system that we use, and it avails us of a lot of very helpful information. to that end, that's an important project. having stakeholder engagement before the survey goes out i think is critical. >> a lot of them are concerned about mandating certain technologies particularly patent questions mandating a specific technology in a federal standard, and patent concerns have been raised through the table saw discussions over the years. is the commission aware that there are 140 patents related to proposed technology held by the petitioner to mandate this technology on all table saws? >> are you referring that question to me? >> yes, ma'am. >> let me say this. quite frankly, quite honestly, my colleague commissioner adler, this is his pet project and i don't mean to pass the buck because this is not a priority of mine nor do i think it should be a priority of the agency, to your point about patents and concerns about that i have tremendous concerns about that. but it is not a project quite frankly that i think should be a

priority of the agency now. >> i have one more question. you recently stated that the sole basis for recommendation to the ban of most widely used chemicals was cumulative risk assessment which found the majority of citizens advisory panel recommendation which found the majority of risk associated with chemicals was from another chemical, dehp. can you explain concerns for using cumulative risk assessment as a basis for such regulatory determination? >> thank you. the chap and the proposed rule is of great concern to me has been of concern to me since the chap issued its report because i believe the chap report should have been a public -- should have been subject to public peer review at that point. from that point onto me the system and whole process has been flawed. the cumulative risk assessment you're talking about is one of

my concerns in that the process that's used, that's not well accepted in the scientific community, cumulative risk assessment, so i think that goes to the process and validity and integrity of the chap report. more importantly and certainly another grave concern i have, is when the chap did their review, they used old data, data that was before the ban of fhalates. it is almost irrelevant because it doesn't use timely data. the commission has taken on analyzing more recent data. and i constantly and consistently said and advocated we put findings and analysis of staff on more current data out for public comment. it should be put out at least 60 days, and staff should comment on how they're going to use that analysis relative to the proposed rule.

because in order to get comments from the public, we have to include that information in the opportunity for them to comment. >> chairman are you concerned about cumulative data and do you believe it should be out for public comment? >> i agree with commissioner buerkle that the staff analysis should go out for public comment and i was the one that directed staff at the beginning of the process to undertake that analysis, and my hope is that we will reach agreement in the coming days when staff is ready to put that out for analysis for it to go out. as far as cumulative risk assessment, i have to respect the work of the chap because that's the statutory regimen set up by congress and section 108 of consumer product safety improvement act. that was scientific or policy direction to the chap members which by the way were picked through national academy of sciences as the leading experts around the world on this issue. so considering that that's what the statute told them to look at and that's what they looked at i respect that decision on their part. >> thank you. my time expired.

>> gentleman yields back. chair recognizes the gentleman from kansas. >> thank you mr. chairman. want to talk about the rule making. you testified before the appropriations committee, described the hearing as the longest hearing held in the cpsc history, went late into the night, many panels and witnesses. i appreciate you taking time to do that. i want to be sure we don't cut back this process we get the data right, science engineering, technology right. that's why i introduced legislation, have you had a chance to look at that. and i didn't see your name as co-endorser, looking forward to hearing you today say you think it is something that would make sense, that industry can work alongside you and get voluntary standards that make sense. >> thank you congressman. i know that you have been particularly interested and i appreciate that since the time you have been in office in the work of cpsc that's a good thing. it is important to have this

continued dialogue. the rov issue is one of great significance, we are taking it seriously, similar to directing staff to work on the phalates. i asked them to redouble and engage with voluntary standards to reach a solution. i think that's the preferred solution many of us would like to see, if they can adequately address the hazard and it can be substantially complied with. as far as the bill is concerned i am not going to be able to tell you what you want to hear, i don't have the ability to co-endorse. >> you can say it here. >> sounds like i could say it, but based on where we are in our discussion, i think it is a well intended but unfortunately would have a negative impact for three reasons. one, i don't want to call it a delay, but looks like a delay, even if not intended to be, and those cost lives. every year we look at getting close to 80 deaths per year, many children, associated with rovs. every year it is not addressed, through robust voluntary

standard or mandatory standard is more deaths. that's something we should all be concerned about. second of all there are real costs, every time there's a death, talking about impact on the community and society, about $8 million as staff estimates from an economic stand point. so if it is a two year study talking about 150 deaths, that's upward near a billion dollars in cost to society that would result from this and probably in the area from timing perspective, and i just had a conversation with mr. prichard who you hear on the second panel before you came here staff and voluntary standards body meaning industry are at a position that i don't think they have been at for many years where they're finally engaging in substantive technical discussion to resolve the issues. if this bill were to pass, it puts out for question for two years one of the key areas that industry and staff are driving to solve now. i just don't think that's going to help the timing of it. >> i appreciate that.

no one wants more deaths no one is advocating for delay to result in death. i know nobody on the committee would either. i know industry wouldn't want that either. i think you have to get the data. i am not going to go through it but i have seen testimony from staff that says we don't have engineering and technology. we have to look at data and exposure to rovs. it might be possible to do something like that, but we have not done it. i am thrilled to hear you're having discussions with industry and making progress. that's a preferred solution for cpsc and my perspective, would be a great outcome. but i would hope that you would be prepared to at least suspend the rule making for a period of time, put it on hold, keep it out there as something that might happen in the event that discussions don't move forward in the way sounds like you have some optimism as do i.

i would love to see you consider suspending rule making or put it on hold while those discussions are happening. if they fall apart and you and industry can't get together so be it, you can continue to proceed. would you at least consider that? >> one, i don't have the power to unilaterally to suspend rule making. i would say whether industry likes it or not, one of the reasons we reached this situation where we are at a position where everybody is trying to finally reach a solution, i think that everyone has proper incentives. from my perspective, the fact that cpsc has taken it seriously to this point and is prepared to prove to a mandatory standard has provided the types of conditions that have created this environment, so i think that it is incumbent upon us to keep moving forward as i mention the deaths they certainly weigh on me, and that's not something at this point that would be a positive. >> i hope you'll reconsider that. may or may not be the incentive structure that's achieved, we

have june 19 deadline for comments. i want to keep it in a constructive way. i hope the deadline won't artificially create an moss tee where i think there's a chance to get it right, save lives, get the rule right. with that, i yield back. >> chair thanks the gentleman. recognize the gentleman from indiana five minutes for questions. >> thank you. indiana has a large presence of juvenile product manufacturers in the state that make everything from strollers to car seats and i heard firsthand about challenges that they face with regards to redundant testing requirements that might do nothing to advance safety while siphoning money that could have been spent on r&d and innovation and resources like additional employment. one hoosier manufacturer told me recently consumer product safety act since it passed they spent

$12.5 million in testing costs alone, and it is because they not only have to test every platform that the products are on but every skew as well. so not only do they spend an average of $8900 to test every new stroller or cradle design, but they have to spend another thousand dollars to test every paint, every new paint color as well. i think we all agree the safety of our children is of utmost importance and shouldn't be compromised, however i think we have to draw the right balance and ensure companies have resources to do further r&d to ensure their products are safer. mr. chairman, i have a question to you that with this in mind what actions have you taken in the past year to provide relief to companies with respect to costs of third party testing requirements? >> thank you congresswoman. one of the areas we found

interesting, and this was discovered by small business ombudsman, i don't want to get the commissioner upset since it involves his prior occupation, but we found a lot of third party labs are testing for services that are not required and so our small business ombudsman and his office provide phenomenal support and assistance working with small businesses and i encourage any members with small businesses that have issues, reach out to neil cohen of cpsc because he can work with companies to go through testing reports and find out whether or not they really need certain testing. he doesn't actually go line by line, but he says here are general guidances and questions you should be asking. he really does a phenomenal job of empowering a lot of companies. that's gone a huge way to addressing these issues. >> thank you. >> i think what you'll get is a lot of dodging tactics from the

agency to try to explain why we haven't achieved much in terms of measurable outcomes and reducing cost and burden of third party testing. we have all of the resources we need and legal authority, we lack the will to enact. very many policies and suggestions that have come before the agency, we can blame the testing labs retailers for retail protocols we can dodge and weave as long as we want but as i said earlier it is frustrating for me particularly because it lacks alignment. if we applied the same appreciation for risk tolerance than we did on that testing rule, we would have all of the emphasis and staff able to recommend countless means to reduce the cost and burden without any adverse health or safety impact. >> thank you. chairman kaye, it is my understanding that a million dollars of the 2015 budget was

to be allocated to reducing the needless and duplicative testing burdens. can you explain what actions you have taken in leading the commission to fulfill that rule how have you reached out, what companies expect to see from this relief if we have mandated that in your budget. >> sure. one of the limitations and i agree with the commissioner that we have a lot of what we need but not everything. one of the areas it is a one time appropriation. we cannot staff up from it. it is not prudent to hire people without knowing how you pay for them in following fiscal years. most of it has gone through contracting. we contract out with organizations that can do the technical work to figure out if there's possibility for relief. but ultimately our staff has to take that work there has to be resources internally to turn that work around and make it something actionable. three areas in response to congresswoman blackburn's questions have to do with providing this exact type of

relief. looking, for instance, at natural wood, whether you use natural wood alone you have to test for heavy metals. we keep trying to check off lists of materials and types of products that you don't have to test to to avoid costs and that has been the theme in terms of stakeholder engagement and internal deliberations we are trying to provide to make it worth the while. >> my time is up. i yield back. >> the chair recognizes the ranking member pallone. >> thank you mr. chairman. my question is to chairman kaye, there have been concerning reports of young athletes that have non-hodgkin's lymphoma and other blood cancers and who have been playing sports on athletic fields filled with rubber coming from tires which often contains cancer causing chemicals. this past october i wrote to the agency for toxic substances and

disease registry explaining i believe additional research is needed to look for causes of other cancers. they say they're supporting efforts by the commission in this area yet in 2008 the commission released a statement saying fields filled with crumb rubber are okay to install okay to play on, unquote. i was pleased to hear recently a spokesperson explained the 2008 statement does not reflect your current views. i just wanted to ask is it correct your views are not reflected in that 2008 report and do you agree additional research and study is necessary to determine whether crumb rubber used in synthetic turf athletic fields presents any health dangers and is the commission committed to working with other agencies to obtain this information and ensure young athletes playing on the fields are protected? >> thank you, congressman. thank you for your leadership in this area. i think you have three

questions. i am going to try to address all three. the first is you're correct the 2008 release does not reflect my views of the state of play, and i think it is important to note that 2008 release didn't even reflect as far as i understand it technical steps views at the time there was a political effort at the time at the commission to say something at headline of release that may not reflect state of play, which is that those products are safe. there's a big difference in looking at lead exposure that might exist from blades of grass and determining based on small sample size staff was not able to say there were disconcerting levels of lead in those fields in that particular aspect. that's very different from saying these things are safe to play on. safe to play on means something to parents that i don't think we intended to convey and i don't think we should have conveyed. that's the answer to the first question. the answer to the second question is absolutely we are working with federal partners to figure out a better and faster

way working together to see if an issue like crumb rubber can be resolved more quickly. as i mentioned earlier, we are working with epa and nih through the center in north carolina national institutes of environmental health sciences and national toxicology program cdc, atsdr and the fda, trying to figure out a way for the government to come together use existing resources and authorities to address these issues. parents don't care which acronym named government agency is supposed to do what they just want answers and want this uncertainty resolved. the third question i apologize, i can't remember what the third one was. if you wouldn't mind asking me again. >> i think trying to find out what your view is and what the commission is doing and whether you're working with other federal agencies on the issue. >> absolutely. >> thank you very much. >> gentleman yields back.

the gentleman from illinois. recognized for five minutes for questions. >> thank you. thank you all for being here today. nice to have you in front of the committee. mr. chairman chairman kaye seems that banning a chemical deemed safe by other government agencies opens door to use of substitutes that have been far less studied and with far fewer scientific and performance data available, is the agency prepared to deal with the market and potential safety repercussions transitioning from well tested phthalates with uncertainty of other substitutes? >> there's a larger issue going on of a policy matter where unfortunately the concept you're getting to is regrettable substitution, one chemical is banned, and don't have a full sense from science and safety perspective what the substituting chemical will be. i think that's a failed public

policy. i have to admit. the better approach with industry and something i would like to see happen, for government and industry to come together to focus on which chemicals shouldn't be used and faster route to which ones should be used. neither the resources or authorities and directions agencies have been going in for a long time are moving that direction, but again as part of collaborative efforts i am trying to undertake that's one of the key goals we are looking at. >> until we get to that point where we can have that perfect system, i think we ought to be careful when we look at banning substances. if we don't have a situation in place where we can do all of the study of alternatives, we ought to be very careful. let me following the fal ate rule making, commissioner buerkle noted that banning chemicals in use many years and risk studied little known about

substitutes, i want,=5= see commissioner buerkle, banning something with unknown substitutes to follow. >> thank you for the question. that was one of my concerns that we are proposing substitutes be used that we know less about than we know about the chemicals that are already banned. my more general concern with regard to the chap, both in comment and here today was the process how that report was done. and this proposed rule. i think we need to take a step back, whether regarding chemicals or regarding any of the things we do, we are a data driven agency. to make sure we have the data correct and to make sure processes we follow are correct and that chap followed a process that the entire scientific community can accept as credible is key to our agency and

credibility of our agency. it has been noted, american people rely on information coming from us so it is important we get it right. if it takes a little more time, if it requires a request to congress that we can't promulgate that rule within 180 days after the chap report was issued, so be it. we have to make that request because it is incumbent upon our agency to get it right, to take time we need to. >> i want to add to that, especially to reiterate what you said i understand in many cases need for 180 days nothing any of us like to do. at the risk of getting something wrong versus getting something right, even if we have to go past a deadline, i think frankly republicans, democrats far left, far right would agree that's a preferable way to go. that's some of the concerns we have. chairman kaye, i want to go to a different subject. in the preamble for proposed rule on voluntary recalls cpsc

indicated it has encountered glib rattly unnecessary delayed implementation of action plans. how many firms deliberately and unnecessarily delayed implementation of provisions of conservative action plans? congressman, i have to follow up and give you answer to that. i don't know the answer to that. the voluntary recall ruelas my colleagues know it is not something that's been a high priority for me. i have higher priorities that go to saving lives. not saying it doesn't have merit, but it is not something i spent a lot of time on. >> can you give me example? >> i can give you anecdotal examples we reached a situation the agreements are voluntary. we reached a voluntary conservative action plan with a company and notice when they file the quarterly reports they're not doing what they said they would, not engaging on social media, not attempt to go

reach out, put forth resources and efforts. i wouldn't name a company, i can't name a company at this point, but commissioner adler last week during public meeting we had when this topic came up had a phenomenal suggestion, asked staff to spend a few months collecting this data and reporting back to the commission to see whether or not this is a real issue and to commissioner buerkle's point, we are data driven that will be a useful exercise. we will all be curious to see it. >> if you're going to throw out the entire system it is data driven. with that, thank you all for being here. i yield back. >> the chair recognizes the gentleman from oklahoma mr. mullen, five minutes for questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you to the commissioners for taking time to be here. i know you guys have a very busy schedule too, any time you have to come to the hill you have to be thrilled about that, right? but we are all held accountable

for statements that are made and sometimes when you're sitting in a position chairman, that you sit in your agency carries a pretty big stick and statements can be devastating to people that are producing a product that depend on retail sales. would you agree with that? >> absolutely. i think about that all the time. a lot of thought goes into what i say whether i end up saying something like that or not. >> i am holding in my hand here a story that was published by indianapolis news agency and it says if a consumer was to see a gas can at retail that contained a flame arester, we would encourage them to suggest such model as it provides a viable layer of fire protection. that was made by your news agency. are you familiar with that? >> i do. >> do you agree with that.

>> i don't know enough about the technical on gas cans i can't comment one way or another. >> your statements have impact. the flame arrester is only sold on commercial cans, not in retail stores. are you familiar with that? >> i am not familiar with that. don't have any familiarity with gas cans other than talking to staff and knowing the issue -- >> someone on your staff made this statement. the reason i say this is in my district i had, had a manufacturer that produced retail gas cans. and your agency came out and made a statement referring to retail gas cans and has nothing to do with retail gas cans. they're only regulated by osha and the epa with the flame arresters. once again, we are held accountable for what we said, and your agency made a statement that could have possibly cost

real people their jobs. does cpsc regulate commercial safety cans? >> we do not. the statement you're talking about, i am not sure it is inconsistent with the position our staff has taken in the voluntary standards capacity. >> then let's talk about that. are you aware the commercial safety can with the flame arrester failed an astm protocol? >> i am not. >> but you made the statement. your agency made the statement encouraging people to go out and buy a gas can from a retail store that doesn't even exist and the purpose of it is to keep children from being burned. but you guys made a statement that failed that exact test, yet the consumer can does. it met the astm standards. you don't see a problem with this?

>> i see a problem with it if what you're saying is 100% accurate. >> i am hopeding the news story. you saw the press release. this is from astm testing protocol that said it failed. >> i understand that. my point is that i am not familiar enough with the area that you're talking about where i can give you the type of answer you're looking for. >> how about we do this. why don't you get back with my office. >> absolutely. >> since you guys are making those statements since they effect real jobs in my district why don't you get back to me and give me that information so you can be spun up to it, so next time your agency opens its mouth and gives a statement like that, maybe they're informed about what they're saying. >> would you be willing to have a meeting with staff and me? >> without question. we would like to get to the problem of that. statements like that hurt real people. >> excellent. my hope is you would be willing to come to the testing center where we have the technical expertise and walk through the gas cans. would you be willing to do that? >> absolutely. >> then we have to come back if

i am willing to do that if what i am saying is accurate i would like you to make another statement publicly backing that up. >> let's get the answers together, figure out where we go from there. you have my commitment. if it turns out -- >> it is not if, the statement says it. >> the rest of it. if we said something that is not accurate, you have my commitment that i will say something that is accurate. i am not going to leave it to anybody else i will say it. >> good enough. mr. chairman i yield back. >> chair thanks the gentleman. the gentleman brings up an excellent point. several years ago i took a field trip to the cpsc testing facility and it was a very limiting day. there's a new headquarters now, and i think the gentleman is right, a field trip of the subcommittee would be informative, instructive, and help the commission and subcommittee members. we will see about putting that in the process.

i just also observe that in addition to being chairman of the subcommittee i am chairman of house motorcycle caucus. i know that's kind of a disconnect, but i have, and going over to talk to that group one day after we passed the cpsc in 2007 2008 was a young man, 12 or 13 years old that stood in front of the group and said mr. congressman if you promise to give me my motorcycle back, i promise i won't eat the battery any more. apparently youth motorcycles sale had been prohibited and until technical corrections were enacted it made it difficult for people that sold youth motorcycles and parts. we have to be careful about unintended consequences. seeing no other members -- did you have a follow-up question? seeing no further members wishing to ask questions for this panel i want to thank you for being here today. this will conclude the first

panel. we will take an underscored brief recess to set up for the second panel. thank you all very much for your time today. >> welcome back. meeting comes back to order. thank everyone for patience in taking time to be here. we are ready to move into the second panel for the hearing. we will follow the same format as during the first panel. each witness will be given five minutes for opening statement followed by a round of questions from members. for the second panel, we have the following witnesses. ronald warfield, buck, is that correct? ceo of atvrovutv safety

consulting. heidi crow michael. thank you for being here today. miss cheryl falvey. co-chair of advertising and product risk management group. and mr. eric prichard executive vice president and general counsel for recreational off highway vehicle association. we will begin the second panel with mr. warfield. you're recognized five minutes for purpose of opening statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman, ranking members and members of the committee. thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of hr 999 the rov in depth examination. my name is buck warfield. i have expensive experience dealing with safe and appropriate use of off highway

vehicles. first, a bit of background. i was employed by maryland state police as a police officer or trooper for over 23 years. i retired in 1993. with regard to off highway vehicle experience in 1985, i was trained and certified by specialty vehicle institute of america, svia as an atv instructor. in 1989 i became an atv safety institute or asi licensed chief instructor, and i continue to be contracted by asi to train license, monitor other atv instructors. with respect to recreational off highway vehicles or side by sides, i've cysted several agencies, including military and government groups in developing primary rov training promise after combining recreational off

highway vehicle association approved training program in december of 2010. i currently serve as chief rov driver coach trainer and i have a training facility at my farm in maryland which has been designated as a driver coach training center and that is one of only three in the entire united states. one personal note. i logged over 900 hours as an operator of my personal rov since 2006. i currently own two rovs, utilized primarily for rov training, and two more utilized for daily facility maintenance at my training center and farm. i participated in the development of rov basic driver course curriculum which is designated for current and prospective off highway vehicle

drivers. the basic driver course is a training opportunity that provides current and experienced rov drivers the chance to learn and practice basic skills and techniques addresses basic operation and emphasizes safety awareness, related specifically to rov operation. the overall aim of the driver course is to provide for drivers' development and skill in risk management strategies. this includes learning to foster driver gains and basic knowledge, skill attitude values and habits. i am here to support hr 999. the legislation would only pause the consumer product safety commission on-going rov rule making until the national academy of science in cooperation with department of defense and national highway traffic safety administration

perform study of the vehicle handling and requirements proposed by cpsc. i do not claim to be an engineer or to fully understand the complex engineering issues, but i do understand that these are some basic disagreements on a select few issues between engineers at cpsc and the engineers who work for major manufacturers. i appreciate that cpsc is well intended. i also know the manufacturers develop safe, capable vehicles for me, my family, my friends and students i train to use. my decades of experience includes training countless people with no prior experience with atvs or rovs, show me these vehicles are safe with amazing capabilities when operated as intended. hr 999 is a narrowly tailored to

examine first of all technical validity of cpsc's proposed lateral stability and vehicle handling requirements. also the number of rov rollovers that would be prevented if the rule were adopted and whether there is technical basis for the proposal to provide information on a point of sale hang tag about a vehicle's rollover resistance on a progressive scale and lastly the effects on the utility of rovs used by the u.s. military if the rule were adopted. so in conclusion i think the best way forward would be for the industry and cpsc to work together to find a voluntary solution that works for all of the parties and protects the safety of rov drivers and

passengers, barring cooperative solution, the best and safest way forward is for independent third party experts to make sure we get it right. thank you, sir. >> gentleman yields back. miss carmichael you're recognized five minutes for opening statement. >> thank you. my name is heidi crow michael. i would like to thank you all for allowing me to speak on behalf of my son, jt crow. i play many roles in life, homemaker achbd advocate, but most importantly mother to five children. jt is my second child first born son. he was a happy extraordinary nine-year-old boy. at school he was a straight a student with perfect attendance. he loved science and learning about birds and butterflies. jt loved being outside and playing sports like soccer and football. jt's life was cut short when he went for a ride in a 2007 yamaha rhino 450. while riding at slow speed around a slight curve, the rov

suddenly and explicitly rolled. he was wearing a safety belted he was thrown from the rov and crushed by the half ton vehicle as it rolled over. paramedics rushed him to the emergency room but he sustained more injuries than his young body could handle. my son died that day when he was nine years old. my life was forever changed. on a daily basis i live with pain of the tragedy that struck my family fear of knowing it could happen to other families. this led me to be an advocate for rov safety and industry reform. i have been given the opportunity to use my son's life as a difference to save lives. as we sit here rov is an industry that sets its own standards and makes its own rules and innocent people are paying the price. i am not against rovs, i want safe rovs. many times they buy them because

they have seat belts roll bars, but they're not safe. it has been many years. every year, every day there's not a better solution implemented for rov safety is a day more people, more children, our children, are put at risk. when we wrote the citizens report on hazards and urgent need for safety and performance standards in february of 2009 asking for safety and performance standards, including minimum occupant containment, stability, and seat belt standards, we were hopeful recommendations would be standard. we asked for action, nothing happened. a high casualty rate will continue unless action is taken. in 2014, rov use resulted in at least 61 deaths 8 more in 2015. while less stringent than recommended safety measures in the citizens report cpsc proposed standards that would significantly improve rov safety.

if the rov industry wants to protect consumers, why wouldn't they want to make the safest product possible. why wouldn't they want to do all they could do to protect people that purchase their vehicles. i have been given the opportunity to speak to many families. we all share a common bond. we have lost someone we love in an rov rollover accident. perhaps the most painful part of my role as advocate for this cause is hearing heart wrenching stories from those families. i know i am not alone in asking the committee to allow cpsc to move forward with rule making to issue rov safety standards and stop the senseless death of our loved ones. in my journey in the last eight years, i collected names and stories of those that shared a fate similar to jt. it is for them i speak. for elly, age ten. kristin lake, 11. dusty lock a be, 14, ashland var gas, 12. danny bernard, 18.

stephanie kayeton 26. whitney bland, 13. sidney anderson, 10. and abby west age 13. our stories did not begin and end on the day our loved ones were killed or injured. the battle is on-going for all of us. we will miss soccer games, dance recitals graduations birthdays, weddings holiday celebrations. we will live with the consequences forever. today you have the opportunity and i think the obligation to help me honor these young lives. their families and the life of my son jt crow. but it is more than that. you have an opportunity to become part of their story, the part that offers hope for the future by bringing about change. our request is simply common sense. it is unimaginable anyone would feel differently. if you don't do something about it, can you live with yourself? delay is a problem.

delay puts our children at risk. it has been too many years and too many tragedies already. we urge you not to contribute to any further delay. thank you for your time. >> chair thanks the gentle lady. you're recognized for five minutes opening statement. >> thank you. chairman burgess, ranking members, distinguished members thank you for providing the opportunity to discuss the statutory framework that the consumer product safety commission will use to address the kind of risk we heard about. i served as general counsel of consumer product safety commission from 2008 to 2012 during implementation of both virginia graham baker safety act as the consumer product safety improvement act. both of those statutes made voluntary standards mandatory. i have been asked to discuss the way cpsc statutes inner relate

to the voluntary standards process to inform the committee's consideration of hr 999. my oral remarks will focus on three important aspects of the interrelationship between voluntary standards process and mandatory law. first, safety standards developed by cpsc require time and effort to develop in order to meet the statutory requirements. it is not easy. section 7 of the cpsa provides cpsc with authority to promulgate rules that set forth performance standards and require warnings and instructions, but only when cpsc finds such a standard reasonably necessary to prevent or reduce unreasonable risk of injury and that the benefits of such regulation bear reasonable relationship to the cause of regulation. the commission must consider and make appropriate findings on a variety of issues, including the degree and nature of the risk,

along with the utility of the product and the costs and means to achieve the objective. to issue final rule, the commission must find that the rule is necessary to reasonably eliminate or reduce the unreasonable risk of injury. and that issuing that rule is in the public interest. must also find that the rule imposes the least burdensome requirement that would adequately reduce the risk of injury. congress recognized just how difficult it is for cpsc to do that when it enacted the cpsia and made it easier to make voluntary standards mandatory law in the danny kaiser child safety notification act due in part to resolute efforts by ranking member sha could have ski, which streamlined the process of making voluntary standards mandatory law. second cpsc statute favors voluntary standards when they

eliminate risk of injury and are complied with by manufacturers. if a voluntary standard addressing the same risk of injury is adopted and implemented, the commission cannot proceed with a final rule unless it finds that the voluntary standard is not likely to eliminate risk of injury and or that it is unlikely there will be substantial compliance with the voluntary standard. these can be very difficult findings for the commission to make. as a data driven agency cpsc staff has to look for hard science to demonstrate intended safety benefits of both standards and consensus driven voluntary standards. but the cpsc must still attempt to extrapolate from current data the likely future effects of its proposed rule making. the legislative history of cpsa sets a high bar directing cpsc to consider whether the voluntary standard will reduce

to a sufficient extent such that there will no longer exist an unreasonable risk of injury. predicting there's unreasonable risk in certain circumstances is easy. it can be extremely difficult when dealing with highly technical issues of vehicle rollover. that's why it takes staff time to develop the rule making packages and why it is over 500 pages long. determining whether there's substantial compliance is also a challenge when so many products come into the country now from overseas. the legislative history of cpsc directs that the commission look at the number of complying products rather than the number of complying manufacturers and those products are coming in from all over the world. third and finally the challenges of making voluntary standards mandatory law is one of the most important lessons we

learned in cpsia and virginia graham baker safety act. these voluntary standards are iterative, they evolve over years, and unless we know that the test methods can be replicated and are reliable making them law prematurely can be dangerous. >> chair thanks the gentle lady. recognize mr. prichard five minutes for opening statement. >> good afternoon mr. chairman ranking member and members of the committee. thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of hr 999, rov in depth examination or ride act. my name is eric prichard. executive vice president and general counsel of recreational off highway association. they're sponsored by arctic cat, john deere kawasaki polaris, yam a has.

they were formed to promote safe use of off road vehicles called rovs or side by sides in north america. between 2011 and 2014 alone, rov sales are conservative estimated at more than 750,000. these vehicles are used safely by families, emergency personnel and the u.s. military in a variety of environments, ranging from mud to sand to forest to trails. this is a high growth industry and bright spot in u.s. manufacturing economy. they're developing standards for rovs, worked with stakeholder. commencing in 2008. cpsc has been involved through the process. the newest standard includes a new dynamic stability and handling test and requirement as

well as new alternative seat belt reminders that were proposed by cpsc staff and driver side speed limiting seat belt inter locks found in 60% of the 2015 model year rovs. nonetheless, and simultaneously with approval of a new standard cpsc voted out pending notice of proposed rule making regarding rovs. npr largely ignores that voluntary standard. instead, cpsc analyzed the prior 2011 version of the voluntary standard and based it on testing of vehicles from model year 2010. in a supplemental briefing three weeks after the standard was approved cpsc sum mayoral rejected it because it didn't match rule making. the cpsc proposals aren't supported by science or real world application. one area of concern is the cpsc application of on road vehicle

dynamics to vehicles used in rugged off highway environments. meanwhile, cpsc continues to conduct testing in support of npr it already voted out. our our review of the data underline the rule making is not yet complete, i can share a cup of observations with you. according to the data where seat belt use is known 70% of riders suffering fatalities did not wear their seat belted provided in every rov. approximately 60% of the severe injury rolled sideways incident in the data were reported by a plaintiff's law firm. a 46-year-old man was injured by the tipover of an r objection v whose unpadded roll cage crushed his foot on june 16 2006. while it has been a year since his accident, foot is still swollen, he find it extremely difficult to walk and is in

considerable pain. end. putting aside the bias of a plaintiff's lawyer's reporting, this is not a scientifically sound approach to gathering data. it tell us nothing about how or why the alleged tipover occurred and not able to draw any conclusions based on this limited information. these vehicles are significantly more complex than other products under the cpsc's jurisdiction. the rov manufacture engineers have serious concerns about the proposals. the ride act will help resolve these matters by having these proposals examined by an independent agency such as the national academy of signs. this common sense approach resolving technical issues before implementation should be supported by everyone. some have attempted to characterize the ride act. the record does not support the criticism. the voluntary standard has been update as technology has evolved.

the fact that the cpsc spent years drafting a rule based on vehicles from 2010 cannot be evidence that the rule should be pursued. nor is the quantity of pages in the briefing packet relative to their qualitity. and the period has been extended because they've failed to turned over the documents and data underlying the rule making. this morning they're meeting to discuss voluntary standards. rov members met on may 5. this is the best approach a view shared by the cpsc in light of this morning. but in the meantime the npr remains pending. it would be a mistake to proceed to a mandatory rule without first conducting the testing contemplated by the ride act. it's imperative that we get this right for the military who use these vehicles in a variety of ways off road and in extreme

conditions. thank you for your time. >> prepared to recognize plz schakowsky. five minutes please. >> thank you chairman. as a consumer advocate pretty much all of my adult life i've been around these conversations for a long time and frankly i think this panel is reflective of what happens to consumers three to one, not doing this kind of mandatory standards. one example i've been working on the rear visibility and the number of children who are killed when often their parent or grandparent drives their car over backwards on them. we had one in chicago recently. and now we're going to have, by 2018 mandatory in every car there's going aba camera. that bill was passed in 2008. and an average of two children die every week. well, heck that's not that many

kids. 355 deaths from these vehicles since -- between 2003 and 2013. and thank you for reading some of those names and bringing it home to us. thank you for your courageous testimony today. i would like to hear from the industry instead of why it all ought to be voluntary. because you said 15 -- i guess that's under the voluntary standards. 15 people have died this year, is that right, already? didn't you say 2015? >> yes, correct. >> yeah. so that's under voluntary standards, i take it. well maybe cost benefit doesn't make that worthwhile to make that have mandatory standards. i disagree. and i think that while you want to get it right, absolutely, i'm sick of hearing the fault is the trial lawyers, the fact is the

user who doesn't put on the seat belt. and if we can do something to save another life, and i'm with you, then we need to have mandatory standards. so i'm wondering if you had any feeling that you had any reason not to trust the vehicle that your son was using when you looked at that. >> in the beginning i really feel like the vehicles give a perception of safety. but rovs are not safe. and the fact that so many children have lost their lives has proven that time and time again. >> and when your son was bucked into the vehicle did you trust that the seat belt would keep him being thrown from the vehicle just as it would in a car? >> of course. we think the products that we buy are safe. >> did the vehicle your son was riding look like the kind of vehicle that would lead to more than 300 deaths or i guess you

already said the vehicle -- >> absolutely not. >> proponents of the cpsc rule and activists like yourself had said that the type of everyday use of the rovs that lead to rollover deaths is not necessarily obvious to required, particularly children. do you agree. >> i agree. >> based on your work advocateing on behalf of other victims of rov accidents, do you believe the children are particularly vulnerable? >> i do. and i believe waiting for more data is waiting for more deaths. >> so what i would like to see is rather than saying we have to have perhaps years more of study and years more of death, that the industry work with the advocates and with the cpsc and with their investigators to if you don't think the rule, the mandatory rule is proper then figure out what a mandatory rule

ought to look like. didn't you say that there's inports, et cetera and that, you know we need to look at all of those? >> the way the statute would work, the commission would need to know that there's substantial compliance before they relied upon a voluntary standard. or they could just decide we don't have confidences in these foreign manufacturers and that they'll be compliant and move forward with their final rule. >> so why don't we have a mandatory standard that would apply to all, including imports? i just feel so strongly that when we have an opportunity to do something that's going to save a life -- and i know that there's, there's complicated mathematics that figures out money spent isn't worth a life. i don't really abide by that. and it seems to me that 35 335 is

enough. i think your son is enough. that we ought to move ahead. i support moving ahead as quickly as possible with the mandatory standards and i yield back. >> chair thanks the gentle lady. i recognize myself for five minutes for questions. let mow first off say thank you for your work for getting graham baker pool standards. i was on the subcommittee when that bill went through and actually added the language for ornamental pools because as you may recall we lost a number of people at ft. worth water garden which underscored to me the necessity of including ornamental pools as well as back yard pools. but when you were doing the drain cover recall did you go

from a voluntary standard to a mandatory standard during that process? >> yes, we did. >> what were the advantages or perhaps the disadvantages from moving from the voluntary to the mandatory standard? >> the advantage is always safety and stopping death. you're always tempted to move as quickly as possible in order to address an addressable risk. the disadvantage in that circumstance -- >> let me just interrupt you there for a second if i could. which is the more expeditious path, the voluntary ore mandatory? >> it depends. it can be more expe dirgs to rely on the voluntary standard. you get them working together on a standard that everyone can agree on. the problem doing it too quickly and mandating it as law when it's not quite ready to be law, in that case we didn't make

things safer fast enough in that the drain covers were tested by different labs in different ways. we didn't know that the test results -- exactly how to do the tests at the lab level. and there were different labs passing different drain kofs and we ended up with pools with brand-new drain covers installed that weren't compliant. and we had to recall those, pull them out and put them in properly tested. that works well in a voluntary world with things can change over time. when you make it mandatory law, it changes the equation. while it's helpful from a safety perspective to move as quickly as possible that's always the cpsc's goal, if you don't do it right it can cost an enormous amount of money and it doesn't save lives. that's what we want to try to avoid. >> mr. prichard i guess we should ask the question of you. the list that was read is impressive but it's also impressive because of the young

age of so many of the people who met their demise. these machine with an age restriction or recommendation for training under certain ages? >> we do. the industry's recommendation is that in order to drive an rov you node toob 16 years of age and have a valid driver's license. these are not toys. these are not meant to be driven by children. this is on the machines. it's part of the free online training that's available to everyone. it's certainly part of the hands-on training that's available. children don't belong behind the wheel of these vehicles. we've covered a lot of ground here in sort of very short form. one thing i do want to clarify is when we talk about a voluntary standard and the requirements under the voluntary

standard, that's enforceable. that's enforceable by the cpsc. i's not value tear in the sense of an opt in and opt out. it's the standard. and that's how the approximately 14 to 15,000 other products that are under the jurisdiction of the cpsc are handled. i mean you could imagine the cpsc trying to write 15000 different standards for every product out there. >> let me just interrupt you for a minute because i'm going to run out of time and u want to be respectful of the other members. i think it's a facebook page set up to the memory of your son, there's a list of i guess, safety members for want of a better term. one mentions the age. another mentions a helmet. i mean, these are things that your organization recommends? >> first off, i don't have an organization per se. but if we're talking about the

fact that children shouldn't be on them, then we would have to -- i would have to say what about karen har wood 46 or andrea jones who's 34. >> that's an excellent point. i was going to ask mr. warfield, you've studied this for a long time. does the -- i want to say this as nicely as i can. but does body mass make a difference, that is the lighter the driver -- because most of the people older than age 16 that are mentioned on the list most of those were women. so presumably of lighter body weight. does that make a difference? is that something you have studied? >> not the weight itself, sir. what i see time and time again with these machines it's operator error. it has almost nothing to do with the design of the vehicle. please let me carry one step further here.

i've been operating these machines since 1985. i currently have 13 atvs, four rovs. i have a brand-new one coming in today. i am on those rovs ever day, either maintenance or through training. i have never rolled an rov over. i have never rolled an atv over. i have operated these machines in every state in the united states including alaska and hawaii, except for north dakota. i don't know why i missed out on north dakota. what i'm getting at is, i put the machines through the paces, through training through an advocate of riding. i wear a helmet. i make sure the proper age person is operating the machine. i follow the guidelines. so what i'm saying is i have trusted this industry. i have trusted this industry that they've shown me, they've given me and my family a vehicle that is safe to operate.

i am really concerned that now cp sx c cpsc is saying, wait a minute. there is something wrong here. to answer your question, why wait? i've been operating a machine that was perfectliable of doing everything i wanted. if we're going to make a change, let's make sure the change is not a negative change. >> i'm going to ask you to hold that thought and the chair will recognize ms. clark five minutes for questions, please. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i thank the ranking member and i thank our witnesses for their testimony here today. it's been more than a half a decade since the consumer product safety commission issued the advanced notice of proposed rule make in 2009. since then cpsc has conducted thorough research to determine the appropriate mandatory standards for rovs. cpsc staff reviewed more than 550 rov related incidents, 335 of which resulted in the death

of the driver or passenger or both. each incident was reviewed by a multidisciplinary team including an economist human factors engineer, health scientist and a statistician. the worked with a limited contractor to create an rov rollover similar later from scratch. in addition to the agency's own data collection they held a 7-hour public meeting in which questions were asked of witnesses both for and against the proposal. by any traditional measure, internal research, hypothetical simulation, incident review and public input the commission has conducted a thorough investigation and has more than enough information to issue appropriate standards. your son was not the only son

affected by weak safety standards that allowed yamaha to continue selling defective versions of the rhino rov. in 2009, the consumer safety commission estimated 59 people were killed riding the rhino. in fact the rhino accident epidemic was one of the primary drivers of the commission ears original rule making. but hr 199 could force the cpsc to contract with the national academy of signscience to conduct further research. my question is do you think more data is needed to determine the rovs that are currently on the market are unsafe? >> cpsc, u they eave worked hard to get the data they have. they've spent money to gather and understand that day pa.

more delay puts children and all people serious risk of injury or death. but i don't think more data is needed. i think it's been enough time. and like i said before, waiting for more data is waiting for more deaths. >> then let me just follow up with that question. you've suffered an unspeakable loss because of an unsafe rov. do you think that the cpsc is rushing to judgment in proposing standards for recreational activity responsible for more than 335 deaths in the last decade? >> no. >> i thank you. mr. chairman, i yield back the balance of my time. >> gentle lady yield back. chair recognizes the gentleman from kentucky. five minutes for questions, please. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for being here to testify today. i noticed in your testimony you

mentioned that the roha is accredited by the national standards institute to develop stand dads for the equipment configuration and performance of rovs. can you tell us more about the process and how voluntary safety standards have been developed over the last several years and does this process involve the cpsc, the voluntary process of standards mandated and is the cpsc mandated. >> absolutely. cut me off when you get tired of listening. rohv was develop in 2007. work began in 2008. in ten a voluntary standard was developed and published. then another version in 2011 and another version in 2014 reflecting the evolving technology. the way the process works is you get the process started through a procedure mandated by its

antsy, that's the acronym for this process. you put out a proposed draft standard to the canvas. and the canvas is made up of stakeholders. and the stakeholders include the cpsc included consumer groups, industry, user groups. it's a broad swath. the way this works is people get the draft, they canvas the comments and submit their comments back in. the comments are shared with everyone on the canvas. then rohva responds to those comments. your suggestion for seat belts, here's our response. and then the canvas gets all of those comments back to the canvasee. then the consensus is built. it's sent to antsy and sthey

check it to make sure you fol plowed the procedure. and when they accept it, it become as standard by which all of the vehicles ujt to that voluntary standard must confirm. >> so then it becomes mandatory? >> it's voluntary -- >> what's the difference between mandatory and voluntary. >> it's voluntary in the sense that it's developed by stakeholders but it's enforceable. mandatory means the cpsc imposes what it thinks is the best approach. where we are now is at an impasse between a voluntary standard that's brand-new and a mandatory standard or at least a proposal for a mandatory standard based on the old standard. and the engineer in industry just think cpsc has got this

wrong. >> was the voluntary standard better? what is it more likely to protect, life than the mandatory. what are the critical differences and why is your more better? >> there are three, what i would call three fundamental differences in between the two. one is vehicle handling. the cpsc wants to impose an understeer mandate. the next is testing the lateral stability. the cpsc's test for lateral stability suffers with reproduceability which the cpsc is conducting testing to address. seattle belts. an interlock that would prevent the vehicle from moving above 15 miles an hour if the seat belts are not used in the driver and the passenger seat. on the driver's seat there's a lot of agreement. the voluntary assessment

includes that. the dispute is over the passenger seat. cpsc commissioned a study of the passenger seat interlock. they just got the results in february. they published them in march. and the study confirmed what industry had been telling that we have heard from our own consumers, which is no one wants this passenger side seat belt interlock because drivers don't want to lose control of their vehicle. you add on top of that that technical challenges which would be if you put your dog in the seat your toolbox in the seat. this is an area where there is no answer. and the final wrinkle, even on the drive's seat interlock, it doesn't work with a diesel or cash rated engine. it has to talk to a computer. the computer has to talk to the seat belt to tell it we have a connection here. that is one small example of what is a frankly complex area. and the cpsc engineers while

well-intentioned 0 don't have this right. and i want to add, we didn't get -- we went through this voluntary standard process last year. which i didn't think the cpsc was very engaged in. a better way to put that though is that they seem to be much more engaged with industry now. and there's a meeting taking place right now between industry and cpsc staff to discuss the voluntary standards. that's a path forward. >> if i could, i want to say, thank you for coming. your advocacy is very important and thoughts are prayers are with you. thank you for taking the cause and hopefully we can come to the right standard and have the right thing as a result. >> gentleman yields back. chair recognizes plz schakowsky. >> i would like to put on the record, the opening statement of john sand, father of an rov victims with letters from the

american academy of pediatrics letter from various consumer groups, testimony of rachel of the consumer federation of american before the cpsc citizen's report that was referred to in her testimony. >> without objection so ordered. chair would just note i offered plz schakowsky a follow-up question. she declined. i did have one follow-up question i wanted to ask. your son was injured on the yamaha rhino 450 and i just ask the question of anyone on the panel, is that plr model still available? is that something that is still sold on the market? >> i can address it. >> please. >> that vehicle is not sold. in fact it's -- you're talking about a vehicle from 2007 if i recall your testimony correctly. we're now three voluntary

standards past that. so the technology has evolved beyond that. i can add, there are tens of thousands of those rhinos still in use that people enjoy at this point have prubl put on hundreds of thousands if not more hours of use. but no. we're at -- the tech noll for these vehicles have evolved and we're now in a new standard. >> but you could still buy one on craig's list? >> yeah, i would guess. >> yeah. so it's going to be an informational challenge to get information to people who may be new purchasers of old machines. >> but those vehicles, respectfully, are not defective. period. i think these incidents are more complicated than what we've heard today. i don't think that's the focus of today. i think the focus of today is can we get this right between industry and the cpsc and if the

cpsc just won't listen to industry, they won't listen to the folks who make these vehicles, maybe they'll listen to the academy of sciences. >> chair wishes to dhaing all members of the panel. i'll echo what mr. guthrie says. e extend our condolences for your loss. seeing that there are no further members wishing to ask questions with before we conclude i would like to submit the following documents for inclusion in the record. statement for the record from the consumer product safety commission a letter -- we did mr. olson's letter. a response letter from chairman elliott kate to chairman olson. i remind members they have ten business days to submit additional questions for the record. i ask the witnesses to submit their response within ten business days. without objection, again my

thanks to the panel and thank you for staying with us through a long morning. without objection, the subcommittee is adjourned. on the next washington journal, tim murphy of pennsylvania joins us to talk about the state of the u.s. mental health system and his legislation to improve access and care. then new york congressman charlie wrangle will discuss the ongoing trade debate in congress

and relations with cuba. and later spotlight on magazines continues with bloomberg susan burrfield. she'll look at her recent article on the tourist baby boom and visa process. those conversations plus your calls, tweets and e-mails. our show is live 7:00 a.m. eastern, 4:00 pacific on c-span. for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother. be he nar so vile, this day so gentle his condition. and gentleman in england now abed shall think themselves acursed that they were not here. >> one drop of blood. drawn from thy country's bosom should grieve thee msh than streams of foreign gore.

>> director of the shakespeare line ray. talking about shakespeare and how politicians use quotes from the famous play rite in their speeches. >> the way senator berg did you're able to pause and linger over a long phrase and then stop and keep going. i think he's really using the rhythms of the language which is something that shakespeare did so brilliantly. so that he can take english and put it into high gear at one moment and then he can slow done down. >> sunday night at 8 p.m. eastern and pacific. >> good night. parting is sweet sorrow and it really is. >> the new congressional directory is a hannity guide to the 114 congress with color

photo of every senator and house member plus bioand background information. a foldout map of capitol hill and a look at the committees, the president's cabinet, federal agencies and state governors. order your copy today. it's $13.95 but shipping and handling at c-span.org. the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, admiral james winnefeld recently gave an overview of threats to the u.s., including the nuclear programs of north korea, iran, and russia. he discussed u.s. missile defense technology and joint efforts on missile defense with international allies. from the sternt of strategic studies in washington, d.c. this is 45 minutes.

>> -- to have all of you here. and i want to say special thanks to admiral winnefeld for joining us today. before we begin, many of you have heard me say this before, but when we have public events, we always start with a little safety announcement. i am your responsible safety officer. i'm going to take care of you. so you follow me, we're going to go, if we have to, out through that exit and that exit, the stairwell is around the corner. we'll go down and meet across the street. it's too early for the bar to be open, so we'll meet in the park right next door and i'll see if i can bring refreshments. but please follow me if we have to do anything. thank you all for joining us today. this is the third in a series that we've launched. dr. thomas karako is the new leader for our missile defense program at csis. i should also say special thanks to our friends at boeing that are letting us do this public

event to present the issues associated with missile defense. i'm old enough to remember the days when missile defense was theology, not programming. that was 30 years ago, and we had great controversy associated with missile defense issues. fortunately that's passed us. we're now into the details of what's appropriate, how much is appropriate, how is it positioned, when do we get it online, things like that. admiral winnefeld has been more influential than anyone in reshaping this debate. there's a significant increase in the budget this year for missile defense. i think it reflects a geopolitical reality. it's part of that geopolitical reality that we're going to talk about today. i'm very grateful that he's taken the time to join us. as i said, this is a series. he said, is this the end? i said, no, it's a mid-course correction. so he's going to give us the mid-course correction today.

so could i ask you with your applause to please welcome admiral sandy winnefeld. [ applause ] >> all right, well, good morning, and thank you so much for that very kind introduction and for your friendship and for the invitation to speak today. it's great to be here at csis to provide an update on where our thinking is and where my thinking is, and where our progress is on missile defense, including national ballistic missile defense, regional ballistic missile defense and i'll add a little bit about cruise missile defense. i know for the most part it's a technically savvy audience that's knowledgeable on the topic, especially the midshipmen off to my right, which i'm happy to see here. i suspect there are friends of mine here, keith, who has been extremely helpful to me in my journey and richard fieldhouse, an old friend former senate staffer who has been supportive of the program all along as

well. those of you mixed in, it's good to see you here. i'd like to start in a little bit of an abstract for my discussion today. the first abstract piece is we recognize two basic pillars of defense -- or deterrence, excuse me. mainly, denying an adversary's objectives and imposing costs on an adversary for its aggressive acts. missile defense is in the realm of the former denying an adversary's objectives. we want them to know that not only is there a price for attacking us or our friends, but also that the attack may not succeed in the first place, resulting in pain, but no gain. the second baseline thought is that we believe any sensible nation has to prioritize its investments in defense along some kind of strategic framework. if we don't do this in a sensible way, we'll end up with a cacophony of demands and an

era of declining means. and we all know where the means dedicated to defense have been going inside our own country. this has implications for our missile defense investments. the operative word here is prioritize. which is something this town hates to do, because it means there are winners and losers. some would suggest that this framework should be around prioritizing regions. i say that serious threats come from nearly every region around the globe. so that doesn't work so well for us. others would suggest that this sensible framework would be simply around prioritizing capabilities. but i would argue, yes, you do need to do that, but they don't arrange themselves. they don't prioritize themselves. capabilities are ways, and we can't prioritize them before we prioritize our ends. so the chairman and i, and an increasing number of people inside the defense department, believe that our investments

have to be prioritized along the lines of what it is we're being asked to protect. some of you have heard me speak of this before. some things are more important than others. call them whatever you want. the chairman and i call them national security interests. and we try to look inside each one at the threats to that interest and whether or not we have those threats properly mitigated. it stands to reason that we need to ensure that we take care of the highest ranked interests first. compromise in an era of decreasing means, which i mentioned a moment ago. will have to come in the area of lower-ranked interest. and missile defense falls into various levels along that spectrum of interest. at the top of our list of national security interests, as it is for any nation, is the survival of our nation and at the top of the list of threats to that interest is, of course, a massive nuclear attack from russia or some other high-end

potential adversary like china. this is about existential attacks, attacks that are extremely hard to defend against. because we prefer to use missile deterrence in situations with the highest probability of being most effective, we've stated that missile defense against these high-end threats is too hard and too expensive and too strategically destabilizing to even try. so even though our russian interlocutors refuse to believe us on this, it has the very great virtue of actually being true. so we'll use the cost imposition piece to deter russia by keeping all three legs of our nuclear deterrence strong and our nuclear control system robust. but we do have other interests in the world. what we call limited missile defense falls squarely within the next security interest in line, the way the chairman and i look at it namely, our determination to prevent catastrophic attacks on our nation. the number of nations trying to

achieve that capability is growing, not shrinking, with our most immediate concern being north korea because they're closest in terms of capability, followed by iran. a robust and capable national missile defense is our best bet to defend the united states from such an attack. that's why the ground-based midcourse defense program is going to remain our first priority in missile defense. in a shrinking defense budget, this system will be accorded the highest priority within the missile defense share of our pie. further down the line, our other global national security interests, including support for our allies and partners around the world, as well as protecting american citizens around the world, including our own troops, wherever they may be present. thus, we also place a good bit of emphasis on regional missile defense, closely cooperating with a number of key partners in this area, and i'll talk about them a little bit later. but in a world of declining budgets, it's likely we'll come to rely more on those partners to resource their own missile

defense systems. and i wanted to get that out, because it's important context for where we will and will not do missile defense and how we will prioritize our investments where we will do missile defense. now let me spend a little bit more time talking about each of these two interest-based priorities. defense of the homeland, and regional defense. regarding the homeland, we have to take the iranian and north korean threats seriously, even though neither nation has a mature icbm capability. and both nations know full well that they would face an overwhelming response to any attack. while we would obviously prefer to take a threat missile out while it's still on the ground, what we would call left of launch, we won't have the luxury of doing so. because it's our policy to stay ahead of the threat, we don't want there to be any doubt about our commitment to having a solid right of launch capability. so it boils down to how many

missiles we can knock down, versus how many the threat can launch. and that's much more than just a function of how many interceptors we have in the ground. it's also a function of how the whole system works. we in the military often say quantity has a quality all of its own. in the missile defense world, quality has a quantity all of its own and the leverage can be enormous. if, for example, because of system improvements, we only have to shoot half the number of interceptors per incoming warhead that we see, then we can handle twice the number of inbound warheads. that's why we're taking time to improve the capability and reliability of our entire system. the missile defense agency, led by jim syring, has done a terrific job of this. it's not easy to hit to kill at the kind of closure speeds that we're talking about, but we've done it. and it's hard to make

advancements in such a program when it's so expensive to test the things you change in response to the things that you might find wrong. i give mda great credit for understanding that. and understanding that when you find a problem, you don't stop at the first thing you see, you wring out the entire system. you don't stop at the first possible fix to what you find wrong. and mda has done exactly that. they've taken their time and they've done it right. sometimes people like me get frustrated because we want to go faster, but mda has done a fantastic job taking a thorough and deliberate approach to these kinds of problems and they've done terrifically. in january of 2013, they launched an improved ce-2 interceptor not against a target, but to run it through its paces to solve a problem and it performed magnificently. they send it up against a real target about a year ago and it performed magnificently. i was in the room watching it,

and you can imagine what it felt like to see that thing have an extremely successful intercept. it was a very good shot in the arm for that program. and based on the success of that shot, we were able to resume production of eight planned gbis in the new configuration. that success kept us on track to increase the gbi inventory by 14. increasing the total with 40 in alaska and 4 in vandenburg. four have the improved design. and we have a lot of confidence in those missiles. we'll keep improving those missiles and testing the improvements because we fly before we buy. the next flight of the gmd system will take place later this year. it's gonna be another non-intercept test of a ce-2 gbi because we want to keep costs under control. we'll demonstrate the performance of an alternate diverse thruster in a flight

environment and test end-to-end discrimination of a complex target scene through the gmd fire control loop. at the end of calendar year 2016, we plan to conduct the first intercept test for the ce-2, the real deal with a new avionics package. that will be our first intercept package of a true icbm target. should that be successful, we'll deliver ten over the next year to achieve our goal of 44 gbis by the end of 2017. we're also making great progress with all three vendors on the redesigned kill vehicle, which we expect to flight test in 2018. but improving the whole system, again, is not just about interceptors. we have to take a wholistic view and invest our limited resources as wisely as we possibly can. in this light, there's been a lot of talk about installing an

east coast missile field. our environmental impact statement should be complete in the middle of next year. however, the only reason to make that investment would be to provide the capability to shoot assess, and shoot again. we can only do that if we have the sensors we need to do so. so we need to put our ability to see targets at the head of the line. and therefore there's been no decision yet by the department to move forward with an additional interceptor site, though we could do that. meanwhile, our current sites, vandenburg and alaska, protect the u.s. homeland from the existing threat from north korea and iran should either of them really emerge. and even though an additional interceptor site would add battle space and capacity, a decision to construct the new site would come at significant material development and service sustainment costs. so we need to be careful. while that site could eventually

be necessary as i said, in the near term, upgrading the kill vehicle on the gbi, improving our ability to discriminate are higher priorities for us in improving our protection against limited icbm attack. and we have a lot going on in this area. working with our very close japanese partners, we completed the deployment of the tippy 2 radar in kyogamisaki in southern japan. and we're grateful to japan for their close cooperation. it's gone well. this radar and the new capability will enhance the overall performance of both rarnds when operating in a mutually supported mode. we made a technical capability declaration for the kyogamisaki radar this past december. that will relieve the need for us to put ships underway for tracking purposes in the sea of

japan and eastern japan, and that's important because it frees up those assets for other missions. we're continuing to operate in the pacific to provide discrimination capabilities for kona's and hawaii defense. we're planning to deploy a new long-range discriminating radar for the pacific by the 2020 time frame. finally, we're continuing to pursue greater use of space. uav-based technologies and increased integration of existing sensor capabilities across the system in order to significantly enhance our missile defense discrimination capabilities in the future. now, i don't want to overlook cruise missile defense, particularly as it regards the homeland. you might ask, if we choose to not invest the enormous resources that would be required to defend against a massive russian icbmattack over the north pole, then why would we care about cruise missile attack over the north pole, then why would we care about cruise missile

defense in the homeland? the element of surprise is nearly impossible with an icbm activity. we will always have time to react. we can't say the same thing for a cruise missile attack which could be intended to take away our ability to decide and response to an icbm attack. that's a key point. it's why homeland cruise missile defense is shifting above regional ballistic missile defense in my mind, as far as importance goes. since defending our national leadership and our ability to decide through our command and control capability is part of the imposed cost leg of deterrence. this has implications for budget and for stationing of our missile defense assets. we're devoting a good deal of attention to ensuring we're properly configured against such an attack in the homeland and we need to continue to do so. this includes the j lens test we're conducting at aberdeen, in case you have seen that dirigible hovering over maryland. as well as other systems we're putting in place to greatly enhance our early warning around the national capital region.

we're looking at changing out some of the systems we would use to knock down any cruise missiles headed towards our nation's capital. we're going to have to extend this to areas around our nation that we believe are important to protect. this is a big country, we can't protect the entire place from cruise missile defense, unless we want to break the bank. but there are important areas in this country that we need to make sure are protected from that kind of attack. now turning to regional ballistic missile defense there's been a massive proliferation in recent years. there are 6,000 known ballistic missiles in the world and that's not including russia and china. within this proliferation, we see a number of technical advancements, including advanced liquid and solid propellant propulsion technologies and missiles that are being more

mobile, more reliable, more accurate and capable of striking targets over longer ranges. some can even target ships at sea. many have shorter launch preparation times and smaller footprints that are making them much more survivable on the ground. technical and operational measures to defeat missiles are also increasing. for example, many nations experience salvo firings of medium and short-range missiles in an attempt to saturate ream improvisational ballistic missile defenses. against this, not only have we brought our own missile defense capability to bear and deploy some kind of missile defense system in ten different countries around the globe, we now have 33 ships capable of doing the mission themselves. a number of which are on station at any given moment. we're encouraging our allies and partners to acquire their own missile defense, as i mentioned earlier, and to strengthen regional missile defense cooperation that will result in better performance than individual countries acting on their own.

but this integration of capability system quite a challenge. our combatant commanders have found that we need to be continually mindful of the sensors, shooters and platforms deployed by the united states. adding the systems and forces of our friends and allies, adds a whole new level of challenges which we're successfully addressing. before combined deployment of missile defense system can be brought together, diplomats and warriors have a great deal of work to do. painstaking establishment of bi- and multilateral agreements will pave the way to more effective regional ballistic missile defenses. it sends a clear message of deterrence and offers assurance to our allies. in in vein, the united states is working across the globe with our partners against regional threats. let me give you a few examples. in the middle east, the united

states is working with partners on missile defense, including supporting purchases made through foreign military sales. in a joint statement coming out of his recent meeting with our gcc partners at camp david, president obama said, quote, the united states policy to use all elements of power to secure our core interests in the gulf region and to deter and confront external aggression as we did in the gulf war is unequivocal, unquote. this includes missile defense. mda is currently executing a fms case with united arab emirates for two thad batteries and accompanying launchers, radars and interceptors. this year we'll deliver the first thad battery to our partners and begin equipment training. kuwait is purchasing batteries and saudi arabia is in the purchase of upgrading to the pak 3 configuration. the united states also maintains a very strong defense relationship with israel.

our cooperation on missile defense has resulted in a comprehensive missile defense architecture. israeli programs the u.s. has supported, iron dome, the swing, and the arrow weapons system create a multi-layered architecture designed to protect the israeli people from various threats. results have been very successful to date. in europe, the united states continues its engagement with nato to build on its commitment to european phase, adaptive approach, while also encouraging greater burden sharing by nato and non-nato nations in the region. mda is on schedule to deliver phase two by the end of this year. phase two will include deployment to romania with capabilities and upgraded versions of the bmd weapons system.

the required military construction integration and installation and testing activities will be complete for technical capability declaration in 2015. and we expect to hand aegis ashore over to the navy for testing. just last year, we had a successful test shot in hawaii, that demonstrated the functionality of the weapon system by verifying its ability to launch, control, establish uplink and downlink communication and provide guidance command and target information to a guided missile. and in an important next step, we should be conducting our first non-intercept test in the next couple of weeks. another test in november and two intercept tests of that e2t important missile next year, which is vital to keeping phase three of the epa on track. currently 3 of our 4 bmd-capable ships, uss donald cook, uss ross, and uss porter, are stationed in spain.

and the final ship to be permanently stationed in the mediterranean to perform the mission, the uss carney will arrive later this year. we are living up to our commitments. this program is on track and our nato allies are making significant contributions through their purchase and deployment of bmd capable systems in deployment and support of nato missions. and let me be clear once more. it's not the policy of the united states to build a system to counter russian ballistic missiles president the sites in poland and romania are designed to encounter missiles that may be launched from other nations against our european nato partners. so let's lay that to rest one more time. the most helpful thing that a russia or a china for that matter can do, is to persuade north korea and iran to drop their ballistic missile programs. unfortunately, we don't see that

happening anytime soon. and finally in the asia pacific, we have a strong missile defense posture in that region for homeland and regional ballistic missile defense. the cornerstone of our diplomacy and security has been our strong bilateral alliances with south korea, japan, and australia. going forward, we'll continue to emphasize the importance of developing regional ballistic missile defense systems. it's a politically sensitive topic for several of our allies, but progress in this area would only increase our confidence in the face of persistent north korean provocations. during 2013's provocation cycle it appeared that north korea might conduct a test of a regional ballistic missile that could potentially reach u.s. soil in guam. in spoons response, as many of you are aware, the u.s. army

did a magnificent job of deploying fab to that island. there it remains, readily are aware, the u.s. army did a magnificent job of deploying fab to that island. there it remains, readily ware, the u.s. army did a magnificent job of deploying fab to that island. there it remains, readily deployable if necessary, and in the meantime, defending u.s. soil from potential threats. and just a few weeks ago, pyongyang was raving about a test of its submarine launched ballistic missile capability. fortunately they've not gotten as far as their video editors and spinmeisters would have us believe. they are many years away from developing this capability. if they are eventually able to do so, it would present a hard-to-detect threat for japan and our service members in the region. this only reinforces the importance of regional ballistic missile defense. with the unpredictability of the north korean regime, we have to periodically reassess our posture within the region. some of you are brimming over with curiosity over the potential for thad in the republican of south korea. including our own troops who are there to defend any attack from the north.

it's a good system that would not pose a threat to any other nation in the region, but i want to make it clear that we have not yet engaged in formal negotiations engaged with the r.o.k. government about this possibility. as always, we're respectful of our host nation's concerns, and it goes without saying that the r.o.k. will want to have this system in place, or we simply won't put it there. while we're on the topic of regional defense, i'd like to make the point that we need to keep our eye on the cost curves associated with that problem. chairman dempsey hit it home on this topic a little more than a year ago when he released his air missile vision for 2020. the simple fact is that a thad, which costs around $11 million, could find itself being launched against a scud that only costs $3 million. and that's only if we launch one thad against that threat. this cost curve is working against us. there are four things we need to

consider doing about it. first, we need to keep the pressure on how much our own interceptors cost. it would be helpful to buy them in increasing economic quantities, but it's tough to do so under the increased budget pressure that we're feeling. second, we can continue our emphasis on developing the technologies required to hit ballistic missiles and their launchers left of launch. we're optimistic about a number of initiatives in this area. we're putting a lot of work into it, but we have a long way to go. third, we and expend r & d effort to find a more cost effective way of knocking down missiles in flight by inverting the cost curve in the other direction. in this regard i mentioned the rail gun project and possibly directed energy. we're serious about pursuing those as options and they may bear fruit. finally, there's no shame in passive missile defense, such as denial, deception, mobility, and hardening. our potential adversaries do these things, and there's no

reason why we shouldn't, and we are. first and most obvious is the claim that our missile defense systems won't work. claim our defense systems will not work. well, as i mentioned, a real statement in the regard a year ago, and we continue to make improvements. overall, the ground base missile defense system is four for seven. nothing like having the most recent shot a success. we have an excellent track record with the regional systems. to date, our operationally con figured intercementers not development prototypes, that is 11 for 11. the patriot pack 3 is 21 for 25, not bad, but we're determined to make it bigger. the second misconception i want to address is it's easy to employ count measures.

to be sure we'll continue to do everything we can to improve our capability. as hard as the job is so is the challenge of employing effective counter measures. if they confront the system, whatever measures worked in mid court may not work in terminal. where terminal measures may be destroyed in mid course. test is critical to the success of any complex weapons system, and when it comes to missile defense countermeasures, adversaries do not do much of that knowing they can't know how well they perform. we have our own program, and we learn how difficult it is to get that right. countermeasures take up payload space and have weight considerations so there's tradeoffs there. bottom line is it may not be as easy as it looks on paper. the last misconception is the narrative that missile defense has to be 100% effective in order to be successful. especially where nuclear weapons are involved. that's a simplistic argument. no system can achieve perfection

even though we always strive for it. it would be hubris to believe otherwise. if deterrence fails, we do not expect to stop every single missile, to be sure, we tray. rather, effective systems we have and are developing are intended to detour an adversary by injecting doubt of the effectiveness of his attack versus our likely response. in other words again, pain but no gain. the enemy knows there will be a significant price to pay of missile launch against the united states. the worse of all worlds for our enemy is the attack it not just effective, but provokes a nasty response from the victim. two pillars of deterrence. our enterprise is on an upward trajectory. regional level tough cost curves, and rapidly coming back into health for the defense of

the homeland. i give great credit to the staff, keith his predecessors. shooting a bullet with a bullet is not easy to solve, hard when assets are expensive and difficult to test, but harder in a turbulent environment and budget enturnty, but we continue to make progress progress with the international partners progress in developing, testing, and fielding national and regional ballistic missile defense systems that are flexible survivalble, and affordable, and progress investing in promising technology to ensure future systems are capable of performing complex threats we expect in the future. as we all know, the advantage in war fair shifts putting offense and defense over time. in our limited way, we are trying to shift that pendulum in favor of the defense as far as ballistic missile threat goes. as such, inno vags is leadership opportunity for the generation

of missile defense practitioners, which is why i believe csiis ease effort to keep the topic alive is so very important. i thank you all for your interest in missile defense, and i hope the discussion has been useful for you, and i hope you come away convinced even more of the commitment to the important contribution of our security and ally's security and that we'll continue to make progress. thank you very much, and, tom, i think we can take a couple questions and after you do a little moderation we'll? :f make a deal that the first question goes to a mid shipman. all right. fair enough. thank you. [ applause ] >> if there is a question i can't answer, i'll pass it on. >> well i think you really covered the landscape there. deterrents, defense, the offense, defense makes

everything. i have to ask one quick one. how do you see this missile defense, connectic and nonconnecter in terms of priority in the third offset, in the electronic warfare that deputy secretary talked about. >> we're doing a number of things in the third offset and just for background for members of the audience who do not understand it. secretary of defense has an observation that not only includes the department becoming efficient, trying to get 0th century work force, but also technical and concept advances that will give us a leap ahead. with the first offset being nuclear weapons that stop a russian invasion of western europe the second is guided weapons that go from shortage and now the third is out there, may not be a magic bullet or

interesting single technology, but it's a combination of technologies. among those, we've been looking at what it would take to get another offset in the field of ballistic missile defense and that's where this cost curve comes in. we're doing such a good job with the problem the way we're handling it now, but we have to keep the curve in mind where we can't continue to buy expensive intercepters to knock down you know increasing proliferation of less expensive missiles so that's where directive energy comes in. it's where the rail comes in. we're very, very interested in exploring that and i think that the adcp, advanced capability deterrence panel gives them a shot in the arm, and i know that mda is looking at that very hard with the navy as well. >> all right. take one over here. actually, get the microphone quick. awesome. there you go. >> well, thank you, sir, for coming today to speak about

this. i'm third class david larkin. i have a question of poland in the cancellation of the site under president bush and then also the cancellation of phase four of the european phase adaptive approach. both decisions to cancel the programs were made based on strategic objectives and new information about north korea and iran. however, both of these decisions irritated our regional partners, so my question is how do our regional partners interest play into missile defense decisions. >> sure. well good helpavens, our regional partners are vital to defense systems. we closely consult with them on any type of offering that we make or cooperative effort we do together. we couldn't do this without them, and if they were not there, we wouldn't be doing it in the first place.

absolutely, we consult with them. i would not go so far to say our regional partners were irritated about the shift. i think because they had to do so much work politically to get an agreement to do this in the first place, any nation has to do that it was inconvenient for them for us to shift the way we were going to do it, but it was clear we were not shifting our commitment in western europe, but realized there was a much better way to do it, and we are actually seeing that better way today, and i vouch that we consult closely with members in the three regions, europe, middle east, and asia on every aspect of the defense. that's been a fruitful process. japan has been a good partner in the regard. our partners have been exceptionally interested in this and to wit some of the foreign military sales we're going to do and we've had a very robust discussion. it's a good news story how we consult with our partners.

are you a new third class or upcoming second class? all right. congratulations. you have a great crew. >> we have one here in the back. >> thank you very much. i'm josh rogan with bloomberg view. thank you for the time and thank you for your service. i want to ask about the inf treaty. the administration acknowledged they believe russia is in violation of the treaty considering responses. can you help us understand what options do we have to respond to the violation if we were to increase capabilities for u.s. and nato partners in europe. what might that look like? is that your personal recommendation? thank you. >> well, first thing, because it's under consideration i can't say much about it. that's fair to the president not to remove his decision space in what's a very, very important topic, something that congress is interested in, we're interested in it and i think the first solution to this problem is for russia to stop

doing this. that's the most important thing and our dip mats are working hard. secretary kerry spoke recently, in fact, to russian leadership about this, and that's the way out of this problem. if it does not look like that's going to happen, then there are, of course, options that i would place to general categories defensive and the other is offensive, that would indicate to, first of all, russia, this is not going to do them any good. this gets into the objectives and causes pieces of deterrence and reassures our partners were very serious about wanting to keep russia's adherence to the treaty that we all signed so long ago. >> all right. i think we've got one more. right here. up front. >> does the russians obviously they continue to make the point, and you've tried to put to rest