions to the president, even though we essentially had put a package together over items that he himself had suggested in his budget plans that we could accomplish in slowing down the growth of government, the plunge -- the spending and the deficits every year that are rolling up and plunging into debt, but we came up short. at that particular point, it became very clear to me that we were not going to be able to

achieve a long-range plan for putting us on a fiscal path to fiscal health. and so i thought well, okay, i'm hearing a lot from others of colleagues here in the senate but also from outside sources saying, you know, under the sequester and so forth, we just can't cut anymore. we need more revenue to expand necessary spending projects in government, and while some essential functions that only government can do do need that type of attention, there's any range of things that you really have to question why they are on the books in the first place. a number of my colleagues, particularly former senator coburn, took this off it and i did as well as others, to point out areas where not the republican party had decided, where not individuals representing their party had decided, but where agencies of the government, nonpartisan

agencies of the government, general accounting office, the congressional budget office, the office of management and budget at the white house, had produced -- had investigated and produced examples of sending that were either waste, fraud or abuse. had no legitimate -- who legitimate qualifications to stay on the books. we started looking into this. thanks to senator coburn and others, have come up with a number of things that we could easily take off the books, easily use to pay for essential things, easily use to reduce our deficit spending, keep from going into debt, return money to taxpayers, however we wanted to do it. so we started accumulating that, and our goal was to reach

$100 billion, just simply to defy the myth that was taking place there was just not a penny we could cut and we've done all we could do. so we have come up with any number -- i don't know -- 20-some times that i have been on this floor, any number of issues which can save the taxpayer money and certainly needed to be addressed. our current total is now well over a billion dollars, and today we are adding -- we are adding $10.5 billion to our $100 billion total and we're now at $116 billion. i said we would stop at $100 billion, but the examples keep rolling in, and so we're going to keep going and keep every week as long as this cycle of the senate is in session come down to the floor and label yet another example of waste.

now, last month when i was home in indiana, coming down from northwest indiana to our capital city of indianapolis, on interstate 65, for the umpteenth time as i drive from north to south or south to north on that road, i pass through wind farms of literally thousands, thousands of windmills. interestingly enough, and as i had observed even this time, many of them are not turning. there are windmills, a few of them turning, driven by the wind, but most of them not turning. i continue to ask the question we've got several thousands of these. it looks like fewer than 100 or less or a comparable number are not operating. i wonder why. and why this -- is the taxpayer

getting a good deal on this? well, i want to give just a little bit of history of how all this came to be put in place. back in the early 1990's -- in fact, in 1992, the congress passed the energy policy act of 1992, which included the renewable electricity production tax credit called the p.t.c. the point here was that as we look at alternative ways to produce electricity, to reduce our dependence on oil and fossil fuels, there was a tax credit created for those using windmills to create power. it was designed -- that was designed to be claimed if a wind farm was actually making the

power. now, earlier i said that many times have i come down that road, i have seen windmills that were idle, but the blades had to be turning and the electricity had to be being produced in order to see -- receive that tax credit. at the time, because i thought we were overall dependent on middle eastern oil and that it was creating issues for us geopolitically and militarily and otherwise, that it would be good to have a stimulus here to support the creation of wind energy. and so to give us the ability to standoned our own, less dependence on middle east oil. but this -- the main reason why i supported it, it was just to start the process and incentivize this to get it off the ground. it was going to be a short-term boost to help these new energy

sources become competitive. and the original credit was designed under the law to last only five and a half years, and there then would be no longer this credit. well, like just about any other credit subsidy or anything else passed here which provides taxpayer support for production of something, it never expires. few if any of them expire at the expiration date. so once again, once you get a law on the books, once you get a credit on the books, once you get a subsidy on the books, you can't get it off. since the time the original bill has passed, the wind industry and its supporters have repeatedly come to congress and said just give us a few more years, and then wind will be competitive with taxpayer subsidies. and as a result, this five and a half-year program which started in 1992 has been extended multiple times.

in 2013, nearly two decades after the time which the subsidies were to expire, congress changed the rules so that facilities only have to begin construction before the expiration date to automatically qualify for a future ten-year subsidy, even before those windmills become operational. so if you're just in the business of producing wind mills, as some of our major companies are, you're going to get the subsidy, you're going to get the tax credit, whether or not the wind mills are needed, whether or not they're producing electricity. you can just pour some concrete and start building the process, and you're going to get the credit. the as a result is that more and more wind facilities are being constructed, irrespective of the needs of the electricity grid or market demand. just last year, warren buffett, a smart investor, noted that wind isn't profitable without

subsidies. he said, and i quote, "for example, on wind energy, we" -- meaning his company -- "we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. that's the only reason to build them. they don't make sense without the tax credit." so it's -- regardless of the demand, regardless of whether or not those wind mills need to be turning and generating electricity, regardless of whether or not that electricity can be put into the grid and, by the way, the cost of wind energy is three to four times the cost of fossil fuel energy -- regardless of any of that, the tax credit is there. in 2014, congress retroactively extended the wind credit at the end of the year and the general assumption here in congress is that the production tax credit will once again be extended at the end of this year. it will probably happen.

now, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan joint committee on taxation, this would add, if we continue and extend this tax credit, add another $10.5 billion to our budget. clearly, it's way past time to end this seemingly never-ending subsidy. it's time to give the hardwor hardworking taxpayers savings, and i.t. tim it's time to stop l spending. if we can prevent congress from just automatically extending this way beyond the original five and a half years, decades beyond, we can save the taxpayer $10.5 billion. and so today i am adding to this chart and picture here $10.5 billion, which now totals $116 billion-plus in terms of money that falls under the category of waste, fraud, and abuse.

my colleagues cannot come down to this floor and argue that we can't cut a penny more of any program and defend the numerous -- now well more than 20 -- examples of what has been defined as waste, fraud, and abuse, not by me, not by the republican party, but by nonpartisan agencies of the federal government. there it is, and stay tuned for next week's "waste of the week." with that, mr. president, i yield the floor.

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i know i speak for the entire senate when i say it was a privilege to welcome the pope to the capitol this morning. the thousands who gathered on the capitol lawn, it was an experiencer this a unlikelexpero ever forget. the quiet nod, a soft smile, a simple wave, the gestures that may have been small but their meaning ran deep, captured forever in the hearts of the faithful and the hopeful. as we turn back to the work of governing, many will interpret his words in many ways. the media certainly has. but we can also hear him as simply expressing his faith, and we all appreciate his closing remarks: "god bless america." it's no surprise that members of the senate have differences on

issues. that's normal, healthy even. but even if our democratic colleagues may not agree with us on every issue, let us agree that the scandal surrounding planned parenthood is deeply, deeply unsettling. let us agree that it makes sense to at least place a scandal-plagued political organization on leave without pay and then use that money to fund women's health care, as congress investigates these serious allegations. let us also agree that it's time for democratic colleagues to finally allow the senate to fund the government, just as we've worked hard to do all year long. here's the view the new senate took from the beginning: the best way to fund the government is to pass a budget and then to fund it. that may be a different approach from previous years, but it's the approach we chose to pursue when we kiem t came to office. we didn't think it was right that the senate didn't pass a

budget in six years or that the senate appropriations committee hadn't passed the 12 bills mess to fund the gunfight in -- the 12k bills necessary to fund the government in six years. the appropriations process got off to a great start. there was often a spirit of bipartisanship inside that committee. consider that nearly all of the 12 funding bills passed with bipartisan support. more than half attracted the support of over 70% of democrats. we saw our democratic colleagues use phrases like "win, win, win," or declare that appropriations legislation would do right by their particular state, as they issued press releases praising the bills that they voted for. it was great to see that bipartisan action. i was hopeful that our democratic colleagues would actually join us on the senate floor to debate and pass the legislation they'd praised in committee. but, nope, they took a different

path. i regret the democratic leadership determined a crisis would be necessary to advance a policy aim of growing the government and that our colleagues decided accordingly to block every single funding bill -- every single one, almost all of which had been supported by a significant number of democrats in committee. so we've been forced to pursue a continuing resolution as a result. it would be much better to simply finish the appropriations process we worked so hard to advance, but if our colleagues continue to block the senate from doing so, the senate was left with very few options. it may be regrettable, but that's the reality we now face. the bill before us would help get things back on track. it would ensure the government remains funded and open. it would adhere to the bipartisan spending level already agreed to by both parties.

it would also allow our democratic colleagues to join us in standing up for women's health instead of a political organization mired in scandal. for one year the legislation would redirect $235 million in planned parenthood funding to women's health instead, strengthening the health centers that provide critically needed community care. i wish our colleagues hadn't pursued a strategy of blocking government funding. that strategy may have succeeded in bringing the country to this point, but there's no reason to continue blocking every attempt to fund the government or to protect political allies that are mired in scandal. so i'm calling on colleagues across the aisle to join us in standing against a shutdown. i'm calling on them to join us in standing up for women's health instead. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the time following the

vote until 6:00 p.m. be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees. further, that all time during convoke quoruquorum calls untile charged equally to both sides s. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask that all time be yielded back on the senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on amendment 2669. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture motion: we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on senate amendment 2669 to h.j. res. 69 signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call whaiived. is it the the sense phs senate that debate on amendment 2669 offered by the senator from kentucky, mr. mcconnell, to h.j. res. 61, shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory

under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote: