appropriations bill, is there a section that addresses personnel hiring? >> i'm not aware of it, sir. >> is there a provision that addresses use of travel cards or purchase cards? >> no, sir, i'm not aware of that. >> how about a provision that details how inspections rb to be conducted? >> no >> is there a provision that explains how background checks are to be conducted? >> no, sir. >> the answers to these questions are all no, and the reason is that this committee never held a hearing or conducted a markup on legislation to create this program. so, the problems we see today were never contemplated by this committee and no direction was provided. now, i understand mr. barton said you ought to resign, but mr. barton was the care of the committee at the time this law was adopted through an appropriations bill. we tried to get the people who

have a stake in this to work out legislation while the democrats were in power and i was chairman. and we had the chemical industry and others with us, when the republicans came to power, they on this committee said let's just extend this for seven years. we will just kick this thing down the road for seven years. now, one of the proponents of doing that was the chemical industry. they were troubled -- excuse me, troubled by some of the ideas that we would have further inspections and we would have further deadlines and we would make sure that things happened. but, while they participated with us in trying to change the law, they said all they wanted to do this last year was extend the existing law for seven years. now this existing law doesn't have much of a requirement on you.

you have established a working group, mr. beers, in the department to look at legislative and regulatory changes and whether they are necessary, is that correct? >> as a whole -- >> speak into the mic and be sure it on. >> yes, sir, with respect to the entirety of the department. >> and the november report identified several limitations to program that limited effectiveness and includes rigid and limited enforcement authority. for example, a facility can violate requirements 20 times and you would not have any more authority to take any action on repeated violations, they could repeat the violations over and over again and you could not do anything about it. right is this >> that was something that we looked into as a result of the report. while, it's true that just on the face of that, the answer to that is yes, we believe we could

use oured administrative authority -- >> excuse me, you should have been given that authority by law. it calls into question the adequacy of the performance standards, without testing the standards, adequacy is more a matter of opinion or fact. will your working group give us recommendations on that issue? >> sir, as we come to recommendations, yes, we will give those to you. we as you know have to go through a very formal process >> you will examine that issue? >> well. >> and congress should have examined it as well. my point is, while we are pointing fingers at you and you are having excuses and everyone says we will do better. i think we all have a burden to bare in the failure. congress did not do its job and

we hoped you took up the slack and did the job that congress should have directed you to do. but i think it's awesomely premature for members of congress should be asking for you to quit, maybe some members of congress should be asked to quit. >> we will try to get this done and adjourn hearing after he is through. they just called votes. >> i think the chairman for the recognition and witnesses for he being here today. when i first read the memo it was like jerry mcguire meets the titanic, just some of the words and phrases used. unnecessary expepss. unqualified personnel. unsuited for the work. problems with how money is spent, foul language. ineffective hiring. unauthorized expenses. inappropriate work behavior, catastrophic failure. perceived favoritism.

how do you grade your performance on a kale of 1-100? >> i think this report is a clear indication that the program needs a whole lot of work on it. but i do not think it -- i don't think it entirely recognizes what we have done and i'm not being an apologist. we have problems we need to address. >> is there criminal activity taking place here? >> sir, those are issues that we are looking into. >> so you are looking into criminal, possible criminal activities? >> if that turns out to be the result of these reviews the answer to that of course is yes, we have an obligation to you and the american public to do that. >> do on you, i mean, in terms of what you are facing, what else are we missing from this memo? i mean is this a comprehensive memo are you finding other issues that need to be addressed?

>> sir, you are asking me to say what the unno oknowns are here, not saying this memo is the entirety. i to not think that david would say that. but it represents a commitment to make sure that we understand the problems as we know them and to come up with solutions to fix that, david? >> i would just add that, i would echo the secretary's feelings, i would say the report was focused, as it was intended ton an internal candid assessment, it was focused on the challenges side of the equation and it did not focus to program's successes and opportunities. you know, i would add too that we have a very talented and committed workforce within oin our department, all ego ager to move the program forward, as i

mentioned he wi mentioni mention earlier the program problems are not -- we are meeting on a weekly basis and we anticipate continue ed >> the report identifies several issues with the union and the challenges you faced with the union. can you name any other agencies or offices that deal with anti-terrorism that placed a union in before most accountability measures were put in place? >> i'm not aware of any. let talk about the budget. the memo talks on page 15 and i say a quote, iscd, lacks a system for the usage of consumable supplies which creates an environment for

fraud, waste or abuse. it's the program's manager describing their own program. so, how can a member of congress choose to fund a program that so self described? >> we recognize some of administrative short comings in the tracking of funds and recognizing too that this is a relatively new program. relatively new organization. we have put into place safeguards relating to the receipt of goods as i mentioned earlier. we didn't identify actually fraud waste and abuse, just that there were processes that need to be in place to prevent it. >> a point of clarification, that part of the report is actually taken from another re

that was started during the period in which they prepared that, and it was our own unit that discovered that. they did not discover charges to be laid but they said that the procedures were not adequate as the report correctly says. ? >> dhs has an inspector general, correct? >> we have an inspector general and and we have an office of compliance and security within our own mppd and that is who looked into this issue at the assistant secretary and my request. >> so the inspector general looked into this? >> the inspector general has access to the reports, yes. >> have you had conversations with the inspector general? >> with respect to this the report? >> i cannot speak to that. >> has access to this memorandum? >> they are available. >> have you sent it to him?

>> i'll have to confirm that for you, sir. >> and another question, based on the authorization, would a multi-year authorization given you the ability to pursue programmatic improvements, it would be helpful that the program cannot change? >> as the report says, and as we have said for some time, a long-term authorization of this program is vital, both to the workforce and to the security partners and stakeholders in the program. it gives us a longer term stability that a year to year does not provide. >> on the issue of retiering -- >> remind my colleague that we are getting close to the votes being called. >> i'll yield back my time. >> i appreciate that, i'll say in follow-up, i think that mr.

beers testified that he would have liked the law to be permanent in the last hearing. let me also just, again, thank you mr. are beers for your long career of public service and this is a part of your portfolio and not your entire portfolio, marine corp officer, in vietnam foreign service. middle east and pesian gulf. we get caught up in the heat of battle, we expect you to fix these problems and that will make further hearings go well. i love this quote, good laws do well, good men do better. so you cannot pass a law for total compliance, it's really the people that make things work. and i think you'll get a handle on it. i just wish that the people who have left the department did not get a move, but probably would

have held more accountable to their activities with that, i would like to adjourn this hearing, thank you for your service. >> thank you. here is a look at what is

ahead in the primary and presidential schedule. primary voters go to the polls in arizona and michigan at the end of the month and washington state holds their caucuses on march third and super tuesday takes place on march 6th. follow road to the white house coverage on the cspan networks and online. fewer than 60 days effective april first, 2012, japan will lower it combined rate and that will leave the united states with the highest corporate tax rate in the world. that will make it more challenging to have corporations hire and invest here where we need jobs. >> someone said that seeing tax law made is like makie --

>> it's time to work to support a more equitable tax policy and corporate taxation structure. >> the house ways and means took up lowering tax rates and eliminating special tax rates. follow it online at cspan.org/video library. federal reserve chairman ben bernanke testifies about the u.s. economy, inflation and the fed's decision to keep the interest rate at low levels. he took questions at the senate budget committee hearing, this is two hours. good morning.

senator conrad is in bed with the flu, and has asked me to chair today for him for the first heart of the hearing. senator sessions, thank you as the ranking member and we want to welcome the federal reserve chairman, ben bernanke, back to this committee. this is the fourth time that you have testified before the committee and we are very, very pleased to have you again. and this is timely for your appear because of the nature of the recovery. i will without objection insert the full remarks of senator conrad's opening statement, i'm going to turn to the ranking member for his statement before mine. senator sessions?

>> all right. thank you mr. chairman, i hope our chairman conrad feels better and value his leadership in this committee as i know you do. good morning, chairman bernanke, i thank you for joining us today, i'm eager to hear your thoughts about our financial situation. the congressional budget office's new out look confirms that our deficit will top $1 trillion for the fourth consecutive year. -- we have never seen anything like that. in just three years we have accumulated almost $5 trillion in gross debt during which time the total mb of americans actually working has decreased by 1.2 million people. so, we have fewer people working today than we did 11 years ago. actual working americans is down. that goes across administrations on both parties. the deficit we face in the out

yoor years are more relentless and systematic, it has increased 53% and real wages for the average american has declined 7%. if government is getting bigger and the middle class is getting smaller. the problem i have, the concern i'm wrestling with is even our financial experts are often very wrong as to the danger facing the american people and our economy. yet some in washington and wall street tell us to delay reforms and not take action now, only a vague date in the future. for example the secretary of the treasury geithner's comments at the federal reserve meeting in 2006 seemed to indicate that we cannot always be sure that those in position of leadership see the problem clearly.

in 2006, as america verged on a massive housing melt down, secretary geithner told his colleagues that quote, we just do not see troubling signs yet of collateral damage and we are not expecting much, close quote. two months later he was saying that the fundamentals of the expansion going forward still look good. janet jellin of the san francisco bank was more enthusiastic left, she said that it's fitting greenspan to leave with the economy in such good shape, what you are handing off to the successor is like a huge tennis rack with a huge sweet spot. i recall in 2001, then chairman

greenspan testifying before this committee that we were looking at more than a decade of surpluses and he wrestled with the question of what we would do after we had completely paid down the debt. what we would do with the surplus coming into the treasury, i'm just saying we are not always as good as predicting the future as we would like to be. so, they were wrong. the minutes show that you were wrong during some of these periods also. common sense tells us, or at least me, tells me that more borrowing and more debt will make us weaker not stronger. as the last financial crisis proves that the future is hard to predict. we cannot predict what unknown event could set it off, we know we are on a collision course with reality. the longer we wait to develop a

plan for a sensible financial future the graver the danger becomes. the ship's bridge has been closed and the wheel locked. he said that the democratic senate will decline to offer a budget for the third straight year. this has not occurred once since it was passed in 1974. i'm glad that chairman conrad is indicating that he will markup a budget in committee, but it will be a doomed exercise if your own floor leader, majority leader t decrees that it will be shut down. the senator reid has declared the senate budget and president's budget dead on arrival. to me, if we do not have a different approach then the majority party is failing in the

fundamental duty of leadership, i ask that their leadership be taken from them. producing a good budget is important. the president's budget submission on monday will also be a defining test, either the president will rise to the occasion or he will again shirk his duties and accelerate our dangerous debt course, the choice is his, i find it beyond imagining that the president, at this credit titical time in then ace life will not layout a serious budget plan for a future that will get us off of this unsustainable debt path. a path to decline. did he not even mention this in his third state of the union address t danger of the debt. what the chairman of the joint chiefs call the greatest threat to our national security. recently there was criticism of

the president's lack of leadership. progress will not occur without the leadership of the president. he did not lead and he attacked those that have led or tried to lead. we must hope the president's proposal and his budget will at this late date change or layout a plan to change the unsustainable debt course. based on history, i'm not optimistic. we are in a difficult challenge, we face a number of difficult problems. i am hopeful that the president's budget will do what a budget should do. layout a sound course for america's financial future. it has not yet, and last year's budget did not do that. i hope he will this year. i am not confident. mr. chairman, thank you for letting me share those remarks. we -- chairman bernanke, we

value your opinion. and if you can help us work our way through the most dangerous systematic debt challenge i believe the nation has ever faced. thank you. >> thank you senator sessions. senator sessions, i'm optimistic. you said you are not optimistic. i am optimistic. >> about the budget the president is submitting? >> about the overall -- >> okay, that is different. i said i'm not optimistic he would layout a plan to get us off an unstainable debt course. excuse me. >> well i'm optimistic and the president's budget that is going to come out, i think, will reflect the overall optimism that is rising in the country with regard to the committee and think it's all summed up in this chart. this is private sector jobs. and you can see for about a year

and a half, there were massive job losses in the private sector in each of the months and of course, this only starts in january of '09 in this chart, you can take it back to further in '08, that is when the crisis started. this tells us along about march of 2010, the jobs' picture dramatically changed. and there's the trend line to the point at which is now 257,000 in this past month on job increases and that to me shows a trend that is, i think reflecting the optimism that is starting to bubble up across

america. mr. chairman bernanke, your job has been very tough over the last few years with the consumer confidence that has been shaken. the events in japan and europe threatening to derail our economy. and of course the partisan b bickerring that we have seen on the national state and state stages from time to time. and i truly believe that when the history of this period is written that you, sir, are going to be remembered as a critical figure. because your role has been so prominent in helping avoid the complete collapse of our financial system and for that we are enormously grateful. we continue to have major fiscal

challenges facing the country. a long-term budget crisis brought on primarily from the rising cost of health care and out dated tax system, and yours of political expediance and the economic challenge of a slow recover as the chart indicates from that 2008 financial crisis. which, if it had not been for, by the way, the bipartisan cooperation, after september of 2008, when we nearly went into a financial death spiral, and the cooperation of an out going republican administration, with the incoming democratic administration, the two of them

working together to reverse that death spiral, now, cbos report last week sheds new light on the long-term budget challenge. under their estimates, if we continue on our current path, without letting current law come into effect, gross federal debt is expected to reach 103% of gdp this year and will rise to 120% of gdp by 2022. as for the economy, it's clear that we have come a long way from the depths of '08 and '09. and the recovery has recently shown these signs of the upward trend of strengthening. but it's a long and difficult road back.

this is a frustratingly slow pace of the recovery. economists have testified here that they found that recessions caused by a severe financial crisis like we have had and a crisis steeped in the housing sector, which is ours, tend to last longer and require a greater amount of recovery efforts than typical recessions. and so, i think not only that this chart has shown the positive signs that we are seeing, we are also seeing the unemployment rate coming down. we have seen ten consecutive quarter of real gdp growth. consumer confidence is showing signs of improvement, u. auto

manufacturers are returning to profitability and states are showing signs of improvement. it's amazing to me how a two minute commercial during the super bowl can generate such political controversy when it is, in fact, celebrating the fact of the recovery of the detroit and the auto manufacturers. so, in all of these good signs, we can't become complacent. there are serious risks. certainly unemployment remains too high. housing continues to pose a threat and time and time on things that have been tried, they have only been partially successful at best, too many homes are in foreclosure or underwater. obviously the political deadlock that we havee