that i focus and have time with the family and that i bring them into my work and that's the other way. we try not to compartmentalize. if we have business, we talk about it. we give them the mda language every time. sorry. >> the center returns from its thanks giving break today, on the senate agenda legislation on expanding medical care in rural areas. a vote on that bill jewel for tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. eastern. now live coverage on c-span2.wi. you are dressed in robes of splendor. guide our senators on the right path, helping them to unite in thought and purpose for the

common good of our nation. remind them that your desires for them are wiser than their plans, so that our lawmakers will cherish the wisdom of your unfolding providence. may our legislators not become discouraged, but may they anticipate a harvest of blessings at the appropriate time. help them to find delight in communicating with you, knowing that you will plant in their hearts desires that will fulfill your purposes. we pray in your great name.

amen. the presiding officer: 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.

the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the democratic leader. the democratic leader. mr. reid: this month is native american heritage month. during this month, we honor the contribution of american indians. also, of course, alaska natives and hawaiians. but we don't have to look very far, madam president, to see how native americans continue fighting for their heritage, and they really must fight for their heritage. pick up a newspaper, turn the news on any channel you want, and you'll see what's happening at the standing rock reservation in north dakota. the standing rock sioux tribe is

opposed to the construction of a portion of the north dakota access pipeline that passes near their reservation where it crosses the missouri river. they're concerned that the construction of a pipeline could not only destroy ancestral burial grounds but also contaminate the water supply for the tribe as well as millions of others who depend on water from the missouri river. standing rock sioux are fighting for their land, the right to clean water, clean air and their history. they're not alone. the standing rock sioux have been joined by thousands of others, including members of hundreds of tribes throughout the united states. last month while i was in nevada, members of the 27 native american tribes we have in nevada made it clear to me they stand in solidarity with the standing rock sioux, but i do, too, madam president, and here's

why. here's why i joined with the standing rock sioux in calling for an alternative route for the pipeline's construction. it's past time this situation could be resolved peacefully. it was only here for months and the debate has descended into violence. private security guards have unleashed attack dogs on indians, resulting in men, women and children being bitten and some very severely. police have used rubber bullets, tear gas, grenades, compression grenades. 300 people have been treated for injuries as a result of this violence against the protesters. the most severe injury took place a week ago when one young woman had parts of her arm and hand blown off. the violence at standing rock must end. i'm confident that president obama's administration are taking the necessary steps to address the situation. they've done well so far.

what is happening at standing rock is a movement that has captured the attention of the entire country, but we should understand the context of what is taking place. we should be mindful that the history of this region is fraught with disputes, and very few of which, if any, have been resolved in favor of the indians. this region is fraught, i repeat, with disputes between native americans and the united states government, disputes that originated more than a century ago but in the minds of the indians, they're still very much alive. last week, kevin gover, director of the american ?oam's nationalf the american indian, which is a wonderful place, put the clash at standing rock into historical perspective, and here's what he said, and i quote -- "take standing rock. if you snow what the history of

the sioux nation is, you know that the treaties were made with the sioux nation concerning these lands that no longer belong to the sioux nation, and you know that the investment of the missouri river for the past century has always, always involved taking of indian land. they were building dams up and down the missouri river. and every indian reservation along the way was flooded. some of the best land was flooded, which only deepened their poverty and made it that much harder to climb out of poverty, which they haven't. we should know that kind of history, says kevin gover," and i agree. this is the history to which he is referring, or at least part of it. in the 1980's, congress pushed the sioux to reservations. i'm sorry. in the 1890's, madam president, congress pushed the sioux to reservations. took them off their ancestral land, jammed them into reservations. speaking from knowledge i have

what they did to the shoshome in nevada, it was unbelievable, put them in the worst places you could find. and that's what they did to the sioux. in the 1890's, they pushed the sioux into reservations. then, two decades later, in violation of all the treaties they had, they built dams in the missouri river that shrunk the size of the reservations even more. and then in the 1940's, the united states built yet another dam, putting the sioux most fertile land under water. i don't intend to have all the answers, madam president, but i do know from experience that progress is possible when cooperation and respect form the foundation of fairness. especially on the issues related to tribal rights and the environmental concerns. i take one example that i know a

lot about, and that's what happened in nevada with a very large power plant. coal fire called the reid-gardner coal-fired plant. reid-gardner. it was one of the dirtiest power plants in the entire country. this coal plant was located less than a football field from the tribal reservation. every day, it dumped thousands of tons of toxins in the air, such as arsenic, mercury and lead. tribal members got sick. of course they did. 300 people in the organization were poisoned daily by the pollution. working with the payutes, i called for closure of the plant. people thought why are you doing this? it was the right thing to do, madam president. it was the right thing to do for the environment, but more importantly a fair and just

thing to do for the moapa band of payutes. since that time when we started this initial effort, three of reid-gardner's four generating units have been shut down, closed, and the whole coal facility will be out of business within the next 90 days. that's pretty good. it's gone. why? because you had government, government, local, state government, indian government and the power company all work together to address this issue. it couldn't have been done without all three of them working together. i have said this publicly. i have had a lot of disputes with a monopoly power company in nevada, but on this issue, madam president, i have complimented them because they did the right thing. and with the payute tribe, instead of having this toxic

dump in the form of a coal-fired generating plant right next to them and they breathe every day, they now have a huge solar farm. it's created lots of construction jobs. that electricity is now being sent to the city of los angeles. it's been good for everybody. good for the air of nevada, good for the indians with the work. it's helped the environment. and the power company has made other arrangements for that power, and they did it fairly easily. the simple truth is based on this little experience i had, you need to work together, whether it's the moapa, payute or standing rock sioux. they are exposed to more pollution than most americans. that's the way it is.

we don't talk a lot about the people who are severely impacted by the century of practically limitless pollution, indians. this is not an urban or rural phenomenon. it's everywhere, and it's dangerous. researchers at the university of minnesota found the difference in exposure to nitrogen dioxide alone is equal to roughly 7,000 deaths a year from heart disease. from south dakota to nevada, native americans are on the front lines of these environmental and public health catastrophes. to make matters worse, heavy polluting industries are fighting to return to the days of limited pollution under the next administration. can the people of america expect our null elected president to intervene on their behalf begins the big polluters? can the standing rock sioux tribe depend on the man who is financially invested in the dakota access pipeline? probably not. this is about more than

president-elect trump or fossil fuel profits. what's happening at standing rock is about respect for people, where they build their homes, where they raise their families. the violence and aggression against standing rock sioux in north dakota is a tragic example of the failure to respect people with long-standing grievances for how they and their natural resources have been treated. no one can see this more than the indians. the standing rock sioux protested the dakota access pipeline has everything to do with the history of broken promises and institutionalized disregard for the rights of their own land as well as the trusteeship between the indian tribe and the federal government of the united states. while most stakeholders want a speedy end to this situation, they must understand that overreaction to protesters, violence and disregard for our history undermines the likelihood of a mutually acceptable solution. they rub salt in the already

infected wounds. profit should be not the determining factor of how this matter is resolved. the obama administration has recognized that this history means the dakota access pipeline is much more complicateed than a water crossing permit simply. they are doing the right thing by working with tribes to develop a better consultation process. i appreciate very much what the obama administration has done. they recognize that history means that the pipeline is more complicated than simply water crossing. i appreciate the president showing the standing rock sioux the respect to which they are entitled. president obama has less than two months left in his term, and it's becoming clear the dispute at standing rock likely won't be resolved before he leaves office. i encourage the new administration and the army corps of engineers to continue finding alternate routes. there is one out there. it should not be that hard. there is no reason that this situation cannot be remedied in

a manner that's fair to all. 300 people have already been injured. grenades, dogs being sicced on these indians. freezing water is being sprayed on them in freezing temperatures, below freezing temperatures. our native american tribes are looking to the federal government for help. for once let's get them some help rather than continuing taking from them. they want to believe that after centuries after wrong, the united states will finally get it right. indians want to believe that after, again, so long of being treated with no respect, that the united states will help and not hurt. relocating the pipeline to a more suitable area away from the standing rock reservation would be an easy and historic step in the right direction. for the sake of our country i

hope that happens. madam president, i see no one on the floor. i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call: quorum call:

mr. mcconnell: madam president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are.

mr. mcconnell: i ask consent that further proceedings be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: over the next few weeks, senators will work to conclude the business of the 114th congress, as we begin looking forward to the 115th. we've got a lot to do, including approving several conference reports as well as funding the government. it's good to see the respective committees making important progress on conference reports, the national defense authorization act, and the water resources development act. we'll work with our counterparts in the house to consider each of those in the coming days and to send final bills to the president's desk for signature. we'll also take up the 21s 21st century cures bill which includes advancing regenerative medicine, among many other

important provisions. sometime soon we'll also take up the iran sanctions extension act, which provides underlying authorities knows reimpose sanctions, if those captions are called -- if those sanctions are called for on the country which has continued to exhibit disturbing and very aggressive behavior. and of course we'll work to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government. i'd also like to note that my friend from alaska, senator murkowski, is continuing her efforts to advance the energy policy modernization act, which passed the senate with large bipartisan support earlier in year. she is been a champion of this critical bill and has never stopped working to move it forward. i appreciate her work in that capacity as well as the many other members who've been leaders on each of the issues i just named. i'd encourage colleagues both

sides to continue working together so we can complete our work very soon. madam president, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: i ask consent the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: madam president, during the presidential campaign which just concluded, president-elect donald trump made some inflammatory remarks about immigration and immigrants. i condemned those remarks as did many in both political parties, and i remain concerned about the impact that rhetoric has on america and the people who are living in the united states. but on election night, mr. trump said, and i quote -- "now it is time for america to bind the wounds of division." as one step in bringing our nation together, mr. trump should change his thinking on at least one aspect of immigration. i hope even more. as the president-elect knows, we are in fact a nation of immigrants, and immigration makes america stronger. like me, mr. trump is the son of

an immigrant, and his wife will be only the second immigrant in american history to serve as first lady. during a recent interview, mr. trump acknowledged that millions of undocumented immigrants are -- quote -- terrific people. that's a good start. words matter. and the tone that the president-elect sets with the language he uses can help to bind the divisions in america, but actions matter as well. and i hope that one of president-elect trump's actions, one of his first will be to pledge to continue the program known as daca. madam president, it was six years ago i sent a letter to president barack obama. joining knee that lor was senator dick lugar, republican senator from indiana. it was a bipartisan letter, and we asked president obama to stop the deportations of young

immigrants who grew up in this country. these young people have come to be known as dreamers. they were brought to the united states as children. they grew up singing the national anthem in their classrooms, pledging allegiance to the only flag they ever knew, the american flag. these dreamers are casualties of our broken immigration system. they were brought here as children, toddlers, infants, babies. they didn't have any voice in the decision of their family to come to america. they were brought here to live. well, we invested in them. we put them in our school systems. and it really makes no sense since many of them are become accomplished and promising young people to give up on them now and deport them back to countries they have never known. the president of the united states barack obama responded. he established the deferred action for children arrivals

program. it's known as daca. daca provides temporary renewable legal status to immigrant students who arrived in the united states as children. what does it take? a student has to fill out an application form. madam president, when this went into effect, this executive order went into effect, i joined with congressman luis gutierrez of chicago. we decided on the first day of eligibility we would set up some tables at navy pier in chicago and we would welcome young people to come in and sign up. these were undocumented young people who had grown up in the united states, and now they had a chance because the president's executive order to ask for temporary protected status and a work permit. it cost money, almost $500, and when they submitted their names, they also submitted their names for a criminal background check to make certain that they had no

serious criminal offense and they were no threat to this country. well, congressman gutierrez and i expected several hundred to show up. we had immigration lawyers ready to volunteer to help them fill out the forms. we were stunned. the night before at midnight, they started lining up in the dark with their parents, and they waited all night to come into that room and to sign those applications so that they as undocumented young people in america would have a fighting chance to become part of america's future. that's all they asked for. they didn't ask for jobs. they didn't ask for government programs. they don't qualify for very many, if any. all they asked for was a chance, a chance to live here and not be deported and a chance to work here. so far, madam president, in the few years that daca has been in effect, over 740,000 young people have signed up. they came forward, paid their fee, went through the background check.

they were approved and now they're either working or going to school. daca has allowed these dreamers to make contributions to america which are valuable to all of us. they're soldiers, nurses, teachers, engineers, police officers, and they're aspiring to the highest levels of to the highest levels of they were aspiring to the highest level of education in our country. they are making important contributions to our economy. the new study by a center for american progress finds that will cost united states $433.4 billion in gross domestic product over the next ten years. these are just great young students, they are great workers and will be great professionals. they will help people and makeii america stronger. docket is based on the dream act. it is bipartisan legislation

that i first introduced 15 years ago. if you conserve in the center and transcendent, you have to be patient. i didn't dream i would be standing here 15 years later still asking for the senate to approve the dream act, but in the meantime, what president obama president obama did was to say we will protect these people while congress debates the future of immigration reform and we will make sure they can stay in this country without fear of deportation. if it's put into law and passes the senate, if it's enacted into law, it will give these undocumented students a chance to earn their way to legal status and citizenship. has the docket is clearly legal. like every president before him, president obama has the authority to set immigration policy for his ministration. it's also smart and realistic. it's the way to reinforce our withou

these young people who have done nothing wrong and have no criminal problems and have paid their fee and registered with the government are allowed to stay without fear of a knock on the door.ort a the department of homeland security only has enough fundint to deport a small fraction of the undocumented immigrants in our country each year. the president, president obama has said he wants to focus those on those who should not be in the united states. those who could do us harm.dents that is just common sense. at the same time, the president said we shouldn't waste our resources on deporting young immigrant students who grew up in the united states and are making contributions to our future. during the campaign, president-elect trump promised to resend and and dock up. i believe after hisnce he administration studies the issue, there is a chance he will reconsider. when he comes to know these perfect people. these senate for over ten years, telling the stories of these dreamers.

there was a time when they were afraid to come out publicly and tell america who they were. they have been warned by their parents and they were little kids, be careful. if you talk to the wrong person, if you do the wrong thing, if the police knock on the door, you may deported along with the rest to your family. be careful. well, as kids will, these youngv people across america decided they are not going to hide who they are. they want to tell america their story, and i have tried to help them. when they send us their biographies along with the photograph, i come to the floor with about 100 different occasions different occasions th tell stories of these dreamers. each one in my estimation is more amazing than the next. today is no exception. in 1990 when ray was two years old, his family came to the

united states from mexico. ray grew up in atlanta georgia, he worked hard and was an honor roll student in high school pretty became the first member of his family to attend collegec in 2010 he graduated graduated with a major in philosophy from southern campus in georgia. he is a devout catholic. he decided to attend seminary in my home state of illinois. he felt that god was calling him to be a priest, but his spiritual path was blocked. he is undocumented. he is a dreamer. then, in 2012, everything changed. president obama signed the executive order establishing doctor. in march of 2013, ray was approved. he went to the background check, did everything he was asked to do. he received his dhaka status an, he knew that at least for two years he would not be subject to

deportation. that allowed him to become a deacon in the catholic church two months later in may 2013.nt in 2014, he entered the priesthood after he graduated magna cum laude from the seminary in illinois. he has a masters in divinity. p today he is a priest at the cathedral what he said about da. like many dreamers, the united states is only -- really the only country i know. daca was an answer to prayer. without daca, i would not have been able to serve as a priest in my community. i believe my faith in god has brought me to this point in my life, but my faith in america's promise has pushed me to keep fighting for peace, justice and opportunity in this great country i proudly call home. if daca is eliminated and that threat has been made, father ray

pina will lose his legally status and be subject to deportation, being sent back to a country that he hasn't lived in since he was 2 years old. that would be a tragedy for father ray and his congregation and the hundreds of people who count on him as their priest. consider this -- there's a chronic shortage of catholic priests in america. since 1975, the number of priests has declined by 33%. the number of american catholics has grown by 43%. hundreds of parishes have been forced to close or consolidate. nearly one out of five parishes, catholic parishes in america have no priest. this shortage of priests is not limited to the catholic church. the problem is so serious that congress has established a religious worker visa to allow people from overseas to come in on a visa and serve as priests in communities. it's happening all across my state of illinois, and i bet

it's happening in iowa. you go to parishes in rural areas, and there will be priests from all over the world. i recently met one in rome who was in southern illinois at pinkneyville and he was from nigeria. at a time when the united states is actively importing ministers and priests from foreign countries, why do we want to deport father ray pineta? it makes no sense. listen to what father ray told me about his role as a priest and also as an undocumented immigrant. i believe my entire journey has prepared me to be compassionate with the sufferings of the many people i encounter. i look at my ministry as a calling, to build bridges between people from all walks of life. diversity sometimes brings challenges between people. i want to help to heal those differences. after the most divisive election in recent memory, i believe if a

father ray pineta and other dreamers just like him have an important role to play in healing the differences that divide america. i am hoping that president-elect trump will see this and will continue the daca program, but let me be clear -- if there is an attempt to shut down daca, i will do everything in my power as a united states senator to protect the dreamers who have stepped forward and contributed their talents to our great country. madam president, many of us dreamers and their parents spoke to me that day at navy pier and ever since. they said senator, are you sure, are you sure that we should sign up with this government? we have spent a lifetime trying to stay out of trouble, stay out of the view of people, not cause any problems, go about our business, raise our families, do our jobs, go to our church. if our children register with this government, will that come back at a future time and be

used against them? i said, madam president, at the time and i believe now that america would stand behind these young people. we will not allow them to be deported after what they have been through. we will not say to them by complying with the requirements of our government, you have penalized yourself in the future. we want to give them a chance. now is the time for america, this nation of immigrants to heal the wounds that guided us -- divided us during this election. let's start with the dreamers. let's start with doca. let's start with the young people that will make america better and stronger in years to come. they are the best in this country. let's make them the best of america's future. i hope and pray that the president-elect's words and actions in the coming weeks and months will in fact bring us together. madam president, i yield the floor. and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

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quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. ms. warren: madam president, are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: yes. ms. warren: i ask it be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. warren: three weeks ago americans went to the polls. voters were deeply divided on whether democrats or republicans should be in charge. donald trump is the president-elect losing the popular vote by more than two million people. but there is one thing that americans are not divided on. one issue that they sent a message loud and clear. according to exit polls, 70% of voters said they think that the american economy and the lawmakers who oversee it are owned -- owned -- by big companies and special interests. that 70% of everybody:

republicans, democrats, independents. in the closing days of this congress, big pharma has its hand out for a bunch of special giveaways and favors that are packed together in something called the 21st century cures bill. it is on track to get a vote in the house this week and then get rammed through the senate. and i've been taking a look at the details here. when the american votes say that congress is owned by big companies, this bill is exactly what they're talking about. so now we face a choice. will this congress say, yes, we're bought and paid for. or will we stand up and work for the american people? for more than two years congress has been working on legislation to help advance medical innovation in the united states. now, medical innovation is powerfully important, and i spent as much time working on this issue as anything i've worked on since i joined the united states senate.

from the beginning i have emphasized one really obvious fact. medical breakthroughs come from increasing investments in basic research. right now congress is choking off investments in the n.i.h. adjusted for inflation, federal spending on medical research over the past dozen years has been cut by 20%. those cuts take the legs out from under future medical innovation in america. you know, we can name a piece of legislation, a cures bill, but if it doesn't include significant, meaningful funding for the national institutes of health and the food and drug administration, it won't cure anything. and that's why months ago senate democrats said any so-called cures legislation must have significant investment in medical research. and that's why senate republicans publicly committed to do exactly that.

but now they have reneged on their promise and let big pharma hijack the cures bill. this final deal has only a tiny fig leaf of funding for n.i.h. and for the opioid crisis. and most of that fig leaf isn't even real. most of the money won't be there, unless future congresses pass future bills in future years to fund those dollars. so why bother with a fig leaf in the cures bill? why pretend to give money to n.i.h. or opioids? because this funding is political cover for huge giveaways to giant drug companies. there are more examples than i can count in this bill, but i'm going to talk about three. first giveaway -- legalized fraud. you know, it is against the law for drug companies to market drugs for uses not approved by

the f.d.a. now, some drug companies find this rule annoying. after all, they could make a lot more money selling a headache pill as a cure for everything from hair loss to cancer. but pushing treatments without scientific evidence that they work is fraud, fraud that can hurt people. it also undercuts the development of real cures, and that is why some of the largest law enforcement actions against big drug companies over the past 15 years have involved off-label marketing. drug companies have paid billions of dollars in penalties. now, one solution would be for those companies to follow the law, but they prefer plan b, cozy up to enough people in congress to pass this cures bill that would shoot holes in the antifraud law. in other words, make it easier

for drug companies to get away with fraud. second giveaway, cover up bribery. right now, the law requires drug companies to disclose the buckets of money that they shower on doctors and hospitals to encourage them to prescribe certain drugs. it is, by the way, all published on a government web site. you can go back up your doctor and your hospital right now online if you want to do that. now, the drug companies could have responded by ending kickbacks to doctors, but instead they have chosen plan b again. cozy up to enough people in congress to pass this cures bill that would let drug companies keep secret any splashy junkets or gifts associated with so-called medical education and make it harder for enforcement agencies to be able to trace those bribes. senator grassley, a republican from iowa, says he is outraged

by this provision, and i've got to say -- i'm with senator grassley on this one. third giveaway -- hand out dangerous special deals to republican campaign contributors. according to news reports, a major republican donor stands to benefit financially from selling cellular and regenitive medical therapies. if this guy had his way, he would be able to sell them to desperate people without a final f.d.a. determination that those therapies were either safe or effective. of course, that would be against the law right now, so this megadonor has poured millions of dollars into mitch mcconnell's personal campaign coffers and into his republican super pac and now he wants his reward. the cures act offers to sell government favors. it delivers a special deal so that people can sell these treatments without needing the

f.d.a. -- meeting the f.d.a. gold standards for protecting patient safety and making sure these drugs actually do some good. you know, keep in mind, people could die from using unbe proven treatments. in fact, people have already died during carefully controlled research experiments on these types of treatments. congress should not be in the business of selling f.d.a. favors to the highest bidders, risking people's lives to enrich political donors. let's be clear. what the republicans are proposing is corrupt, and it is very, very dangerous. and there's more. republicans decided to hand out gifts for other special interests. the cures act, a bill that is supposed to be about medical innovation as a giveaway to the gun lobby. the bill cuts medicare funding. it raids money from the

affordable care act. it takes health care dollars that should have gone to puerto rico. it makes it harder for people with disabilities to get medicaid services. there is a lot of bad stuff in this bill. a lot of bad stuff. but not everything in the bill is bad. republican leaders are playing a crafty game here, trying to buy off democratic votes one by one by tacking on good bipartisan proposals that senators in both parties have worked on in good faith for years. there's a bipartisan mental health bill, bipartisan provisions protecting the genetic privacy of patients, bipartisan provisions to give some very limited funding for important priorities like the national opioid crisis and the vice president's cancer moon shot. there's a proposal in here to improve foster care. i support most of these

proposals. i've worked on many of them for years. i even wrote some of them myself. if this bill becomes law, there is no question it will contain some real legislative accomplishments. but i cannot vote for this bill. i will fight it because i know the difference between compromise and extortion. compromise is putting together commonsense health proposals supported by democrats, by republicans and by most of the american people and passing them into law. extortion is holding those exact same proposals hostage unless everyone agrees to special favors for campaign donors and giveaways to the richest drug companies in the world. compromise is when senators, democrats and republicans, find the way forward on issues that matter to their constituents.

extortion is telling those same senators to forget what your constituents want. we will do nothing with the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs and nothing to increase medical research. instead, every important commonsense bipartisan bill on mental health and genetic privacy and opioid addiction and foster care and anything else will die today unless democrats agree to make it easier for drug companies to commit fraud, to give out kickbacks and to put patients' lives at risk. this demand is enough to make me gag. scientists who invent new cures should be celebrated along with the companies that support them, but let me be perfectly clear -- while the drug industry may get a seat at the table, they do not own the table. i do not care how many armies of lawyers and lobbyists they send

out. i do not care how many campaign contributions they dump into congressional pockets. i do not care how painful they can make life for politicians who oppose them. i will not be their lackey. i will work for the hundreds of thousands of scientists and doctors who are committed to saving lives and who are waiting for congress to fund their work. i will work for the millions of families that have been touched by alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer and other deadly diseases who are counting on this research. i will work for the 70% of voters who are sick of a congress that is owned by big donors and giant corporations. republicans are taking over congress. they are taking over the white house. but republicans do not have majority support in this country. the majority of voters supported democratic senate candidates over republican ones, and the majority supported a democratic

presidential candidate over a republican one. the american people didn't give democrats majority support so we could come back to washington and play dead. they didn't send us here to whimper, whine or grovel. they sent us here to say no to efforts to sell congress to the highest bidder. they sent us here to stand up for what is right, and now they are watching, waiting and hoping, hoping that we will show some spine and start fighting back. when congress ignores the message of the american people and returns to the old ways of doing business. republicans will control this government, but they cannot hand that control over to big corporations unless democrats roll over and allow them to do so. it is time for democrats, democrats and republicans who should be ashamed by this kind of corruption to make it clear

exactly who they work for. does the senate work for big phrma that hires lobbyists and people who make giant campaign contributions or does the senate work for the american people who actually sent us here? thank you, mr. president. i yield and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: the presiding officer: another senator wishes to speak. would you withhold your request for the quorum call? mr. cornyn: thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: mr. president, i confess that i came to the floor to talk about some of the nominations that we are going to see coming from the administration, particularly from one of our -- regarding one of our colleagues, senator sessions, the senator from alabama, to be the next attorney

general. i am somewhat taken back by the nature of the comments that i hear coming from the senator from massachusetts. i had to refresh my memory of the senate's standing rules, which i thought prohibited the sort of ad hominem attack, the claims of corruption, selling legislation for campaign contributions. i thought that the rules of decorum of the united states senate prohibited that sort of demagoguery. but i'm not sure you could write a rule that would prohibit somebody who is actually determined to defy the very voters they claim to be representing. you know, if our democratic colleagues like the result of the election that just occurred on november 8, i would say keep on keeping on. keep on with this same sort of ad hominem attacks and attacking the motivation of people rather

than talking about policy. i thought that's what the senate was supposed to be all about, not where we come in here and call each other names. no wonder the american people are turned off by what they see as politics as usual. i think what they told us on november 8 is they actually would like to see us accomplish some things, and, first of all, starting with listening to them, not telling them what's good for them and saying well, if you don't like it, you're going to have to take it because the people in power, the people working in washington, the elites in america know better than you do what's good for you. so when i hear the senator from massachusetts come in and give essentially a political speech such as she did, not talking about the merits of the policy but rather making personal attacks against senators and people that support the policy, i just think this is beneath the dignity of the united states senate, and i would hope we would rise to the occasion in

the wake of this historic election and say you know what? we can do better. the american people deserve better than what they have been getting coming out of washington, and the only way we're going to be able to turn this country around is by first of all listening to what the american people are telling us, and we know what they said is we're not happy with the direction of the country and we're not happy with what's happening in washington. but to come in and make the kinds of speeches that i just heard just a moment ago is disturbing. it's disappointing. and we can do better than that, and we must do better than that if we're going to regain the confidence of the american people that we are actually worthy of their support as we try to guide the ship of state and try to pass laws which actually will improve the quality of their lives, by growing the economy, by making it possible for people to find

work who want work so they can provide for their families, to try to make sure that the american people are safe and secure, to provide for our common defense. those are the sorts of things we ought to be focused on so it's a little distressing to walk into this chamber, what used to be known as the world's greatest deliberative body and to hear the sort of diatribe and the personal attacks and the name calling that we just heard from the senator from massachusetts. the reason i came to the floor, mr. president, is to make note of the fact, as i alluded a moment ago, that president-elect donald trump announced his intention to nominate one of our own, a member of the united states senate, to be the world -- to be the nation's top law enforcement officer. our friend, the junior senator from alabama, senator sessions, is undoubtedly qualified and prepared for this role as

attorney general. because of the long career he spent protecting and defending our constitution and the rule of law. i think if there is one thing that we can do in the united states government to help restore the public's confidence, it will be that we embrace the concept of equal justice under the law and that there is not a double standard by which people are judged, the powerful, the well connected and then the rules that apply to everybody else, but rather that the same rules apply to all of us. the same laws apply to alls of us. that is the bulwark of our constitutional democracy. frankly, i think the american people have seen in the last two attorney generals the current one and her predecessor, mr. holder, essentially an office at the department of justice that was not worthy of the name "justice."

it should have been called an extension of the white house political operation, because so much of the way they conducted themselves was governed not by the rule of law but by political considerations. well, our friend, the senator from alabama, understands firsthand the importance of hard work as well. he's the son of a country store owner from hybrit, alabama and went on to get his law degree from the university of alabama and served in the united states army reserves. as we know his service didn't stop there. guided by a sense of duty for the last five decades, jeff sessions has dedicated his life to the state of alabama and to the united states itself. first as a federal prosecutor, including 12 years as u.s. attorney for the southern district of alabama and then as the state's attorney general.

and now here in the united states senate where he has served with distinction for the last decade-plus. above all, jeff sessions has worked for the people of his state and his country with one purpose in mind and that is to uphold the rule of law. his career in the senate reflects this earnest commitment to do what is right, not what is popular, not what is politically convenient, but to do what is right guided by the constitutional and the laws and inspired by the people he was elected to serve. he has been a defender of our military families and played a leading role in ensuring that rural communities have the health care they need. now, i understand that the long knives have already started to come out against president-elect trump's nominees and that senator sessions, our colleague

from alabama, is not going to be spared some of those attacks, but i would just ask some of these critics who don't know his entire record just to consider the fact that a few years ago he teamed up with the senior senator from illinois to reform sentencing charges on crack cocaine, sentencing charges that disproportionately discriminated against african-american communities. it was a bipartisan solution that achieved fairness without impeding our ability to combat drug violence. i would also ask these critics to consider the bill he introduced with senator ted kennedy, the now departed liberal lion of the senate, to use grant funding to reduce sexual assaults in prison. the legislation requires the department of justice to keep track of these assaults and this was signed into law by president george w. bush.

these are not the sort of actions taken legislatively that fit this disported picture that some of the critics are already starting to draw about senator sessions and his record in the senate or his character as a man. i've had the honor of working closely with jeff on the senate judiciary committee since i came to the senate, and i'm proud to call him a friend. those who have watched him day in and day out understand his stalwart commitment to the rule of law and his deep and abiding concern for our country. of course, we wouldn't be senators if we didn't sometimes disagree with each other. it's just normal, but senator sessions is always engaged with seriousness and cordiality and the kind of civility that this chamber and this country could use more of. and he's helped us all to see by

the strength of his arguments the weaknesses in our own arguments as he's worked together with his colleagues here to try to help us build consent tuesday -- consensus which is the only way we get anything done and the way our constitutional system was designed. only by building consensus can we move our country forward. now, we are going to miss senator sessions here in the senate when he moves on to the executive branch as attorney general, but it's even more important, i believe, at this point in our country's history to have a champion of the constitution and the rule of law at the department of justice and to help restore the reputation of that department. as i said earlier, for years now during the course of attorney general holder's tenure and unfortunately succeeded by

attorney general lynch, the department of justice has twisted the constitution to further the president's political agenda. i would just give you one example. when congress was performing its legitimate oversight responsibilities into a gun-running operation gone wrong called fast and furious, attorney general holder was called before the senate judiciary committee, called before our corresponding house committee and simply defied those committees' lawful and appropriate oversight responsibilities into what the department of justice was doing. this resulted in his having been the first attorney general, to my knowledge, to be held in contempt of congress, a sitting attorney general of the united states hea held in contempt of congress. so the obama administration unfortunately put politics ahead of -- ahead of our national

commitment to the rule of law and unfortunately too often demonize those who work to protect us. i have every confidence that senator sessions as the attorney general of the united states, the head of the department of justice in a trump administration will defend the rule of law and will use his expertise in the constitution to play an essential role in our president-elect's cabinet. as a 15-year veteran of the department, senator sessions understands better than most what needs to be done to help the department of justice refocus its responsibilities and its priorities. but here's the bottom line. we need people in the highest rungs of our government who will ensure our constitution is preserved, protected and defended. and senator sessions is the next attorney general of the united states -- as the next attorney

general of the united states will do just that. mr. president, while the president-elect is considering additional nominees to fill his cabinet, we in the senate and working together with our house colleagues have our own responsibilities to fulfill before the end of this year. most pressing is legislation to fund the government, something that unfortunately has been hindered by our democratic colleagues slow walking the appropriations process. actually calling it slow walking is a little too generous. what they did is block the normal appropriation process where the 12 separate appropriation bills would be voted out of committee which they were on a bipartisan basis, but then they would come across the floor of the senate where amendments would be offered and we would actually vote on them before sending them to the president to be signed into law. but instead of this normal process which is transparent,

it's bipartisan, it's really in the best traditions of the senate, we were denied the opportunity to do that resulting in our need now to pass a year end continuing resolution kicking the funding of government over to perhaps sometime in the spring. strictly as a result of the gamesmanship of our colleagues who -- many of them blocking the same appropriations bills that they voted for on a bipartisan basis before the appropriations committee itself. well, despite those obstructions, we have actually tried to do some good work here. we passed our first bicameral budget since 2 09. the appropriations committee voted out all 12 appropriations bills. so i think despite the obstructionism that we've seen and despite where we find

ourselves, i would just ask all of us to take stock of where we are given what we saw happen in the historic election of november 8. i think the american people have made pretty clear they want the government to function and they don't have a lot of tolerance for gamesmanship or partisanship or obstruction, but we -- with other substantial legislative goals. while i disappointed we find ourselves where we are today having to pass another short-term continuing resolution until next march or so, this kind of waiting till the last minute is not a good way to do business, you but i hope next year -- but i hope next year with the new administration and with the leadership of senator mcconnell, speaker ryan in the house and with more cooperation from our democratic colleagues,

we can have a regular and open appropriations process, one that will serve the american people much better. and it will certainly serve the interests of, for example, the defense department and other people who need to be able to plan beyond two or three months in terms of what they can do with the money that congress is going to appropriate. until then, i urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to set aside the disputes we've had over the last year and the election itself, which i know some are finding it easier to set the results of the election in the rear view mirror than others as evidenced by the comments i heard when i came out here from the senator from massachusetts. but we need to pass a bill that will fund the government and allow us to move forward. and i hope we can do that. and then once we've completed that work for this year, we can come back in the new year with the new administration and a new congress and recommit ourselves to doing the people's work and

doing it in a consensus-building, bipartisan way that listens to what our constituents are telling us they want, not the siren call of the people who think they know better than we do or they do what's good for them but to listen to the american people and then get about the work of passing legislation which promotes their interests. first of all, to assure for the common defense but secondly, to make sure that our economy starts to grow again, and so people who want to find work or want better-paying jobs can find work available so they can provide for their families and pursue their american dream. mr. president, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 667, h.r. 4 of 65. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: the clerk: calendar number 667, h.r. 4665, an act to require the secretary of commerce to conduct an assessment, analysis of the outdoor recreation economy of the united states and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent the bill be considered read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon

the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i now ask unanimous consent the committee on help be discharged from further consideration of s. 2974 and the senate proceed to its immediate consideration. the presiding officer: without objection and the clerk will report. the clerk: s. 2974, a bill to ensure funding for the national human trafficking hot line and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without objection the committee is discharged. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to immediate consideration of calendar 660, s. 2325. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 660, s. 2325, a bill to require the secretary of commerce act,ing through the administrator of the national oceanic and atmospheric

administration to establish a constitution driven program and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there objection to the proceeding? without objection. mr. mcconnell: i further ask the committee reported substitute be withdrawn, the 3w58d win substitute amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, the bill as amended be read a third time and passed and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or degreat. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h.r. 5111 which was received from the house. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: h.r. 5111, an act to prohibit the use of certain clauses in form contracts and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there objection to the proceeding? without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the bill be considered read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without

objection. mr. mcconnell: i understand there's a bill at the desk and i ask its first reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the title of the bill for the first time. the clerk: h.r. 6297 an act to reauthorize the iran sanctions act of 1996. mr. mcconnell: i ask for a second r50eding and forward to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule 14 i object to my own request. the presidinmr.president, i asks consent -- the presiding officer: the objection is heard. the bill will be read a second time on the next legislative day. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today it adjourn till 10 a.m. tuesday, november 29, following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for that use later in the day. following leader remarks the senate be in a period of morning business till 11:00 a.m. with

senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each. finally, that the senate recess from 12:30 until 2:15 to allow for the weekly conference meetings. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: so if there's no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until senate stands adjourned until >> the senate returned from his thanks giving break today, tomorrow they put on legislation that require the department of health and human services to study whether role medical care should be expanded. off the floor this week, negotiations on government funding bill reviewed on december 9 current government funding expires. when the senate is in session, lives coverage here on c-span to

>> writers sitting that donald trump stepped up his search for secretary of state. they said general petronius, once the top military commander in iraq and afghanistan was sentenced to two years probation and fined 100,000 dollars lester for the unauthorized removal and retention of classified information. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> the meeting went well. i was with him for about an hour and he basically walked us around the world and has a great grasp of the friday of challenges out there. some of the opportunities as well. a very good conversation and we

will see where it goes from here. >> that's all i can say today. [inaudible] >> tonight on the communicators, i hope that any kind of copy rate rewrite will come with a requirement or some framework for putting data into a central repository where people can have access can be searched on an individual item by item basis and on a scale basis. we went to a half-million songs through and we are going to get more everyday as we move toward an on demand service. >> pandora general counsel on

the music industry over digital music services including copyright laws, taken price price inflation in the competition between humans and box for concert tickets. >> bots dubai tickets, but what they do is they keep other fans out of the market for tickets. over finding finding is that some fans really want to go see a concert and they can match the buttons on the computer all day long but you cannot be to a bot. so they're not not able to get tickets in the first run at their list price so they're left with only the opportunity of buying the tickets on the secondary market after the bots have gotten him and and pass them to promoters who raise the prices. >> watch communicators tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2.

>> now, conversation with former white house officials about presidential transition. among the speakers will hear from, josh bolton who served as white house chief of staff at the end of george w. bush second term. this is an hour and ten minutes. >> and morning everybody. >> there's never been a better time to discuss the presidential transition then now. for over 4040 years the washington center for internships and academic seminars has welcome college students from across the country and around the globe. in washington, d.c. our students immerse themselves in professional academic internships and become empowered to become citizens in a global society. the events from last week that reminded us of the important work that we do to foster civic

engagement and active participation was civil discourse in students lives. our discussion today will cover campaign to governing, the white house transition process. our featured panelists include lisa brown who served as codirector of the obama come up biden transition project and josh who served at the white house chief of staff for the outgoing george w. bush administration. both have an intimate knowledge of the transition process from the vantage point of both democratic and republican trans- -- including 12000 appointees in the executive branch. director of the white house commission projects has written and studied extensively about the transition process. our moderator will be anthony cook who holds the white house beat and is covering the transition process for politico.

i might add, all 44 of these folks are in big demand right now. so we welcome them during their busy schedules and look forward to great discussion. [applause] >> thank you so much. we have a lot to talk about. we're talking our ears off in the green room so we'll keep doing that appear. we'll start with the lightning round question if we could go down. i'd be interested to know how you would great the trump transition team. that we can half after the election for you and how do you think is going? >> incomplete. i mean this is a group that is really, most of of them are new to this stuff. the typical transition at this point would be much further

along, but this is a group that really ran without the republican apparatus so they do not have the built-in institutional memory and personnel around them that would make it possible for them to hit the ground running. >> what you think lisa? i agree with josh. i think this is a campaign that ran a lot on the president-elect's personality and ideas. he did not have a big structure around him even during the campaign. this is a time where you have to transition from campaigning to governing. that's going to be a bigger challenge for him as a result. it is turning ideas now into policies and actual steps that you will take. the government is a big bureaucracy. for them to get their hand around it is a major endeavor. they are are not as far along as

certainly we were with the obama transition. >> i think they clearly had one thing that was different but besides having a candidate who is not an elective office but they change leadership of their transition from chris christie to mike pence. while that is jarring to the transition to change of personnel, one of the benefits of it is that postelection we can see that the republican controlled the house, the senate, and the presidency. and therefore having mike pence in is a real benefit because he has the relationship, he was in the house leadership and deals well with mike mcconnell, mitch mcconnell. in addition, he was the governor and as governor he would be able

to tap into a base of appointees through knowing other governors and seen who he can bring up from the state level because they want to reach beyond the usual crowd and he has the context to do that. >> in the last 24 hours we're starting to see trumps cabinet pick take shape a little bit. this this morning it was announced that he has picked senator jeff cousens to be the attorney general. michael and the national security adviser, what to these early pics tell us about the way that he is going about assembling a cabinet and also what do these early pics say about his own priorities in this administration? >> loyalty and the people and their connection to the campaign. loyalty is very important to him.

and people who served during a campaign where nobody thought he was going to win and they went out the day after day like jeff sessions did and flynn did as well. and appeared and what would sometime be seen as hostile setting. he wants those people around him that he trusts. but a president has to reach beyond the especially if he doesn't have elective experience he has to bring in those who compensate for his lack of experience in those particular areas. that that something he will have to do. >> loyalty is obviously the key word in and confidence. that's not surprising, but it should be noted that they have made five appointments, they have named five people so far,

wright's previous as chief of staff, steve bannon as senior counselor in the white house, general flynn as the national security adviser, senator jeff sessions as the attorney general, these were announced this morning and then congressman mike pompeo as the cia director. those are the only five and we are now nine days and or more than that. we are nine days in and they have only made five appointments , of those five, four of those people were among the closest 63 people in the trump organization in the campaign organization. so it is not surprising that president-elect trump would pete pick people who were very close and loyal to him.

but martha is exactly right, now they need to reach beyond because the people who work close to president-elect trump in the campaign number only about a dozen. you need a lot more people than that in some very senior positions hopefully with a lot of experience to fill out the government. >> i want to talk you to you about how you go out building a cabinet. so far all of these appointees have been white men. i'm trying to look ahead and see how are they going to go about building a more diverse cabinet. trying spokesperson said that diversity was important. how do you go about thinking about the cabinet from this broad perspective so you can include a lot of view points. you have any sense of the trump transition team will do that?

>> i can't speak to the way the transition team is thinking about it. it is something that president obama thought about it and we thought about as a group. you want a variety of different perspectives in your cabinet. you need to think about it holistically in that sense. so now that if you have chosen your attorney general, thinking about okay have this type of person here, what are the other skills i need, what are the other perspectives i need, diversity that i would like, i would hope he's thinking about that in terms of how it's going to represent the country. you really do need to consciously think about it as you are appointing people. >> and when you look at the vetting process how has that worked in other administrations and i was looking recently at the vetting questionnaire that president obama used and it has things like social media questions, wasn't just like did

you feel to pay her taxes or did you get a dui, so how is that process evolved and what what it look like. >> i think sadly it's become increasingly onerous. that's one of the frustrations of government right now, if you are nominated the amount of paperwork that you have to fill out and everything from your form that ask everyplace you have traveled for a. of time which is a little crazy, and, with anything that you have written and in today's world if you think of today's world we don't have everything we have written. that's an area that we need to bring more sanity to that to nominations and considerations of nominations, but there are people being put into the highest positions of government. so you do really want to know who this person is, what their values and views are. it's really going to be think openly.

>> if you look at how far back it goes the office of government ethics is created in the carter administration. so the financial disclosure process really begins with the reagan administration. it doesn't go back that far but it has become an increasingly important aspect of nominations. what you don't want is to have a nomination blowup on you. if it does it could just be days and bad stories at a time when you want to develop a narrative of what your administration is about. you do not want to have nominations that are not working be part of that narrative. he wanted to be positive and talking about the things that you are going to be doing. >> how will the confirmation process look different this time. the.

the republicans also control the senate which seems like a huge boom to trump as he's trying to push these candidates for. how does that change the process? >> well it makes it a little easier and nicer. but, i expect the senate will still give a serious and probably look at all of the nominees. bear in mind that the senate does not get to look at a number of the key appointments that the president will make of the five positions that they have announced that i just mentioned, only the attorney general and the cia director will end up being subject to review and advise and consent from the senate. the folks who are inside the white house, the president gets

to pick those. so having picked a very controversial character like steve bannon to be the senior counselor, that's done. nobody nobody else gets to have a say in all of that. the folks that do go before the senate will have a serious look, it will be kinder than it otherwise would be because the republicans are in the majority, but democrats are still there, they get to ask at the same questions. hopefully the senate will continue the strong tradition, unless there is a real problem you let the president have his pics. you give it a serious question, you probe where you think you need to probe, you, you ask questions of the nominee to ensure that the senators are comfortable and this is someone who is competent to fill the role. my hope would be in this time as

in most previous times, at least at the outset of an administration the senate will be deferential to the pics. he won the election, it ought to be his prerogative to fill out the candidate in the cabinet with candidates who reflect the views that he wants to bring into government. >> one thing i'm curious about is that you cochaired the agency team that go into agencies which is a huge part of the federal government and part of this transition. the trump people are just starting to go to the agencies now. there is there's a bit of a delay with the shakeup of the leadership team. what is that process look like? >> i think this is one of the places where they are behind. if i recall the timing correctly agency review teams were in agencies the monday after

elections. this is a massive management endeavor. because if you think about all of the federal agencies, the goal essentially is that when on inauguration day when the president starts governing and there is a new cabinet secretary they can come in and start governing so that you do not want on the day after inauguration summoned to walk in the door and say where's the bathroom. you want want to learn as much as you can before the sea can start governing. what that means is there's two key pieces. one is defense and one is offense. on the offensive side you want to know with regard to an agency what are the opportunities for implementing the new president's priorities, how do we take part of what we did was obama had

made a number promises during the campaign and one thing you do is map those out to the various agencies so that when you come into office how do you go about implementing those promises with regard to that agency. the other piece of it is defense which is when i walk into the door what's going to hit me in the face. is a pending litigation? are there regulations or big authorization, in the upcoming year. so you know what you're going to need to react to. with a change of party that is particularly important because there may be things where you want to change direction. you need to get your hands around that. >> appoints adhere that is different this year is the legislation that was signed by president obama in march provided that a white house transition coordinating council be created six months before the election and they did so on may 6 he issued an executive order creating that counsel which had senior white house

staff and then they set policy on transition and then an agency transition director's counsel which has 20 people on representing the 15 departments in the five largest agencies and they are to implement the policies. that is composed of career staff. so they have words for that whole time figuring out what kinds of things they agency should be gathering so that they gather information on the budget, programs, on what programs or what particular point and what problems they may be having, positions, what are the descriptions of the physicians, who are holding them now. there is a lot of information that has already been gathered and scheduled of what kinds of meetings are going to be taken place at the cabinet secretary

might have to start traveling very soon after they get into office. the government is is a moving train. so the president and his team are jumping on a train, the the government doesn't stop because the president stops. so the idea that legislation is to make certain that it is moving as smooth as possible to get on that train. if they are behind when they do go with they will have more information than previously. >> and part of it is thinking during the transition what you really want to focus on what's really important, both what are you going to know for the first 30, 60, 90 days. one of the things that it's really happened over the last several transitions as people have realized that you want to be creating gathering and

creating useful information that when somebody comes in they can react rely on it. it's what what they need to know federally. of time because additional appointees come in and there is a lot that keeps going on in the government. some can wait a little bit but what you want to focus on is what are the most important items both affirmatively and defensively. >> the trump transition team have this new lobbying bannon place where they're saying you can come in for the transition there's no cooling off. you just need to register as a lobbyist lobbyist immediately and you can join. on the other end you won't be able to lobby for five years after you leave the administration if you join it. what effect will that have? >> it will chill some people going into the administration which is a shame. i have a view of this that isn't particularly fashionable at the

moment but i think we have overdone it on the restrictions, we need good people willing to serve in government, the fact that somebody has been or will be a lobbyist there's nothing wrong with lobbying, it is a dirty word in our public discourse today but lobbyists actually serve a useful function in government. they represent clients who have a point of view that they want known to the government. and lobbying and its best form is actually informing the government about the positions of important economic interests, importance interest groups and so on.

lobbying is not done just by corporations. but big corporations to oppress the little man. lobbying is done by the small business association, it is sunday the children's defense fund. it's done by all sorts of entities and they should welcome a sect of lobbying in government because it helps government be informed and make good judgments based on the interest of a wide variety of stakeholders. so, i thought thought the obama administration overdid it when they came in they recognize basically that they overdid it because they put in some very strict rules and then started waving the rules for literally dozens of people. i think the trump folks are at risk of overdoing it as well,

making it difficult for people who have the knowledge and experience to serve in government i actually agree with josh. i think we have overdone it. i think you're excluding excluding people with a tremendous amount of expertise. it's true the lobbyist and a democratic administration are going to be the lobbyist a republican one. there's a lot of folks in nonprofits and if you think of them fighting for policies they believe in their experts in those policies into not bring those people into the administration is a real price to that. >> i think one of the areas the prices paid is in legislative affairs operation of the white house. that you need people with throbbing experience because they are going to be involved in putting together coalitions. they have the knowledge. >> this is a great point that

martha is raising. the white house itself needs lobbyist, that's what the legislative affairs offices. if you're precluding lobbyists from being lobbyist from being lobbyist who are you lobbyist be? there gonna be people who don't know the craft that they're being asked to perform. now, none of us is a lobbyist but that is part of the atmosphere now surrounding the selection. you all are sitting near ground zero of the swamp. and the president won the selection in part on a promise to drain the swamp so the diplomatic step needs to be done and some stuff is going to go down the drain that would actually be helpful in governing but that's way politics works. if you run on a particular pet platform with a mandate you probably are to do at least a few of the things he promised the people that you will do.

>> president clinton recognized that he had disadvantage people in his administration over the lobbying ban postemployment lobbying ban. so at the end of his administration i think it was just after christmas. >> it was, i looked it up last night. >> he rescinded that band. if you think of it, people who are coming in who made large amounts of money and then they come in and they're making a small percentage of what they did make, then to prohibit them from going back to the life that they had, there a lot of people who are not going to do that. >> want to go on to a different topic and talk about the role of family members in the trump administration potentially. we have been trying to figure out exactly what kushner is

going to do and i'm curious to know how on precedent that would be to have a family member serve as the senior right house role? >> of course there was legislation passed after the, but bobby kennedy who is very important as the attorney general but he was at the white house all of the time and speaking to his brother and he had been very much a part of the campaign. he was very important to him. family members, generally family members have not been part of the white house or the decision-making structure. that was not unusual circumstance, but if you remember in this campaign it was a campaign with a very small

coterie of people in his family was integral to that. you saw every time there's a big event it was his family that was there. so kushner and his son and daughter all were very much a part of that loyalist group to him. he wants his people around him that he trusts. >> what worries me more is a conflict of interest in regards to his businesses. and they all now feel a little too close having the family, the business and the governing. that's the part of it that i would want to see him separate and have the businesses run by whoever they are, but in the president himself is not subject to conflict of interest rules that the rest of us were. but most of this is very, you cannot take any official action that is going to benefit you or your family members personally.

that is something that every government official commits to. and actually it's a criminal criminal or statute. that's a piece that worries me more. >> anything tag? >> no. when you think about family members they worry about their family members getting in trouble and what problems they can cause, whether it's billy carter and his connection with the libyans are richard nixon who is worried about his brother and along that he had taken from howard hughes, that's usually where family members come in.

>> i do want to ask you about what the white house will look like. so far we know that ryan's previous is going to be the chief of staff. steve bannon is going to be senior advisor, and strategists, those are very different personalities. they bring very different things to the table, how's things to the table, how is that going to work out? >> well i hope it works out well, but the structure that has been suggested by the announcement, i think it could be a serious mistake. here's why i say that. the very first personnel announcement of the trump the transition was ryan's previous as white house chief of staff. and steve bannon as the anything senior counselor title. which those are two good announcements to make very early on, that it seemed to me was smart. those are probably two of the people you want to pick first along with her national security advisor which they have now done. all of that was smart, but in

the announcements of previous and bannon, the press release said they would be co- equals and actually banning got top billy which is a former chief of staff was particularly painful. that cause me concern, if by coequal they mean those two people will have equal access to the presidency year and he will rely and their advice, roughly equally, that's fine. but the president can listen to his many voices as he wants to and it's actually benefit to the president to have disparate voices which i think he would get from previous and bannon. previous being somebody is well steeped in the ways of washington, he's been chairman of the republican national committee for some time.

he is more in the mainstream of republican politics and governments, bannon is a a disruptor, former head of breitbart, he's provocative, he's been a promoter of what's called the alt-right. i don't think there's anything wrong with having a different voice in the white house, but the problem arises when you try to grow the white house and through the white house run the government, if there's a lack of clarity as to who is in charge and who speaks for the president, that can be, should be, and a successful white house must be the chief of staff, that if there's a question about what did the president decide, do you ask it to people now and get two versions of that?

if there's a question about what will the president be revealing today, do you have a fight about what it's going to be on the agenda? to have a a fight about who gets to be in the meeting? is there a dispute the president has to resolve about is he going to go to chicago, or detroit to give a speech. you need a chief of staff to basically be the person who sits at the top of the pm and and who manages the flow into the president and then interprets for everybody else in government to flow out. i was chief of staff of the the last three years of the bush administration. while i was there the senior advisor and comparable strategists position was karl rove. there was no closer, better,

more intimate advisor on the staff to president bush than karl rove who was an extraordinarily astute, sophisticated, i think brilliant both the political and policy strategists. so strategists. so i was chief of staff with a senior advisor whose advice even i thought probably was more important to the president the my own. but the system worked, i thought extremely well because both of us could give our advice to the president but only one of us was actually in charge of running the staff and acting as the voice of the president to the rest of the governments. if what they mean by coequal is they both get to talk to the president i'm going to listen to them both, great. no problem with that. if what they mean is that there is lack of clarity as to who

voices the operation in terms of the president that i think there for trouble. >> the other thing i would ask about is trump is been holding all of these meetings with this but ten show cabinet picks and trump tower. just from a historical perspective is that common for president-elect's to do that outside of washington? >> absolutely, they do stay outside of washington. what they want to do is keep personally out of public view because they want to make a shift from being a candidate of a particular party to be president of all of the people. so that is not something you can do in washington. so they have allstate wherever they were was reagan was in california, and when reagan did come to washington what he did was he had a party and at that party he had to bow neil who was

speaker of the house and he had the democrats throughout washington like robert strauss who is on democratic organization and head of the dnc. he had others in the washington community, not just republicans. he wanted to show that when he came as president he needed everybody in order to govern. so that really was an important statement, but it's not something he could have done immediately after the election. so he did all of his work in california. bush did his and crawford. obama was in chicago. you still have an operation that is working here in transition in addition to the operation that is wherever the president is.

>> were going to go to the audience for questions in one minute so people want to start thinking, one last question for you to answer, what are the real challenges for the trump transition team over the next few weeks? what do they need to focus on. >> the biggest challenges personnel. you mention 4000 people, people, you don't need to fill all 4000 jobs, but there are over 1200 are subject to senate confirmation. because they don't commit with close connections with the traditional republican apparatus, they have a real challenge, every transition has a real challenge in filling the key job that you want to have in place on, or near near january 20 when you actually take over. this transition has a real challenge with that and so i

think their focus should be and probably is, overwhelmingly for the next several weeks to figure out who the right people are to put in place in these important jobs. >> is one follow-up to that, so many establishment republicans in washington d.c. people changing their mind and being more open in serving and administration of that he's president-elect? >> i do see people changing their mind. make no mistake, the trump campaign was a remarkable, hostile takeover of the republican party. it did not have the support of a very large portion, of a specially traditional pub republican policy people. this is especially true in the form policy area were a couple of

letters were signed by well over 100 of of the most senior experience republican policy officials. the letter expressly say this man is unfit to be president. now, those people have probably disqualified themselves by their signature on that letter, probably disqualified themselves from being drawn into a trump administration. if i am president-elect, donald trump i am not that keen to bring onto my team somebody who publicly said that that i was unfit to serve as president. and the challenges that most of the senior and republican policy experts sign that letter. i don't think there's actually a problem with people being willing to serve because in the heat of the primary and so on

there is a real battle that goes on. in the end almost everybody i know that has been or wants to be a public servant is a patriot and wants the country to succeed wants to try to help contribute. i do think there's a problem with people being willing to serve, i think there is a problem in the foreign and national security policy area of a lot of the best people having disqualified themselves from serving. >> like completely agree with josh on personnel. the other thing is a new new president has a certain honeymoon to. they need to be thinking very carefully about what their first 30 and 60 days will look like. what are the priorities can be and what will they roll out and think very carefully for that. that will set the tone for the administration. given the way the campaign was run in the way the opposition to him, what kind of president is he going to be?

think what he does in the first weeks of office will be more important for him then for previous presidents. i would hope that is also part, what is the tone they want to set and what are they going to do to demonstrate that. >> i think a challenge they have now is that before you make a lot of your appointments, setting up your decision-making structure, what information do you want together? who do you want to talk to? what groups do you want to take into account? what's important for the president? for the president-elect and the president, it's a different decision-making system that it's going to be running your business. running your business you can decide who you want to talk to and not bother with people that you don't. when you're president obviously

are going to have to take into account congress. you you can just make decisions on your. you have to think about what is the mature decision-making structure. that's going to be important and how you set up your white house. >> let's take some questions. the people asking if you can state your name and where your from will keep the questions brief as possible. >> i'm from florida state university, the question i have is when it comes to agreements made from the previous president being transferred to the president-elect with donald trump disagrees with their income is this something. [inaudible] >> yes. absolutely. i think that is among the toughest issues that the

president-elect and the transition team faces. he said on the campaign trail he wants to tear up the iran agreement. he wants to withdraw the united states from the paris climate agreement. that president obama, somewhat controversially did those agreements as executive agreements. he did not submit them for the advice and consent of the senate. having done them as executive agreements rather than treaties which would then have the force of law, which would then there would be probably complicated legal procedure to withdraw the united states, having done them as executive agreements they can be undone as executive agreements. so president-elect donald trump when he becomes president will have at 12 oh

1:00 a.m. on january 20 he will have the authority to withdraw the united states from the iran nuclear deal, from the paris climate deal and a number of other things. particularly with respect to the iran nuclear deal is a very complicated and dangerous situation. i imagine that one of the key issues on the agenda right now of the new national security adviser, general flynn will be okay, exactly what what did we mean by that, how do we implement that? do we really mean to tear up the agreement on day one? a very difficult situation they're dealing with. that's not uncommon for presidents, the presidents often say stuff on the campaign trail that turn out to be awkward when you're governing. but this one is consequential in a way that very few

president-elect's have faced. >> good morning. thank you for sharing your insight. i'm from south florida. my point is, are my questions regarding the devices that were used during the campaign, the sound of ice and whatnot they said the cabinet they nominate reflects the views they intend to project. how do you you evaluate now actually the devices that he used the soundbites that he's actually going to back away from them? or the choices he made medical or that he's pushing through? the the second question is with regards to some of the letters they wrote calling trump unfit and then him being elected to

think in the future people be more cautious? >> when you're talking about the -- high-tech but his use of twitter? >> of the promises. while one of the things that is a challenge at this point for president-elect is getting rid of some of the bad ideas to think that this did not turn out to be wise. that they were good rhetorically but would not make for good policy. so that is always a challenge. every president has face that in some way. in his case there's going to be a lot because he took such very hard positions like the wall. [inaudible]

no one. >> redefined what constitutes a wall. so maybe a fence, and then maybe because you have drones that's as good as a wall. so it doesn't messes necessarily mean bricks. i haven't figured out how he's going to get out of the commitment that mexico is going to pay for it. >> you've always seem some of this on 60 minutes, you saw him talk about his priority on immigration was going to be deporting criminals. i think exactly how you implement a number of these ideas. in some ways it actually gives him more's' room in terms of figuring out exactly what he's going to do as he starts implementing. so what i think we hope is that

on immigration he starts with criminals and he starts to prioritize in a thoughtful way as he actually has to move forward and figure out what some of those ideas are going to mean in reality. >> i like your questions about whether people are going to sign letters. i think first of i think most of the people who signed those letters had no expectation that donald trump could possibly be elected president of the united states. i think something that will happen and i think should happen going forward is the political class in both parties have a little more humility about their expectations of what they know will happen, the people have their own voice and they sometimes speak in ways that is surprising to the elite.

>> one senior person in the form policy and national security community who did not sign that letter was steve hadley, who is the national security adviser. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> i think there are a lot of people who believed in government wanted to work. if that is in all of our interest that this transition goes well. so i think there be individuals who will join because they want to make sure the government is going to continue to run well. i also think that more this point, a lot of government is

career employees who are incredibly knowledgeable. the incoming administration a smart, part of what they do is take advantage of those employees, part of the more recent legal changes as they're saying is that you have materials prepared in designated employees who are ready to step into political positions that are not filled, who are the people who are going to be working with the incoming administration. there is a lot of capacity there, any incoming president should take advantage of that as well. >> good morning. my name is paige on the student and emerson college and currently interning at the sierra club. my question is, what is the chance there'll still be vacancies come

inauguration day, how can we anticipation that dysfunction trickling down through the administration and agencies. >> 100% chance. no matter how organized you are, there's no way those positions are filled. i think it's one of the challenges. it has to be one of the priorities of the administration. you can can fill the non- senate confirmed 13 quickly. that is a way that you can get people into agencies. but i think our transition was very organized and even we had a number of vacancies and important agencies. secretary -- was only the political appointees and the treasuries for time. >> it doesn't mean dysfunction, if there are still many vacancies on inauguration day, it's just incrementally harder for the president-elect to manage the governments if he doesn't have his people in those places. lisa and martha emphasized an important point, there are how

many people working government? 4 million total if you include military? so therefore thousand political appointees, but their 4 million, other mostly really capable and dedicated people who keep the government and keep the train going that martha was talking about on a daily basis. you just need to get as many people as you can promptly into the cab of the train so the president-elect has an opportunity to take it where he thinks it taught to go. >> and the goal is to have about 400 people confirmed by the august congressional recess. what you want to do, the casino everybody cannot get confirmed, if you think through what are your priorities, so for example when president reagan came in it was a tough economic situation and the same thing with

president obama. so what you do is you focus on what positions are there throughout the government that are going to be important for your issue. in reagan's case they chose 87 positions that dealt with the economy. and all of the agencies and departments, and and that is where they put their attention. so i would expect they're going to do something of the same thing. to do that you have to think through all of the things that you have said in the campaign, what are the conditions now and what are your priorities as far as those positions. so at the obama administration they started the transition early but in september the financial meltdown was occurring so they had to switch to an entirely different set of issues

, to focus on when they came into office. so getting that focus is going to be key to getting the appointments set up in their priority line. >> i think you'll see a focus i would hope on national security appointments and economic appointments. those will be traditional that those are the ones you focus on. but the transition empowers a time of vulnerability. you do i make sure that especially on the national security front you have your people in. another one of the new legislation that passed part of what it requires is the of the two tabletops on national security which is something josh instituted what we are coming in, but you really practiced any work with some of the people in those positions so you are ready and this was important. there is actually national security

threat on inauguration day when president obama was inaugurated. if i recall secretary -- in the secretary were at an off-site together. regardless of your party and when there's a change of party and the ministration it shows that everybody is dedicated to our country into the system and they wanted to work. i think there now built on a lot of best practices in the past that president bush and the incoming president obama started. >> the government under the new laws also require to submit a list of vulnerabilities, the intelligence community gathers vulnerability so that people will know coming in what the issues are. in 2008 in the bush administration steve hadley prepared memoranda that looks

through what the issues are that are important for them to deal with on the national security area and then what countries also, you needed to know what the situation had been before, when they came and how it had developed and what was the situation at the end, so there's a lot of work that is done that to the point of national security being key. >> hello. from the university of puerto rico some people have said that the beginning you mentioned some transition is incomplete. some had said him not expecting

twin. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> this was an insurgent campaign. they did not bring with them a whole cadre of long time republican establishment government figures, think tankers, in fact the trump campaign was predicated on running against those people. it is not at all surprising that when it comes time to put together a transition team they

are a little thin with the people who have experience in putting a government together. the other thing is in this is a challenge for transitions in every election cycle, the candidate is focused on winning the election. and it is really hard to get the candidate to focus and put some resources and brainpower, somebody who the candidate trust it's really hard to get them to focus on preparing to govern when they are still trying to win the election and every out of their time and effort and money was going into that. that was the point of the legislation that two sets of legislation passed promoted substantially by martha on my

left so that there is a legal structure in place that basically forces the two candidates to take seriously the transition process to have money to start planning the and it gives them gsa office space as soon as they have the nomination to start putting a transition together. the legal structures there, the challenge is to try to get the campaign and the candidate to focus on something that is nowhere near their priority. they just want to win. and then worry about governing later. the problem is there is a lot of work that if you're going to have a smooth transition it and needs to be done early on and that of course is a particularly big challenge for what might the trump campaign. >> they did gather a lot of information that would come in this campaign during chris

christie and then when the leadership changed you can have different people coming in, but but there is a lot of information that they gathered. that information will stay. one of, i guess maybe it's not real funny but there a lot of candidates who believe in the jinx. and they don't want to jinx themselves by working on transition. i was reading something yesterday that trump believed in the jinx. don't jinx me. and and i think clinton as well, they did not want to think of those things before hand. the way to handle that is to have what candidate obama was is to have john podesta run his transition, it was totally separate from the election and they should be. the campaign needs to keep campaigning in that camp

candidate needs to win and that's exactly where his or her attention should be, but there someone you can trust in you can say go set this up then there's a structure that you can then walk into and take advantage of when you do when. >> my name is ashley i'm a student, i'm interning at the american conservative union. my question is that our constitution was written in such a way that the office of the presidency was not supposed to be an ultra- powerful branch yet some people are acting like a trump presidency is the end of the world. if they're really afraid of the wrong person be a president doesn't that mean the offices the president has too much power? is this a reflection of the overreach of authority set by the president of the current and past administrations?

>> the president is the only official we have that is nationally elected. one of the things that's happened over time is that you have a nationalization of problems. so the only official that really has that total perspective is the president. if you ask presidents whether they had too much power i think they would all agree that they did not have a sufficient amount because they think of themselves as representing the people in congress is representing in the house just representing the district in the interest of their state. so they feel that they should have more authority than they should have. you often have battles over what kind of authority a president should have, like in the battle in this administration over trade promotion authority, whether the president should

have that, which she ultimately got but it was a big battle to get it. >> the last question. >> i'm at the university of florida. to what extent would you say 911 impacted -- >> a hugely, i was the chief of staff for the transition out of the bush administration, so the first transition out of government after 9/11. it was i think with 9/11 in mind that president bush called me into his office a year before the inauguration of the new president, more than a year before and said, he, regardless

of who wins this election he wants to make sure that we attempt to execute the best, most efficient, most useful transition in american history, especially because this will be the first transition in modern american history during which the american homeland is known to be under threat. he was very concerned about the time of vulnerability our country goes through at that moment of transition. you all would be both chilled and impressed with what the white house looks like on january 19 and january twentieth. i have been in the white house twice on january 19, as in the white house on januarn january 19 in the morning in of january 20, 2001, the white

house is empty, there's nothing on the walls, there's nothing on the shelves, the computers are there but the hard drives are wiped clean. there are no people there, it is a complete blake slate. the only people that are in the west wing are in the situation room, a few cia and state department, basically junior level people there to handle communications, and their the navy people who served the food in the mess. and that's it. your government is, we always worry about the decapitation of government, when we have a transition we self decapitate,

we clean the place out and it is a moment of real vulnerability for the country and president bush very much had a 91111 type episode in mind when he directed me to direct the staff to do our best to make the transition into the obama administration a smooth as possible. it has improved dramatically, the legal structure and the expectations have improved dramatically since then so that we now have a built-in agenda to make that transition go smoothly, but a a lot of people have to do a lot of work to give the country the kind of reassurance it deserves that we are not unnecessarily vulnerable as we go through this extraordinarily process of the peaceful transfer of power. >> i actually was there an hour were for vice president gore and when he lost i was there on the last day.

i actually had worked in florida, came back to the white house and my role then was actually to help on the transition out and make sure everybody was doing what they're supposed to be doing. i think there is some reassurance that everyone should take from the dedication of the individuals in office to making sure the transition is as smooth as possible. it is only become stronger over recent transition both because of 9/11 and because of the legislation. he really do have a lot of dedicated individuals who want to make sure it works. >> and president obama has set the right tone from the top. >> the terrorism prevention act that was passed in 2004 and abroad until legislation recommendation of the 9/11 commission, they're very concerned about that vulnerability. so they wanted to make sure they

were going to be people during the transition who were going to be and have their security clearances early so they provided for that early security clearance so there would be people who are well informed and in place early. why group you didn't mention that actually is in the white house is the prep, the press, the press does stay. >> to i detect some sarcasm there. >> we will wrap up. thank you so much to everyone into our panelists. we know how busy you are. [applause] >> tonight on the communicators. >> i hope any type of copyright rewrite will come with a requirement of some kind of framework for putting data into a central repository where people can have access, where

can be searched on an individual item by item basis in a sort of skill basis because we run to an have million songs through. we're going to get more more everyday as we move toward an on demand service. >> 's d binet on the issues facing congress of the music industry over digital music services including copyright laws, ticket price inflation and the competition between humans and bots for conference tickets. he he is interviewed by the technology reporter for political. >> bots to buy tickets. but they keep other fans out of the market for tickets. what we're finding is some fans really want to go see a concert and they can match the buttons other computer all day long but you cannot beat a bot. so they are not able to get tickets in their first run at their list price. so they left with only the

opportunity of buying tickets on the secondary market after the bots have passed them to promoters who raise the prices. >> watch the communicators tonight at eight eastern on c-span2. >> back at her desk and talk about presidential transitions come up with his work at the partnership for public service. reviewers are not familiar, what is the partnership for public service? >> where nonpartisan nonprofit organization trying to make the government more effective. one thing that we do is try to make the presidential transition process smoother and more effective. what we have found it it all begins in the beginning if your government starts poorly their consequences throughout the rest of the administration. tential transitio refocused on trying to make it

the best transition never. >> through your work with the center for presidential transition which will talk about, you been calling for both candidates during the election to start preparing for the transition as far back as january of last year. how well dide the president elet donald trump prepare for thissin transition? >> i think we saw the very best transition season pre-election season there's ever been. both candidates had very aggressive pre-election transition efforts that started even before the conventions. we've never seen that historically were both majorsi party candidates have had a positive approval investment in planning that early on. i think candidate trump to the right tank, chris christie put together great operation but now they are making timely. they have to move with great dispatch because there's like to be done. >> comedy decisions have to be

made in jobs need to be filled?o >> it is impossible to overstate the complexity of this past year. give a 4 trillion-dollar organization, your 4,000,000 million people when you countu the military, you have 4000 political of appointees. no other country, no other democracy on the planet have that many political appointments. it's the complicated and difficult task. the new need to do with budgeting issues to not only to have a continuing resolution you have a budget that you will have to present to congress one month after the inauguration. the list goes on. of things you know you need to do, the rear if there's going to be a bunch of things you can't expect and anticipate, the asteroid that you have to come in. >> are you working with president-elect trump in the transition process?way we

>> again we have no authority, we are nonprofit organization but we are assisting in any way that we can. with information from what's required from these jobs, 4000 political appointments, there no available position descriptions available for these jobs. eventually the averment puts out the plum book which let's stop the job title. so where in the process of producing those in providing those, not only to the trump transition effort to the senate and others are interested so they have a sense about what the core requirements are. there should be job interviews a political theater. . . s about the transition process, democrats call 202-748-8000. republicans called 202-748-8001. .ndependents, 202-748-8002 lines are open and you can start calling in now. the amountsk about

of turnover we saw at the beginning of the transition process, and whether that is normal? the atlantic magazine had this to say about the early days of the trunk transition -- from the outside it looks like a mess. the new president-elect abruptly replaced demand for months had been running his transition office in new jersey governor chris christie would does chris christie with the soon-to-be vice president mike pence. departures quickly follow and that was a purge of people close to christie. is this normal? >> guest: there is no normal in transition planning. the bar is pretty darn low given the fact that no higher president has actually done this the way that it needs to be done today. i should've started with this point that transition is not only about taking over the complex organization. it's about making sure we are kept safe. the point of maximum vulnerability for our country in a post 9/11 world you have to be really can learn.ve the pre-election plan in the

trunk team did was very strong. it creates a new issue which is you have to merge your pre-election transition option. if you describe a pretty messy example of that, i was day weha are still in the relative early days. the trump transition effort can recoup the time they move with great dispatch but their time to be done and it's not just a mean the people and it's not just about naming the top people. it's about getting teams in place, making sure they are clear with respect to the ethics issues they may have, back rent check to bring them to theio senate that the 1100 confirmed. they should be on the outcomes, how their team on the field in real-time and that means their top 100 senate confirmed by day one. >> host: if we are looking to get to what you just described, and what needs to happen in early december? what will you be looking for to see if things are on track as we

look nine weeks down the road? >> guest: clearly you need to put your top people in place and move some dispatch to make that happen. you have to see the activity occurring not just in the very top cabinet secretary, the further down into the organization. deputy secretary, general counsel, even assistant secretary. >> host: are we seen that yet? >> guest: not yet. it is still pretty early. compared to a prior president-elect had done. i would not argue that the right benchmark if you get done what needs to happen you need to see a much more accelerated process. one of the key questions for the trump operation will be can they scale effectively as they are not able to run everyone througs the process we've seen so far in terms of visiting with president-elect trump to get the kind of numbers they need. >> some 4000 different -- >> guest: and i'll have to

take place during the transition phase, but certainly you'd be talking literally and remember not to be about 30 teams together. these folks need to work together effectively. one of the challenges in the past is people taking individuals to the top and with the requirements are later on. they did, the trump pre-election did a lot of good planning inla one of the things we've seen is either using the planning to achieve the goals they need. >> host: what is an example of the good planning? >> guest: an example would bee they put together landing team operations to go into the agencies. what that really is is a group of people that enter into agencies to do due diligence ane understand the issues and said the agency to think about what their campaign promises are, what they do to implement them t until a bunch of agencies that have not seen teams arrive. that would occur now. >> host: presidential

transitions with max stier is taking your call. (202)748-8000. independents (202)748-8002. we will start in chattanooga, tennessee. james is a democrat. i go ahead. >> caller: yes, i was wondering if the gentleman, how he learned to be bipartisan if he would be just as willing to work with a clinton administration if the need should arise. >> guest: i love the question. thank you for asking that. i learned through experience and like many people in washington,a i've been in the partisan world and boy do i prefer the nonpartisan staff. what we do at the partnership is president-elect trump is the pilot and our airplane. we'll have to hope he succeeds as our pilot or we shall have a

common interest making sure our country succeeds in there for our is as effective as possible. the answer to your question is absolutely i would be happy to help whoever is president elect. we have been helping going back pre-election both sides and even before that we were up one point hoping five different campaign to make sure they would be ready if in fact they got a nod from their party. in april we had literally cruise campaign, trump campaign come us in this campaign, clintonprojec campaign. from a readiness project four years ago. the obama white house altogether comes back to the question all of them together focused on what needed to happen to make sure the next president is ready to everrn on day one. everyone laid their stores down

at the door and there is a common understanding among the group that they had a commons of interest. you fight hard during the election but ultimately we have an interest in a functioning government and that is what we are committed to a partnership. sam, good morning. call coe hike on the goodrnin morning.g. you know, a week ago there was a a lot of talk on the news that's trump was picking his advisers and staff, a lot of lobbyists infiltrated the process which goes against the promise to drain the swamp. wondering if you guys had any thought on that, maybe an update on how the discussion is evolving in the transition. thanks. just go sure the drain the swamr metaphor is a powerful one and

there's no doubt they're important things not to be done to make sure government is responsive to the people and not simply to special interests. that is an area where you should see more activity from the trump administration. prior efforts of all had ethics commitment, you know, recent presidents have likewise done something where the very early d on in the industry should lay down markers about what they expect from their political appointment. lobbyists are an easy target and inappropriate one to make sure that people who are assuming in our government for helping set up our government are motivated for the right reasons. i think one of the things we need to keep an ion is the kinds of rules and regulations of the trump administration to

guarantee and we have a more ethical government.th one of the things i can't resist saying is one way we do that ing our country is making sure we have a career civil service going back of 100 years ago. the president assassinated by a would-be office seeker. it makes no sense with 4000 political appointees right now.i it is a vestige of the system. one day we could improve the system and reduce the number of appointments. the president should run thetheo government according to the policies the president had beent elect bob. you do need a strong and capable civil service.d they need to be reformed and some big waves, too. >> a want or fear thoughts about donald trump's proposed hiring freeze on employees to reducefe the federal workforce through

nutrition.ins is that something the fact that that will help create an effect to federal government? >> guest: no, not at all. the motivation is a good one and we have to change our system that has done wonders for the american people but it's not for today or tomorrow's world. hiring freeze is not one ofeze s those. it's been tried before presiden. reagan. what they found was that it actually cost the government more money. you don't freeze in place something that isn't right for today or tomorrow. let me give you a strong example of it. they need to be performed in a very good way. almost 80% of some operations and maintenance. look at the workforce. more people over the age of 65 and under the age of 30 in the

federal government.an do you really want to freeze that into place? what you really need to do is get the right talent and have a perfectly to reduce the cost if that's where you want to go. it will cause more damage and cost more at the end of the day. good idea, wrong way to get of done. >> as the caller mentioned, lots of discussion about the top of the government workforce. here is the latest bid to lead story in today's "wall street journal" talking about thesecrer emerging battle over secretary of state.iggest sparks fly, one of the biggest discussions is whether to name secretary of state mitt romney as mr. trump's early favorite for the post despite his criticism for the gop nomineesm during republican presidential primary. the party nominee escalated in a

the top trump advisors said they would feel betrayed if mr. romney got the prominent cabinet post after he hadd opposed mr. trump so publicly. when these pics are made and when they settle in who will beu in these positions. do you have any suggestions orra strategies to make the nomination process as easy if not drawnout as possible. >> guest: is a terrific question. is the tendency for everyking t information and they don'tre really focus on what happens next. an example is who you pick and how you prepare your foes. you need to pay quickly and make sure you are picking well-qualified people. they are being essentially here. you need to make sure you get them through the process effect to believe.

one that is critical as understanding the process. the president as has been noted does not have the same conflict as it applies to every one else. but dear secretary of stateha designee you have to be able to clear the ethics reviews at the office of government not fixed us. you have to go through a background check or the fbi. making sure you find the work up effectively have goodan communication with the senate vt committees is vital to getting people in place quickly. their 17th senate committees that have jurisdiction over nominees. they all have their own individual process to work with majority and minority staffs. it's a very big lift. then he think about that they are actually prepared to run the government effectively. you get great qualified people from the outside. once they arrived they have to contextualize their skills to

the government environment and understand the differences. have seen great people comment and not understand differences around the hiring process, federal budget, how you work c with congress and make mistakess that can be avoided. one thing we've done is create a curriculum for new political appointees that they can avoid mistakes and start right. that would be another example.

the hosts go joining us this week i'm treated to is steve