confidentiality protocols. let me say to some degree this is not just my opinion. this is the opinion of the office of management and budget, at least if you believe the omb statistical policy, omb federal statistical policy directives 3 and 4 who make it clear as i mentioned before that it is the responsibility to determine whether or not there is a lockup and their responsibility to disseminate the data and they are the ones who are responsible for the confidentiality. >> thank you. miss roth. >> you should just say diane. >> maybe after the hearing. thank you. >> thank you for inviting me to testify here today. i was asked to talk about green jobs and it's a very topical time to be discussing green jobs because we just got the employment news on friday which showed that the number of jobs

rose by only 69,000. following an increase of 77,000 in april. the unemployment rate rose to 8.2% and has been above 8% for well over three years. well, america might not be good at creating jobs but it excels at relabeling jobs as green jobs. it's easier to redefine an existing job as a new job, a green job. how many jobs has our government relabeled as green t bureau of labor statistics decides which jobs are green and which are not and they are identified 3.1 million in 2010. the latest year available in a release in march 2012. americans may have toiled for decades at the same job unaware a federal agency might some day designate their job green. i'd like to argue that we should focus on job creation rather

than green jobs because we have over 12 million unemployed. our broadest rate of unemployment is 14.8%. if people want to buy green products such as priuses because the price of gasoline is high they will do so. much emphasis on green has driven jobs overseas, just two examples, incandescent light bulbs, the ban has resulted in the closure of those factories and the new cfls, the fluorescents are all made in china so there are green jobs but green jobs for china. many solar panels, wind turbines that are required by law, are made overseas in places such as china. coal is produced here but we are increasingly not being allowed to use it. china is using our coal and produces less than 1% of its

electricity from renewables so it makes these products with coal, then sends them to us. which reduces our jobs. so bls decides which jobs are green and sometimes these jobs qualify for tax references or subsidies. for example, our transportation policy is based on green jobs with 20% of the highway trust fund reserved for mass transit. tax subsidies given to electric vehicles, both for companies to produce them and for americans to buy them. bls has defined green jobs as, quote, jobs and businesses that produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources, unquote, or as in quote jobs in which workers' duties involve making their processes more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources. so in order for a firm to be considered green, they have to

meet one of five goals. namely, energy from renewable sources, energy efficiency, pollution reduction or removal, natural resources conservation, and environmental compliance, education, training and public awareness. so i was particularly interested when i came in to see this cup here. this just is a cup. but on it says, we have the power to save energy. so this fits in with number 5. environmental compliance education training and public awareness. so now people who produce these cups, they would be considered to have green jobs. but that hasn't meant a total increase in jobs in the economy. it's just a matter of relabeling. in agriculture, for example, one of the main categories of workers are 36,000 organic farmers and growers, and their

workers are credited with accomplishing both natural resource conservation and creating energy from renewable sources. so when a farmer produces corn to eat that's not counted as green job. but when he produces corn for ethanol, that is counted as a green job. with farming it's possible to calculate the percentage of employment that's dedicated to ethanol or organic produce but in other areas it's not so clear. one example is wood chips used for biomass. how many workers are employed by the timber industry to produce wood chips. wood chips are a byproduct of milling and milling is not considered a green job. according to a labor department definition the 33,000 wood product manufacturing jobs are created are called green because companies can sell the wood chips for biomass. i have many other examples in my testimony but i see my time has

run out. thank you very much. >> thank you. thank you all for your testimony. dr. hall, i'm going to begin with you. because you do see a need for reform in the lockup. but what you said earlier is of concern to me, the office of management and budget has a set of guidelines, it makes every effort to make sure that the bureau of labor statistics is independent. carl falichio. >> he works for the secretary of labor. >> he is a political appointee connecticut firmed working for the secretary of labor and came up with this policy. >> yes, he is. >> okay. so, they violated omb guidelines, it is being directed from the department of labor, this is in fact not the independent agency intention that you work for so long and hard and you've been candid with us in the past, you know, it's your job to count the green jobs

you're told to count. so you accurately account for the numbers. it's somebody else's decision whether they are green or not under a definition. so we've enjoyed your honesty but your honesty here says it's supposed to be one way. it clearly wasn't. isn't that correct. >> that's correct. i do think the bureau of labor statistics should be responsible for running the lockup. >> by the way, would you ever have thought that the department of labor would be -- or bureau of labor statistics would be the left of brookings able to come up with more green jobs even than one of the great liberal think tanks. you need not answer that one. mr. moss, you're one of the companies that invested heavily in proprietary lines in order to send out in a timely basis, aren't you? >> yes. >> okay, so you did so for two reasons. one was clearly to ensure that your story didn't fail to go out. and i guess the second one is to

make sure you got it out at least as fast as any one else if not a few seconds faster. isn't that right? >> mr. chairman, we're not interested in getting it out faster than anybody else. >> but you at least want to tie the fastest. mr. doherty next to you is shaking his head so i assume he wanted to. >> we have an interest in transmitting the information as instantaneously as the lockup rules allow. >> and mr. doherty, you also obviously have an interest in absolutely positively not being beathe news stand. >> we have our interest is to get the information out as quickly as we can to our clients within the rules of the lockup. >> and you sort of represent the umbrella for a moment, dr. hall was very kind in saying that, one, most of the statistics actually go out on a news wire. they are not important enough so they go out, everybody gets them

at the same time and they look at them. but the most important are subject to this lockup, historically until today. let me ask you one question. if, in fact, the bureau of labor statistics started pumping this out through their internet, wouldn't in fact it be worse for these most critical information because then the hedge fund with the best computer diagnosing what is very predictably exactly the same raw statistics would then make the decision on market interruptions and trade during those first few seconds? doesn't the plethora of different news organizations with different opinions, reporting in a different fashion, reaching sometimes different conclusions on raw data, actually negate the advantage of a hedge fund because ultimately looking at any one of the services doesn't guarantee him anything -- doesn't give him the raw information as much as it gives him somebody's opinion and isn't

a dozen or 100 opinions a better safeguard against a radical market move than a single piece of fact? >> mr. chairman, i really have to confess i don't know a lot about how hedge funds operate but i can tell you that by having multiple news organizations in that lockup disseminating that information i believe there are safe guards for the public and i also believe that the independence of those news organizations is a benefit to the public rather than having the government being the only source of the information as it gets out, whether it be to the public or to the hedge funds. i think there is value in having multiple news organizations digesting and disseminating this information. >> and to the two news organizations represented here today, if you're given no tools, if you are given information in a short period of time basically to report what you're given, aren't you in fact an arm of

propaganda? the difference between propaganda and independent news, isn't it the value added that your reporters can bring either through their years of experience or in fact the information they bring in that helps them take raw data and turn it into opinionated factual news? >> mr. chairman t advantage of the lockup as it's currently run at the department of labor and at commerce, agriculture, and agencies disseminating statistics around the world is that it allows us to publish information with as much context and supporting data and as many superlatives as we can. what we publish at 8:30 sharp goes beyond one headline and one number. we endeavor to tell the story, both behind the number on top of it and underneath it. >> and i would add that one

important part that we didn't talk about in the april 10th order that the labor put out though we are in talks about changing this, is that there was no internet access at all. even in the half hour that leads up to these -- leads up to the lockup starting. that's important because it allows our journalists to do a variety of things, one of those is see what's happening around the world, and add that context in even if it's breaking at the last minute. with everything happening in the eurozone, it can provide context to the stories. >> thank you. recognize the ranking member for his questions. >> let me -- mr. hall, good to see you. i want to make sure we're clear. sometimes i don't want the wrong, inaccurate information be on the headlines tomorrow. the bureau of labor statistics is a non-partisan statistical agency. is that right? >> that's right.

>> did the department, to your knowledge -- when did you leave? when did you leave the department of labor statistics? >> january of this year. >> did the department of labor or any other entity within government that is focused on the development and advancement of policy interfere with the development of the methodology for counting green jobs? >> no, they didn't. they were very good about letting us do our work and staying at arm's length. >> as i listen to the testimony, clearly i understand and sympathize with the news organizations, i understand exactly what you're saying. seems like we have a question here of balance. anything, any time anything gets out of balance you usually run into problems. it appears our security problems are not equal to what technology can be used to do with the data. seems like there's you know, i think mr. hall described the way, what happened, how this

thing first came about 40 years ago. and now technology has changed dramatically since then. would you agree with that? then i'll go to you, mr. moss. >> congressman, the department of labor has a master switch that controls communications into and out of the room. no news headline or story can be published until the labor official literally flicks that master switch at 8:30. >> do you have a comment? >> just that, that's absolutely true. one of my concerns, though, one of my concerns with the lockup room came from a number of incidents over the past few years that involved this struggling with the technology coming out. and i do think that there is a need to sort of at a minimum really review the security in that lockup room.

>> congressman, i would add, that's why you know, these discussions we've been having with the labor department have focused on that. they have needs and as we said, i said in my testimony we understand they have the responsibility and the right to set up lockup rules and -- i think our view would be that the april 10th announcement, plan action whatever you call it, didn't strike that balance. we're hoping to in these negotiations. >> i'm hoping that happens, too. i'm going to urge the secretary to try to move that along so that you all can come up with an agreement. because sometimes i think it's a matter of people sitting down and working out things, not everything has to be legislated. it moves a lot slower when you have to depend on the legislature. but according to a joint news statement issued december 9, 2008, by the then commissioner of bureau statistics keith hall and then assistant secretary of labor for public affairs data from the november 2008

employment news report that was schedule forward release friday, december 5, 8:30 a.m., eastern standard time was inadvertently transmitsed from the lockup to approximately 25 seconds. the news release states that a similar early transmittal occurred on december 3, 2008, involving the data on productivity and costs. the news release clarifies that a wire service quote, a wire service bureau chief informed us, the early to subscribers on both occasions end of quote and that the department of labor confirmed this claim. finally the news release states the early transmissions were accidental and followed a recent technical change in hardware configurati configuration. dr. hall, you were with the department at that time. at the time these leaks occurred. >> correct. >> what can you tell us, spefrly about how that occurred and how were the leaks accidental and

what circumstances allowed such accidental leaks to take place? >> as i recall, the news agency was allowed access to the room without any els technicians and they replaced a cable from the computer to the box. it turns out that cable bypassed the security on the box, so -- the company didn't mean to do that. they were trying to increase their connectivity i suppose. so since then we tried very hard to, well, we'd still -- one of my proposals to not let people in the room and mess with the equipment without a technician there. >> those leaks, were they detected at the time they occurred? >> they were not. >> you write in your testimony, thompson reuters, we have always

intended to comply to the department's lockup procedure but our company after a hardware reconfiguration did inadvertently uncover a defect in the equipment that resulted in two early releases of data from our machines in the labor lockup in late 2008. what can you add to what mr. hall said about how the leak occurred, also your statement indicates, quote, a defect in the department's equipment resulted in two unintentional early releases end of quote, was the fault in this matter with the department or with your firm? >> my understanding and i wasn't part of this at the time but my understanding is that perhaps shared. we did reconfigure our hardware, my understanding is that the way that interfaced with the lock box and how that was cabled in the department led to the inadvertent releases. as i say, and mr. hall said, the first release wasn't detected by

any one, wasn't by us, the second we realized and immediately made that known to the department. we worked with them to figure out what the problem was. a fix was implemented and as i say, in my testimony, we're aware of no other issues in the 3 1/2 years since. the department has 8 to 10 lockups a month so that would be roughly 350 lockups or so since there was that problem. >> dr. hall, as a former commissioner of the bls do you believe that steps the department of labor announced to improve the security of economic data during the prerelease embargo period are necessary? >> i think most of them are necessary. the one aspect would be replacing the equipment. that's a pretty dramatic step. i do think that was worth considering, and i do think that is a possible solution. i also think it's a possible solution to retlees data on the website and then open up the

lockup room so it runs a little bit behind the website so people get the stories and get it out. but there won't be quite such a rush to move trading from inside the lockup room. i'm not sure for sure, i think it's something that should be done, i think it should be considered and should be discussed. >> thank you. thank you. just for the record, when these lapses occurred who was president of the united states? >> i believe it was during the obama administration. but we did have a lapse, to be fair -- >> november 2008. who was president. >> i'm sorry. it was 2008, that was -- >> i want to make sure we understand that this is so long ago that president bush is responsible for the leak and yet 3 1/2 years later we've got a fix proposed. i guess that's quick and dramatic action. >> president barack obama leaves today for a two-day campaign fundraising swing in california. he starts with two events in san

francisco, followed by a visit to los angeles. among the events is a gala for gays and lesbians, ellen degeneres has remarks. wisconsin governor scott walker is the first governor to survive a recall election. he defeated mayor tom barrett. with nearly all precincts reporting governor walker had 53% of the vote compared with 46% for mayor barrett. this was the third gubernatorial recall in u.s. history. >> we want to know what you think the impact of the wisconsin election is on the 2012 campaign. that's today's question on c-span's facebook page. exit polling in wisconsin shows president obama had a 51-44% edge over republican mitt romney. and more wisconsin voters said that the president would do a better job improving the economy and helping middle class voters than his gop rival. let us know what you think.

>> over the past four years author david maraniss is writing his book barack obama. speaking with the president's relatives and discovering his ancestry on the shores of lake victoria. he toured the family homes and sites in kansas to find the origins of his mother's family. it comes out on june 19. but book tv will give you an early look with pictures and video including our trip to kenya as we traveled with the author in january of 2010. so join us sunday, june 17, 6:00 p.m. eastern time and later at 7:30 that night your phone calls, e-mails and tweets for david maraniss on c-span's book tv. >> house democratic leader nancy pelosi is calling on speaker john boehner to keep the house

in session next week. members have been recessing for one week a month to give them more time in their home districts. the democratic leader says, quote, instead of recessing yet again, the house should remain at work and pass critical legislation that will create jobs for the middle class, that will actually be signed into law. republicans must not run out the clock on the economy. >> warren buffett spoke last night. he's interviewed by the club's president david rubenstein, a co-founder of the carlisle groom. among the issues discussed the nation's debt and deficit. this will take us up to live coverage of a house hearing on corruption in afghanistan that begins at 2:00 eastern. officials with the government accountability office testify at the hearing. now the interview with warren buffett.

>> thank you very much, warren, for coming and honoring us. i don't think you need much of an introduction. but i will say that i think it's fair to say that you are the most respected investor in the world, and i think -- [ applause ] the most respected business man in the world. not just because you've made a great deal of money, but because you've done it with enormous integrity and humility and as people will see tonight with enormous sense of humor. and in addition to being a business person that everybody would aspire to be, he has in recent years become the, with bill gates and melinda gates the largest fill philanthropist in

the world. >> i think his net worth might be higher than mine, i'd say about $50 billion more or less and he committed to give 99% of that away. and he's in the process of doing so. so thank you on behalf of the country and everybody else. [ applause ] >> your background is pretty well known. some may not know that you actually spent much of your formative years in washington, d.c., your father was elected to the congress so you moved here, you went to alice deo junior high school. got a lot of c's and d's as i understand. then you went to woodrow wilson high school. finished 16th in your class. you were -- >> class of 17, we might add. >> you had -- you were working, you were delivering papers in the morning and in the evening

and so forth. and my question really to begin is that many people grow up in washington, love living here and they want to stay here. so they hope to aspire to be the head of a lobbying firm some day, or the head of a congressional staff or something. do you ever have regrets that you might have made something of yourself had you stayed here? >> well, i'm still young, david. i may come back. i went out to alice deal today, the first time in 65 years. and i met the principal. i went to wilson also today. but at alice deal i tried to get my record expunged but had no luck. >> you told me earlier today that you lived in spring valley. >> yeah. i lived at 49th street between van ness and fordham. >> you knocked on the door of the person living in your house. what did that person say? >> we had a good time. the house seemed to have shrunk. she was very wonderful woman, she lived in the house for 30-plus years and we got along

well. then we retraced my paper route. >> growing up in washington you were already a business person. >> well, i thought so. i didn't get a lot of public recognition as tux. such. >> so you were making money as i understand it, you filed your first tax return when you were 14. >> yeah. it was for the year when i was 13 and i filed it when i was 14. >> okay. and did you think the tax rates were too high then? >> it hurt more in those days. i did deduct my bicycle and my watch as business expenses, and only because the statute of limitations, i -- apparently never used my bicycle for pleasure or my watch. >> so after you graduated from wilson you went to actually the university of pennsylvania for a year and a half. >> correct. >> you transferred back to university of nebraska. why did you leave penn?

>> yeah. i felt i would -- i wanted to quit after one year. give you the honest answer. my father -- he kind of talked me into going to college. then talked me going a second year. he said if i went a second year then i could drop out. so i went back to nebraska. that way i got out of college in three years. i planned to live in nebraska. >> so when you graduated from the university of nebraska you applied to harvard business school and were rejected. >> that's true. >> has harvard announced that they regretted? >> i understand the development officer is kind of unhappy. >> so you rejected by harvard, you went to colombia, you met the man, ben graham. and when you took his class was he as great as you thought? >> he was. he only taught one semester one

class. he came up from wall street and taught this class. that's the reason i went to columbia. i knew -- i don'ts -- it was inspirational to be around him. it made a real difference in my life. >> so when you graduated you wanted to go work for him, and his firm, and then he rejected you for an interesting reason. in those days i understand there were jewish firms and non-jewish firms. you weren't jewish so he said he didn't hire you. >> that's true. and i was ready to convert, believe me. i think they might have felt it was phony at the time. but it was true. there were very few firms in wall street that would hire jews at that time. and then only employed five or six people. he told me to the extent that they were able to employ five or six people they felt that the