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house budget committee chairman paul ryan at the enterprise institute today. it would consolidate poverty programs and give states flexibility in how those funds are spent. after congressman ryan's remarks, policy analysts discussed his proposal. this is an hour. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. i'm going to ask you to take your seats. but there's standing room only. i'm delighted to see that. i'm arthur brooks. i'm honored to welcome you today, and to welcome the chairman of the house budget committee, congressman paul ryan here to aei. congressman ryan has spoken here many times. he's a friend of aei's, and we're delighted to see his

continuing willingness to tackle the important and difficult issues that many others are not willing to confront. today he's here to talk about an issue that's near and dear to my heart. and those of my colleagues here at aei, expanding opportunity in america. he's particularly focused on low income and vulnerable populations in the united states. one of the things that those of you who follow congressman ryan's career and pronouncements, remember and notice consistently is that he knows that great leaders, that patriots fight for everyone, no matter how they vote. when we forget this, we don't represent all the americans. when we remember this, we can truly reunite our country. we're excited about that. we have a moral vision at aei that congressman ryan shares and we're looking forward to hearing about his new plans today. we're going to be hearing from a distinguished panel after congressman ryan's remarks, and after that, after that panel on which congressman ryan will

participate, he will be taking your questions from the audience for the balance of the hour. please join me in welcoming congressman paul ryan. [ applause ] >> good morning, everybody. how are you. first off, i want to start by thanking arthur for his hospital irt for all that he's done, and for just the patience that his team and for opening up this great facility. i look forward to seeing the new place you've got. i look forward to hearing from everybody. this is going to be a participatory event today. let's start with a subject we can all agree on. hard working taxpayers deserve a break in this country. too many families are working harder and harder, yet they're falling further and further behind. that's just what's happening in america today.

the cost of food, housing, and energy and gas, they keep going up. but paychecks have not budged. so whether you are a republican or democrat, let's all agree that america deserves better. what do we want. we want to help the economy. and part of that is having a safety net that is strong. those who both cannot help themselves and those who just need a helping hand to get up and going in life. that's our goal. the problem is, that's not what we're getting. though it's not for lack of trying, we spend $800 billion each year on 92 programs at the federal level to justify poverty. yet we have the highest poverty rate in a generation. deep poverty is near record highs. we can take a step back and look at all of this, you've got to think, we can do better than this. now, i don't have all the

answers. far from it. nobody does. but the way i see it, we have an obligation to expand opportunity in america. to deliver real change, real solutions, real results. and to do that, we need to stop listening to the loudest voices in the room and start listening to the smartest voices in the room. i have spent the last year traveling all over this country, learning from people fighting poverty on the front lines. you know, i've been to a high school in milwaukee, that's eliminated 14 games from their school grounds. i've been to a church in indianapolis, i saw hundreds of men get off drugs. i've been to a homeless shelter in denver. a rehab center in san antonio. the point is, there is a lot of good that is going on in this country. it's amazing. and since washington can't fight poverty alone, it is time to bring in the reinforcements.

so today, i would like to start a conversation. i want to talk about how we can repair the safety net and help families get ahead. the thing i want to talk about, in addition to that, is a few ideas that some of my colleagues in the house and senate have proposed, to put forward to help income support, education, criminal justice, cutting down on red tape. each idea touches on a very different topic. but they all reinforce the same principle. you have more flexibility in exchange for more accountability. my thinking is, listen to the boots on the ground. listen to the local leaders who are actually changing the status quo. who are actually succeeding. let them try unique and innovative ideas with a proven track record. and then, test the results. that's my guiding principle. and the first place to apply it is the safety net. today federal aid is fragmented

and formulaic. washington looks at each person's needs in isolation, like food, housing or energy. it doesn't see how their needs interact. what's worse, washington looks at each person in isolation. it doesn't see how people need to interact. the secret to our country's success is collaboration. people working together, people learning together, people building together of our own free will. what government should do then is encourage collaboration. bring people together. get them into the mix. empower them, don't oversee them. don't force them. what we need to do is to coordinate assistance to families in need, get the public and private sector working together. that's how we can smooth the transition from assistance to success. the fact is, each person's needs fit into a coherent hole, a

career. and a community. if the public and private sector work together, we can have a more personalized, customized form of aid, that focuses on their needs, and their strengths, both the problem and the potential. i would start a pilot program called an opportunity grant. it would consolidate up to 11 federal programs into one stream of funding of participating states. the idea would be, let states try different ways of providing aid and then test the results. in short, more flexibility in exchange for more accountability. my thinking basically is, get rid of these bureaucratic formulas and put the emphasis on results. participation would be voluntary. no state would be forced to join. and we would not expand the program until all the evidence was in. the point is, you don't just pass a law and hope for the best. if you've got an idea, let's try it, let's test it. see what works.

don't make promise after promise. let's let success build on success. each state that wanted to participate would submit a plan to the federal government, that plan would lay out in detail the state's proposed alternative. if everything passed muster, the federal government would give the green light. the state would get more flexibility. it would get to combine into one funding stream up to 11 different programs. things like food stamps, housing assistance, child care, cash welfare. this new simplified stream of funding would become the opportunity grant. and it would be budget neutral. the state would get the same amount of money as they would under current law, not a penny less. in effect the state would say, give us some space and we can figure this out. the federal government would say, go to it, on four conditions. first, you have to spend this money on people in need. you can't take this money and put it on roads or bridges, no funny business. second, every person who can

work, should work. third, you've got to give people basic choices. the state welfare agency can't be the only game in town. people must have at least one other option, whether it's a nonprofit, for-profit, or what have you. fourth, you've got to test the results. the federal government in the state must agree on a neutral third party to keep track of progress. that's the deal. so if approved, a state could use that money to expand state programs and partner with local service providers. in other words, families in need would have a choice. there wouldn't just be a federal agency or state agency, instead they could choose from a list of certified providers. we're talking nonprofits like catholic charities, or community groups unique to your neighborhood. these groups would work with people one on one and provide a personalized aid through case management. think of it this way, right now, you've got to go to a bunch of

different offices to enroll in a bunch of different programs, each with all their different rules. under the opportunity grant, you could go to one office, and you could work with one partnership for all of your needs. that person would give you financial assistance and also act as a personal resource. maybe you're struggling with an addiction. you need counseling. maybe you come from a broken family. and you need a network of support. the point is, you would work together to get you from where you are, to where you want to be. let's take one example. let's call her andrea. she's 24. she has two kids. they're 2 and 4 years old. her husband left the family six months ago. she doesn't know how to contact him. andrea graduated from high school, but her only work experience was a two-year stint in retail. she and her kids now live with her parents in a two-bedroom mobile home. her parents can't support her over the long haul. she's been trying to find work

for the last five months. she doesn't have a car. she can't afford child care. and her dream is ultimately one day to become a teacher. here's how it would work under this plan. andrea would go to a local service provider. she would sit down with her case manager and develop an opportunity plan. that plan would pinpoint her strengths, her opportunities for growth, her short, medium and long-term goals. the two of them would sign a contract. andrea would meet specific benchmarks for success. she would establish a timeline for meeting them. consequences for missing them, and rewards for exceeding them. andrea's short-term goal is to find a job. but her long-term goal is to find the right job, to become a teacher. so she might find a job in retail to pay the bills, meanwhile her case manager would help pay for transportation and child care so she could take classes at night. over time, andrea could go to

school, get her certification and find a teaching job. the point is, with someone involved there to help coordinate her aid, andrea would not just find a job, she would start a career. and all this time, a neutral third party would keep tabs on each provider and their success rate. it would look at the key metrics agreed to by the state and federal government. how many people are finding jobs. how many people are getting off of assistance. how many people are moving out of poverty and so on. any provider who came up short, they wouldn't be able to participate any further. at the end of the program, we would pull the results and go from there. in short, we are reconceiving the federal government's role here. no longer would the federal government try to supplant our local communities, but it would try to support them. in my view, the federal government is the rear guard. it protects the supply lines. it's the people on the ground

who are the vanguard. they fight poverty on the front lines. they have to lead in this effort. and washington should follow their lead. in that spirit, i want to throw my support behind a number of ideas that i think a lot of colleagues both on the left and right have been supporting in the house and senate. they both expand opportunity by taking decision-making away from washington and bringing more accountability to government at all levels. first, we should make sure that in this country, it always pays to work. i would do that by increasing the earned income tax credit for childless workers. after reviewing the federal government's role in all of this space, this is one of the programs that's really shown results. it encourages people to work by increasing the rewards of work. and we all know that the more people that we have in the work force, the more opportunity we have in this country. so i've doubled the maximum

credit for childless workers to $1,000. and that would lower the minimum eligibility from 25 to 21 years old. this is similar to what the president has proposed. but with one big difference. i wouldn't raise taxes. i'd pay for it by eliminating ineffective programs and corporate welfare, like subsidies to energy companies. stop the programs that don't work and support the programs that do. second, we need to expand access in education. we need to give students more options. in other words, we need accreditation reform. sounds dry, but it has a huge difference. this is similar to what my friend senator mike lee of utah proposed. we need to bring competition to the college cartels. let other schools in on the action. and we need to keep reforming job training programs. if employers can design their own curriculum, then workers will know just what skills they need.

third, we need common-sense criminal justice reform. we need to give people the opportunity to earn a second chance in this country. luckily, my colleagues have done a lot of good work on this front. senator mike lee, labrador and scott have introduced a sentencing guidelines. it would give judges more discretion with low-risk, nonviolent offenders. all we're saying is, they don't have to give a maximum sentence every time. there's no reason to lock anyone up longer than necessary. and we also have to tackle recidivism. about half of our ex-cons are reincarcerated within three years of release. think about that. but we know that there are programs that work. that get people out of a life of crime. that's why congressman jason chaffetz and bobby scott

introduced the act that would exchange time in prison for time in pre-release custody, as long as they complete a program with a proven track record. here's the point. non-violent, low-risk offenders, don't lock them up and throw away the key. get them in counseling, get them in training, help them rejoin and contribute to our society. finally, we need to cut down on bureaucratic red tape. a lot of families are trying to get ahead. but washington is simply getting in the way. so i would pose a very simple rule for future regulations. if you are a federal agency and you would want to unburden low-income families, you've got to go to congress. they have to fight for it and do so on the record. it's your government and you deserve a voice and a vote.

all of these are good ideas. they're just the start. what we're releasing today, we're calling a discussion draft. because this is meant to start a discussion. we want to hear from people. we want people to send us their ideas. we want constructive feedback. so, please, e-mail us at expanding opportunity@.gov. nobody asked me what party i belonged to. they welcomed anybody who was there, who was willing to listen and learn. that should be our approach in washington. enough with the politics. let's talk solutions. because this really isn't a republican or democratic issue, it's an american issue. as a matter of principle, we need to build a society where hard work is rewarded, and every american has the opportunity to succeed, regardless of

birthplace or background. and to do that, everybody's got to get involved. everybody's got to pull in the same direction. and if we all work together, we can build a healthy economy, we can fix this, we can get this done, and that's what the good people of this nation are expecting of us. that's what they deserve. thank you very much. and i look forward to this conversation. [ applause ] thank you. >> we're going to turn the podium over now virtually to robert doar at aei. joined us only in the past six months. he's expanding the focus greatly. and we're delighted to have him host this next panel. >> thank you, arthur. and as congressman ryan said,

let the discussion begin. we have an outstanding panel today of experts in this field who are well-known to many of the audience. so i'll keep the introductions very short. starting on my immediate left is ron haskins, co-director on children and family from the brookings institution. he's also a senior consultant at the casey foundation in baltimore. from february to december of 2002, haskins was the senior adviser to the president for welfare policy at the white house. ron is well-known, extremely well respected in this field and we're very honored to have you with us here today. next to ron is stuart butler, director of the center for policy innovation, a division of the heritage foundation, charged with the innovative solutions to some of america's toughest challenges. before taking the helm of cpi in august of 2010, butler guided heritage's domestic policy research for almost 30 years.

stuart, we're glad you're here as well. finally, bob woodson, on the far left, next to congressman ryan, founder for the center of neighborhood enterprise. bob developed and coordinated national community development programs. durk the 1970s, directed the urban league's administration justice decision. he served as a resident fellow of this institution. we're honored to have you. to start the discussion, we'll have ron go first, then stuart, then bob, then congressman ryan will respond. then i'll ask a question and we'll go up to the audience. >> i'll make four points. first, a sweeping proposal, this is worthy of a think tank. it's full of references to social science. things are justified or explained. it's a spectacular document. and i would emphasize sweeping.

opportunity grants, eipc for childless workers, education at all levels, criminal sentencing and other prisoner reforms, regulatory reform and program evaluation. i've not seen anything that's from an individual member in many years introduced in congress. second point, results-driven research. so if you need to sleep, now would be the time. because people don't pay much attention to this. it's one of the most important things going on in the country now. we're last learning that our programs don't work. and that they can be evaluated and you could use the evaluations to approve them. the bush administration on this. obama is even bigger. this creates a real possibility for bipartisanship and a focus on results, which we should do in all our programs. third, the opportunity grants, by far the most controversial part of this, and the part that i hope doesn't get all the attention, but i'm afraid it might. because it's the most controversial. it gives flexibility.

i hope as bob woodson will emphasize, what i like about the grants, and i think most people do, they call it opportunity grants, but we know it's giving flexibility to states which is something democrats traditionally have been very tardy about. so the part about bob woodson is, this is a way to get money to the local level, and the platoons of society, civil society can benefit from some. money, funded to do things that government just can't do. like tell people, you've got to stop that. you have to stop that. and i've heard that many people are associated with bob and bob himself says the same thing. the opportunity grants are really crucial. if you are a republican, and you believe the flexibility and block grants are the way to go, you could not improve on paul's proposal. why? because it's not national. it's not changing the statutes of food stamps, they remain in place. but five states, seven states, some number of states will effect the experiments and we'll

find out if these ideas really play out and if the money does actually get down to the local level. that is exactly the way to go about it. it's a compromise from the beginning. finally, the politics of this situation we're in right now. if paul will excuse me for observing that almost everything in this proposal is possible for partisanship. it is really a bipartisan proposal from the very beginning. if the media focuses on the controversy, that's a huge mistake, they're missing the story. there are very few republicans who would have the courage especially in the situation we now face to introduce such a bipartisan reasonable proposal. this raises a question, the second question, about republicans, about politics. and that is, if they'll have the sense to support this. in 1996, republicans reformed in a way had never been done before. it was because they were united. the republicans and the house and in the senate, a lot of fights behind the scenes, ugly and everything, but publicly

everything was -- it was agreed upon. and eventually the president agreed with us, and a majority of the democrats voted for it. if we take the senate, and the senate introduces something along these lines in both the house and senate pass it, we can put something on the president's desk that will become law. already partisanship. come on. >> i think our late and mutual friend would call this an audacious proposal. it's bold. it shakes up thinking. it has the potential for partisanship, as ron said. and it raises lots of questions. it has to be discussed and considered, and turning this into a major proposal. so i'm very supportive of this approach. i welcome the congressman for putting it forward.

i think if you look at some of the elements, i want to raise some issues, and some questions about the proposals. while supporting very much certainly the opportunity the grant idea. it is absolutely critical if you're going to see innovative policy in this country, to give incentives to states and non-government organizations to try out ideas, to be innovative and to learn from them. that's the heart of the opportunity grant proposal. i think it's very important for somebody very much devoted to the federalism myself for many, many years, not to be romantic about states, this proposal isn't romantic about states, it recognizes that you've got to in some cases push innovation as well as give incentives for innovations. the conditions that paul ryan mentioned in his remarks are very, very important. it is critical that as part of the opportunity grant idea that work requirements are core elements of that approach, we

have work requirements to some degree in the welfare system right now. they were never as wide placed into the law as they should have been in 1996. but they should be extended, and will be extended by this proposal. it's very important, too, to go beyond the state bureaucracies. as i'm sure when you went around the country you found. often local organizations are held back by the frustrations of rules and regulations and bureaucrats. this proposal directs the states if they want to get the green lithe, to show in very clear ways how they're going to reach past the bureaucracy and enable these organizations to play a much greater role. it's also critically important to have evaluations, as the congressman said. we've had so many policies that sound good, sometimes look good, but actually do very little. systematic evaluations is absolutely essential to see if innovations are true. and to enable the key elements

to be exported elsewhere. it's very important to have states to have some financial skin in the game. i'm not sure that the pure opportunity grant has enough to encourage states to have skin in the game. and to see the kind of financial -- the 1996 legislation gave states a very powerful financial incentive to get people out of welfare, and into independent work. i don't see that in this. and i think that's an element that has to be looked at more carefully. in terms of the earning tax credit, it is clearly better to get people to work and to be able to get hired, take home earnings, than to increase the minimum wage, which very often actually cuts jobs for people who are very low skilled and just starting from school. it's much more targeted. of course, there are design issues to get this right. these will have to be part of the conversation that follows this proposal. one of the issues is fraud.

we have a lot of fraud in the eitc currently. and so in tandem with expanding it, it's very important to look at better ways of rooting out that fraud. it's also very important to look at personal incentives that can occur. if a young man has a larger eitc and is working, under this proposal, then marries a woman who's also obtaining the eitc, you can have a situation of a strong marriage penalty, if that tops out, and if the total amount tops -- goes above the total amount under the eitc rules. you could find financial penalties for getting married. that would be a terrible thing as a result of this proposal. when you look at the design stage, it's really important to look at the incentives as well as the potentially incentives of discouraging year round work.

if you increase the eitc, you may not see people working the full year. it's important to look at design changes that will encourage year-long work. i think the work requirements in combination with the eitc would be the right way to do that. thirdly, and the accreditation i echo what you said, congressman, that if you look at what is necessary to enable people to get the skills, to command real wages, good wages in the work force, getting college or college equivalent is critical. we have enormous financial barriers about doing it. the way we'll see a solution to that problem is dramatic reductions in the cost of tuition. you now have college for america, part of the southern new hampshire university offering $10,000 degrees. all of these highly innovative approaches to delivering low costs, but effective higher

education. and accreditation. accreditation protects the existing providers. it protects the large expensive universities. and you're right, senator lee and others have put forward the proposals in institutions to credential courses and accredit institutions. that is an absolutely essential feature of this proposal. and finally, i'll just echo what others have said, that the -- looking at the issue of sentencing, alternative sentencing, of dealing with the tremendous rules and regulations getting in the way of ex-cons trying to get a job, terrible rules in licensing, they need to be looked at as well always well as the alternative sentencing. you mentioned this in the proposal. and i think that's going to be a very, very important part of it. this is audacious, i hope it provokes the kind of bipartisan conversation that it should do, and i hope it will do. i think we should all be part of

that conversation. and i'm very grateful to you, congressman, for taking the step of introducing a proposal like this. >> thank you. i'd like to join my colleagues, it's critically important that we have a dialogue that goes beyond money. for the past 40 years, the anti-poverty expenditures, $15 trillion, 70 cents of every dollar is spent on poor people, not going to the poor, but those who serve poor people. these professional providers ask not which problems to solve, but which ones are fundable. so we have created a commodity out of poor people with their perverse incentives for maintaining people in poverty. we wonder why it expands. and so it's important for us to recognize that this control has to change. but in addressing poverty, it's

important that we tend to make the mistake of generalizing about poor people. not everybody is poor for the same reason. i identified four categories of four people. the first category of people are just broke. they lost their job, or breadwinner dies or there's a temporary illness. but the person's character is in place. and for them they use welfare and assistance for the way it was intended, as an ambulance service, not as a transportation system. and then you've got category two, a person that confronts perverse incentives for staying on welfare. for instance, the single mom in milwaukee, many years ago, saved $5,000 on welfare to send her daughter to college, only to be charged with a felony. so she concluded, well, i'll just -- her character's in place, so perverse incentives.

category three is somebody who is physically or mentally disabled. category i think concerns most of us, those who are poor because of the poor choices that they make. the character flaws that they have. they're drug addicts, they have serial out-of-wedlock births. just giving money to people like that injures with the helping hand. and so it's important for us to disaggregate this population of the poor. people on the left tend to look at poor as if they're all category one, and people on the right tend to look at the poor as if they're all category four. and so it's very difficult when we do that, to have a meaningful dialogue, because as paul's proposal identifies, you need a strategy, to address the needs of each of these groups. and the center for neighborhood enterprise, we concentrate on all people in category four. 80% of my friends are

ex-something. these are the people that i have taken paul around the country to see. the point is, these are the new -- people on the left and the right have missed about the poor, people on the left when they look at poor people, they see a sea of victims. people on the right see a sea of aliens. there's an old african proverb, that when the bull elephants fight, there's a loss of grass. the real solutions to poverty and people in category four are the people who are resident in the community experiencing the problem. they are the healing agents, the antibiotics. and so it's important to go into those communities, the qualities that make them effective also makes them invisible. you've got to be like a geiger counter and go in and seek them out. what you will find is -- what makes them effective is they

provide character coaching and moral guidance to the people that they serve. they witness to people by their example, that they can be restored and reclaimed and redeemed in the midst of poverty. so paul has gone to some of those crime-ridden, drug-infested neighborhoods and has witnessed redemption occurring among the most fallen, the most broken people you can imagine. it's important that any anti-poverty approach takes into account these real anti-poverty experts that are resident in there. and so what we intend to do is take this proposal to our whole network of 2,500 grass roots people in the states. so for the first time, grass roots groups, who are suffering the problem, will have a seat at the table, so their views, their opinions on what should be done to address poverty will be

factored into whatever deliberations that we have. only when you allow people suffering the problem to provide their own input, do we have change. final point is that also, i think this -- we have to destroy this false dichotomy that somehow, if we spend more, we care more. if we spend less, we care less. and we have demonstrated this in our programs around the country. as you visited in milwaukee, wisconsin, where we have for the past eight years, an anti-violence effort where we hire young adults from the same cultural and geographic zip code as the children experiencing the problems, and we put them full-time in the schools as character coaches and moral mentors. and as a consequence, the kids are redirected away from lives of pathology, and we're able to reduce crime and violence by 25% in just three months. we started with one school, now

we've expanded to 12. and this is a initiative that we want to take throughout the country. and also, the running rebels organization has a very unique program where for the past eight years, young men who are violent offenders, instead of being sent to 22, 30 years in prison, are given community-based attention, supervised by other people every six -- every two hours, they have to make a contact with their mentor. usually someone who's been in prison himself. but as a consequence, we have had 800 young men come through that program with a 80% success rate. and the program gave a mock check to the county commissioners for $63 million. this is the money that the county saved as a consequence of keeping these young men out of prison. so that's another example that

demonstrates the point that if we invest more wisely, in creative community-based poverty warriors, that we can help more people at lower cost, and expand opportunity for everybody. thank you. >> congressman, do you want to respond to those comments? >> thank you very much for that feedback. as i mentioned in the beginning, the whole point of this is to start this conversation. i just touched on a few of the ideas that is contained in this proposal. as the gentlemen here mentioned, there are a lot of others that are in here. i wrote all your comments down and i'll try to be as quick as i can to continue to open it up. both ron and stuart sort of used block grant. this isn't really exactly a block grant. it's not your garden variety of block grants where you cut a

check to the states and call it a day. as stuart mentioned, there can be abuses with that. this opportunity grant is designed to streamline a funding stream into one grant that is there to have customized and personalized aid to each person. so to bob's point, each person has a different issue. there are different kinds of poverty. unfortunately, this washington one size fits all approach treats them as if they're the same. and so you have to bring this down to the local level, and have a customized approach to it. i could point to wisconsin alone. catholic charity, lutheran social services, where they, in spite of the federal government, offer very holistic services where they have a person that works with a recipient to come

up with a plan for their lives, to help them meet their benchmarks, and with carrots and sticks. accountability and rewards. this to me could be so much better delivered and accelerated through the opportunity grant. the problem we have here is, you can look at these things like the marginal income tax rates. there are a lot of economists that look at this stuff. right now we have such a disjointed system, which inadvertently, less likely a person is going to leave assistance and go to work, because they lose more money when they do so. we want to remove those disincentives to work. people making rational decisions, to get on to a better life. we think the flexibility of the opportunity grant, combined with work requirements, and flexible time limits, and work requirements means work related activities. working, or looking for work, or in job training skills, getting yourself prepared for work. so it's a little bit more than just, i'd say, a block grant. ron mentioned results-driven

research. we spent the last year and a half in our committee, lots of committee hearings, lots of staff research, trying to find metrics. there's just so little out there. we don't do a good job of measuring success. if i had to take a 30,000-foot view of this proposal, it is basically this. our approach to fighting poverty has basically been, let's measure it by inputs. success is measured by how many programs we create and how much money we spend. how many people are we getting out of poverty? how many of people are getting out of poverty and staying out of poverty? we need to do a better job of understanding how effective our policies are by measuring them better. that's why we have a proposed commission for a clearinghouse of data. plus, we have to get ahead of the privacy issues that are inevitable in the 21st century with the debt issues we have. and remove the barriers. accreditation reform i think is a key way of getting at tuition

inflation, lowering the cost of college, making it easier, more accessible. licensing reform. i think this is really important. this is not a federal issue, but a state and local issue. there are barriers to entry that are making it harder for people to get into professions. whether it's somebody with a felony who wants to get a commercial driver's license to drive a truck, or whether it's somebody who just wants to be a beautician or barber. we need to do licensing reform at the local levels. you also talked about, stuart, crowding out civil society and local organizations. i think this is among the other big points we're trying to make here is, the federal government inadvertently has basically come into our communities with strings and rules and duplicating programs and, you know, archaic formulas, and has crowded out what we call civil society. if you talk to raj chedy, or others, they'll tell you, this is social capital. what that basically means is

these cultural social antibodies, people in our communities, who care and are involved and want to make a difference, in many cases the federal government's role has been to displace them, push them to the side. the government needs to respect its role. the federal government here can provide resources. the federal government can man the supply lines, but again, the people on the front lines, the people who are fighting poverty eye to eye, soul to soul, person to person, they're the ones who make the difference. they're the ones who are actually achieving something. if you bring the federal resources behind them in this innovative way, i think we can focus on a more results oriented approach. i think that's really, really important. there are so many other points that you mentioned. but i think the key here is, let's stop focusing on treating the symptoms of poverty, let's stop propping up a poverty management system. let's get to a results oriented system. and let's integrate, let's bring the private sector and public sector and charitable sector

together, pulling in the same direction, not competing with one another, so that the focus is on results. are we getting people out of poverty. and we have to know, when we do that, there are different kinds of poverty. there are different kinds of needs. let's respect those different kinds of conditions and bring aid that is customized and personalized. and that, to me, is how you deal with a lot of the problems that we have. and this is the kind of conversation that i think could evolve so that at the end of the day, we started welfare reform with waivers in the early 1990s. we did this in wisconsin to great effect. i witnessed it. it was very impressive. and then we brought those ideas to congress and then we passed it in 1996 and since then we have not been reforming. we've got 92 other programs, $800 billion a year, that are in dire need of reform. so we don't measure success on inputs, but based on outcomes. >> congressman, i was administrator when these programs were in, for mayor

bloomberg. there's a lack of connectivity, so i think you're tapping into something important there. the biggest program that you are putting in the opportunity grant it seems to me is the food stamp program. you're offering states, it looks to me, an option of being able to not necessarily have that be a voucher. and have the food stamps go for other needs in the household. i wonder if you would address that issue, and what is it that you saw in your investigation of this issue that led you to believe that this really long-standing program, this would be a big change, is in need of that kind of at least opportunity for experimentation. >> the critical part of this, and the reason for that is to combine it all together so that you can design an aid package that is necessary for this person's particular needs. maybe she needs more for transportation, or maybe she needs more for child care. right now, you have these structured programs that don't recognize her unique problems, and unique needs. so that your case manager can

actually adjust the benefit. if a state wants to, they can make it a cash assistance program or they can have the ebt card which is what most states have, designed within the opportunity grant. i also think that having the carrot and stick approach, having the work requirements, or the training requirements, with a time limit that applies to the person's particular needs, is really essential, so that this is known not as a permanent condition, but as a helping hand for the able-bodied to get them up and on with their lives. and the states can design however they choose to, whether they want to put it on an ebt or cash form of assistance that a case manager works on. >> thank you. now, we want to open it up to questions from the audience and see what we've got. right there, in the first row there. wait for the microphone. we want questions, not statements. >> i'm an intern at the u.s. house of representatives.

i know there are some policy scholars, including jim pettacucus, you have to go with the ftc. could you guys discuss the merits of a monthly paycheck that comes with a page subsidy versus the lump sum, annual lump sum? >> i agree with jim's point tonight. i forgot to mention this. stuart mentioned about the reform. i think the ways and means committee needs to get into this. there are some fraud issues that we need to police and do a better job. and i believe ultimately it's a good idea to get the eitc to be a monthly system. so that you see it in your paycheck every month. i think by reforming and working within the eitc structure, that's a more successful outcome and more likely reform than -- the subsidy is a good idea. i just think we can take the attributes of that idea and apply them to the eitc.

we have a program that has a good success rate that needs a good reform, monthly going after fraud, the other thing is it works. i think uncle milty -- we call it uncle friedman, uncle milty, this was an idea that was inspired from some of his work. this is an idea that has great philosophical principle, origins, that has been practiced in society that shows it really does pay to work. and here's the other point. 20% of americans between the ages of 20 and 21 are not working or not even in school. and so we need to pull people into the work force. when you take a look at our very low labor force participation rates, it's the worst in this category, a childless adult who is 21 to 25 years old, and these are people who are in the prime of their lives, that need to get into the work force. and on the marriage point, i would respectfully say to

stuart, i think it shows that if you have a job, you're more likely to get married. if you're able-bodied and working, you're more likely to have a stable life, a stable marriage and a stable family. so i think, applying eitc to childless adults is actually going to facilitate marriage. i think it's going to be good for the family. >> okay. next question? right there in the mustache in the back. sorry, in the mustache. that's great.mustache. that's great. did you put that on this morning? >> congressman, you and several of the panelists mentioned college, and nothing about vocational education. is it your view that the colleges trump in terms of vocational needs? >> did you say trump? >> yes. is it more important than vocational? >> no, if you go to the report, i just -- i'm doing the flip

notes version. if you go into the report, vovais cat is very important. it's primary. it is not -- i think we overemphasize in america, you have to go to a four-year degree and get english, especially when i come from, vocational education is fantastic. look, if we can work on our resurgence of our manufacturing industry, a whole other issue, we're going to need high-skilled workers earning great paychecks, family supporting wages. and vocational education is a really important part of it. that's why wei talk about job training reform, flexible john training reform that is individual based that goes to the individual so they can take that aid and go to the provider of their choice, be it an employer who is setting aside 50,000 square feet to teach people how to get a welding degree or a tool and die degree or a vocational technical college or what not, that's why we put a lot of emphasis on job training reform. i just didn't mention it in my

opening remarks. >> i think we should also look add enterprise formation as one strategy, too. a man in indianapolis, curt moore, who spent 13 years in federal prison, and came to himself and came to christ, and came out to start washing cars in people's driveways. now, he has 15 employees of other ex-offenders and just established his business because we connected him to some business leaders in the community who partners with him so we have a conservative enterprise partnerships, and there are about 12 other entrepreneurs in this community with curt's profile that need the kind of help that we can provide. so that would be another strategy to provide incentives and remove the barriers for people like curt moore to start a business. >> that brings up one

important -- i'll make it a brief point is right now i say we have a lot of silos and divisions within our society that are isolating the poor from the rest of our communities. and we need to reintegrate that. i think the inadvertent design of the federal government's approach has been to basically re-enforce this idea that this is the government's responsibility. if there are poor people in your community and you're worried about them, just pay your taxes and the government is going to fix that. don't get involved. we need to break down that mythology. i think this approach, it tends to do that so we localize, personalize, and integrate. one of the things we're trying to do, say in milwaukee, is hook up employeers and manufacturers with people who are in need of skills and jobs together. we're getting suburban churches working with poor community churches so we can bring all the tools they have to help make a bigger difference. this, look with voke tech, is an

important area. by getting everybody going in the same direction and not just lacing these relationships that's happening today, you're going to make a big difference and you're going to see really 1,000 flowers bloom. you're going to see what i call force enablers that are going to make this outcome based approach really successful. >> we have time for one more question. we'll take the lady in the front row. >> i'm with the philanthropy round table. it seems to me -- well, you know, i wasn't going to do that, but since you said that. >> that's usually what i get. >> it seems to me this program, which is amazing, i congratulate you on that, opens the door for a new and expanded role for private philanthropy at the local level, at the state level, and possibly at the national level. so what about incentives for private philanthropy? we are looking at the tax code. we're looking at some of the possibilities, some of the provisions in the act.

i think you know how the reaction has been from the sector. what can we do to insure that private philanthropy remains as healthy as possible and engaged with those boots on the ground? >> we will not solve these problems and get people out of poverty in a private way without private philanthropy, without good works. digressing on the ways and means tax side, if you notice that draft, the one thing it did preserve of all the tax expenditures out there, was the open-ended nature of donating to charities, of private philanthropy. that is a very important distinction i think needs to be noted. there are other good ideas like alliance letting people file, take their donations that occur up until april 15th to claim on their tax return. there are a lot of innovative ideas to help pull money into the private sector and the philanthropy sector and tax

policy is a big way of doing that. the right kind of tax policy can help integrate by encouraging giving. the other thing is i think a lot of the problems we have is the federal government is displacing and crowding out and competing with private charity in many ways. the purpose of this is to stop that competition, and respect the good works that are being done by people on the ground, the experimentation that's occurring. that's why we want to have good measurement, but respect it. what the federal government can do better is provide resources. what private charities, what nonprofit, for profit, they can provide expertise and boots on the ground and customization. by respecting these various roles, i think we can integrate the roles so they work better at the end of the day. that, to me, is what we ought to do if we want to truly get everybody working in the same direction and focused on an outcome based policy. i think tax insentives like we have in the code are something

that ought to be preserved so we keep this part of civil society or social capital going. >> thank you, congressman ryan. thank you all here. i wish you would all stay seated, let congressman ryan leave. >> we have come to the endf our session. i'm very grateful to congressman ryan, to our panel, and especially to all of you for giving us some of your time, for joining us on the war for america's poor. on the next washington journal, we'll focus on foreign policy with republican representative scott ridgell of virginia, a member of the armed

services and budget committees. and we'll be joined by representative zoe lofgren of california to discuss immigration. she's the ranking member of the judiciary subcommittee on immigration and border security. washington journal is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. join the conversation on facebook and twitter. michele flournoy is our guest on this week's q & a. >> if you're in government, you're dealing with the daily tyranny of the in box. you are focused on the crisis of the day. part of my responsibilities as undersecretary of defense was representing the secretary of defense on the so-called deputy's committee which is sort of the senior level group that's working through the issues. developing options for the principals and the president. a lot of crisis management focus. when you're in a think tank, your real utility is not trying to second guess the policymaker on the issues of the day but

help to do some work to raise their day, to help them look over the horizon to see what are the issues i'm going to confront a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now, and how do i think more strategically about america's role in the world. >> former undersecretary of defense and cofounder of the center for national american security, michele flournoy on the creation of cnas, its mission and current defense policy issues. sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span's q & a. >> at a senate hearing on wednesday, cruise ship passengers who experienced medical emergencies and sexual assault described how they were treated by the ship's crews. the committee is considering new safety rules and legal protections for cruise passengers. this hearing is 1:20. for those who came here for a different purpose, again, i want to apologize. this was a chance to get out

five bills and if you have been watching the senate or the congress for that matter, getting a bill out of the committee is a triumphant moment. we had to take the advantage to get five out, but the point of this hearing is all of you. so i'm going to make my opening statement andchairman, may i be recorded in fave of these five. >> of course. so ordered. all right. i'd like to begin this hearing in the same way i started the hearing i held on the cruise industry last year. by saying that most people who take cruise ship vacations have a good experience. millions of americans, i would like to have silence, please -- millions of americans go on cruises every year. most of the time, they have a nice trip and they return home safely just like the cruise companies promise in their advertisements, but once in a while, things can go terribly wrong, ships catch fire, passengers fall overboard or get

sick, crew members sexually assault passengers. instances like these are also part of the cruise experience. i'm very honored today to welcome four witnesses who will help us understand first hand the consequences of these instances. we have talked about them in sort of a larger way, but we have not had the direct testimony of those affected by it and those who represent some who are affected by it. and so that's what this hearing was before. the fact that some senators have left, don't let that bother you. mark-ups are unusual. and that's why they had to come because they're all 13, and they had to go do something else, but you're the point of all this. i want that to be very, very clear to you. so as i said, very glad to welcome four witnesses who will help us understand firsthand the consequences of the instances and what they had to go through.

yoig this is not an easy subject to talk about, let that be said, okay, so that it's painful. and however you reflect that pain, the committee understands it. welcomes it, joins you in, you know, the difficulty of coming up here and testifying before a senate committee. although it's really not that difficult after all. the cruise industry, i'm happy to say, is not happy that i'm holding this hearing. they're very unhappy. those companies don't like it when congress and the media talk about the risk of taking a cruise vacation. they have repeatedly told this committee in both public hearings and private meetings that cruise ships and trips are safe. that's it. no teed to do anything, but the facts tell a different story. it means that that doesn't mean they're -- as i said, the average person will have a good experience, but you don't judge a steel plant by, you know, 500

workers not being hurt, but 30 workers being badly hurt. i mean, it's the problems that you have to address. so the facts tell a different story. last year, our committee releases a report that found hundreds of cruise crimes were not being publicly reported. very basic negligence. we've had several hearings where expert witnesses testified about ongoing safety and security problems like wrecks, fires, crimes, onboard these vessels. and we continue to see the same issues continuing -- to continue. and i'm fed up with it. i'm fed up with them trying to stonewallace. yes, they have lots of money and they have lots of lobbyists and that's -- we're going to win this one. almost exactly one year ago,

carnival's president told his committee his company's number one priority is, quote, the safety and security of our guests. explain how the cruise lines have every incentive to make sure the customers have a good experience. that sounds nice in a congressional hearing, but it's little comfort to the many people whose vacations or in a number of cases, lives have been ruined by the cruise line's failure to deliver on their promises. that is if they got a chance to see what the promises were. which is a problem in and of itself, and we'll talk about that. in spite of the evidence that crimes, fires, mechanical failures, drownings and mishandled medical emergencies occur with disturbing regularity on cruise ships, the industry continues to deny that it has a problem. any problem, just denies any problems. it has circled the wagons and reflexively fought all efforts to provide consumers more information about the risks of cruise ship vacations. i don't mind if they talk about the joys and the pleasures, but

people have to talk about the risk, too. it's not fair if they don't. they ought to refer to, you know, new york city doesn't. they have all kinds of problems. but they don't advertise their problems. but when you're on a cruise ship, you know, out in the ocean somewhere, there isn't a hospital next door. there isn't a police station to go to. you're just on an island all by yourself. and it's a very different feeling. than being part of a community, which can come to hell. so that's where my legislation comes in. last year, after witnessing the costa concordia tragedy, and learning about the underreported number of crimes on cruise ships, i introduced something called the cruise passenger protection act of 2013. in this bill, i've poposed making it easier for consumers to report crimes and make complaints about problems on cruise ships. everything is about making it

easier. if you make it hard, a lot of people just won't do it. and unfortunately, when you have an encapsulated environment like a cruise ship trip, you have to be able to report. you just have to be able to do that. and do it fairly easily. so we make it easier to report. i've also proposed simplifying ticket contracts and publishing more information about crimes and other problems on cruise ships. you know what i'm talking about when i talk about the ticket problem. you have to peel, you know, layers of paper away and you're just signing a ticket. but it's underneath that somewhere that says, oh, by the way, you give up your liability. that is not nice. it's a terrible thing to do to passengers. these aren't crazy ideas i'm

suggests. they're common sense protections people already have if their travel, for example, in airplanes or by rail, but the cruise industry vehemently opposed my bill, even the bill's simplest provisions like reporting crimes against minors or putting up a website at the department of transportation that consumers could consult while they're making their vacation plans so they can see what the problems might be, what the advantages might be, so they're making an informed decision. when an industry opposes even the most basic public disclosure about its conduct, it suggests to me, frankly, that it has something to hide. our witnesses today are going to help us understand why it is so important for consumers to have this information. unlike people vacationing on land, cruise ship passengers who are victims of crimes do not have immediate access to law enforcement. well, you say sure, they're out at sea. yeah, but they're out at sea and they don't have access to law enforcement. that's pretty basic, and if they

suffer a health emergency on a cruise, they could be hundreds of miles away from a health facility that operates at u.s. standards or even below u.s. standards, just something called a hospital. our witnesses are also going to tell us that in spite of the cruise industry's talk about talking about taking responsibility for their passengers, cruise companies sometimes treat their customers with shocking callousness and disregard. my words are harsh because i'm angry about this. four witnesses are appearing before this committee today, and i thank them, but there are many, many more people as you all know, who could have shared their experiences, and have with my staff. ken carver, jamie barnet, and countless others have fought for years to help protect others from needless tragedy. i would like to thank everybody who has been willing to step forward and tell us their stories despite, as i indicated, the painful and sometimes tragic circumstances. not just that they happened but

having to recall them verbally and publicly. having accurate statistics about crimes and others instances are important, and it's even more important to understand the human cost of the safety and security problems that this industry is not fully acknowledging. this hearing along with other hearings and inquiries i have made into the cruise industry since i have been chairman are about one thing, and it's called accountability. being honest with people. i know the cruise companies think that i am singling them out, as they say, for special scrutiny, but i asuhre them that is not the case. i have never hesitated to ask companies tough questions when i think their business practices are hurting consumers. that's my job, all of our jobs. we have oversight. that's the main reason we exist as a committee, to have oversight and try to make things better. ths process of asking tough questions is called, in fact,

oversight. it's one of the most important jobs congressional committees have, maybe the most important. when it comes to the cruise industry, we have been doing our job. we have held hearings. we have analyzed the data, and we have talked to many different people with experiences in this industry. this oversight has led us to very clearly to the conclusion that we have to act. we need legislation to protect consumers. for anyone on this committee who still hasn't gotten the message, i urge you to listen closely today as these witnesses bravely share their experiences. i thank everybody. i have one closing statement. to the cruise industry, instead of fighting this process, i encourage you to listen careful to the testimony today. i ask you to honestly consider whether there are steps you can take to better protect the health and safety of your passengers. look, this is the cruise industry is booming. people love to travel. people love to go on those

ships. and i don't begrudge them for that. my own son has done that. i don't begrudge people that. they have a right to do that. but they also have responsibilities since they are under our jurisdiction to do it safely and properly for everyone. i believe there are steps that they can take and i will continue pushing to make those things happen. i now call upon the distinguished senator from mississippi, mr. roger wicker. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i think you've made a number of very important and valid points. i also want to thank the witnesses for being here. as you said, mr. chairman, it may be difficult for them to share their experiences but it's important that they do so and i appreciate their courage in coming forward and being able to share with us today on some information we need. the chair has built this hearing as a forum to discuss his bill, the cruise ship passenger

protection act, s-1340. we need to protect passengers from crime. we need to ensure access to medical care while on the high seas. these are important and worthy issues. i would say that i think it would be best if we consider the legislation as a stand-alone bill and not in connection with the coast guard authorization act. i don't know what the chair's approach to this is going to be. but i do not believe the reauthorization act is the appropriate vehicle for a cruise passenger protection bill. in my judgment, we ought to consider cruise ship passenger protection legislation separately from the coast guard authorization act. congress deserves the opportunity to examine how we can strengthen the transparency of crimes on the high seas and the public deserves a discussion

with full congressional attention to making cruising safer for americans and foreign tourists while visiting u.s. ports. there are many areas in which the cruise ship industry is receiving criticism, including the effectiveness of crime prevention, their response to crime, sexual assault, the report of incidents and tax concerns. i hope that safety standards, like those that could have been ben finishal in the treatment of violet butler are a priority in this discussion. there are cruise ships under way with maximum capacities larger than many of our small towns and cities in america. some cruise ships have more than 6,000 passengers. and some 2,000 staff along with them. and yet they only require two medical professionals on board. imagine a small town of that size, for example, in rural

mississippi. imagine my native home of ponotoc, mississippi, where there's some 5,700 people living, and what if we only had two medical professionals in the whole town? and as a matter of fact, in my native city, we have 29 health care professionals, 21 members of the police force as well as 24-hour physician care in the emergency room. so that gives me great pause to think that a cruise ship of only -- containing 8,000 souls would have only two medical professionals aboard. so any transparency, we need to promote self-correcting behavior and we all have a right to hear

the stories of the victims. we do not need to paint the entire industry with a broad brush because of a few bad actors. i think the chair acknowledges that. but we should look for ways to partner with the industry to make passenger cruises a safe environment for our american passengers and tourists and i encourage the cruise line industry and association to find a market-driven solution. thank you, mr. chairman. and i look forward now to getting to the testimony of our witnesses. >> thank you, senator wicker, very much. the senator and i come from states with lots of rural places. my sort of hometown has about 270 people. so you're urban compared to us.

okay. let me just go right to the witnesses. laurie dishman had a very, very bad experience on a royal caribbean cruise in 2006. she's also an international cruise victims association board member, which means she wants to follow through on that. i'll read each of the four and then call on one by one. phil gerson, a lawyer who represented a 15-year-old minor, 15-year-old minor who was raped on a cruise ship is also on that same board and chairman -- also chairman of the national center for the victims of crime. i'm grateful that he's here. amanda butler, who i just met outside, whose mother suffered a medical emergency on a carnival cruise in 2013, and likely passed away from a lack of adequate medical care, i'm proud

that you're here. and kim ware, who was a passenger on the carnival triumph that caught fire in 2013, and was stranded for four days. now, those are easy things for me to say but they are very hard to have gone through and even talk about, so let's get at it. i'm going to call on laurie dishman. and thank you so much for being here. >> hello. my name is laurie dishman. i'd like to thank the chairman and the committee for convening this hearing and inviting me to washington. it is quite an honor and privilege to be here today. senator rockefeller, i am a cruise ship rape victim. i have an experience to tell you about. a cruise line employee raped me during a vacation on a royal caribbean cruise to mexico. the crew member was working as a security guard in a disco on the

ship. he approached me and asked me my name a cabin number. he later snuck down to my cabin and forced his way in. i resisted and struggled. he strangled me and brutally raped me. i awoke with ligature marks around my neck and my tampon was impacted during the brutal rape. i did not know what to do. i did not know who to turn to. there were no police on the ship, i learned. i was hesitant to report the crime because he wore a security badge. just three days earlier i was looking forward to this cruise, the glossy brochures advertise an adventure every day and an experience to remember. i was celebrating my birthday and 30 years of friendship with my best friend michelle. we have known each other since i was 5 years old. i was so excited. in the evening i would find myself in the middle of a nightmare. michelle called the desk to report the crime.

a security officer in the head purser, both men, came to the cabin and sat on the bed where the rape occurred. i tried to tell them what happened but they insisted that i prepare a written statement and sign it. they left without securing the cabin or taking me to the ship infirmary. after i finished my statement, the security officer took me and michelle to the infirmary. the doctor handed us two black garbage bags and asked us to go back to the cabin and collect the evidence. we tried to preserve hair and other items folding the pillow cases and sheets, not knowing really what we were supposed to be doing. we returned to the infirmary along the public hallways and still all men surrounding us. it was a painful and humiliating ordeal. the ship doctor performed the rape kit and examined my neck but failed to administer anti-viral medications. i was returned to my cabin after the ordeal in the ship

infirmary. i was traumatized to be back at the scene of the crime. i could not take my eyes off the mattress where the crime occurred, stripped of the pillows and sheets and the mattress seems dirty to me, it looked like i felt. i could not stop thinking about what had just happened to me over and over again. i did not know what would happen next. i just wanted to close my eyes and go home. i was eventually given three options. to get off the ship in mexico and report it to the local port authorities, to stay off the cruise ship -- stay on the cruise ship and report it to the fbi when we returned, or fly back to l.a. and report the rape to the fbi. i opted to fly back to los angeles as soon as i could get off the ship. once in l.a., i was questioned extensively by the fbi and they photographed the bruisings around my neck. a few days later, the fbi boarded the ship when it

returned to port together with the cruise line defense attorneys. the crew member denied even going into my cabin. he did not pass the polygraph but the fbi said it was just a she said/he said case and declined to arrest him. the department of justice declined to prosecute on that same day. the cruise ship then set sail again full of passengers with the rapist on board. two days later, i learned the crew member changed his story and admitted going to my cabin. it was only then that the cruise line confined him to his cabin and then put a security guard outside his door. and then terminated his employment and flew him home to trinidad. with nowhere to turn, i hired a maritime lawyer in miami. why miami? because even though i lived in sacramento, the cruise left from l.a., the crime occurred in international waters and in the ticket it says that you need to find an attorney in miami.

my attorney found out many things that surprised and angered me. the security guard was actually a janitor who the cruise line called a cleaning specialist who is paid $550 a month. he was assigned to act as a security department because the cruise ship's limited number of legitimate guards on its staff. he had no training or experience at all as a security guard. royal caribbean records my attorney uncovered revealed an employee history which included lying, falsification of records, insubordination and anger management and he had also sexually harassed two girls six weeks before he raped me and they put him in this security guard uniform. we also learned that on the night in question, a witness observed him drinking beers given to him by the cruise line bartenders. royal caribbean, pursuant to

court orders that my attorney received, stating that cruise line studied the problem of sexual assault on their ships back as far as 1999, the outside experts retained by the cruise line concluded that sexual misconduct occurred frequently. the head security guard who approached me in the cabin said this never happens. but the cruise line ignored what their experts told them in spite telling the public that crimes are very rare. in 2007, i joined the international cruise februarys and i'm now a member of the board. i have testified in the past before the house of representatives in support of the cruise vessel's security and safety act. today i'm joined with the chairman of icv, board member and friends of icv. in closing, cruise consumers have virtually no rights or protections. i know this firsthand. i know exactly how it feels to have no rights and to be

victimized by the cruise line a second time after their employee assaulted me. certainly our congress can require such a powerful industry to timely and accurately report crimes against cruise ship guests, provide a clear and accurate statement of our rights embodied in a ticket without incomprehensible legal mumbo jumbo. hire comp tent medical providers and provide protection under a consumer agency which will help us in our time of need. thank you. >> thank you very much, miss dishman. and you did that well and i know it was hard. we will have questions. but first we want to hear from phil gerson who is a lawyer who represented a 15-year-old minor who was raped on a cruise ship. mr. gerson.

>> thank you, members of the committee. i'm a lawyer in miami, florida, with more than 40 years experience focused -- for more than 40 years my law practice has focused on representing crime victims, both at sea and on land. i appreciate your invitation and your willingness to consider my views in this august chamber. i will be brief. i will not read to you from my written testimony which states the case facts about the incident the chairman just referred to in more detail than i will mention now. and i welcome any questions the senators may ask. the cruise passenger protection act should be passed. it is far short of the needed solutions but it is the next step on the path to greater passenger safety. if you think that young women are safe on cruise ships, think

again. they are not. my 15-year-old autistic teenage client was not supervised like she was on land because her family thought that she was safe. they were vigilant in managing all of her activities, scrupulously and on the ship she was supervised in teen activities. on the last night of the cruise, the teen activities ended early, but no one told her parents. and she was gullibly led away by a soexual predator to a staterom where she was brutally raped and attacked by a juvenile and an adult male. this occurred two years after the cruise vessel safety and security act of 2010 was signed into law. but despite that fact, her

stateroom was lysoled and cleaned before law enforcement could gain access to it. security said, well, there was a mistake. we locked it out but the housekeepers somehow overrode the lockout not knowing that a crime had been committed and the evidence on the bed clothe and other evidence in the room was lost. fortunately, our state legislature has had the wisdom to enact and extend jurisdiction to crimes on cruise ships when the ships leave and return from florida ports. so there were ft. lauderdale/ broward-based deputies standing on the pier when the ship returned to port who took custody of these two offenders and they were punished under state law. but had this occurred anywhere

else besides florida, they likely would have gone unapprehended and unpunished. now, what is worse about what happened, the cruise lines not only suppress the facts but they foster a misleading disinformation campaign boasting that vacationers are safer at sea than they are on land. now, in some ways, you are safer at sea. you're not going to get hit by a car or a truck, walking in public places, nor is it likely that you're going to be shot by an armed robber because there are no vehicles or guns allowed on the ship. but sexual crimes, like the one that my innocent teenage client was the victim of, are far too common. and the risks of them are high.

there are thousands of people onboard and there are no police to deter crime or to stop a crime before it harms somebody. ship security officers are trained to protect ship owners, not passengers. and that's exactly what they do. the real answer, in my view, based on my lifetime of experience in this work, is that independent sea marshals should be placed on cruise ships, a trivial cost in view of the large number of people here who are assembled on these floating city vacations. if we can't get that today, we can start now with d.o.t. empowerment to make the risks known. truthful disclosure of risks has been required by government for decades and it is a part of the fundamental fairness, which is the fabric of the american --

the american society. full disclosures of risks is a first step toward improving safety. very few travelers understand the legal relationship which exists in the cruise contract. as passengers cross the gangway, they surrender all legal rights to protect their own welfare, except as the cruise ticket allows them to. this is not an informed consent. the ticket doesn't explain how the legal relationship is different at sea from what we know it to be on land. and it is not semantics when we refer to the ship's captain as the master. the master is just that. and the passengers have virtually no individual rights. the cruise line industry association bill of rights is illusory, empty, and

meaningless. a close reading of the cruise line tickets reveal a frightening list of contractual and statutory disclaimers of any legal responsibility for harms to passengers. the tickets say the cruise line has no legal liability in port for any excursion which they arrange, which they sell to the passengers, and which they share fees with the tour operators with but they disclaim any responsibility. they say the same thing about the physician services that they sell in ship board medical clinics on board. but if there's medical negligence, they have no legal responsibility. there are also arcane statutory and international maritime treaties which limit passenger rights and passenger remedies when something goes wrong on

board and neither the cruise ticket nor the cruise line adequately informed the passengers of the nature or extent of what they have given up by crossing that gangway. the bill should be passed so that the outdated buyer beware business relationships at sea are replaced with truth in advertising, full disclosure, and informed consent which are the hallmarks of american life required by government for business and industry. until congress gives passengers more protections, american nationals on cruise ships are just on their own. i invite you to read my brief written statement which provides more details so i take no more time that is necessary now and i volunteer to assist in this process in any way that i can in the future. >> thank you, sir, very much.

amanda butler, your mother suffered a medical emergency in 2013 on a carnival cruise. and as i indicated, probably passed away from a lack of adequate medical care. >> senator rockefeller, members of the committee, i appreciate the opportunity to tell my mother's story, to share what we have learned and to offer recommendations, from our perspective in an effort to insure that no other family will go through what we had to experience. my mother experienced a catastrophic health event on a family cruise april 18th, 2013. she subsequently passed away on may 4th with the cause of death listed as a brain injury. she was a woman who loved life, loved her family. she had a general -- generous heart.

she was a faithful and devoted wife and mother who was there to nurture her children, support her husband and provide care and kindness to many individuals in our community of columbus, mississippi. in fact, more than 800 people came from the community to her visitation. we had just returned from a short excursion on april 18th, passed through security and were planning events for the evening when she collapsed in mid-sentence. she had no pulse. she was not breathing. i ran to plea with the security personnel in the area but all they did was seal off the entrance and exit of the boat so nobody could see that there was a problem and an event had happened. they did not step forward, period, to help my mother and no one indicated that they were calling for help. so i ran down the corridors in an attempt to find a

defibrillator or someone that could explain that we have a medical emergency. a nurse arrived after my mother had been on the ship floor for what american physicians are estimating to be 15 minutes. the nurse had a radio but no defibrillator and no medical equipment when she arrived. she examined my mother and then she waited for a gurney to arrive. she did not initiate cpr. my mother was taken into the medical facility, located within a distance that my father and myself could have carried her, had we been told. they had to unlock the doors, turn on the lights and the computers and prepare the tiny examination room for the resuscitation process. they set up a portable defibrillator. after four cycles, her pulse did return. nevertheless, the duration of time that she went without oxygen approached 32 minutes.