but we're not waiting. we are trying to work out other ways of getting humanitarian assistance into syria and also support efforts on the borders because people are fleeing. they're coming out in lebanon, in jordan, in iraq, and especially in turkey. we will be there to try to help the people coming out, as well. this is a terrible crisis that demands the entire world's attention. and i hope that russia will come and work with us to try to resolve it. >> thank you so much. madame secretary, if i could yield one minute to mr. johnson who is patiently waiting there. i don't want to end the meeting without him having an opportunity. >> thank you so much, mr. chairman. it's a real quick question, madame secretary, and thank you for being here today. with the growing economy and vast foreign reserves, it would seem that beijing has more than enough money to deal with many

of the issues that u.s. foreign aid supports, like it's own citizens' health issues. borrowing money from the chinese government to spend back in china on health programs seems a particularly bad use of u.s. government funds especially as americans struggle to cover their own rising health care costs. why are we proposing $2 million in support of health programs in china when the chinese hold an estimated $1.2 trillion of u.s. debt? >> well, congressman, the remaining aid that we are asking for goes to what we consider to be transnational issues in which we have a stake. it was united states aid and leadership that finally helped china respond to their own hiv/aids crisis, which does have a positive effect on the epidemic far beyond their borders. when we look at communicable diseases, when we look at the

need to try to help democracy, human rights, good governance groups. there are a lot of brave lawyers in cities in china that are standing up against coercive practices. so i think i will take it for the record and give you a breakdown of the kinds of things we've been doing, but i share your general point that we're certainly not looking to support the development of china's economy. they're doing that well enough on their own. but there are certain key values that we believe we can further within a trade and -- within an aid relationship with china. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> thank you and thank you to mr. duncan and mr. wilson. you're on my dance card and you'll come up first next time. madame secretary, before we adjourn, i'd like to know that since you've announced publicly you do not intend to serve

beyond the end of this term, this is your final appearance to testify on the budget before our committee. i'd like to thank you again so deeply for making yourself available to answer our questions today. and during the past three years, and i hope that we have the opportunity to host you again for other testimony prior to the conclusion of your exemplary service. i thank you. meeting is adjourned.

the national association of attorneys general is holding its annual summit here in washington, d.c. this year's meeting is going to

focus on digital piracy, copy write around intellectual property rights. again, here at the national association of attorneys general, this year's meeting focusing on the role they have in a number of legal issues. again, that includes digital piracy, copyright, enter intellectual property. the attorneys general will begin the session with a welcome by naag president rob mckenna. he's the attorney general from washington state. and that's going to be followed by an overall discussion of

issues the various states are facing. we're going to have coverage later on at 2:00 eastern. they're going to be discussing copyright infringement at universities. and former senator chris dodd will begin that discussion. he's now the chairman and ceo of the motion picture association of america. and on that afternoon panel, university of north carolina's vice chancellor in charge of i.t. issues, nbc universals top attorney, an an attorney for the state university of new york. >> we have a color guard wait rg ing for us outside standing patiently, so i think we ought to go ahead and get going.

good afternoon. welcome to the spring meeting of the national association of attorneys general. i'm rob mckenna, this year's president of the national association. it's my pleasure to welcome all of my fellow ags, our guests and members of the media, to our spring meeting. first i'd like to introduce the color guard from the spingarn senior high school junior ro thrks c who will conduct our flag ceremony. so please stand.

please join me in the pledge of allegiance. 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.

[ applause ] >> please be seated. again, thanks to the spingarn senior high school rotc for the color guard presentation. well-done. we have 49 attorneys general attending this meeting seated alphabetically by state and territory around the table. i'd like to take this opportunity to introduce two new attorneys general who were appointed office early this year. please join me first in welcoming alaska's new attorney general, michael garrity. michael, welcome.

and new jersey's new attorney general, jeffrey kiesa, he's not quite here yet. his loss. we'll introduce him later. it is now my pleasure to introduce our host. irf? >> good afternoon. thank you very much, attorney general mckenna. it's my pleasure to address my fellow ag members for the second time as host here in the district of columbia. i'm sorry for the weather today but i am assured that it's going to get warmer and sunnier in the next few days. and that's not just because of the hot air of the introductions that i'm about to make. in my first year as attorney general we've been fortunate to have a very productive collaboration with many of you at nag. we have a preesh kuwaited the

perspective and time given by nag and executive director jim mcpherson and several attorneys general to inform our thinking on challenges and opportunities that we face now because our office is transitioning from an appointed attorney general to an elected attorney general, which begins in 2014. in addition, we recognize and value the fine work by many of your offices on amicus briefs and letters. and we've been glad to join and help the district have an ability to have its voice heard on national matters, an issue of particular importance to us in light of the minimal and unjust situation that we have no voting representation in congress. we've also been fortunate on behalf of our 600,000 citizens to have the opportunity to work on and join in some of the important multi-state settlements that our collective resources have made possible. most of you have been in

washington before, and i want to welcome you back. for those of of you here forth first time, i encourage to take advantage of the wonder things in our city. the wonderful things it has to offer, including historical and scenic site, good food, shopping, and other taxable events. we've had an exciting year here in the district of columbia in our office. i'll mention just two items that i think are related to the overall topic of this meeting, that is opportunities and challenges in state/federal relationships. first, we investigated and filed suit and obtained a settlement and a consent judgment against a sitting member of our local legislature for diversion of funds from the district. he took $400,000 that was intended for little league baseball and put it in his own pocket. this is the first time in history that our office had ever sued a sitting counsel member. we then referred the matter for

criminal prosecution to the u.s. attorney's office which secured a guilty plea and the individual is awaiting sentencing. i point this out because we work closely with the u.s. attorney's office in d.c. which under congressional legislation has jurisdiction to prosecute felo y felonies in the district. we think it sends an important message about the role of our office as s. prepared to play in cooperation with the u.s. attorney's office in governmentegovernment ethics in the district. the second major thing was we settled, as the presiding judge of the u.s. district court here put it, a major and historic achievement in the so-called dickson case which ended federal oversight of our department of mental health in a 37-year-old class action lawsuit. the judge mentioned that two judges have died while presiding over the case and he was very glad that we did this before he met his maker.

it's interesting in this matter to see how the insights of the supreme court's 2009 decision in horn are playing out in various jurisdictions around the countries -- around the country, as states and localities evaluate what to do about longstanding federal consent decrees. we believe this case is a or binner for more success in the district towards our goal of ending the intrusive and expensive federal judicial oversight of local government agencies. and finally, the issue of federal control over the district brings me to the main point i wanted to make today, and that is the ongoing and shameful denial of the basic right for voting representation in u.s. congress for, as i said, the 600,000 plus residents of our nation's capital. one of our government's major challenges in the district is that our fate is linked to what is happening or sometimes not l happening on capitol hill. a federal shutdown because of a

budget impasse which thankfully is not being bruited about at the moment, as in the past posed real possibility of closing down our local government, as well, and including with that is our local school system and other basic local functions. and making things worse under current federal law, the the district which without congressional authorizatithor a can't spend any of the $1 billion in local taxes that we generate and collect annually. and of course compounding this problem is that we have no representation to vote in the body making these decisions. and as you know, this is not simply a matter of local concern but one of national, international, and certainly regional consequence. it is or at least ought to be a national shame that as the people throughout the world strive for additional nation with the support of our national government, in our nation's capital residents lack basic fundamental democratic right.

our license plate accurately proclaim, taxation without representation which, of course, was the battle cry for our nation's declaration of independence. our mayor vincent gray has made this a major priority issue to raise the profile of this issue. and as you the attorney general rightfully noted to n. his testimony to congress, this is a matter of fundamental, equal and civil rights. i'm heartened to see that leaders across the partisan spectrum take a stand on this issue. and more recently, governor mcdonald from virginia came out publicly in support of budget autonomy for the district, recognizing that what happens here can have a ripple effect on a regional economy and the citizenses of virginia and maryland who work and obtain services in d.c. i'm very grateful that gatherings like this can bring before a bipartisan group. this vital matter. as the chief law enforcement

officers in your states committed to justice and democracy, i hope you will join me in raising your voices on this critical civil rights issue. for now, though, i just want to extend a welcome to you, wish you well at this conference, enjoy your time here in the district. and let me or my staff know if we can be of any assistance to you. thank you. >> i'd like to take this opportunity to remind all of you in attendance that you are cordially invited to the presidential initiative summit march 28-30 in seattle. as you know this year's focus is pillars of hope, attorneys general united against human trafficking. and we're just putting the finishing touches on whaterful . we invited experts from across the country, from the government, from non-profit

organizations, from the business world, offering their solutions on how to tackle this growing national and international problem. registration forms are available at the nag desk out in the foyer and you can also register online on the nag website. we hope you can attend. and i think you will find it to be a most worthwhile and powerful presentation. i want to thank the members of the leadership cabinet that we formed around the initiative, those ags who have been working on this program, and all their staffs. they have been absolutely phenomenal. know for the spring meeting agenda, the thing for this week's meets are opportunities and challenges in the state-federal relationship. it's the theme that captures both the possibilities and complexities of joint state-federal partnerships. we're going to hear from a number of top federal officials who will discuss how we can foster more partnerships together and those speakers, as you know include united states eric holder and director of

consumer natural protector and colleague from ohio and ftc commissioner julie brill. we're also pleased to our speaker lineup will have spec te secretary and housing join us on 10:00 a.m. on wednesday which will result on the operation in our sites program featuring lanny brewer from doj and the director of i.c.e., john morton, moving to 11:00 a.m. we're very pleased that secretary can join us. as you know he was a crucial partner in the multi-state over long servicing and foreclosures. of course, it wouldn't be a nag spring meeting without the traditional sage reception tonight hosted by former state attorneys general which will be at 5:30 p.m. and then tomorrow we have our traditional supreme court reception where a couple of the justices will be joining us. i'd like to thank members of the planning committee for this meeting. attorneys general roy cooper,

martha coakley, doug glanceler, david louie, bill shuty, john smothers and, of course, the fantastic nag staff for their considerable time and effort in organizing our meeting. if you could join me in thanking them for their hard work, we would appreciate it. as we move into our first session i would just remind you that there are written speaker biographies in your materials. so as is our custom rather than providing those introductions orally as they come up, we will refer you to pose biographies to save time, keep introductions short and keep us to the heart of the matter. we're doing to start with the hot topics and best practices round-table, what we're working on, what we're interested in and concerned about. we're going to follow the pattern or the model we established at our winter meeting in san antonio where instead of going around the table alphabetically, the

planning committee has identified several topics that we'll be addressing together. i would like to invite hawaii attorney general and massachusetts attorney general to come up front and lead this part of the program. i'd like to thank martha and david. they did a terrific job once again putting this hot topics panel together. please join me in thanking them. >> hello. >> mine isn't working. hello. aloha. there. hello. that's better. okay. all right. okay. so two meetings, i just wanted

to start with a quick comment on what i hope will come out of this. and this is a session that we hope will be useful for you and for us. at one of the things i just wanted to know is that starting my second term as ag i'm excited about the challenges but i faux kn -- i know that for my first four years, as many of you find there's a huge learning curve for what you do in your office. years, as many of you find there's a huge learning curve for what you do in your office. years, as many of you find there's a huge learning curve for what you do in your office.s many of you find there's a huge learning curve for what you do in your office. >> we got mikes in the back? >> one of the most valuable things for me has been the work that i've been able to do both through nag meetings and through subcommittee meetings in the

organization, and i hope particularly for those of you who are newly elected or are starting your second or third years you will see nag as the same kind of opportunity. in the past we've used this time to go around the room to talk to people about what they're doing that's interesting. the last few meetings we focused a little more on what we call hot topics, things that i hope will be of interest to you or that you can join in with your expertise because you've done it, or you have questions about it because you haven't done it yet. i think we should look at this next sort of hour and a half or so as a little bit of this is your opportunity during this meeting to be in a chat room with your alcohol leagues. some of whom have tons of experience and some of whom are new at it but are enthusiastic about it. so as we talk through he's topics, larparticularly in lighf the theme of this, opportunities and challenges, most of the topics that we're talking about

can and should probably involve our work with our federal partners. so we want to do that, too, but as we talk about these topics today, i think it's important to think about a couple of things. first of all, is this topic something that i am or should be interested in? secondly, what are my options around a topic like this or anything that i want to do as attorney general? is it statutory, is it regulatory, do we need changes in our states around statutory or regulatory authority? does it involve enforcement issues, if so, do we have the people and resources to do it? is it illegal, civil, or criminal enforcement issue and what do i need to be able to do that? and finally, i think one of the things that maybe we don't talk about as much but is as much your authority and one of the great things about being attorney general is what we talk about as the convening authority. what do you do and can you do to bring people together to discuss these topics, to connect the dots and provide resources with your federal partners, partners

at the state or local level around these issues. how do you use that bully pulpit in a good way to try and get results around some of these issues. i say this as someone who, for the last four years, i think in seeing what an attorney general's office can who, we can't do everything obviously in how we focus our evident for thes. this session, i hope today will, be helpful to you in not only the topics we're thinking about here but what are the other things we can do in our states going forward or together in nag or subcommittees in nag to do our jobs better. with that, i'm going to turn it over to david. >> and let me just echo the comments of general coakley that the object of what we're going to do now is to try to promote cleenlgality, interaction and discussion among the ags. in the past we would go around the room and pick random topics. we're going to shake it up, pick the random topics first and then go around the room.

we're going to start off with synthetic drugs. the idea here is what i'm going to try to do is tee up the topic and give you a little bit of the experience in hawaii and then some of my colleagues i'm going to call on to talk about their experiences, and quite frankly, i'm looking forward to everybody, those of you who have had experience and those of you who have perhaps not had experience, joining in the conversation which is to talk about what your experience has been in your state, what are the problems and pitfalls around this particular issue that you've experienced, what is perhaps some of the legislation that you have gotten involved in, and what, if any, are the best practices that you and your state have come up with? let's jump right in to synthetic drugs, starting off. one of the latest fronts that we are confronting, i think, in our state and many other states is the attempt by a number of people to get around drug prohibitions.

and they are doing soma marketing, selling, and distributing synthetic drugs in two main categories. k-2 or spice, which are tweaked designer drugs that follow the thc that's in marijuana. and these are being sold as a mixture of herbs or other substances that many times are sprayed with these artificial thc additives that can be 200 to 500 times stronger than normal marijuana. another synthetic drug is the synthetic cathenones which mimics cocaine and meth am fit mean. these are sold as bath salts which are then ground up into powder and smoked. many times. and these also can create many problems. so these things, they're trying to get around the laws and the bans on these things. we've had some interesting experience across the nation, in

hawaii we've had attacks by people who have been smoking synthetic pot. in new orleans recently some guy committed suicide after smoking bath salts. demi moore was rushed to the hospital after smoking k-2. and my favorite, of course, was in charleston, west virginia, where a man high on bath salts dressed in women's lingerie was killing the neighbor's goat. and it was very strange. but many of these drugs create hall luis genic problems and psychotic episodes. the dea placed a number of these substances temporarily on the banned substapss list. there's a bill that passed the house to ban these things, in the senate, senator ran paul has held up passage of the bill unfortunately but they're still

working on it. this has been a -- just a growing, growing problem. one of the problems has been that states that have regulation regulate the drug specifically. the chemical formulation. and these guys say, well, what i'm doing is not illegal. you're not banning this substance. 39 states have introduced legislation on this. in hawaii we have introduced legislation to ban families of synthetic drugs. it is unclear whether or not that will be a sufficient definition to ban things. i had a discussion with lisa matigan from illinois who could not be here to join us but she has been doing an awful lot on synthetic drugs, convening informal summits to educate the public about this, doing informal sweeps where they go and they talk to merchants and th