the phoenix field division -- >> so any questions regarding supervisor directions to say don't say anything, all of that's been investigated, is that correct. >> it's being investigated. >> being investigated. and all documents will be able to be accessed or the final report will be able to be accessed on that issue? >> yes. we are all awaiting the oig finalizing the investigation and the report. >> and would you be able to submit that to this committee once it is finalized? >> yes. i'd -- i -- i would have to defer to the inspector general, but usually the oig reports are made public. >> let me move forward and, as i said, quick questions. what is the extent of drug trafficking on tribal land? can i just get brief answers because i have a series here. >> yes. there's a serious substance abuse problem on tribal land, especially in the last five

years with prescription drugs. their big problem used to be alcohol and methamphetamine, but more recently -- >> so -- and what -- and so what are we doing? the dea has a focus on that? i want to know that we have a problem, i believe it is, and do we have a focus in some of your -- >> absolutely. we have established very good relationships with the other law enforcement agencies, both the fbi and bureau of indian affairs and other tribal law enforcement and have done joint investigations. we depend on them to tell us, you know, who are the traffickers, who are those most impacting the supply on indian lands and then jointly work with them sharing intelligence, and we've had many successes. >> right. >> on -- on those lands. >> right. let me ask you, has there been

many requests by members, has was the ryan republican budget, the budget that would cut resources, how devastating would that be? and let me follow up so you can answer these questions. i am very concerned about bath salts. i know we talked about synthetic, but focused on bath salts, and particularly the impact that it just had in houston, texas, a story i refer to you khou channel 11 specifically talked about a heen yous incident with bath salts in an individual, david petersons, who died on gallison street. he was found disoriented and in extreme physical deterioration and then i'd appreciate your comment about dea officers and physician officers and pain pills and whether or not the response is excessive, whether you think we're being fair to doctors on that -- on those investigations. >> do you have all points of that multi-faceted question?

>> the last question i had a hard time hearing. >> the efforts with dea -- thank you, mr. chairman. the efforts with dea officers dealing with physicians and pain pills, there's been sort of a surge of closing physician offices, arresting them. i'm wondering, are we being excessive? are we being careful because you're literally shutting down professionals who may be legitimately issuing -- >> okay. witness will answer. >> okay. i'll start with the -- you asked about the budget. >> yes. >> you know, these are austere budget times and we will work within what money is given to us and we will prioritize accordingly. as to the synthetic drugs, and i'm glad you bring that up, an emerging problem that concerns us. this committee has just helped give us the biggest tool we can, and that's controlling some of those chemicals -- those

substances. we -- in your area, for instance, our agents have opened a number of investigations, both on bath salts and on k2 and spice and they've been pretty successful in assisting state and local officers on those types of investigations as well. your third question about, you know, physicians and pill mills and pain clinics, houston is very troubling because they have a pill mill problem. and it's not like in florida with oxycodone, it is hydrocodone that is the problem there. and we've got many investigations -- successful investigations, and we have -- we have arrested and prosecuted some very egregious doctors. and let me say that the doctors that are affiliated and

operating these pill mills and working within these pill mills, there is no -- they're not practicing medicine. they're not -- they're not giving examinations to patients. these pill mills are just open for pill distribution, and those are the physicians, those are the clinics that we have targeted using our intelligence, using undercover investigations and we've been very successful in the houston area. >> mr. chairman -- >> time of the gentlemen woman has expired. >> mr. chairman, let me thank you for your courtesies. could i put a question on the record to be answered in writing please? >> yes, you can. that will be taken care of with the ucs that i am about ready to pro pound. thank you, ms. leonhart for coming. we look forward to seeing you come back here. you might look forward to seeing

us again. might not do that. but thank you for your testimony today. without objection, all members will have five legislative days to submit to the chair additional written questions for the witnesses which will move forward and ask the witness to respond as promptly as they can so that their answers may be made a part of the record. without objection, all members will have five legislative days to submit additional materials for inclusion into the record and with that i thank ms. leonhart and without objection this hearing is adjourned. next a discuss on the progressive movement and the 2012 national campaigns. then a forum on what issues will

be facing voters this november. after that, a house judiciary hearing on renewing the fisa act. on "newsmakers" minnesota congressman john klein looks at the division in congress over issues such as student loans, education and job training. "newsmakers" sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern on cspan. this weekend on afterwards, katie pab lish details "fast and furiou furious". >> this was something that was swept under the rug and kept from the american people and mexican people as well. there are hundreds of faceless innocent mexican citizens who have been murdered as a result of this but the only thing that we knew outside of the government program was that guns from american gun dealers were going into mexico and causing all of these problems with the cartel when really the government was sanctioning these sales and sending them into

mexico. >> she's interviewed by national journal white house correspondent major garrett sunday night at 9:00 part of book tv this weekend on cspan2. if all of us decide at the same time we're going to tighten our belts and spend less, guess what? we all end up poor because all of our spending falls at the same time. this is the kind of stuff that we're supposed to know. this is stuff that we've known since the 1930s, right, that the attempt of everybody to slash spending at the same time because they think they've got too much debt is self-defeating. who's going to tell them the truth? we have to tell them the truth. if we don't tell them the truth, then our country fails. we must succeed in this, and we will succeed in this. we'll reach them through the media and through politics and through pop culture.

pop culture. we're -- we shouldn't be afraid to get out there, quit preaching to the choir and get out there and be influencers, right, in pop culture. >> the cspan networks cover the panels and right on line discussions with sarah palin. watch them online at the cspan video library. the three day take back the american dream conference was held this week in washington, d.c. this panel focused on the progressive movement and the upcoming elections. van jones, a former white house special advisor on green jobs also made some remarks. this is 1:25. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome robert borosage, co-director of the campaign for america's future. [ applause ] good morning.

>> good morning. >> can i get everybody to come in and sit down. we're going to get started almost immediately. first let's welcome our two other guests. come on, van. [ applause ] >> van jones and melissa harris-perry. my name is robert borosage and i'm here to greet you and meet you and welcome you to this take back the american dream summit. this will be an amazing few days. you are activists and leaders from across the country and across the progressive movement. over 1,000 strong by registration. we offer a stunning lineup of speakers and strategy sessions that await you. we will highlight the organizing that's being done to try to elect progressives who will fight for the 99%. we will share strategies on how to drive critical issues into this election.

and we will give our major focus to the independent progressive movement we are building to try to take back the american dream. the days will be intense because the stakes are high. now i'm old enough in an election season to know that every election people say, well, this election's the most important of our lifetime. but i think the stake these days is something more than one election. we are, i suggest to you at the beginning of what i suggest to you will be a fierce struggle, already is, about what comes after a 30-year failed experiment of a conservative era, an era that has left us with extreme inequality, a declining middle class, rising poverty, the worst recession since the great depression, and an economy that doesn't work for working people even when it is growing.

americans clearly are casting about for change. you saw the elections in '06 and the extraordinary election in '08 as they looked for someone who could help transform america. we saw the reaction and the frustration in 2010. the uprisings of the tea party and occupy wall street. the assault on workers rights and women's rights and the mobilization to counter that. now we see brazen billionaires, the coke brothers, addleman, the super pacs looking to consolidate complete control at all levels of government. in this situation we ought to be perfectly clear, we are not going to allow mitt romney, the modern day and their tea party allies to take over in washington, d.c. [ applause ] >> but we can't stop there.

if we're going to build a foundation for shared prosperity, we can't accept mass unemployment as the new normal. we can't accept declining wages and increasing insecuritiy as inevitable. we are not signing on to a grand bargain, partisan or bipartisan or trans partisan that uses the current crisis to savage the vulnerable and the elderly. if we are going to build a new start for this economy to save the american dream, we have to build an independent progressive movement, one that is prepared to take on big money politics, confront the entrenched interests that now endanger our future, and rebuild the american dream. i want to say a few words about each of these. it's now four years since wall street's excesses blew up this economy. 9 million jobs lost. the typical family lost a

staggering 40% of their wealth. mostly in the declining value of homes. any recovery from that kind of collapse would have been long and difficult, but this was made even more difficult by two major factors. first there was no healthy economy to return to. working families have been losing ground for decades. over the bush years most americans suffered declining incomes and rising insecuritins. we were running up trade deficits. finance was capturing 40% of corporate profits. we waged two wars on a national credit card. we were in denial about global warming. there was no place to recover to, but in addition to that, any reforms faced fierce resistance. now we all know about republican obstruction. from day one they set out to

pursue what mitch mccon fell in set out to ensure that barack obama would be a one-term president. but when obama pushed even modest reforms vital to our future on financial reform, on health care, on recovery, on new energy, far more impressive than republican obstruction was the power of entrenched corporate interests that mobilized regions of lobbyists to protect their privileges and their subat the nans. even when they had majorities in both congresss, they succeeded in delaying, diluting, and in some cases defeating reform. now the economy is said to be in recovery but it is the old economy that is coming back. the top 1% captured fully 93% of the income growth in 2010. that doesn't leave a lot for the

rest of us. we're back to casino finance with the two big to fail banks bigger and more concentrated than ever and making big bets as jpmorgan just showed us in losing $3 billion on one reckless training scheme. we're back to trade deficits over $1.5 billion a day. and we face the struggle of what comes next. now americans are only learning about mitt romney, but he's not a mystery. he is quite inevitably of, by, and for the 1%. the big money decided to be safe, they better pick one of their own. and his agenda is a clear commitment to double down on the policies that got us in the hole we're in. he would give millionaires an average 25% tax cut on top of the bush tax cuts. he calls for eliminating taxes on corporate profits earned abroad turning the entire world

into an off shore tax haven. he wants to deregulate wall street and reopen the casino economy that blew up the economy. he'd repeal health care reform and medicare as we know it, medicaid and throw about 34 million people out of health care protection. he defends subsidies to big oil, denies the threat posed by global warming. wants more money for the military and less for our schools. this guy is building a summer home with elevators for his cars and he says obama is out of touch. he paid a tax rate of about 15% on an income in one year of $20 million, a lower rate than his chauffeur. but that's the tax return he showed us. imagine the ones he kept secret. no matter talking about equality is the politics of envy.

it should only be done in, quote, quiet rooms. are you kidding me? we're not going to let the brazen billionaires elect this guy president. [ applause ] he's not offering a remedy, he's offering possessionions that are poison. we're going to twork elect the president and take back the house, but that is not enough. we have a bigger battle for america's future. conservative columnist david druff says that republicans are extreme because they are fearful that the welfare state is unaffordable and that it now threatens our future. we agree, we can't go back to the old path. but they've got the victims wrong and the culprits wrong. it's not the poor who rig the

rules and pockets millions in subsidies and privileges. it's not the elderly who blew up the economy. it's not the young who pay for the revolving door of lobbyists and officials. you want to build sustainable growth that works for working people, it's not enough to put obama in the white house or mans si pelosi in the speaker's chair, we have to take on crony capitalism, entrenched interest, the corrupt politicians and big money in both parties. [ applause ] >> look at the sources of our current debt of the half of it comes from the collapse when wall street blew up the economy. next comes the bush tax cuts and tax loopholes that have millionaires paying lower taxes than their secretaries and big corporations paying no taxes at all in some cases. and then the continued costs of an imploded military and the two

wars. turn to the scary long-term projections, you've all seen maps of them, that make it look like america is going broke. these are entirely the question of soaring health care costs. an unaffordable health care system deformed by health insurance, hospital and drug companies, complexes that hike costs so that americans pay twice per capita what other citizens in other industrial countries pay for worse health care results. to revive the american dream we have to take on the powerful net profit from these arrangements, not the vulnerable who are their victims. so this is not a question for one president, one election, one administration. we're about to head into what they call the grand bargain, i think.

right after the election we hit a fiscal train wreck purely made by the politicians in washington, and it's being used as an excuse, an excuse to cut a grand bargain. shared sacrifice is necessary, we're told. it's time to put our books in order. let's do a big trade. let's trade cuts in social security and medicare for tax reform that lowers rates, closes loopholes and gives us more revenue. this ought to be known instead of the grand bargain as the big heist. [ applause ] >> but be clear about what it means. what it means is that we accept mass unemployment as normal because we're going to turn to balancing our budgets rather than focus on creating jobs. it means that middle class americans and the vulnerable will get stuck with much of the bill for the mess that wall

street created. and worse in some ways, it ignores largely the causes of the plight we face. the wealthy will still not pay their fair share of taxes. wall street will still be free to blow up the economy. the insurance and drug companies will still drive up health care costs. we will still not have our long-term budgets under control. so we have to organize now to oppose the big heist and demand the real deal. and the pieces of this are simple. we need good jobs now and good jobs first before we turn to austerity and we have got to focus on what drives our deficits, the big money interests that now are deforming our government. [ applause ] >> this won't be easy. we have to build an independent capacity to elect people's champions and hold them accountable. we'll talk about that at this

conference. we need to make big money toxic in this election, even as we work to overturn citizens united and get money out of politics [ applause ] >> we need direct action, non-violent confrontations, demonstrations that expose and challenge the interests standing in the way. [ applause ] >> this is a forbidding task. it is the great challenge of democracy. can the people in fact curb the re pash shusness of big money and big power? but we've been in this situation before. at the end of the 19th century the robber barons consolidated ollie darkies and major industries. politicians were routinely bought and rented. labor unions were outlawed, but populist movements, progressive reformers, labor uprisings challenged the supremacy of that unassailable power.

it took decades of struggle but eventually that people's movement won. the extremes of inequality were reduced, the brazen corruption curbed and what made america special, exceptional, the broad middle class was built. now we are back to that same kind of inequality, that same kind of robber baron politics and once more the test is posed. can the many overcome the power of the few? and what's exciting is we've seen the first stirrings in wisconsin and ohio and occupy wall street which spread across the country like wild fire. [ applause ] >> we must continue to build. serious about taking power, serious about rebuilding the country. understanding we'll suffer setbacks. fierce in opposition to the modern robber baron politics.

not satisfied with the defense of what is. sure, we will try to work to defeat romney on the right. we'll push to take back the house, but we will keep on building an independent movement to take back the american dream. that's our subject this week. that's our task for the years to come. we know it isn't going to be easy. we know it can be done. yes, we can. [ applause ] >> now i'm delighted to introduce melissa harris-perry. she is a modern wonder woman. she is a -- dr. perry is a professor of political science at tulane university. she's the author of "sister citizen, shame stereotypes and black women in america." she's a regular columnist for

"the nation" magazine. she's the host of her own show on msnbc that airs on saturday and sunday mornings. she's the proud mother of a young daughter and once a month be or so she gets a little sleep. it's a delight to introduce you to melissa harris-perry. [ applause ] good morning. >> good morning. >> so it's the start of what is going to be an idiologically diverse day for me today. i'm going to run off the stage when i am done with my address because i am heading off to chicago where i will join the bush family for a conversation about volunteerism in america. so that'll be fun. by the end of the day i will have no idea what's going on in the world, but i am very happy to start the day with you, and

particularly because what i find to be my value added within the public sphere is not as an activist or organizer per se. i am married to an activist and organizer so it's very clear to me which one of us does real work and which one of us talks about the real work that needs to get done in the world. and so that is probably not my comparative advantage. i hope today to do a little bit of what i think my comparative advantage is, which is to try to understand analytically where we are and how we got here. so i'm so appreciative of the framework of thinking about this within an historical context, the kind of robber baron moment, and i want to take a much shorter historical context, really just the past decade. and rather than focusing primarily on what the elites have been up to, to think a little bit about how where we

are now has been made possible by the choices that we as ordinary citizens and americans made. because we were not fully disempowered in these moments. we made many choices. so i want to start with the moment that is september 11th, 2001. because i believe that the era that we are in now begins on september 11th, 2001. the election of george w. bush in 2000, whatever we think about it, is an election that ultimately was a choice that the american people made about -- okay. that's not -- okay. okay, that's fine. that was all fine. i had a little -- i've been reading ""the hunger games."" i suddenly thought i needed to duck or something. i'm not even kidding. i really was running through my head what kind of thing the

capital might have been sending to us in this moment. so september 11th, 2001, my sense here is when we elected george w bush or when george w bush was handed the american presidency by the supreme court of the united states, that that decision was made in part because we understood ourselves to be in a time of peace internationally, of domestic economic growth, and george w bush for whatever failings or successes he has, does seem like the kind of guy to keep the party going, right? if you're thinking you're coming out of the clinton era and things are good economically and we're at peace internationally, then it does not seem that odd to make the choice of electing a kinder, gentler conservative, right? you have to go back to 2000 to remember where we were in that moment. we did not know then that just a few months into the first year of george w. bush's