findings, and that process is underway, and then at the end, when it's resolved we take a look at it and determine what lessons need to be learned. what is the appropriate punishment for -- for whatever wrongdoing was undertaken, and do as well do in every case when we find that a person does no adhere to what we expect in the fbi. >> i would just ask if you would share the final result of that investigation and your actions with this committee. >> i'd have to look into that, but i would expect that we would report to you on what we have done. >> i would ask that you do so. >> yes. >> i want to just go back to a couple of other points. number one, on cyber security. there are different bills that have been put forward to deal with cyber security. i think everyone in both bodies,

the house and the senate, and both parties in the house and senate, agree it is a critical need that we address cyber security. i think how we do it is the question and the differences in the bills. many of us are concerned about an overlay by the department of homeland security, especially over the areas that have developed the expertise through the years and the experience in cyber warfare, security of all kinds, and that would be defense, cia, fbi, and the defense intelligence agencies. as well as the national security agency. and so we're trying to work through what is the best approach for cyber security, and i think my position has been that we don't need a homeland

security overlay so much as we need the agencies that have the experience and the expertise to be able to make these decisions on how is the best way to assure our networks and our infrastructure are secure. in a general way, how would you -- i don't want to put you on the spot, because -- i guess it's hard for you to say in this environment with all of the different ideas and the different agencies involved, but is there a particular area that you think is essential for us to agree on as we move forward in trying to determine how we get to the goal of securing out of infrastructure? >> let me start by indicating

how i perceive the allocation of responsibilities in the cyber arena. on one hand, the protection of the infrastructure. protection of dotcom and net and that falls to the department of homeland security also the actuality of foreign countries seeking to extract information and with the possibility down the road of undertaking cyber attacks, that falls generally with the intelligence community overseas, nsa, cia and the like. in the middle become domestic intrusions, and determination whether that domestic intrusion is from a criminal, an organized crime group, a nation state, or

a -- a teenage hacker. we have 56 field offices around the country, 56 cyber squads. the first indication of a substantial intrusion will quite probably come to us and it is our responsibility to do the investigation to determine who is behind that computer. and to stop them. often the discussion is how we protect and how we present against foreign countries, but part of that has to be disrupting these individuals and putting them behind bars. the legislation that is currently pending, there are three areas that are important to us. one is to the extent possible only if having a required notification to the bureau of an intrusion. i think there are 47 states that have this, but it's all over the lot in terms of who has to report, when they have to report. so first it's notification. secondly is to a certain extent we are where we were in terms of sharing information prior to september 11th amongst the

agencies. when it comes to counterterrorism, we share -- it's very little that's not shared. and i would say it's also irreverently true in the cyber arena amongst the agencies whether it be dhs, nsa, ourselves, dna and the like. so important to this is what you point out, both the experiences and expertise in the private sector. this is where it's different from addressing terrorism, because the private secretary sector has to play a substantial role. runs or critical infrastructures. how you execute that whether through the statute or not is really up to others. my concern is the sharing of information so that we can determine who was responsible for this and lock them up, and perhaps the third area is the necessity of building up the expertise in the federal government amongst all of the agents, and the outreach to the private side. not only building up the expertise, but also the outreach

to the -- to private businesses so that we become partners. so we have not any other criminal arena. >> well, you have really highlighted an area that makes this whole intelligence, security holding, accused, terrorists without charges being filed -- we're not dealing with an enemy that is a nation state. like we have in the past. so if you picked up a person that was in the german army, or in the intelligence arm of the german government, you would know in world war ii that you had to hold that person in the military sense. but when it is organizations, like al qaeda and others that

have attacked our country, but yet are not -- they're not under the rules of -- of war as we accepted. the geneva conventions don't affect them. it makes it very difficult to deal with any kind of the intelligence areas when you're dealing with an enemy of our country but not a nation state. so that's something that we're all going to have to deal with, and i think -- i mean, i hope a realistic way. because i'm with senator graham on this. i think we need guantanamo bay. i think we need the ability to hold people that are suspected terrorists that have associations with al qaeda and other networks that deal with al qaeda, and i don't want us to give us our capability to

protect our country from another attack from one of these entities that may not even be an organization yet. so i know you're wrestling with it. we are, too. but i'm going to come down on the side of protecting our people with an asymmetric war that we have. that's what we're given to deal with, and we've got to do it in a way that protects america. thank you. >> thank you very much, director mueller. colleagues, as director mueller has said, 60% of the fbi request is in the area of national

security. many of these are really sensitive issues that the fbi's engaged in, and we need to make sure we get our resources right while we're working on very complex policies. therefore, this is why we would move to a closed session. if there are no further question, the senate may submit conditional questions for the record. we request the fbi's response in the usual 30 days. this subcommittee will temporarily recess and reconvene in a closed session in room 217 at the visitors' center. before i close this public part, i would like the director to know as we said to the attorney general, when the issues related to public integrity and on the issues related to the stephenson matter, a bipartisan request. we feel both the justice department, those involved in enforcing the law, if we're going to pursue public integrity issue, which we must and should, that then those who are pursuing it have to have the highest

public integrity themselves. we know the fbi has that standard. you've insisted on that standard, and we thank you, and just note that it's not just for men because there are republican and stephens was on this committee. it's larger than that. so we look forward to working with you and we look forward to meeting in the other room where we can go into the national security budget in more detail. the committee's temporarily recessed until we reconvene. next week we'll also take the testimony of secretary bryson of commerce. shall we proceed?

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is a complete guide to the 112th congress. also information on cabinet members and the nation's governors. tonight, leading generals from world war ii and the civil war. at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a u.s. army film on general mcmacarthur. at 8:30, a look at the top two military leaders of the civil war. and at 10:10. the world war ii chief of staff who went onto earn as secretary of state and defense secretary.

get our schedules and see past programs at our websites. and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. excessive spending at a general services administration conference outside las vegas. he testifies about the investigation before the house oversight committee on monday. you can see that live at 1:30 p.m. eastern. the president's budget totals $3.8 trillion with a deficit of $900 billion. national journal hosted a discussion on the budget, the

deficit and the the debt. this is half an hour. >> next we have our discussion with our panel of experts. we have laura peterson, senior policy taxpayer for common sense. our moderator is gym. he covered energy, the environment and politics for newspapers including the los angeles times and the tribune. he is a colleague at the blade won the 2007 livingston award for young journalists for their business as usual series revealing the trou routes of the economic decline.

jim? >> thank you so much. thank you all for sticking around. i'm a numbers nerd myself and have been delighted with the amount of numbers. we have heard a lot about numbers. let's talk about what's going to happen. what does this look like a year from now? both from the lake duck and going forward? how much closer do you all think we will be towards actual, you know, fiscal health? towards balancing our budget,s and most importantly, where will those budget balancing measures actually have come from. we'll start with you. >> history would tell us if you look at gramm-rudman-hollings,

which was enacted 25 years ago was an amendment in order to get a debt ceiling passed, which should remind you of what happened last summer. history tells us it will take that kind of brinkmanship, frankly, to get something done. our estimate at the bipartisan policy center is that some time in late december or early january, treasury will announce that they have to resort to extraordinary measures because otherwise the debt ceiling would be breached. that and the expiration of the bush tax cuts and the implementation under current law of sequester, as mr. van hollen said, offers some possibility. but, you know, after 40 years of doing this, and being a doer scots, i have to say the odds are they'll kick most of these grenades down until the bond vigilantes decide to exact some punishment. >> and do you agree with chairman ryan that the bond vigilantes are waiting for this election and once that's over,

they'll pounce? >> it's not a secret. moody's has already told us that if nothing happens by january, they will downgrade sovereign debt. fitch has said the same thing. and john chambers of standard & poor's, who makes those decisions has said the same thing. so we have the three major ratings agencies in this country saying if you don't act, we're going to downgrade you further. and i believe them. >> the defense sequester. do we think it will happen? will it actually go through? or is it going to be shifted somehow? >> i'm not sure i would argue that the sequester as it is now envisioned will go through. i think there is enough consistencies within congress that don't want to see that, that there will be some sort of alternative. but i do think the money is

coming out of the defense department. they think $500 billion is going to have to come out one way or the other. i think both sides know it. i think the pentagon knows it. look at the books. you can kick stuff down the road for a while until, you know, you really kind of come up against the wall. and that's where they are right now. so i think there is going to be lots of machinations similar to what we saw earlier this year, strategy reviews. you know, there will be a lot of choreography to make sure that it looks -- that the pentagon looks like they're in control and that they're calling the shots and this is not being decided by the bean counters and that kind of thing. but i think whether it is through sequestration or whether or not it's through a budget, that eventually, you know, take some out here and there, that that money will come out eventually. >> quick diversion. is the pentagon in control? it would seem it would be much harder to cut this if the generals really didn't want to do it as the gentleman is indicating. >> i think about what they think basically blasting their boss, the commander in chief. but look, i have no doubt that chairman ryan, like many

chairmans before him have had plenty of discussions with generals who come to him and say i would like more money. i think that happens all the time. it's part of the process. you know, they go to the hill hean they talk to the chairman and they say, this is what we'd like, particularly for my service. they always want more. they're not really in the business of cutting. they're in the business of saying this is what i want to do. so i'm not sure -- back to your question, which was, you know, i think that the pentagon -- a big part of the strategy review that we saw earlier this year was -- came out of negotiations that happened last year where basically said we see this is coming down the pike, but we want to make the decisions. we just don't want congress or someone else handing us some

kind of mandate. so i think they're going to maintain that argument, that they want -- they want the decisions about the cuts to originate with them. so they'll push for that. and i think that they will probably be -- under panetta and obama, that they may very well get it. but i just think it's unavoidable that there is going to be more than the $497 billion coming out of the defense budget. >> speaking of mandates, let's talk what sort of mandate comes out of this election. do you think particularly in terms of the expiring tax cuts and how they get dealt with. how do you foresee that going and -- because it can have huge ramifications both on deficit reduction, but also on growth. >> that's true. the irony here is if we do go based on current law and we don't do anything, then the path we're headed on is actually for the budget, not necessarily a bad one. we do get to fiscal sustainability. not quite in the way a lot of members of congress or a lot of

experts on the stage want to go. but at the same time, like we should recognize that this really is kind of -- these are choices that we're making that we do have a path that is laid out for us. we can choose a different path. but at the same time, the one path that we shouldn't take is basically just ignore all of that and continue down the same kind of current policy path that we're headed. in terms of getting some sort of mandate, i think it really depends on who wins. mitt romney right now is running on a platform that actually increases the deficit substantially. so if he wins, it's going to be difficult for him to then implement deficit reduction, because that means that he is going to have to be breaking a lot of his campaign promises. >> just to push you on that, you think that his priority would be to do the tax cuts that he is calling for, which would be deficit-inducing instead of doing the deficit reduction that he is sort of in general calling for in terms of reducing the

debt? >> i don't know what his priorities will be. but what i do know is if you look at the overall plan, the spending cuts that are in his proposal, and this is not including, you know, the 20% cap or the balanced budget amount, which really aren't actual spending cuts. that's just a procedural mechanism. but the actual spending cuts are there in no way add up to the lost revenue that he has. if you're just scoring on what you can score, it actually results in a net increase in the deficit. so my worry would be that then he will have a difficult time adhering to his campaign promises. now for example, defense. he has said that defense should be at 4% of gdp for the foreseeable future. well, if you look at the ryan plan, ryan's plan brings down, if you take out social security, you take out health programs, then everything else goes down by 2050 to about i think it's about 3.75% of gdp, okay. that includes defense. so if defense is at 4%, that means everything else is eliminated.

that's everything else including our entire regulatory structure, all public investments, transportation and research and development and education. that includes actually ironically, funding for congress. and the president. >> maybe not ironic. >> it gets a very weird existential debate at that point. >> first off, congratulations on breaking the numbers seal for all of us here. so let's dive into some other types of numbers, which is polling numbers, right. the public has very differing ideas on what they like. we would all like to see lower taxes. we would all like to see higher taxes on the rich. we would like to see a strong defense, but we would like to wind down the wars, and by the way, don't touch my entitlements. how do we -- that does not suggest a path that absolutely fits for deficit reduction, or does it? >> it doesn't to me. i think the word that i would leave everyone have in their minds is cognitive dissonance. if you take a look at the american public that.

>> want what they want, but they don't want to pay for it. >> like my 5-year-old, actually. >> it sounds like my 65-year-old brother who is a member of the tea party in south carolina. when i talk to him about such things as medicare changes and things like that, all of the sudden he is not a tea party member anymore and says i've earned that. so there is this cognitive dissonance. it's reflected perfectly. you saw what happened to cooper latourette. got a grand total of 38 votes, 16 republicans and 22 democrats. they're very courageous people because it was only a message vote. an important message, but the fact that it was defeated so resoundingly i think reflects the fact that the american people haven't made most of these decisions. and there is so much junk, information going around.

the numbers, which everyone gets bored by, are just thrown around without much regard for their truth actually. and so i don't think the american people have made this decision. until they make this decision, until palpable pain hits the average family in the midwest of this country, i think you'll see -- you'll see members of the congress behave accordingly. they're not going to break that mold. >> do you think we'll see public pressure on defense one way or the other? or will we continue to see it mostly coming from the pentagon, from contractors? where does that pressure happen? >> well, the polls that -- the public polling on defense spending has shown a real sort of gap in answers depending how it's framed. framing is everything when it comes to defense. if it's an immediate threat, if it's something that you really think compromises your safety, then it's like money is no object. spend what you need. when it becomes -- when it's

placed in terms of, you know, large government-heavy projects that have negligible benefits to our immediate safety versus and you kind of give them the choice. so you're not making the decision in a vacuum, then people actually frequently choose to decrease defense spending. so it shows there needs to be a lot of education. and i think of the public. but i think this is why you see both parties engaging in this rhetoric. and it's tough. because if you are -- if you're really pushing the sort of panic button rhetoric, it's easier for that to get through than this sort of more measure like look, there is a lot of waste in the pentagon there is other stuff we could be doing with this money. your average american citizen isn't -- the pentagon is an enormous, enormous bureaucracy.

it's bigger than most governments, you know, around the world. it's bigger than -- it employs more people than walmart, the largest corporation. and people don't get it. i barely get it. and it's just very hard i think for people, to your average member of the public to really wrap their mind around what isn't a threat to me and what is bureaucracy. >> and how does that wrapping your mind around change if we're, say, going to war with iran? >> right. so that -- so that is, you know, that's an immediate sort of headline threat. that of course feeds anxiety about immediate danger here at home. so that kind of thing does change. people's support for higher defense spending can wax and wane, depending on what is in the headlines.

definitely. of course, now we're facing a big burnout about iraq and afghanistan. i'm not sure we can depend on want public to give us a clear answer about this. if they can depend on them to give us a clear answer about anything because i think it's so dependent, it's such a wide spectrum. it's such a big question. it's very dependent on framing. >> right. speaking of framing -- you are so -- i appreciate everyone for leading right into these next questions. ethan, one of the things, probably the only thing i remember vividly from high school economics is guns versus butter. the idea of do we spend our limited resources on defense or do we spend them on programs to help people in the country. it seems to me that the sort of choices laid out in chairman ryan's budget or ranking member van hollen's budget are in fact guns versus butter sort of

choices. do you think that those are the choices america should be debating right now, bigger military versus bigger social programs? and do you think we'll actually get a referendum on that in this presidential campaign? >> well, i think that -- i don't want to get too much into this kind of trade-offs thing. to a large extent, that's definitely true. and you can see particularly from the ryan budget as one of the members of the audience pointed out -- two members of the audience i think pointed out that there is this trade-off where you're getting the large tax cuts that disproportionately go towards higher income americans, and then you're also getting huge massive cuts to the social safety net that primarily go to disadvantaged americans. so there is obviously an inherent trade-off there. but at the same time, i don't think that we should -- there is a certain segment of people i think in the beltway that feel like something is only really good deficit policy as long as someone is being hurt. as long as there are some losers that are identifiable. if there are no losers identifiable, then it must kd