the gentleman from illinois, plchl davis is recognized for -- mr. davis is recognized for five minut minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman, and thank you madam secretary and thank you for the tremendous service you provide for the country. i understand that for the budget the first time, a major focus of homeland security will be grant funded, and will be sustainment of capabilities and just to clarify and just so i can understand, does this mean that you are going to focus more on the sustainment of the capabilities, and will this maybe oversupport new developments? >> it depends, representative. it depends on what a particular community needs. it may need to buy something

new, but what we have found in the past is that there was, and there used to be a prohibition of used to being able to pay for the maintenance over time, and so there was a constant emphasis on buying new stuff for lack of a better term. we think now with $35 billion out of the door, there is time to looking at how we maintain those resources as well as purchasing new ones. >> and what you are seeing the sustainments of support being transitional, or would it be perennial? >> again, our with respect to 20 -- the past years allocated and not yet out of the door, we see sustaintment as part of having or getting the monies out of the door, whether that, and how that is calculated in for

2013 and beyond is something that we will work on with the committee. >> earlier today, you testified before the house appropriations committee regarding the proposed national preparedness grant program. you explained that a small portion of the funding would be distributed based on portion of the fund iing population and th the rest of the money would be awarded to grantees based on risk. you suggestk that t that states expect to receive more money based to be formula funding because the program would be primarily be risk-based. is it your expectation that the jurisdictions that currently receive the bulk of money pursuant to risk assessments would receive the same or even

more support under the new program? >> again, it depends. i don't want to be premature in saying how the awards will be given out, but if, unless a high risk jurisdiction somehow becomes a low-risk jurisdiction, that would be the conclusion. >> the budget proposes $650 million to fund important research and development advances in cyber security and explosive and technical and chemical and biological response systems and of course, both chicago and new york have had problems, and how do you see these, and how optimistic are you ha the new programs are going to help rectify those problems? >> well, again, it depends.

by focussing the research and development dollars, we get to three or four areas which we plan to do and are doing. we have actually stopped about 100 different programs and projects in order to focus and concentrate. we think that we upped the odds to get some significantly better technologies, and again the research cycle is not a one-year or two-year cycle, but over time. >> well, thank you very much. we've noted some what i think to be rather important advances and again, we appreciate your work and i yeield back. >> thank you. i recognize the gentleman from south carolina, mr. duncan, for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and secretary napolitano, i know you have been here a long time, and i appreciate your patience. this is the second roundf of the president's budget requests and budget hearings and i mustt say

it is an eye-opening experience for me. i realize that washington wants to talk with flourishes and calls for more bureaucracy when handling the problems. so how can deficit reduction and savings be so at odds with the action. the founding reason of the creation of the homeland security is to establish border security, and you say that, but you have no plans to build milings offense, and it fails to include an alternative standard to measure the alternative effective. in the proposal, the coast guard eliminates 1,000 uniformed active duty personnel, and 772 people from the front line operational units, and decommissions numerous front

line operational units which g significantly lessens the addition of illegalle aliens and the capture of drugs, and this will result in the reduction of 10% of the all of the 110-foot patrol boat operations. you talk about the importance of patter inning with other countries, but you ask for no further funding for the screening program, and yet you have requested a $10 million increase, and your own personal budget is $1 million increase from fiscal year 2012 and transferred and combined three other offices, including international office of affairs with 44 positions, and a budget of $ 4 million with no explanation as to what they will do, who they will answer to, and

if i do the math rightk it is $180,000 per employee and i know that is not all associated personnel costs, but i did quick math here. so how can you justify taking people away from the field in regard to the coast guards and other areas for the office of defense to create bureaucracy and duplicity of the work that the state department does. and by duplicity, there is work that the aus of international affairs is doing that the department is doing, and so there is redundance and duplicity? >> well, i must say that our numbers at the border speak for themselves. they are strong. we have not seen this few illegal immigrants at that border since the early '70s, and i would say from when there began life in a border state and the numbers continue to go down. >> let me ask you that, do you

think that the economy has anything to do with that, with the number of illegals wants to come in for work? >> no doubt. and the funding allows us to do more. i go back there regularly, and i will go back in the next couple of days back and now go to arizona/south texas. so what we requested for the cbp al l l allowed us to sustain the strong efforts. with respect to the coast guard, we are not laying off anyone, and so what we are doing is not hiring for the positions, and in the judgment we don't need, and those fall within head quarter staff in washington, d.c. and some of the recruitment staff that are unnecessary, but it is not the, again, the front line personnel that i think that you are thinking about.

and what was the third one that you had an option with? >> well, we were talking about the duplicity -- >> oh, the state department. >> and the international affairs. >> well, we have an enormous international portfolio, and it is something that because we are called homeland security most people don't realize, but we have now 75 countries right now screening cargo and working in airports and training missions and they do a whole host of activiti activities. what we have been focussed on is pushing the work of the department out from the actual physical borders of the united states to other places in the world. if we do it, that has a number of benefits and one is that it maximizes the opportunity to interrupt something. but it also takes some of the pressure off of the lines that are at the airports and the

landports. so that international work has become more and more important as the department has matured. >> and for the record, i just want to say that i appreciate you not taking people out of of the field, the front line operatives and understand the need to trim personnel, and trim budgets in the economic times, but the taxpayers expect us to make sure that every dollar ise and that is the reason for the line of questioning, but having visited the port with ms. miller in baltimore and seeing what the coast guard is doing, and the dhs is doing, i am satisfied. >> madam secretary, you have been here now for over well over two hours, and i have a question that for the record, mr. smith who is also chairman of the judiciary committee had to leave this hear, and he had three questions that he would like responses to at the end of

february and i submit them for unanimous consent, and i will forward those to you. and by 2011, there was a group of truck drivers who were granted authority and access throughout the united states and eventually permanent authority, and section 603 requires the secretary of homeland security, and secretary of transportation to draft guidelines for trucking no later than april of 2008. the department has yet to issue the guidelines and on november 21st of last miller and i wrote an oversight letter to you expressing security concerns about the pilot, and then your staff got back to us on the 20th of january, ab youn said that you are drafting the guidelines and so if you can get back to those on us, and can you provide a time line when you can expect the department to issue these

guidelines? how has the pilot affected the volume of trucks at the border, and how is the cpc handling the volume of trucks at the border, and how is this additional scrutiny compared to additional trucks with the risk-based trucks and does the mexican trucks with personnel and trucks throughout united states result in additional vulnerability, and if so, how is this mitigated. also, the motor vehicle administration has allowed for gps devices to allow for remote tracking of the vehicles, and how do you make sure that the relevant components have access to the information. you can answer that today or get back to us. >> well, we will get back to some of that, because some of it is going into the classified

infor mashgs mr. chairmai informati information, mr. chairman, but we will forward you answers in writi writing. >> that, i yield to the ranbing gentle gentleman from mississippi. >> thank you, mr. chairman. at several hearings we talked about rekrupment, and a concern that a lot of people through no fault of their own received reimbursements for expense, and in what we needed was some clarity on whether or not the individuals would be s would br prosecution. i think that the approapriation saw that issue, too, and i would like to thank your operation for understanding the sensitivity of

what those many families went through in katrina and some several years later receive a bill. and the fact that since you have now devised a notification procedure and some appeal procedure of payments, i would encourage you to make that as robust as possible, and so that individuals who probably don't have the money to pay back can pursue the waiver provisions of it, and i would encourage you to be as aggressive in public service announcements and a lot of other organizations who worked with many of the families to include them in part of the strategy so that they cannot come victims of a system that

was not designed to make them victims, and so i would encourage you to look at that. >> yes, i appreciate that. we have ha the ability to grant waivers for the older disasters, and katrina and rita being among them, and fema is preparing that process now, but we are prepared to be very robust there. >> and the other issue is basically we have spent billions of dollars to develop metric system systems, starts and stops and that is still i believe the wish of a lot of us that somehow we should perfect this and make it a part of the system. to you s do you see that happening at some point? >> well, i think that biometric entry is on the way, and a

biometric is a different kettle of fish, because the ports were not designed to have biometric equipment in the exit lanes. that is just one of the many reasons, so that's got to be a very expensive process. to compensate for that and we are as you said a u.s. visit to the ccp and we want to consolidate the border vetting responsibilities and get greater leverage out of the resources that we have and cdp and i.c.e. for overstays, but cbp at the exit stage, but we have developed now and are able to come wine a number of databases for very layered and robust biographic information at the exit stage. it is not the same as biometric,

but it is very close to the same. we think that will give us a good bridge to when ultimately biometric becomes feasible to do. >> i yield back. >> are with some trepidation, i yield to the gentleman from texas for one question. >> thank you so much, mr. chairman. i appreciate your courtesies. madam sek tashcretary, i sit on subcommittees both of whom deal with cargo, the transportation committee and the border committee of land and port, and i'm frankly disappointed and concerned about what we have come to in light of the situation dealing with not doing 100% cargo en speinspection. so i heard in an earlier question, that my understanding

is that with the earlier question is that the question relating to air cargo and the lack of 100% inspection, and can we and will you set actual time frames so that we can work together as a committee and as your department is working to see what the alternatives are or are in fact to see whether or not the 100% cargo infspection would be possible given the pushback of time line. >> well, we are in respect to scanning, but in air cargo, we are 100% of air cargo put on passenger planes put on u.s. domestic airports whether they are leaving on a domestic flight or international flight. >> that is what i want yod to clai -- i wanted you to clarify.

>> well, we don't use other carriers to carry the high risk area from abroad. >> but the other aspect, you will work with the committee? >> screening and or scanning. yes. >> thank you. i yield back. >> i thank the gentle lady. madam secretary, thank you for the testimony, and thank you againerccommodating our schedule for the floor voting, and we thank you for that. anb thank you por the testimony, and the questions and the members of the committee may have additional questions for you and i would ask for you the respond to those in writing. and the record will be held open for ten days, and without objection, the committee stands adjourned. >> thank you.

more of president obama's cabinet secretaries will be on capitol hill testifying about president obama's 2013 budget proposal. energy secretary chu will be at the senate committee at 9:00 a.m. eastern time, and then secretary geithner at 2:00 p.m. eastern. both of the hearings are here on c-span3. now, interviews and political news from c-span radio's washington today which we are joining in progress. >> caller: and the likelihood of the capitulating. >> let me ask you a message from the book "a single rolf the

dice, obama's diplomacy with iran." first of all, dwoe have diplomacy with the iranian government in their eyes? >> i don't think there is, and the type of ongoing diplomatic trust that is needed to solve this issue, and the iranians have not been helpful either, and the title of the book is from a quote of a senior barack obama official who said that diplomacy had to work right away or not at all, and rarely does diplomacy work in that type of instantaneous fashion. for diplomacy to work, we need a lot of patience and political capital invested in it. and eb though i believe that the administration has been not sufficient and serious. >> we are talking to the president of the national iranian/american council, and we heard earlier in the month from

defense secretary leon panetta that he felt that there could be an attack by the israeli military aimed at iran later in the spring. he tried to walk back in some of that in the testimony of capioll hi hill, and how real do you believe that the prediction is? >> well, there is a risk, but we have to be clear that they have had these bombs for ten years now, and they have turned out to be potentially a bluff. now, that does not mean that we can count on this being a bluff every time it happens. we may be in a more tense situation than before and the like that an israeli attack would be greater, but the thing to take note of what panetta is saying that the u.s. military is opposed to the war. they do not believe it has a high likelihood of success, and they do not know how it would develop, and particularly mindful of the difficulties that the u.s. have faced in iraq and afghanistan, and neither the military nor the american public

has the appetite for another war. >> and finally, the issue that we brought up at the top of the interview is oil production and "the new york times" reporting tonight that in a new show of defiance against the sanctions that iran is now feeling, the iranian government threatening to cut oil exports to a number of european countries and of course, that could have a direct impact in the u.s. and a lot of the concern about the strait of hormuz with gasoline heading upwards to $4 or $5 a gallon here in the u.s. as a result of what isp haing in the middle east. >> yes, the iranians are threatening to cut off oil to the european states, but this is after they had decided not to buy the iranian oil. and the deployment was delayed for six months, and that is to make sure that is costly for the europeans. the bottom line is if we don't

walk back out of this caustic dynamic, all prices will increase particularly if there is a military intervention. gasoline will reach $6 a gallon and when the price goes up, americans feel the pressure and job creation reduces, and particularly right now, the economy is the most important question for the upcoming elections, and you are not going to see success in turning the economy around if we have war with iran or tensions with iraq so that the oil prices continue the rise. >> so dr. parsey, what worries you the most? what is your biggest concern? >> well, i am worried that a, we would have a military confrontation with iran, because a military confrontation with iran unfortunately is not going to stop any iranian nuclear p program and on the contrary, increase the likelihood that they do build one down the road. and secondly, a devastating effect on the american economy and the economic recovery and devastating effect on the

iranian pro democracy movement, and movement that cant no flour nish the wartimesch so i am worried that as a result of the lack of patience and lack of political will and strength, we are moving to the confrontation without having actually considered it first. >> and he is the president of the national iranian council and author of a number of books about the u.s. relations with iran. thank you so much for being on c c-span. >> thank you for having me. we want to turn our attention to another story dealing with nuclear weapons, and let me read to you what the associated press read yesterday. the obama administration is considering deep cuts in the nuclear arsenal, and including one plan to slash weapons by 80%. according to the associated press, a u.s. official is being sited, a cited that the u.s. should bring down the stockpile to between 1,100 and 300, and the current

treaty allows 1,550 and a lot of reaction to the ap story today on capitol hill as members of the president's cabinet including leon panetta, and marvin dempsey testifying about the president's budget on capitol hill. we wanted to share with you mr. dempsey takes questions from the republican chairman marc thornberry. >> one thing that intrigues me that under s.t.a.r.t. there is weapons that will be cut down 80% for 500 just for round, and that is generous. it seems to me that if we end up with 500 nuclear weapons and

country a has a couple of hundred, all of the incentive for them in the world is to catch us, because it is not that fa and not that hard for them to do, so i would appreciate your best professional military judgment regarding whether cuts in 80%f of the nuclear stockpile are really good for the national security of the united states. >> i won't comment on the 80% figure, congressman, but what i will say is that what has been reported is the cliff notes version and not that you would ever understand what cliff notes are from your personal education, but it is the cliff notes version of what is a comprehensive set of discussions internal to the military with the national security staff on what is our next negotiating strategy notably with russia. the status quo is always an option, and one that is in play, and at this point, sir, i would -- i'd encourage you not

to become too concerned with the media reports of what is a comprehensive process. >> well, i do become very concerned, partly because it does nothing but encourage other countries to advance their nuclear program. if they see that we are kind of coming down from the 1,500 to some number in the low to middle 100s, it does nothing but encourage the enemies an discourage the friends and that encourages more weapons programs around the world and that is something that we don't want to have happen. so i am concerned if our mi military takes seriously any notion that we can, can even begin to have approaching production of that scale. i'm worried about where we are with the last round of s.t.a.r.t., but anything to that level concerns me much. >> and congressman