u.s. student loan debt. later, discussions about cyber security and business. now a senate hearing on training firefighters who respond to firefighters. mark begich questioned officials representing the forest service and firefighters about the resources needed with increasing firefighters in populated areas. this hearing is an hour.

>> thank you so much for being here. it's a pleasure to have folks here. this is the subcommittee on emergency management intergovernment relations in the district of columbia. i apologize. i have a cold so i'm suffering through a cold. so i appreciate you being here. i want to thank the witnesses to be here especially on short notice to lend their expertise to our discussion. we are here to look at the problems that are serious and concerns to many states for a while now, and that's wildfires. this is a challenge that confronts communities of all towns, villages, cities, states and the federal government. as a former mayor myself i know firsthand how important it is to have personnel resources to prevent and fight fires when they occur. the stakes are high.

we must ensure that first responders who are out there protecting lives, homes, businesses receive the training and support they need. that's why we're here, to learn from these experts and leaders about the situation on the ground, across the country, from a variety of perspectives. we have to know where we are succeeding. and where we need more resources or a new approach. there are different levels of governments involved in fighting fires. from locals to various federal agencies it's important we have comprehensive protection and response no matter where a fire occurs. i know providing that protection has become more and more expensive. especially on federal levels. in the past 12 years, federal costs have averaged more than $3 billion a year. that doesn't include the $2 billion spent by state and local communities as well as other private spending. the costs are increasing because wildfire activity is growing.

when you talk about wildfires, most people think of flat, grassy states like montana or states hit by drought like california. but as weather patterns have been changing with the rest of our climate, more states than ever are being hit by huge wildfires. in the past decade, acres burned are up by almost 67%. right now in anchorage, more than 700 men and women are fighting a dangerous fire in the kenai. it's the funny river fire but there is nothing to joke about. they have been fighting to put it out since may 19th. they have done an amazing job. all alaskans are grateful for their efforts. as of yesterday, the fire was 59% contained. and danger to life and property has been nearly eliminated. it scorched almost 200,000 acres of our forest. close to residents, businesses and individuals. it's early in the fire season for something of this magnitude in alaska.

my state has had one of the warmest winters on record. now strong winds and low humidity are combining to allow these fires to grow quickly. over the weekend there were reports of 15 new fires in the fairbanks service area from chino hot springs to toque. luckily they were relatively small fires, but they only stayed that way because of the outstanding work of our firefighters. to make sure we are as prepared as we can be that we have the resources and experienced personnel in the field, we have to look at the first responder hiring and retention practices. the skills men and women learn during training to become a firefighter, smoke jumper, hot shot team. members are invaluable. we must recognize their importance. not just with the words but in how we treat them. earlier today i was proud to introduce the senate version of the federal firefighter flexibility and fairness act to address a glaring misstep in how we treat federal firefighters.

across the country, municipal firefighters are able to work out changes in their schedule among themselves with vancouver -- supervisor approval. they can trade shifts without impacting their pay schedules, allowing them to take care of sick family members or attend children's important events. this type of flexibility is important to morale and life balance. and i'm glad state and local firefighters have it. for some reason, federal firefighters do not. right now these men and women can only swap shifts within a two-week period. an accounting system the government uses ends up with one firefighter receiving no pay for the shift while the other receives overtime. it doesn't make sense. because the system is nonsensical, some departments don't allow shift swapping at all. i can't blame them. for not wanting to deal with the headache. this problem needs to be

fixed. treating our firefighters well is the moral thing to do. it is also fiscally responsible. the bravely and skills earned by folks in the field make it more important to retain them as long as possible. attrition reduce it is effectiveness of firefighting teams which is unacceptable. we need to train and maintain the best teams we can. clearly that goes to more municipal firefighters as well. i have been a strong supporter of the important federal resours like fire and safer grants that go to the fire situation. firefighters have told me how beneficial the grant programs are. that's why i'm fighting the to

roll back president obama's proposed cutses to the programs in this year's appropriation bill. as a member of the appropriations committee i'm committed to restoring the $10 million proposed are reduction. every dollar spent will save more in local communities. over the last -- on one last issue i want to bring up briefly before i introduce our witnesses is a broader issue that impacts many firefighters in alaska. this advantage is to seasonal employees in the federal hiring process. i have been working with senator tester and looking closely at the bill he and senator udahl introduced the land flexibility act senate bill 1120. seasonal workers are so important in alaskans have different jobs depending on the season. many firefighters come from the lower 48 to help us fight fires in the summer. right now it seems to me that the federal hiring practice isn't giving these seasonal workers who have developed great expertise over many years a fair shot if they want to transition to a full-time job in the same field. i'm glad to hear your thoughts on the issue. i look forward to the continuing discussion with senator tester. i'm not sad. i have a cold.

let me introduce our witnesses. i will start with mr. jim hubbard, deputy chief of the u.s. forest service, part of the department of agriculture. jim? >> thank you, mr. chairman, glad to be here. as you've noted, we're into the fire season and alaska is especially, arizona, new mexico are having normal fire activity but it's busy and the funny river fire is a bit unusual, you don't have 200,000 acres burn on the kenai very often and that gets a lot of attention, especially with the values at risk and people in the way. what our season looks like is that june will continue to be that kind of a problem for alaska. maybe it will moderate by the time july gets here. i hope so. alaska went a little longer than usual in past seasons. as we move further into the

season, we get into july, california, oregon look particularly bad. nevada is not going to be good. so that's where we expect most of our problems. it will be scattered throughout the west as usual and we'll have surprises pop up all across the west. but those three states in particular look problematic. our forecast tell us we probably will be spending more money on suppression than we have in the budget. so we'll go through that process again. we are prepared. the inner agency forces are at 14,000 firefighters available to us. currently we have 14 large air tankers but could have as many as 22 under exclusive use contract before the season is over as those next generation planes begin to fly. we still have the 8 military

mass units as surge capacity and we do have the 72 engineer tankers under contract and more than 600 helicopters under contract. so aviation forces and ground forces are in place for the season. but the conditions are challenging, the long-term drought, the changing conditions we face with climate and fuels and insect and disease have all caused problems, not to mention the development that has to be protected that's in the way of some of these difficult situations. risk reduction occurs on about 3 million acres per year. that's a substantial amount and it addresses some of the priorities. it does not cover the territory that needs to be -- the risk that needs to be reduced. it is a combination of what you do on the landscape and what you

do in the community and around the community that will save us in the future. some of our limiting factors have to do with the transfers that occur when we don't have the suppression dollars and we have to take it out of other accounts to do so. how we budget for suppression has been an ongoing debate. you mentioned do we have the resources and do we have the right approach. perhaps that needs another look, another look such as was proposed by senators widen and crepo, and the agency continues to provide in their budget the initial attack and forces and cost of that initial attack. we do catch 98% of the fires during that initial attack period. it's the 2% that get away that

cost us about 30% of that suppression budget and those are fires that are perhaps fall into a disaster category and ought to be treated financed differently. if that were to happen, we would hope that the agency could make proposals for using some of that budget constraint to increase the land treatment and reduce the risk further. that would be our approach and we would hope something like that could at least be considered. thank you, mr. chairman. >> let me ask william dugan, national president of federal employees next, please. >> thank you, mr. chairman. for inviting me to testify, our union represents 110,000 federal workers and for 22 of my 31 years in federal service i fought wildfires serving in many

positions, i spent 16 years in sitka, alaska. i can tell you fire fighting is a dangerous business. when you're on a fire, the only thing between you and trouble is equipment and brave men and women with you on the fire line. that's why it's so important that we arm firefighters with the training and resources we need to be safe and complete the mission. the wildfire problem in the u.s. is growing. six of the worst fire seasons since 1960 have occurred since 2000. we must recognize that this is the new normal and we must change the way we do business to account for it. with respect to training, the usda inspector general issued a report in 2010 that predicted is future shortages of qualified firefighters in the forest service. too few are being trained to replace those retiring. that prediction is coming to fruition and it is a major problem. they have done tremendous work

to improve inner agency cooperation. the development of a consistent certification and training system administered by the national wildfire coordinating group is an outstanding achievement. our union is proud to be a partner in the apprenticeship program which we hope will take consistency and training to the next level. unfortunately this program has been underutilized in our view. within the forest service, training resources are not reaching the field in a timely way. from one forest we're hearing the primary fire personnel are unable to attend training classes that are only offered out of state leaving them no option for certain training. at another forest we hear managers are getting the training budget too late to get employees into classes. congress can improve access to training by exercising oversight to ensure that the action items developed as a result of the referenced i.g. report are properly implemented and make sure the program is used to the fullest potential. also, congress should make every effort to appropriate funds in a timely manner so resources get

to the ground in time to be used. with respect to workforce retention, the attrition rate is alrmingly high. something must be done about it. for a firefighter, experience is hard earned on fire line but firefighter career path is blocked by flawed and dysfunctional federal regulations. many begin their careers on temporary appointments and many return year after year acquiring valuable training and experience. however, firefighters looking to advance their careers face a critical barrier. current regulations do not credit service regardless of how long as qualifying for acquiring competitive status. because of this barrier to career advancenebt, many skilled firefighters eventually leave taking valuable skills with them. to explain, agencies have the flexibility to fill positions from current employees under

merit promotion or from among civilian applicants under the competitive process. over 2 million federal employees have the status to compete over merit promotion and firefighters classified as temporary workers do not. they cannot compete for jobs. we urge passage of the bipartisan land management workforce flexibility act, s-1120 which addresses this inequity. funding for wildfire suppression is also a problem. with the occurrence and severity of wildfires increasing, the expense of fighting wildfires exceeds the funds appropriated for wildfire suppression. when this happens, agency transfer funds from other programs into fire fighting accounts to cover the shortfall. this so-called fire borrowing results in cancellations and delays. ironically many of the canceled

projects are those designed to reduce frequency and severity of catastrophic wildfires. it's robbing peter to pay paul and it cost taxpayers more. we urge congress to pass the wildfire disaster funding act s-1875 to address this. i will conclude my testimony by quoting one of our members currently out on fire assignment in alaska. in alaska, we do have a well constructed tactical plan to deal with fires. the wildland fires are on the increase. we fight to put the fires out immediately and address hazardous fuels but sometimes forests are allowed to grow into overgrowth and decay causing a hazardous situation. it is time to take action to provide resources necessary to prevent this hazardous situation occurring in national forests across the country and protect communities from wildfire. these reforms cannot wait until next year, they need to be

acted on immediately. i thank the subcommittee and would be happy to answer any questions you may have. >> all written testimony will be included in the record. we have kevin o'connor, for the public poll of international association of firefighters. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm here representing 300,000 professional firefighters and paramedics who provide fire rescue and ems services across our great nation. first, let me thank you for the introduction of the flexibility act and firefighters greatly appreciate it and for the support on appropriation for the other programs is very much appreciated by our organization. wild land fires increase in intensity and duration and scope, they are a threat from coast to coast, from 2003 to 2012, over 17 million acres have been scorched by wildfires, claiming over 300 lives and destroying 34,000 homes and resulting in over $70 billion in insurance claims.

as you know, mr. chairman, the raging fires currently threatening your state are a stark reminder of this present danger. before the hearing we spoke with tom wescott. he estimates that a vast majority of his membership will be engaged in those efforts before the fire is finally brought under control. the scourge of wildfires has become epidemic and will continue to peril our nation. changing the way in which federal government budgets for wild land fire fighting. it makes sense and should be done but is only a first step. for decades firefighters are battled on how to deal with wildfires. today with the increased development of wild land urban interface, we want to develop a more holistic strategy to deal with the issue. clearly the federal government must take the lead. we applaud the strategy. this strategy establishes a national vision for wild land fire management and response. the strategy is an excellent

first step but once again more must be done in the 1960s and 1970s they were blighted with arson. the national commission on fire prevention and control issued the landmark report america burning. over 40 years later it is frequently cited and still has value. the federal government should take a similar approach to the wild land fire program. we propose the establishment of a blue ribbon commissioned modeled after america burning with congressional participation to fully study this issue and make recommendations. although the iff, they have yet to act. the federal government is the only entity that can ensure the participation of all stake holders. we hope that either their own volition or general nudge from congress they will soon act. state and local governments contend with devastating wild

land fires and privately held or state owned lands, fire fighting operations are exclusively handled by state and local assets. it's safe to say throughout the southeast, nearly every firefighter will be called upon to fight a wildfire. disturbingly not all firefighters are trained to battle these fires. cash strapped firefighters cannot afford training. we propose a pilot program to provide wild land fire training for local firefighters in high risk areas. furthermore, because fire fighting is an inherently governmental function, it should be a default policy to contract with a governmental entity having jurisdiction in the impacted area if additional fire fighting resources are needed beyond the federal effort. however, if private contractors are required they should be required to meet the same rigorous standards of their governmental counterparts, period. this is an issue of public safety and firefighter safety and operational efficiency. lastly we need to protect the men and women on fire line.

not quite a year ago, brave firefighters from the hot shots team 3066 died in the line of duty battling the yarnell hill fire. the death or injury of any firefighter should give us pause. wild land fire fighting is physically taxing and emotional draining and incredibly dangerous. the job differs greatly from that a structural firefighter. wild land firefighters are on scene fighting fire for days or even weeks at a time. through government investment and research over many years, much is known about the health impacts for fighting fire and how best to protect them. but we're only beginning to examine these impact on lild land firefighters. as a leader in firefighter health and safety the iff is uniquely positioned to help coordinate research efforts. with our california forestry

local 2881, san diego state university and much appreciated funding from the department of agriculture, research has already started. san diego partnering with cdf studying improving protective clothing, a great start. to prevent death and injury it is incumbent we study staffing patterns and other metrics to ascertain the impact on firefighter health and safety. partial funding from d.o.a. has been provided and we encourage the federal government to continue this investment until the resource is completed. we must act now and very divisively on multiple fronts to address this complicated issue. i thank you for the opportunity to testify and will gladly answer questions. >> let me go to the mayor. i was down there at the funny river fire which we all know has been a top priority, i know for fire fighting. we appreciate you and thank you

for being on a pilot of using our technology. we'll allow you to testify and open up for questions after your testimony. >> thank you, senator. >> uh-oh. >> hold tight. >> i appreciate your holding this hearing and touring the area and asking the right questions about the adequacy of the response and whether or not resources were available when needed and where needed. in answer to that i think is absolutely. i was exceptionally impressed with the incident command structure in the way there was coordination between all of the agencies and we had incredibly high winds changing wind directions and conditions but the knowledge that they command team had of fuel sources and fire behavior and logistics, all of the things that count when

you're really reacting to an ever changing fire dynamics was truly impressive. the coordination between the agencies, i can't say enough about how all of the resources and resource agencies worked together. one of the things that i should point out is that the refuge folks were quick to order up a command team and had done fire breaks between urban and wildland interface that were critical to the way the planning and protection of the populated areas and structures there. we were very, very fortunate. i want to say thanks to you and to the resources that were put towards this and result was that we had very few small structures, some remote cabins, that were lost. all of the residential areas were protected and priorities

were clear from the outset that is protection of the firefighters who are employed, also protection of life and property in the urban areas and developed areas around the peninsula and looking where the important infrastructure is including very high voltage lines that needed to be protected. and i want to also just talk briefly about the importance of the planning process well in advance of what we know are going to be an increasing number of wildfires. that is federal resources important to the kenai peninsula in a variety of ways, we had funding over a long period of time to deal with the bark beetle infestation and allowed us to build a coordinated plan that we could identify where the consensus was and where the consensus was is making sure that we enhance natural fire breaks and roads between urban and rural and wildland areas in

the event that at some point we saw a wildland fire that would threaten the developed areas. so we over a period of time we got as much as about $18 million from the federal government and we used that to build fire breaks and do a fire wise program and renew fuel sources. i think that this is critically important. the other thing that we also used federal grant funding for was the borough information system. we have a very good system. we update it regularly, the last time we were able to update it with a federal grant doing aerial flight to gather the data and put it in the system was actually 2012. we have pretty up to date information on where structures were, including in remote areas. it allowed them to tap into our system and use it where they were going to muster resources and it was an excellent planning tool.

that's one of the things in looking at whether or not resources were adequate in this case as i said i was very impressed with the level of effort that went into this fire, resources that were employed and planning that went into it on a nightly basis and the planning that was put into place and executed on a daily basis. i think we did have adequate resourgss, one of the things i'm thrilled about, your efforts to get the drones at the university of alaska fairbanks, that was something that was employed in this fire, sort of at the end of it to do overflights and it's something that will be even more increasingly valuable tool as we move forward. as you know, senator, the state of alaska has an incredible

remove wildland areas and a lot of interface between rural and urban and small pockets of developed areas and population. it's critical in alaska. i want to again thank you and thank the incident command team, rob allen, also the fema and tree planning through our office of emergency management and coordination at our director did to help support that effort, all of that -- this was a good example of how in part we were lucky but the realty is there was a lot of planning that went into it well in advance of when a fire might happen and it really worked in this case. i think it's a good example of right amount of resources and expertise that's brought in to a lot of different areas around the country and state. it was impressive. thank you.

>> thank you, mayor. these are pictures from that fire and it's incredible devastation that occurred and i was down there on monday, as mayor talked about, some incredible resources came to the table at the right time. there was one thing you had mentioned and i want to ask you, made a note here. your borough mapping system, was that funded by the borough or a combination of federal or state? how does that -- how did you upgrade that? >> you know, it's operated by the kenai peninsula borough and available publicly and has a lot of tools that folks are familiar with the gis systems can tap into and use to get all kinds of different vegetation mapping. there are a lot of tools that can be used to identify where strategies can be employed to attack a fire like this. the other thing that i should mention and you're aware of it, oftentimes at the federal level, the sheer perspective and size

of this fire was huge but in terms of the state of alaska and even the kenai peninsula, it's only a small portion of our land mass. >> if i can, i don't know, maybe jim you might be able to answer this first question i have, when i was down there i took a tour of some of the areas. what i saw was these areas where they thinned out some of the trees, kind of found natural breaks and the mayor described those areas. you could go from the heavy clustered areas and thinned out areas and some cases a road or utility corridor. and the comments i got was a raging fire. then when it hit that thinned out area it dropped lower to the ground, firefighters could attack it and manage it quicker. and control it at that point. they were describing to me that that came from -- i was expecting to hear a big number to be honest with you, a big cost to that piece.

they said, no, that was about $175,000 out of the wildlands fire fund, that they were able to get a grant for to do that. can you tell me the status -- i know that has been under pressure for many years and that's more preventive than disaster. so tell me a little bit about that fund. is administration looking at long term for that and additional resources and does that connect at all -- and i'll put this issue way over here for a second. i know the president put together a proposal, a billion dollars in climate change issues and so forth, disaster management, other things, is that at all connected? two-part question, the impact was unbelievable because they showed me the area where they were unable to do it and it just swept across the road.

unbelievable difference. >> mr. chairman, as you just described the effect of that kind of land treatment on fire behavior is exactly right. and that's what we're after. and where we place those treatments is pretty important too. if we do that in combination with a community that has invested in being adapted to fire, a little more firewise, then we have a chance of protecting that community and saving it, even when fire like this comes their way. and most of that money is appropriated through the forest service. we work through the state forestry agencies on the private lands at least. and what happens there is a competitive process in the west with those states proposing their highest priority for their it protection and the money being allocated. >> is that fund, that money comes out of for local

communities like this, give me the sense of that. i understand it's under pressure and not as robust funding as it used to be. can you comment on that? >> we try to protect that one. >> does it need more? i'm giving you a softball. i know you can't answer because onb probably haven't told you what you can say. >> what i think i can say -- >> i might jump to these two to answer. >> it's not -- you ask if it was connected to the president's climate change proposal and we are working with the administration on what we might be able to propose in that regard. but perhaps it is definitely connected to the proposal for how we finance suppression. if that were to pass, go into effect and free up for the forest service roughly

$300 million of discretionary funding, the appropriators of course control that, that would be our proposal to use it this way. >> let me make sure i clarify what that is because i know some people might be watching or later find out what we're talking about. in the past, the way your disasters were funded were fires occur, you rob all of these accounts because we never funded enough. then we come back to try to fix it all and never do totally. now the idea is and i might be wrong about the numbers but know i'm close, 80% of what the cost is and try to fund it. you're at least having a budget to work from so you're not robbing other agencies, is that fair? >> that's fair. >> i can tell you when i said that, the mayor was there doing a press conference and i said that, one of your employees in the middle of the press conference jumped excited about the whole thing. it sounds like that is a big

piece of this puzzle that you need to kind of get out of the way in order to fund -- this is the piece that they were working on but as appropriator we'll try to do that this year in the appropriations process. that's a real positive for all of us. is that a fair statement? >> that's a fair statement. thank you very much. >> let me ask you, there was an estimate or -- we know since the '90s the money has gone to 3 billion and we'll still be half a billion short. do i agree with that? based on your analysis and what you're seeing this summer? >> yes, i do. those forecasts come from forest service research and they provide them to us periodically during the year. it's based on what's going on with the forest conditions and based on the drought and based on what -- how the weather patterns are setting up with

pacific oscillation and ocean temperatures and gives us an indication of what's coming our way for the season and where it might hit and what that might cost. right now it is predicting that we will fall short. >> the question or comment that the mayor navarre talked about about the bark beetle i know colorado has issues and northwest has issues, a constant growing problem, for several years i know alaska was earmarked. we had earmarks able to do this for some reason some people in this body don't like earmarks. i do. because people i don't think -- it was not taking from the budget but taking from the existing budget and do you think we have enough resources to go after -- i use spruce bark beetle in my state, basically beetle kill or forests that have dead kill in them, are we doing enough there? or do you think that's an area

that maybe we better be watching carefully here because it could be growing because of these drier temperatures and droughts we're facing? does that question make sense? >> yes, the drier temperatures and drought, the condition of the forest in the west it's largely a disturbance forest and being regenerated by disturbance, fire, insect and disease. that's going to continue on a large scale. there are things we can do to mitigate that. we can't stop it. but yes, there's more that can be done to help with the impacts of it. >> let me if i can to mayor navarre, you don't have any more federal resources for that type of activity in the spruce bark beetle cleanup or management or do you have federal resources you're tapping into?

what are you doing now to combat that issue? >> what did we do -- >> in other words, the grant money you used to get, do you have any of that remaining that you can use to do the management or what are you doing now that those resources are pretty limited to manage that? >> well, it actually happened last time i was mayor from '96 to '99 where we identified the problem and before that mayor gillman had come to the alaska legislature to get funding. in '96 and flew over the entire kenai peninsula, i was shocked at the level of infestation and potential for a huge fire.

and really because of the different landownerships and agency oversight and things like that, what we did initially was put a task force together that worked very well reaching common ground on things that everybody could agree on. natural fire breaks and enhancing them, whether there are power lines where you have 100 foot right away and trees on either side 200 feet tall. trying to broaden those and making sure you're clear rights of ways for roads a little bit further. then, perhaps as importantly as the firewise program, things like that. because people want to stay in their homes and protect their homes. it's their largest investment often times in their entire life.

so making plans ahead of time that put resources into those types of necessary areas so that when you have an event like this, you have the ability to actually combat it on a reasonable basis and at the same time, putting adequate resources to it and protecting the folks who are actually out there fighting it as well as the urban areas. we still have areas that we could use additional funding for but we're going to go forward with that in any event. the educational process for homeowners, where they can build protections as best they can and then making sure that our emergency operations plans are in place and reverse 911 system worked exceptionally well for pre-notifying folks and when there was an evacuation in two areas we could get them out in an orderly manner, again, it -- those are things that are critically important in the

interim between what as i said we know are going to be growing numbers of fires. >> thank you very much. jim, i said i have no more questions but i have one more. i just remembered when senator mayor navarre was talking to me. down in -- i saw this map, utility company, i think it might be homer electric. they had a power line going through two federal properties, one a reserve and one not. and yet they were able to clear the power line area all the way and then the new designation goes after that and they can't clear. to anyone else you wouldn't know the difference between the land and you see there's no clearing going on. and their point was part of their job because they have to access those utility lines, they have that area cleared but from a fire protection area, it's a fantastic opportunity there have

you run into this problem elsewhere where you might have a different designation and another one side by side, maybe the west has this problem. and yet -- i couldn't believe the map. just clearly they show where they clear cut and this strip where the power line, break, everything then this stops. the utility corridor keeps going and yet the fire could occur anywhere. do you run into this? is there something not to get you in trouble with any other agency, is there something we could do here to help this problem? >> yes, we run into the problem and it's not just differences of federal ownership but differences with state and private ownership. when we get into this, it really takes everybody coming together

and different agencies have different mandates. and different environmental clearance processes that they have to go through. but when you have a common problem such as this, and you have values at risk that need to be protected then you need to find a way of working it out together. >> i may bring you an issue then because in some of the states that have had huge swath of jurisdictional issues, especially federal land, seems like we should figure out this. the comment -- on one hand we're watching one area burn up, the other hand we're controlling it on another hand because we did this this way and other side burning it up because we didn't do the right control. so we'll follow up. let me, if i can too, william and kevin, thank you very much for being here. there was a recently released national wildfire strategy. are either one of you familiar with that? william, you want to go first? >> yes. >> can i assume and if i'm wrong, correct me.

can i assume your organization or members of your organization might have been involved in the strategy or at least responded to the strategy? >> our organization was not directly engaged in that. we certainly have had input over the years talking about fire management issues and about kind of the more strategic picture with how we manage our landscapes across the country. >> do you think -- why i bring this up, kevin had a comment about a blue ribbon committee. and one thing i'm always nervous about is another committee around this place. we'll committee stuff to death. you mentioned the i.g. report which is a question i'll ask my staff, what have we done and not done, because as we found with the v.a. when you have i.g. reports, you should respond to them. this might be the same thing. but do you think this strategy could morph into where we engage

stakeholders to say, look, we've got this strategy, is it the right strategy? what's the action plan that goes with the strategy to move us forward in a preventive way as well as a response in a sense. can you respond to that? >> i think the national strategy has great utility to get us thinking about how we engage -- how we engage each other across jurisdictional boundaries, across geopolitical boundaries and other regional boundaries. that's part of the problem we have in this country -- >> some of those land issues, they're jurisdictional. >> absolutely they are. it becomes very difficult and challenging to try to deal with

fire across those boundaries. because you have to understand fire doesn't respect geopolitical boundaries or other jurisdictional boundaries. >> we saw that in kenai, they really don't. >> so the challenge for us as a country is to figure out how can we engage the stakeholders and get people to understand this is not just a federal issue and just a state issue and local issue? this is a national issue that everybody has skin in the game on. >> good example of that, $3 billion plus taxpayer money and i think the data point that jim, you gave which i thought was interesting, 98% of those you get right at them, 2% that then add 30% of the cost. and it's -- those are ones where we may not be as aggressive as we maybe could be. i thought that was an interesting quote. let me -- can i ask -- i'm going to jump back and forth. you heard the commentary here.

i like the idea that we kind of attack this issue in the sense of what do we need to do. there are clearly changes in the environment for alaska to have a fire of that magnitude in may is unheard of. and we were very, very fortunate where it was and how quickly they could control it on the back end. it could have got to a whole bunch of businesses, homes, properties and lives and it seems like these little things of prevention could actually -- in some cases we lucked out and jumped over a river. but then hit a swamp. you know, thank god the swamp was there. it was going to move in a different direction. the winds helped us but then the winds were moving left and right literally in a 24-hour cycle and aggressively moving that fire. give me a thought on this strategy and could it be morphed into this idea you have that getting stakeholders and going after this. >> let me first say as an old firefighter, i'm not much on

commissions or meetings. >> i know a lot of firefighters and you fit that mold, i can tell you right now. >> with respect to this issue first, i do want to laud what the national action plan has done. i agree with phil. it has an awful lot of utility and the wildland fire leadership council is doing a good job. the international association is not part of that but this is not a parochial issue for us. this is such a complicated issue. you can get firefighters in a room and come to the consensus on the ground, the coordination between state and local assets is tremendous, but it's more than just a fire problem. in my oral testimony i use the term holistic, if you read the action plan and it's a great document, all it talks about throughout the document is bringing people outside the fire service, other stakeholders to the table. and quite frankly efforts were undertaken several years ago, the international codes council on trying to bring people

together. and they weren't successful. why? because frankly nobody had the hammer to get all of the stakeholders hammer to get all of the stake holders sitting at the table. the home builders and code enforcement folks, all of these people who weren't part of the effort but need to be involved in larger dialogue as it results to this problem. as everyone testified, it is going to be a problem for many, many years. my analogy was look at america burning -- >> if i can interrupt, what happened there was congress got involved and said, we see this as a national issue, we're not interested in one group taking the lead, we just wanted a strategy that has an action plan to determine if we can fund it, make it happen from the state, local, private federal levels. that's kind of what happened there. >> that's absolutely correct.

i have an aversion to those type of commissions, i don't see any other entity aside from the federal government that can force people to have that conversation. >> would you agree with that? >> i think the convener has to be the federal government. i think we need to start thinking outside the box of o, you know, what do we need to do? what are the interests we need to satisfy to get these people to the table? for some it may be we might need to consider some sort of incentive program such as if you participate in this program and do certain pretreatments to your land, you could get a tax break, for example. >> got you. >> that's an interesting idea. >> so, because, again, as you described on the kenai with the utility corridor, if we have people that are participating or

landowners participating in other landowners that are not, that's really not going to solve the big problem. >> more amazing that they were two federal agencies, one wanting to and one not. >> that is something we definitely have control over in this body. you had said something that, two things, in your written testimony it says we are still doing business the old way and it's not working. then you also talked in your oral presentation about apprenticeship programs, which i'm always intrigued by apprenticeship programs. we used them quite a bit when i was mayor of anchorage and as senator use internship programs all the time. i was intrigued by that. can you -- you say with business kind of as usual not changing much, can you give me a sense of one of those vacations we need to be doing, which i do agree on issue of a temporary -- we had the same problem when i was mayor, we had great parks and rec people that came back every single summer. they had probably 20 years doing it.

because the way the system worked, the first -- someone to come in working for the city full-time, first year, walk in and have a better chance of getting the job than the temporary. we changed that because if you have 20 years working seasonally, the odds are you're good at it because we wouldn't hire you back for 20 years. i introduced legislation to fix that. we think there are a lot of interesting ideas here. tell me what you're thinking when you say the old way. >> another good example is the funding issue, how do we pay for fire suppression? historically federal agencies have basically been given a budget of x million dollars for fire suppression. when the money runs out -- >> we rob everywhere. >> the agency is forced to look else where in its budget to come up because, again, we can't fire is unique, relatively speaking,

in terms of an agency's program. we can't just when the money runs out can't just walk away and fold our tents up and leave. >> again, so you support the support of the bill and what we're doing in appropriations committee, which i feel confident we're moving in the right path here when we get the interior budget bill we're doing two bills a week now in the full committee. that seems like, i mean, to be frank with you, i was so much shocked when we got here and we were fighting at a 20% level or so and we know the average. we know what's going to happen. we would hope not, right? everyone hopes we don't spend anything in disaster firefighting, but that's not real. make this approach is better. that's a new approach that you think would be huge. >> i think that's going to ensure that the agency has the funds in the programs that help

it to accomplish its mission. whether the programs are pre-treatment instead of robbing money from pre-treating forest fuels and have a full budget and we can continue to do these projects to mitigate future fire occurrences and hopefully allow us to catch fires when they are small before they escape and become huge catastrophes. >> i absolutely concur. we have to have a different mentality. years ago, wildfires were largely contained in areas, they were simply that, wildland. massive fires and it's a natural phenomenon and they burn. part of the mentality was you allow it to burn. i'm not qualified from an environmental standpoint to comment on that. with the fire fighting standpoint, we have to change

your view on how to do that. when you talk to the folks in terms of my membership which is municipal, we don't represent the wildland folks but almost all west of the mississippi are engaged in fire fighting. the coordination on the ground is great. if for example in california we have a california department of forestry and able to mitigate the event before federal resources are there. conversely, the same thing happens when there's a federal station near a state land or privately held land. the radio systems are compatible, there's a unified command structure and it works very well. however, what we are hearing from our folks is that there is an issue and it gets back to money on timely repayments for local assets assisting the federal government. this is something that particularly in california some

municipalities and counties are actually skewing a little bit mutual aid agreements because they are concerned and it gets back to base he money, the same thing applies to training. training is vitally important. but when you have a municipal fire department and has to train people on structural response and ems and hazardous material, clearly there's only so much money in a pot. one of the things we want to ensure, the red card, qualified certification versus the trained certification, we want to make sure that every one of our firefighters exposed to wildland fire is going to be number one safe and number two effective on the fire line. there's no substitute for training and unfortunately that cost money. >> let me ask one last question. i want to thank the whole panel, this is helpful. i know in the fire, correct me if i'm wrong, or jim you might be able to know this, we had to bring in two canadian water tankers, if i remember right in addition to our crew, if i remember this right.

>> i know in the fire, correct me if i'm wrong, or jim you might know this, we had to bring two canadian water tankers if i remember right to our crew, if i remember this right. this is what happened, they brought in blackhawk helicopters and had planes that were also deploying retardant in areas that it would be effective on the particular fuel sources. >> jim, you laid out a an agreement with alaska and probably the states that border from the lower 48. do you -- on the equipment that we have, that we operate and we have relationships with, do we believe that that we have good resources for continued maintenance and upgrade or is that an area we have to look at here long term to make sure that we're not, let's assume for example, this season is a busy season, again. it's the argument you might make

for a guy doing aviation that the more hours you put on the plane, the more wear and tear it takes and therefore the capacity for it to operate long are term diminishes. do you see that as an issue that we need to really reexamine because fires are more severe and happening on longer spreads of time? meaning season is longer, i should say. is that something we have to look at or something you are looking at or? >> both. we are looking at it. we have made some strides. we have moved from primary fleet of 1950 vintage aircraft that are getting tired to a next generation fleet, but we're just getting into that. there's a ways to go on making sure we've updated our aviation assets, especially the large air tank portion of that. i would say that the progress is

good but we're not there. >> and we did something last year if i remember this right through the national defense authorization bill, we got 21 went your direction and 14 went to the coast guard. >> that's correct. >> of surplus planes from the military, who knows what they were going to do with them. but they saw an opportunity, right and we were able to mobilize them for forest service as well as for the u.s. coast guard? >> yes, that's correct. that was a welcome addition to the fleet. and we don't have those yet but we will. we'll start phasing them in next year. that was seven c-130 hs and we have 16 sherpa aircraft. for smoke jumper platforms. >> i know we worked on that from our office with senator mccain because we thought it was a great win/win for the coast guard for equipment that's desperately needed. we were happy to do that. i think the record -- the record

will stay open for 14 days for questions and comments. i want to thank the full panel here, especially mayor nevarre, via teleconference. you're here, which is good. we appreciate that. especially because you're dealing with a real live issue on the ground. we thank the panel here and thank you for your written testimony, there's a lot of suggestions that you placed in there that will examine. this committee that deals with emergency disaster first responders, fema and others, this is an important issue and i have a feeling as you described very well, mr. hubbard, that the summer is just beginning and we're already seeing a lot of issues. thank you all very much. the meeting is adjourned and record will be open for 14 days. >> thank you.

on the next "washington journal" we'll focus on president obama's three-country, four-day trip to europe. our guest is stephen szabo. and we'll mark the 70th anniversary of d-day from the world war ii memorial on the national mall. "washington journal" is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. russia as united states is a nation that believes in its mission and we believe in freedom we believe in distributing our core values which suddenly disappeared in 2000s. but it didn't go anywhere because at our core it was still

there. the biggest for all those years was the victory there. that is our main national holiday. and that unites the whole nation. and how it was presented to the nation by president putin is that in ukraine those are western sponsestered fascists that came to power and flex of former ukrainian army during world war ii and, so, he used this to prove that these are fascists who are fighting against both russian and ukrainian nation. so, it's misinterpretation that we are looking just to protect russians or russians speaking, no, for the overwhelming

majority of russians, we are continuing world war ii. and we are liberating, really liberating ukraine from the fascist threat. >> this weekend on c-span, a look into the politics of putin's russia saturday morning at 10:00 eastern. on c-span2 book tv, live two-day coverage of the "chicago tribune" printer fest starting saturday at 11:00 a.m. eastern. c-span3 american history and beginning saturday morning at 10:30 eastern. >> senator sharon bill introduced a bill to allow individuals without standing student loans to refinance at lower interest rates. chaired a hearing wednesday that looked at student loan debt. it's an hour.

subcommittee come to order. thank you for joining us. ohio and other panel, thank you for coming back and being of assistance to us in a number. about a decade ago we began to see the warning signs. a few years later we watched the combination of wall street greed and attentive regulators helping to destroy our economy. we're still picking up the pieces. the crisis, the topic of today's hearing. student loan servicing are very much interconnected. for the course of the last few years we have seen homeowners become victims of improper foreclosure when their mortgage servicer could have introduced them to enroll in a loan modification program but chose not to. hear we are, again, outstanding student debt is $1.2 million and student loan is second to mortgage debt as we all have heard.

in may 2013, the consumer financial protection bureau described heavy student loan burdens and a growing group of business leaders and regulators have joined to describe how student loans can interrupt the slowly recovering economy. excessive student debt can defer or destroy the dreams of perspective first-time home buyers, small business entrepreneurship and limit the options of young graduates that might work as teachers and doctors in underserved areas. defaults will have long-term impacts on recovery. it's critical that we ensure that student loan servers do their jobs properly to protect individual borrowers and our economy as a whole. last year i wrote a letter to some of the largest banks and student loan companies asking about their efforts to modify loans for borrowers in trouble, measuring their success and enrollingoe enrolling borrowers in affordable plans. no bank is enrolled more than 5%

of borrowers who are in trouble. i'm concerned that student loan servers care more about maximizing profits than giving proper customer service. one of the questions to consider, the repayment system set up to make borrowers fail. are servicers making sure that borrowers under the full range experiencing financial hardship and many loan repayment options are better suited for contract lawyers than recent graduates. if we don't give graduates the tools to succeed, we can't expect them it have a fair shot at building a successful livelihood. how can borrowers understand the repayment options best suited to their specific needs when written in legallies that only lawyers are trained to understand. that's clearly unrealistic at best. in the dodd-frank act i proposed within the cfpb and, again, shoutout to senator warren for her terrific work at the beginning and since on that

bureau. that office has issued reports describing pervasive and troubling practices, servers allocating payments to maximize late fees and activating their military benefits on their student loans and all be orrowe enrolling in loan modifications programs. based on referrals from this office and the department of justice the fdic found the nation's largest servicerer broken a series of laws. it's been ordered to pay fines and compensation to more than $90 million. in february another major player in the private student loan market revealed it, too, was under investigation by cfpb for its student loan practices services. recommends that congress examine some of the reforms to the credit card and mortgage servicing markets such as ones related to payment processing and servicing transfers in order to improve the student loan

servicing profit. harm borrowers in our economy and borrower bill of rights which provides protections and repayment options for private loan borrowers who are at risk for default. required lenders to notify borrowers and would protect borrowers from penalties due to errors on the part of the servicerer. students loan have significantly higher interest rates, limited payment options and no relief for the many graduates who don't make the amount of money that they expected or who have been laid off or even unable to find work. my refinancing education addresses this problem by authoring treasury to make the student loan payment more efficient. allow borrowers and more affordable loans at no cost to taxpayers. i look forward to our witnesses views on servicing practices and

the opportunities to ensure accountability and better quality customer service. senator warren, you want to make a statement? okay, thank you. let me introduce the four witnesses. we have votes at 11:00 and go as much past 11:00 as we can, but, obviously, we'll ask people to stay within their time limits, if they can. nancy hoover financial director at denison. past chair of the national direct student loan coalition a grassroots organization that works to improve the federal direct loan program. 30 years working in financial office and helping students afford secondary education. william hubbard vice president of student veterans and he joined the marine corps at 17, currently is a drilling reservist out of joint base bowling. welcome, mr. hubbard.

mr. robert geremia teaches ap u.s. history in district of columbia history. he has some students here with him today. thank you for that. he served as a student mentor grade level leader, track coach, co-representative and remember the american federation of teachers and washington teachers union. lindsay burke fellow education policy at the heritage foundation. done extensive research on the government's role on education. welcome, ms. burke. ms. hoover, if you'll begin. >> members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify today at the hearing regarding the borrowers experience with student loans. my name is nancy hoover and i am the director of financial aid at denison university in grandville, ohio. a selective, independent, undergraduate liberal arts college with an enrollment of approximately 2,200 students.

i have been the director of financial aid at denison since 1994 and the direct loan program in year two of the program. denison's endowment allows us to financial aid from ourversity fund to 97% of our student body. an average of 47% of our graduates borrow federal loans and 4% borrow private loans. the cumulative federal indebt indebtedness for the denison 2014 class was a little over $21,000. the federal direct loan program turns 20 years old this year. the direct loan delivery process for loan funds to students has continued to be efficient, reliable and easy for schools to administer. even after the 100% transition of all schools to the dl program. when the direct loan program was first implemented, all of the loans were serviced by a single contractor. all correspondents to borrowers was identified as the william d.

federal direct loan program and the logo for the department of education made the servicing contractor for these loans invisible to the students. the department had to expand the number of services to accommodate the increased volume of loan servicing required for the purchase of federally backed loans in 2008 and the transition of all schools to the federal direct lending program. the department issued new deal servicing contractors, contracts to agencies who had experienced servicing student loans and the ffel program and allowed, but did not require these new servers to co-brand their correspondents with the department logo. since the servicer's logo appears larger than the department logo borrowers are confused why ether receiving written or electronic correspondents from an unknown agency. services report a large percentage of unopened e-mails from the borrowers because they believe the correspondence is

junk mail or spam. the inherent flaw with the multi-servicer is buyers do not understand who is servicing their loans and a greater risk of defaulting. currently, there are 15 contractors servicing federally held loans. the current federal loan servicing environment needs to be simplified by a mandate that contractors be invisible agents of the federal government with identical processes and policies and the number of contractors be limited. congress made progress in this area with a bipartisan budget act of 2013, which eliminates the special treatment for nonprofit student loan servicers. when the department of education has the opportunity to renew the servicer contracts, it should consult with all of the stakeholders in student loan servicing and open the contract bidding process to other entities in financial sectors outside the previous ffel environment. borrowers need their point of contact for all repayment

activities to be a single web portal and one phone number for account access. the department of education has made significant process towards creating a single portal for students who borrow federal loans with the creation of stude studentloans.gov a robust portal which students can execute every required process for their federal loans, except to initiate the repayment process. stude stude studentloan studentloans.gov so students can repay instead of going to a specific servicer website. senator brown, i'd like to thank you and other members of the committee for your support of bank on students emergency loan refinancing act and the student loan borrower bill of rights. assists borrowers with loans at multiple services to refinance all of their loans to have a single servicer and also required servicers to notify of income-based options.

repayments from which the borrower can choose, extremely confusing for students to understand the intricacies of all the repayment options. congress to reduce the number of loan repayment plans to two. standard and income based from which students can choose. repayments should be collected through the payroll withholding. many borrowers are unaware that the servicer has changed until they encounter a problem. according to the report by protection bureau, many borrowers have filed complaints to correct errors related to the servicing contracts. they need to provide notices to a change in their service like the mortgage servicers are required to do. thank you, chairman brown, to provide administrative perspective on student loan services and i'm happy to respond any questions you or members of the subcommittee may have. >> thank you, mr. hubbard. >> chairman brown and members of the subcommittee, thank you for

inviting student veterans of america to submit our testimony on student loan servicing, the borrower's experience. as the premier advocate for student veterans and higher education, it is our privilege to share this on the ground perspective with you today. as veterans graduate across the country, we believe that the student debt burden will utimately be one of the largest inhibiting factors to their long-term success. this stems from the lack of access to individual and institutional levels. they cite the following challenges. difficulty obtaining accurate information about loans, convoluted pathways to gathering information and implementing programs and unnecessary road blocks put in place by servicers. despited despite avid efforts getting service members and veterans the right information about the protections at the right time remains a challenge. service members and veterans have access to protections under

the service member civil relief act, access to many different student loan actions. this does not function cohesively and programs often function independent of each other. we have seen that many service members enter the military with preservice student loan debt. this existing debt is also a major source of the overall debt owned by service members and veterans. existing debt is particularly harmful to a service member or veteran when servicers do not comply with protections afforded. there is also a common misconception that veterans that go to school on a gi bill has a free ticket. we know this is simply not true. as an earned benefit not only is the gi bill not free but may not always cover the cost of a full education. this is especially true for those attending private institutions or for those considered out of state residen residents. to prevent situations that may violate a service member or

veterans rights, we believe that institutions need to have access to a full range of financial data. this data is necessary for institutions to be able to effectively counsel their students about futures. individuals should also have access to this data to achieve the highest level of consumer awareness. currently, there is no widely used system that would allow any individual with education debt to see all of their loans in a centralized place. meteor, run by the national student clearing house, could be such a tool. the meteor program has the unique function of providing all private lender data and would simply require the approval from the department of education to access direct loan data. to date, this has yet to happen. while we might not know the full effect of student debt for this generation of veterans, we are beginning to see the first and second order effects today. service members and veterans with student debt are significantly less likely to

build their own business, save for a home or save for their retirement. the effect ovthese issues will impact the economy for years to come and will continue to distort economic behavior, if not taken seriously. in light of the issues we've identified, sva has recommended various solutions. of the solutions we submitted to the record, we would like to highlight one in particular. program coordination. many programs exist to support the repayment of student loans, though very few of their programs have coordinated inner program relationships. a major opportunity exists, if current programs were coordinated and streamlined to function seamlessly. putting these pieces of this puzzle together would be an important step forward. the investment that america has made in the gi bill and its veterans becomes an even clearer asset to our economy when those veterans are empowered with the right tools. by reducing the debt burden on

service members and veterans, we can set them up for long-term success. we thank the chairman, ranking member and the subcommittee members for your time, attention and devotion to the cause of veterans in higher education. as always, we welcome your feedback and questions and we look forward to continuing our work with this subcommittee, the senate committee on banking, housing and urban affairs and the congress to ensure the success of all generations of veterans through higher education. thank you. >> thank you, mr. hubbard. mr. geremia. >> mr. chairman and the distinguished members of this committee. my name is robert geremia and a social studies teacher at woodrow wilson high school in washington, d.c. i come to you as a member of the american federation of teachers and the washington teachers union. i want to thank chairman brown for the opportunity to testify. my experience is with student debt and loan repayment. i hope that sharing my

experiences in the financial aid process makes it easier for students and their families to pay for higher education. growing up in rhode island in a family of teachers, i always felt like i could make the world a better place by helping kids. i graduated from rhode island college with a batch lbachelor degree having secondary in history. while i was fortunate my parents were able to cover my tuition, i still had to pay for books and other expenses. i started my teaching career like so many of my colleagues with credit card debt. i sought to teach in an urban area and that's how i ended up here in washington, d.c. i have to admit, i was not fully prepared for the high cost of living in washington, d.c., on a starting teacher's salary. after several years of teaching i knew i needed to further development my skills but i didn't want to take time off from teaching and going to school for my master's degree at

night would take my energy from my students and their work. i was accept under to one of the most respected teaching programs in the country. i was able to earn a master's degree in social studies education over three consecutive summers and the program, i believe, to this day, was the right professional choice for me. however, in order to attend this highly regarded program, i had to take out several loans despite my full-time salary, on top of tuition and fees, i had to account for two apartments as i could not contractually sublet my apartment in washington, d.c. i had had to travel to new york and books and typical living expenses. while the focus of college affordability is really on tuition, it was really the other expenses that drove up my borrowing. after three summers i graduated with my master's degree and approximately $37,000 of debt. while i received some grant money during my program and

subsidized loans of over $25,000 for three years, i had to take an additional $11,000 in unsubsidized loans. as i'm working to pay off these loans i was puzzled by several issues. first, my loans switched providers twice and never quite clear to me why the transfers were made. in an additional amount has been debited from my checking account. second, when i recently set up an online account the information about my loan including payoff options and payoff dates was available. that information was never provided to me on my paper statements. i'm proud of my 12-year career here in the district of columbia as a highly efefective teacher, earned that rating last year. yet my financial life has been put on hold because of the loans i have taken to stay in the classroom. my loans have a current interest rate of over 6% and i will pay

over $10,000 in interest on top of the principal. hard to see how i could save to buy a home, though i could secure a mortgage of an interest rate at 4% and i have a car loan currently that is at 1.9% interest rate. yet, there is nothing i can do to lower my student loan interest rate. with more and more students being forced to take on debt, i believe we must make it easier for them by having access to grants and lower interest rate loans. i made a decision to get an advance degree to be able to further my career and benefit the students i am committed to serving. after about two years of payment, i learned that i am likely eligible for two programs that could lower my monthly payments and shorten the life of my loan. i believe many college students would be more likely to pursue teaching and many of my colleagues would be more likely to pursue advance degrees if these programs were streamlined and better understood. i suggest congress find a way to reach out proactively to

teachers about these options. because the process was so convoluted for me, i wonder what will happen to my students, many of whom are graduating as i testify today. and begin this whole process. many will be the first generation in their families to attend college, others have worked hard and have been admitted to the nation's top colleges and universities, but will be unable to attend because of costs. i'm afraid some of my students don't understand the way high interest rates and basic living expenses will multiply their debt and i don't want them to be face would the same lack of transparency and confusion. i hope congress can find a way to ease the burden on students and families and make attending college and continuing education more affordable. i fear if we do not, a generation, like myself and my peers, will be too saddled with debt to invest in housing, businesses or make career choices based on anything other than earning potential.

thank you, mr. chairman, distinguished chairmen. i look forward to responding to questions. >> thank you. ms. burke. >> thank you, mr. chairman, distinguished members of the committee. my name is lindsey burke. the views i express in this testimony is my own and not representing any official position of the heritage foundation. for many earning a college degree is the way to climb the ladder of economic mobility. associated with greater earnings. median earnings for individuals whose highest degree was a high school diploma totaled $30,000 in 2011, compared to $45,000 for those earning about a bachelor's degree. college graduates on average earn $650,000 more over the course of a 40-year career. while the college degree isn't the only route to upward mobility, for many it represents the most promising path for achieving their full earnings potential. th