essential and should be a core element of any intervention in the region. of course, this involves policyi decisions at the level of the international community to highi mainstream this dimension and the programs but it also g involves and as the report highlights, the role of the t local actors including civil society in this kind of work.e because at the end of the day the agents of changes have to be local. the international community can support but the change has to happen through indigenous actors. the initial question for this event and for the report was weo that if good governance can erode the support to militantsyl my point is that the answer to e this question is yes if, so it's a conditional yes, depending on

whether an element of social transformation is built into the interventions that will address the governance issues. you, thank you for your attention and i'm looking forward to comments and questions.. >> thank you, dr. lee. before i ask my first question as the moderator, i just want to encourage the panelists if they have comments on each other's remarks, i would welcome any ne followup on those. i encourage a discussion here also between the panelists and also as the same way we engage with the audience.esting >> one thing you said which i think was very interesting is that -- two things actually. one was demonstrating the cost of violence as potentially productive and that there's note this link between poverty and lr support for extremism. something that we see very clearly in several years of tann survey research across pakistan in all parts of the country, so

not an arab country but a it country that suffers tremendous amounts of political violence that generally it is the poor who are most negative towards extremist groups. so again, it's kind of the poor who dislike the groups the most, and we see a little bit of that in the surveillance data from iraq, although it's not as strong. the other thing though sha that see there is if you share information with people about ng the cost of violence to the ilit country, you have a very strong effect on driving support for militant groups down.n. and this isst across all kinds militant groups and that effect is strongest among the poor. it suggests the intuition, at ra context, the er intuition is born out in very large scale surveys across a number of years. >> thank you. i think some of the key th takeaways from this conversation is that i liked the question

underneath the research which . talks about how good governance can diminish support for isis and sectarian militias. itg highlightsfrom that the vi is not coming from a point of i. belief, from a point of religious belief that you have to do this. second, it gives hope that there is possibility that you can diminish that and good governance is the route to do tt that, and civil society is a good partner that could be worked with and i think this is one of the success stories of iraq in post 2003.ause it is important -- it constitutes a paradigm shift for government to have another partner on the scenend to se tor active governance player and to see acceptability by the government. and by the people

more so to be a partner as an important one. for v i'd like to get back to the issue of violence because n orga there's support for armed groupt andhi violent groups, whether i. isis or somebody else as an organized group. then there is the other thing that dr. lee talked about is that resorting toit is a violenn it may not become an armed olene organization but actually violence as a means, whether it's a demonstration that turns into violence or it's a o soci government that mayet resort to violence as a means to respond to societal demands.-- and then also the perception, whether it was the kurds or the sunnis that when they had an a k of the government thatt when there was no consensus and agreement, the response was tiof violence. so through the research, through hae interviews and this is a questionve for the panel, after the bloody conflicts that we have seen in these different stages, do you see at all any change at the policy maker's

level or the people level that e they're especially looking at the south because looking at the south at the demonstrations l tt we're close to t breaking into violence sometimes, do you feel that there is any change at thev policy maker's level, at the ss community level, that resorting to t violence may not be the wal to address those differences? because difference will stay, t they will be part of humanity. they have been. the question is how do you deal with them nonviolently. lee mentioned some examples of . interventionon but i'm specifically interested in merca core's observations. >> just a couple of points before addressing that particular issue. resea i think two things particularly resonated with me, reflecting on the research. first of all, just this whole idea that, for example, poverty

and a lack of job opportunities would drive young people into the hands or the arms of extremist groups, violent extremist groups, so in a previous piece of research which is collected in this report, youth and consequences, which is available also here, what young people in somalia and colombia i and afghanistan has told our ven not poverty armed or e a lack of job opportunitie it's not sympathy or a lack of sympathy for al shabaab or the taliban, it was their own senseh of marginalization and injustice. so yes, all of these things layer over each other and exclu interplay.marginal for the young people themselvesy they felt excluded.e. they felt marginalized. they felt their own society was not responsive to them and was unjust towards them and that's,

for them, what drove them to either support or not support violent armed groups. again, that's reflected in the research that we just conducted in iraq in that sectarian identity is not the prime driver for sympathy for armed port y opposition groups.ou that's the first thing. just to kind of i guess support your comments. secondly, just to go back to the issue of the constructive role s of iraqi civil society and see n basicallyd improving governanc isn't proven which is true, but what do we see and what does the research tell us and this begins to start to address your own point. so first of all, what is witnessed in iraq over the past several years through its engagement through the program.

we've witnessed as nancy was saying, a flores ans of civil society in iraq that's very hats vocal and active and organized. and that level of vibrancy, that level of activity has also driven changes and perceptions among iraqis themselves towards what they basically see as the s usefulness of civil society a a the usefulness of nonviolent ways of solving grievances and issues. so when the first survey was vio carried out,f only 39% of iraqi expressed a positive view of civil society as a broker that can resolve issues.50%. by the time the 2015 survey, thy that had increased to 50%. so 50% basically saw civil society as a force of good within governance and saw it as able to broker solutions around their own issues of perceptions

of governance and injustice.it >> now i'd like to open it up te the audience for questions.ht please, if you raise your hand,. a microphone will be brought to you and wait for the microphoned if you also please state your name and your affiliation and for those who may have walked in later, just to remind you that this event is being live ugh c- streamed through the usip and mercy corps websites and this is being carried live through c-span. question here? >> thank you. i suppose if you are talking ,h aboutet governance you are thinking about accountabilities and the problem with the government or law enforcement, whether they have police securityto like the united stat or what do you mean the governance or what do they have to change or correct, whether they have accountability,

reliability, whether there's corruption i suppose and whether there is data for your research. when you are looking around may be more reliable but when you y are looking at the b data a lotf time it's false and fraudulent. so you want to say blame on pery financial institution whether they take people's property or even lives away.kes pe what you mean by change our governance that make people feel better. >> what the iraq search shows is that when peoplele had an expectation of improved iolenc governance, that really had a strong and powerful effect in ex terms of their own perceptions of using violence to solve problems. their expect tagss of government performance. there's been practical exampleso

on the cietground, especially ie last couple of years in iraq ofh civil society groups actually making government more accountable, whether that's the federal government or at ponden district or government level. so within the surveys, yes, the vast majority of respondents bo stillrr see -- still perceive te government ito, for example, b. corrupt. they stillwhen perceive the government to be ineffective and not representative.t but when you look at what's happening on the ground, that can change.ter for so whether it's a civil society group like the iraqi conflict a management and association skills, moderating with the federal government in baghdad to talk about support for iraqi civil servants who have been effected by thehe isis takeovern mosul, that group is able to play a key role in changing the government's policy about civil service salaries for example and that's a real tangible result.

if you look down south, civil ap society groups were able to come together and change the way the local governor and authorities were approaching the command ods of the electricity provision in a much fairer and transparent way.a all of these are small gains that shows that civil society can haveve a powerful role in making government more accountable and kind of brokering that conversation between the enriched citizen and the government authorities and brokering that in a very nonviolent, focused way. >> i think one of the striking things you see in the data for s this report is this disconnect between the general changes and expectations of government and g changes and beliefs ically

about corruption. briefs about corruption are menw increasing dramatically reased throughout the example and expectations of how effectively government is going to perform increase dramatically from 2004 to 2015. so there's not a sense in the survey, to go to the question about corruption, that e surv corruption is incompatible with government performance. the survey seems to suggest that there's some set of changes going on in society in iraq le where for expectations about corruption are going up but people are also arere expecting moreof of their government. and so there may be some kind oc tolerance for the inefficiencies or problems caused by corruptiom because those two things, at e least in the western context, m you wouldn't think of them ct. together. there has to be some tolerance. there's a little different than what we might expect.stion inin >> question in the back? >> hi. i'm dale lotten with the state

department's office of opinion research. i wonder if you could answer a sort ofan nuts and bolts questi about the surveys and tell me a little about the differences and methodology about the three. there seem to be some implied differences from the slide you showed, and how you think those might have affected the results. >> my understanding from the work i've done with the data and the work my students have done t with it is the main difference is there were certain areas youn couldn't sampleot previously an the results aren't kind of -- the results aren't very lly sensitive to how you treat that. those areas didn't move dramatically differently and so that's the main difference. when you poke at the data hard and try and control for the sul differential politics and governances and things like that, the results also seem . quite stable.

it doesn't seem like there's a lot going on with the composition of the sample that would drive the results. ec >> question from the lady in the middle?t >> hi.be a gru thanks, i'm jen heeg, a projectn director. want to be a grum pi vehicle t -- executive for a second. my understanding in iraq which is limited is that it's not sectarian violence and it's not actually political attitudes but tribal and family obligations at a local lovely that would lead to support or lack of support for daesh. that's a question and i could br wrong i would love to hear. my second brief question is the strong support and the idea that there's a validation of violence, i've spent many years in the middle east and i think i lot of thatol responsibility col with local media. i'm curious how you see any sort of intersection between civil society and media in changing this.

we know that the recruitment o magazine for daesh uses violence as a recruitment strategy, so we know it really turns kids on and i would love to seey for lo an role or call for responsibility for local media. thanks. >> just to pick up the point in terms of what does the survey tell us about support for a specific group like isis. in fact, the surveying showed consistently very low levels of support for isis among the iraqi population. that's right? yeah. so that's basically what the survey tells us about that specific group. i don't think the survey -- the survey did not poll the your interaction between local media and civil society in terms of -- so this research doesn't particularly speak to your specific -- the latter part of your question.r

this whole question about violence turns young people on k and is a driver for the recruitment into extremist groups, if you look at what the iraq report tells usth but if y also look at what the youth and consequences report isin tellin us, the indicators are that that's not the case or it's not the overwhelming factor. what young people tell us is ign it's their own sense of societal injustice towards them for example that wouldmist or make feel moreli sympathetic for an armed extremist or opposition group which isisse offering lik alternative solution in terms of correcting what they see as the injustices rather than the violence itself. >> i think you raise an out th important point aboute the disconnect between behavior and attitudes. it's important though to think about i think this in terms of what happens at the end of the

day in terms of violence. are malicious attitudes aren't as much of a problem if they're not accompanied by malicious behavior and the ability to conduct malicious behavior depends on your beliefs and what the people in the community are willing to do and how likely they are to alert the s is i authorities when you're going ts engage in violence. one of the ways to think about the results of the survey is it's probably not the case that you're getting a sample result on attitudes towards violence that is the right estimate of it that for the population that se might engage in violence. but it's still really important because you're getting the estimate for the population in o whicht those people are embedde, the community in which they're embedded. those communities can take a lot of actions to stop people from acting on their ideology. i think it's important even if t you don't have that direct link between i'll respond this way on a survey and i'm likely to pick up a gun.

when you think about the evolution of attitudes towards e isis, it's a shame, dr. meta from iaacss isn't here because they've been doing the best public opinion work on this over a long period of time. and j to paraphrase that, the supporto for isis isme quite low. it was dropping.bi in just the last few months they've done surveys in mosul which suggest maybe it's ticking up a little bit in mosul. but really you don't have the right person on the panel to speak to that.>> a >> actually, i want to follow up on that and ask the doctor, i heard you in other conversations comment on the issue of the youth in those societies, omment especially in the provinces after 2003 who have seen violence around them, if you can comment on how that may affect their vulnerability in being prone to violence. >> the point is that -- before t

getting into this,ti i'd like t make a very brief comment on the political attitudes and rity of behavior. i think thatn the if you talk d majority of people in the region, you would feel there is kind of a dual standard approach on this, that people deny praising violence, but in fact,t when they are prompted to act, they act with violence. if you talk about sectarianism, about corruption, youuption woul the same issues, that people e b deny they endorseri corruption t when they want to do something for themselves, they don't hesitate to bribe someone to get it done or whatever. so there is this dual standard that exists in the mind of the majority of people in the e of t region, and this also should be something that needs to be taken into account. back to the issue of the youth, yes, i made previous comments e about the vulnerability of youth, especially those who are

today 12, 13 years old, so they were born in 2003.youth ha they lived all their life in the context of conflict and violence. many of these youth have seen their dads, uncles or other people from their family die in what they consider a legitimate war against occupation, againstr whatever you want to call it. the increased risk on this group today is the heavy is militarization of the community. so the number of groups in iraq today is scary.nds the way these groups are metimes structured, their line of commands and their affiliation, sometimes to regional partners and sometimes to local partnerst is alsoo verybr dangerous. my question is always and this is something i try to bring up in myth discussions with iraqi officials when i meet them is, what's the plan to handle the

caseload of 60,000 to 100,000 fighters who are today on the th ground when the conflict ends? these people have been outside the civilian life for a while now.emen i mean, even if the conflict ends today, if there is a 2 100, political settlement between sunni, shia and kurds, who will happen to 60,000 to 100,000 people who have been outside th. school system or have been fighting for four, five years now, if not more than this. so this is another scary question that comes across my mind. for >> highlights the need against a point that investments in addressing those issues is a multi-year thing. you have to really stay with it. there was a question in the back, please. >> hi. morgan kay, motive s international.

if i'm following the hypothesise it's that civil society is almost a proxy vehicle to see improvements in governance as opposed to tackling governance head on and i'm interpreting ite as government accountability in this case.what d my question is and it's sort of a reinterpretation of the first question, what does the data , i actually say about when -- who within civil society which is huge -- it's massive and very, very heterogeneous. who and what elements of civil society is most effective in changing what particular aspects of governance? can we be a little more granulah maybe about tieing those two if together because that's really i what's goingl to guide us in th right direction. is it civil society groups or religious leaders calling for

decrying of violence among with political actors for example? can the panel maybe tease apartt who within civil society is targeting what within governance and what the data says about that. thanks. >> actually, i like that question. let me add a little bit toe civ. if civil society and the activism that we have seen from them in the recent demonstration over the past months had the ayatollah wasn't so vocal on hir that c issue of corruption and violence, would civil society have had the same level of success or do you think there was a higher chance of the government or other actors have responded to them more harshly? >> i think this is really a question for you, mike. >> thank you. you'll correct me if i'm wrong but the data itself won't tell us which specific actors or

groups within the broad swath of civil society are the most effective. yes? >> can we get her a microphone actually, please. >> in the survey when we refer o toto civil society, we referred specifically to civil society organization so we're really talking about formal civil society. >> the quantitative data itself which is basically the surveying doesn't allow you to do a ety ac comparative analysis betweento different types of civil society, that is to say, okay, type a is effective, type b is less effective. what the qualitative research does in terms of interviews andt the yprogram's own engagement with these more structured formal civil society organizations shows you that across every area of iraq, aghdd whether. it's in the kurdish region or bathat had, these

groups are able to be effectiveo inve changing the paradigm of governance in ways that are responsive to citizen voices.t a so they might be engaging with a local government body about budget transparency, but they ie might also be engaging about a i very, very tangible public good like electricity provision during summer in iraq which sparked a lot of protests last year. and they've effected change so e they've made government more transparent in a lot of as instances. they've made government therefore more accountable to dr its citizens. they made government change keyt policies that it was pretty ion determined to pursue before that civil society organization brokered that conversation between citizens and the people with within -- the policy makers within government. civ quantitative data doesn't necessarily tell you what's the mostbu effective form of civil

society, but the qualitative experience shows us that these most structured civil society organizations can be pretty th effective in actually delivering real change. that's about as far as we can go right now. >> question here in the middle? the gentleman in the middle. yes, yes. >> foreign policy research institute. looking forward, oil prices have been down for a year.barrel o they're now talking about a cut decade off $50 a barrel oil.n the iraqi government has already cut back on its reconstruction investment. there's talk that the subsidiesy will be reduced for electricity and water.vil is this going to be a strain on civil society that civil society won't be able to take? thank you. >> could you elaborate on that a little bit more,e, please?? >> i'm sorry? >> couldldhow do you elaborate more how you're seeing civilth society's role in dealing with i

those issues. arg >>ue a i guess the point is tha the pieou is growing, then it's one thing to argue about king t dividing the pie evenly but when the pie is shrinking, that's going toto put a tremendous strn both on the formal and informal parts of the iraqi government. i'm thinking of the iraqiqi government as being the employer of first resort. those days are over.put trem so unemployment growing especially among the university educated. that's going to put a tremendous strain on this society. thank you. >> i have a brief comment about this. i think that this crises, despite all the negative aspects that it brings with it, it's also an opportunity for both the government of iraq and the civil society in iraq to think about many aspects that were left forgotten over the last ten years.took one of them is -- and this is more of the government's resort -- is to look seriously

into diversifying its economy instead of relying on the oil th sector. the second one is to end up in an abnormal situation of having the government being the first employer in iraq. at the same time, the civil to e society can use this crises as d well to steer the direction of . some public policies that are much needed in iraq today. so i think it will put some visi strains on the civil society but if i were an iraqi activist i would see it as an opportunity as well. >> before i get back to the questioning, i was hoping as i work on this conflict that as et oil went down, obviously it could have the transformative in effects that dr. lee talked about, but also the competition over the resources may bring other challenges and bring it dt down to the provincial level as

iraq decentralizes. my real hope was as the iraqi revenue is going down, i hope that the different actors -- obviously not isis. but these iraqi actors, whether it'sco -- which ever political angle you take, that the cost of the conflict will be so high they will lose interest in spending so much on the weaponso on the fighting and the need fot reconstruction, but so far i don't know if the panels have seen any -- i have not seen an indicator of that influences the key actors to really take it inl a different direction and probably that is offset because of the regional interventions which i'll come back to it if there's no question about it. okay, here. >> sarah chase, carnegie endowment. i wanted to drill down a little further into the sort of ted be

decoupling that you suggested between corruption and governance. it seemsng abo -- again, i'm ju listening to what you're saying about the report, but it seems as though you've got negati increasing --ve perceptions of increasing corruption or increasingly negative e perceptions of corruptioncorr throughout the period, increasing expectations of government at a certain point l but not necessarily increasing perceptions of actual government delivery.hether t and so i'd like to just probe a little further as to whether this decoupling between corruption and governance is wt actually fair because it sounds like given the words that you're using which have to do with transparency, justice, deliveryt effective delivery of the things a government is supposed to do, all of those things are -- what i'm suggestinga is perhaps whate

we'rer looking at is after the election the expectations of a better and amet cleaner governn rose but were not yet met in terms of perceptions of the outcome. is that a fair alternate phrasing potentially? > would actually -- i would have to defer on this to ask beza if she remembers what happens in 2015 as far as not e expectations of government performance but reports of governmentt performance. is so what you have extremely dramatically in the 2014 wave is expectations of governance go up hugely. they go up most strongly when it comes to basically the performance of the police services, and among sunnis and how likely they are to suffer negative treatment from the security services. is th so that's likee -- once you control for individual's

characteristics, that's the the massiveve jump in 2015 which is completely different with the perceptions of the government. it's not like there was the pecd change and among sunnis they amc expected all of a sudden service delivery in all other areas to dramatically improve. it was really this narrow thing. beza, i don't know if you remember the 2014 results more specifically. >> i would completely agree with your interpretation and if you have the report, on page 19 you'll see a graphic where not just perceptions of corruption but also perceptions of services are worsening from 2013 to 2015. so that trend is consistent.t. but as jake pointed out, when e looked just at perceptions of expectations of service delivero before and after theur rising nation, those expectations did rise. so i think your interpretation is correct. >> here and then the gentleman d

over to there.ause the >> thank you.ften c nancy lindborg again. i wanted to piggyback on sarah's question because the classic sr conundrum is oftent change happens, expectations rise and change doesn't happen fast enough and you'veve got a very short window within which to make the kind of change that at sustain whatever positive reaction there is. so is there anything in the data, anything in the durab sure thatn suggests how durable the positive perception is and whato might happen if abady continues to not be able to institute a meaningful reform program, and reforms that will actually be perceived? >> i'll just make a very general point aboutmark getting that kih analysis and then turn it over v to ermark. and this is really for people in the room who might have some influence over funding or administering these things in

the future.with t it's almost impossible to considerwh that question credib with these kinds of surveys where you're not going back to the same people every time.ts i what you really want to do is get the same people at multiple points in time several years apart and see how their peop individual perceptionsle are changing. because the thing that can happen if you don't is people sy who are happy can be more. willing to respond on certain questions on the survey, so you get a spurous kind of result. this is actually what killed the romney campaign in 2012 in some ways, they didn't account for this. in colombia, we've just -- usaid has just finished a program, the midline of a survey where they went to 20,000 people and did a panel survey in 2013 and late 2015 and they got 90% of the n 3 people. in 50 rural -up.

municipalities where there was f conflict in 2013. they went back and found 90% of them in the followup wave. you can absolutely do that kind of research. it's just expensive. quest >> good afternoon. my name is jorge shepherd and io haverw a question for professor shapiro to look the way forward. as far as all these surveys that are put in place, i'm actually a former member of imf and the word bank and also worked very hard in 2007 and 2008 as part of a contractor under usaid and i remember working so hard on these issues around transparency, specifically what we call physical transparency sv

and oversight. we went through a lot of similar surveys at the grassroots level and we put a lot of money in this. my question is how much of value -- obviously all of you, this has to be consulted through the other idps, some of which i already mentioned.city bui i remember we tried to encourag. some building at the grassroots level, even working at the village level in the kurdistan region. i personally was a trainer on c something we called public pent financial a management, specifically on accounting and treasury. we spent a lot of time and i remember there was a very nice period. i don't know if nowadays with all these changes going on with the new regime, is there a kind

of a blueprint that's being discussed as all of these surveys and these other efforts through a donor committee or donor support committee as far as how oversig all these issues transparency and oversight and institutional building are going to be in the weigh forward?the s thank you. >> i don't know. is i'd actually be curious to hear from mark what the consensus isk at mercy corps about the ek kasy about those kinds of programs? >> is there a blueprint?o on that sounds concrete and fixed. certainly those conversations go on between the iraqi authoritieu and key institutional donors and civil society groups. whether those are national civiu society groups like mercy corps

or iraqi civil society organizations. if you take the example of how s do youta program most effective to stabilize areas that have ce recently been retainrs from isi for example. so within those conversations all those key institutional and actors, those groups, looking ao this issuene very seriously ando developing their own strategies for engagement, i think one of the kind of key messages of this research is within that let' conversation and within that road mapping and blueprinting, let's not forget the necessity of investing equally as big in governance and particularly in c civil tusociety's role within governance as you might invest, for instance, in infrastructuree if you look at the stabilizatiol plans, they're still very output heavy in the sense of we will repair the water system for example in tikritt

or rebuild tor schools. what people in the service tell us is that's not necessarily the them. toortant factor for es are the most important factor for them is they feel that their ee. voices are listened to, that they're heard and things change when they vocalize those concerns and needs. and it would suggest that one of the most effective ways of doing that is fostering a vibrant and active civil society and two keu factors, able to build the kind of level of professionalism and focus you were talking about but also within that i think youth play a very, very key role. if you look at what a lot of respondents told us, singling out youth was the most important civil society investment.

>> thank you. first off, kathy guildenhorn here.ery cu thank you for a thought provo provoking andrther thorough presentation. i'm very curious in going might further into defining investments in civil society that might actually impact the marginalization sense that you spoke of in the youth so that wu can getct the most effective construct for change. and if there might be any specific ways of achieving thata end result that you might t recommend based on your evaluation of the data and your knowledge of what's going on on the ground. >> so i think one of the key recommendations from mercy corps on that issue would be so oftenk programs that are focused on

youth empowerment tend to look at it in a very kind of to a y stove-piped single issue way. so you might put a huge investment into a youth s employment program in colombia, but what both young people tellg us and data shows is that the of most effective programs are not ones that take a kind of project focus so it's not about youth mw employment itsolely. a it's looking att th young peopl experience in a holistic way anc programming with people at the center, so that holistic approach that recognizes that young people don't live their hk lives in silos basically. one day they don't think, okay, today i'm about youth employment or today i'm about better access to water and sanitation. they live their life holistically. the most effective programs in addressing that sense of injustice and marginalization among youth is holistic programs

where you're able to engage with young people directly to start to address the totality of it which sounds complex but actually comes down to a set of fairly simple methodologies in terms of engagement. something as simple as psycho social counseling can be powerful in affecting youth's sense of marginalization and the sense of their inability to cuma control theirnc own destinies. >> i have a question. in the best of circumstances, trying to get to reach good governance or a level of good governance is a challenging road, and you always stumble on and hit vested interest and you talk about that in your report.e there is a vested interest just in governance itself, but you have also vested interest in rei maintaining some aspects of the conflict.ar you have regionale happ interes the proxy wars that are wiping

happening and affecting and sometimes probably wiping out some of the investments you make, whether it's in development or something. how do you the affects, if you are someone in the international community and saying i want to i invest in peace in iraq and you look from the perspective of an vested interest, is this a way to invest or counter that? can you speak about that challenge? >> me? >> obviously the answer is yes since we maintain our program in iraq. wewort consider thathwhi invest peace in iraq is a worthwhile to investment. now, i always give the right value to the region and

dynamics. i think that they can -- they s areaid i already affecting a lo what's happening in iraq.nd ther as i said in my presentation, i believe that peace building in iraq and in the region has to start from the bottom up and this is why we are focusing at usaip at the grass root level at this stage because we know thatl working in this region might nov be the best option. at the grass stinghe root level in civil society, the governance at the local level is worthwhile and is a track that should be pursued, definitely. >> it's similar for mercy corps. it's less about looking at what. the data tells you about that. it's more about we've seen it ng work basically. so if the question is, is vestmt investing, for example, in civil

society in iraq an effective investment in terms of you're s ability to ameal yat the e blocking effect of invested interests, our experience is, co yes, it is an effective investment and an investment that we're going to continue to make. even though the program that gave birth to this data is now ended, we're not going to back i away from a belief in and an abt investment in iraqi civil ed society because we have witnessed time and again their ability to challenge invested interests and change the dynamics, the incentives for what the blockages those invested interests put in placee inct terms of governance transparen transparency. yes, it's a very imperfect situation, but we've directly witnessed civil society affecting positive change in terms of taking on invested interests so we'll continue to i

make that investment in them. >> i'll take the last round of questions so that we leave any final remarksse -- time for fin remarks from the panelists. wow, we have several. okay, well, question here first and then second and i'll go to the the palast.t with i have to apologize for those -- hopefully after the panel there will be time to interact with the panelists here. yes? >> dan rowburg, defense consultant -- y ques >> i'll take both.e know >> i've got the mic.activi my question is integration of these efts and the knowledge that's come out of this study, specifically, ramadi is being cleared. ten mosul iset on deck and will probably be somewhat complicated but then the insurgency and buii stability isng clearing the terrain of hostile actors,

holding that terrain with security and building it with y thethe institutions that have s permanence to them.il so there's particular efforts being donene by the iraqi government and civil society to focus on these high priority areas that are right in the radar screen. >> yes, over here?co >> i am with the international association for human values.ic i wanted to just follow up on the comment you made about ple having a holistic approach to the issues that young people face, especially psycho social aspects of dealing with them. i think that all the issues that we've discussed, the lack of opportunities, the injustice, wy poverty, are not issues that are going to go away overnight. the they are huge issues. but the people that will be dealing with them, if they are offered certain research and atg

evidence-based tools and techniques to handle negative emotions that are part of that region, frustration, anger, feelings of high stress, perhaps how they can deal with those issues can be better and they will not resort to violence.at so i'm justive wondering, altho this is a very useful and formative research, are there any studies or any interest in n doing research on programs thatt are offering these kindsha of a tools and techniques, especiall. to young people, so that violence is not a first option in the region? thank you. >> hi. i'm with the education for peace in iraq center.ut als this came up a little bit about. long-term untilf research but also the importance of long-term programs. i know up until 2014 u.s. clinin funding for civilg. society in iraq and peace building was

precipitously declining. isis has helped concentrate the mind. i know that with ramadi close $ million for stabilization there, there is more funding. t sometimes the focus is on rebuilding infrastructure. in the meantime, damage has been done. there is a need for peacebuilding, the divides that isis leaves behind.state so i'm curious how this report has been received by usid, the state department, policymakers. does there seem to be more ma interest in longer term funding for civil society and also for youth which make up the majority ir iraq in the longer term? thanks. >> the last question in theto ae back, and sorry, i have to end it here and give the panels the opportunity to respond.n corrup >> thank you. james cohen with u.s. institute of peace.poli diving into a comment you made u on corruption withinri the poli sector, i'm wondering if we e

could dive into security and defense corruption a little bit more. and that a unique pillar of the government that's causing marg perceptions of corruption or marginalization, and is civil society looking into corruptione withinct police in the defense sector, and if so, are they having particular issue with those two sectors in iraq? - thank you. >> a half well, each one of yo have a minute and a half to address all these questions and make any closing remarks. so i start with you, professor. >> really quickly to faliza's question, there has been one very good randomized control trial i'm aware of tracking cognitive behavior with at-riska youth. the biggest finding is that therapy alone does not work. therapy combined with fairly large amounts of cash to reinforce good behavior does so seem to work. but that's one study.cable in it's in liberia, so it's maybe

not applicable in iraq. >> very quickly on your question about available tools, as i said in my presentation, very little is being done, to the best of my knowledge. of any ot awareple. extensive programs that are a pi providing theseti tools to youn people. owant to end on a positive note, that based on our experience and what we did, what we did in northern syria, eventu peacebuilding at the local levei is possible. it can be successful, it can prevent violence from erupting, so this is why we're continuingl ourl on o programming in the re and we call aon all the other agencies to do so.it >> to try to tick off things in order, your question around what's the most effective program model for stabilization in areas that are retain from

isis. is that right? >> that's part of it and actually just -- >> i was actually speaking to the guy behind you. all right. so yes, it's obviously -- it's t imperative that you get stabilization policy right in i these areas like ramadi or creth that have been recently taken from isis and are now under government authority, let's just put it like that. and i think a lot of effort is put into, like, thinking through how do you do that most effectively. but i think those conversationsc are still heavily flavored by what you might call the classic counterinsurgency stabilizationp i think that misses a trick. misses a very important trick. what this report tries to help illuminating is how you might ve address that weaknessra through really looking at -- several people have talked about making large investments in e impo peacebuilding and civil society.

so yes, i think key donors do recognize the importance of those approaches and programs in areas of conflict, fragility anf stabilization, but maybe we're just not investing a large enough scale to make them truly, truly effective. area it is a question of volume. -- it's a question of getting that voice in the conversation, most appropriately, then it's a question of volume. if you're looking at mexico's work in iraq right now, maybe that's a humanitarian reaction t to displacement or return, or maybe it's a more delicately flavored program, iny duke all work we do conflictctso mitigati work, we do peacebuilding work. we work through and with society groups. through for us it's the awareness of being in iraq and acute reaction of conflict to agility and of that's a very effective

approach, and perhaps has not been given the permanence as to whether they are the strategies they should be in terms of effective in building a stabilization. youth programs. i'm not going to speak to that r because i'mit totally ignorant that area, but i know in mexico it's one of our three priorities areas, in research and basically answer the question what works, what doesn't work, p you know?e research agenda and we hoped to continue building that research in terms of better shaping the kind of tool kit you'll be talking about. usg funding for civil society and d peacebuilding. i'm looking directly at mr. diehl over that. do you want to comment on that l at all? no. okay. again, it loops back to the

previous comment about the most effective stabilization strategy. for mexico, at least, our message is that appropriate levels of investment in iraqi peace building capacity, particularly within civil society, is imperative if you want to have effective stabilization from a very fragile state.it security and defense corruptionr the survey itself doesn't look that specifically into perceptions off corruption amon particular -- >> perceptions of police, and we saw that improved after market resurrection as well.nk >> i guess the simple answer to that is i can't talk about thati because weke t don't know. >> thank you so much. i think i like the title of the report "investing in iraq's peace." that investment from this conversation, from the survey, n

and fromly the last questions about hadin and stabilization there, it's not only investmentn iraq's peace as it relates to stabilization after isis, but also investment for preventing violence down the road. i think it's a worthwhile -- investment. stabilization probably about a year ago, i it may not have bee part of the isil campaign.g diag it was gradually incorporated. it started with the infrastructure. most recently we can see more ie efforts going into supporting efforts, and that is definitely the right trend, and i hope that line will increase.paneli so please join me in thanking l] our panelists and the researchers and the great work they have done with randal ploss. thank you. [ applause ]

on the next washington journal, massachusetts congressman jim mcgovern discusses a recent report on hunger and federal nutrition assistance programs. after that texas representative louie gohmert looks at the oregon militia standoff, federal issues and president obama's position on guns. facebooks and tweets all live on washington journal, live on cspan. book tv has 48 hours of non-fiction books and authors every weekend on c-span2. here's some programs to watch for this weekend. saturday at 7:00 eastern, book tv is at the university of wisconsin with history professor william p. jones to discuss his book "the march on washington." >> this was a movement that was really going to the core of many people's beliefs about what this nation should be.

and it did change a lot of minds, but it also stilled a lot of people to their positions of hatred and their commitment to inequality. >> then at 10:00 p.m. eastern afterwards with news correspondent james rosen who looks at the life and former career of jim cheney on "cheney 101." >> no one on the right has attracted more vitriol from the left, more intense vitriol on the left with the possible exception of who he served in the white house, george w. bush, or richard nixon. >> molly crabapple talks about journalism and her latest book "drawing blood." >> i started out writing personal essays. i think i only had five published pieces ever when i got the book deal.

people really liked them, and i had this delusional fantasy that since i had written a 2,000-word essay, writing a 1,000-page book would be like writing five essays and that wouldn't be that hard. ha, ha, ha. up next on c-span3, the head of the small business administration testifies about mismanagement in the sba. then rick vaney. then a look at the israeli palestinian conflict. then a look at the syrian refugee crisis. here's a look at american history tv on c-span3.

next week president obama will give his last state of the union address. it will feature four state of the union speeches by former presidents during their last year in office. on saturday it's president jimmy carter followed by president ronald reagan. and on sunday, president george h.w. bush's state of the union followed by bill clinton. also sunday morning at 10:30, playwright lin manuel miranda accepts the book prize personal achievement award. then on "rewind," we'll look back to the 2004 presidential campaign and a debate among eight democratic candidates in iowa. >> who we look to replace that man has to have the trust and confidence of the american people, and it has to be on matters spoken in public and in private. private promises and public statements for the american people being the same, and it has to be for all our people. >> for our complete weekend

schedule go to cspan.org. next the head of the small business administration, maria cron trer contreras-sweet is questioned about problems at the sba. the government recently found management problems and recommended changes. the small business administration is chaired by steven shav its in ohio. >> i call this meeting to order, and i want to welcome back maria contreras-sweet. i think everyone here wants the same thing, and that's to serve america's small businesses the best we can. those of us up here on the dias have a stand. our constituents let us know how they're doing all the time and on an ongoing basis. as a head of an agency, i often worry too often you hear from your own folks and other washington bureaucrats.

that's the only explanation for why the 69 gao identified concerns and problems haven't been addressed. yesterday wasn't the first time these issues have been raised. yesterday we heard some pretty serious concerns, both by members of this committee and from our gao witness who testified here yesterday about the management of the sba. administrator contreras-sweet, since you weren't with us yesterday, i'll recap those briefly with you, although i'm sure your staff has probably already given you a rundown. i told the gao witness yesterday that this kind of reminds me of being a parent. if your teenager's room is a mess and they have stuff thrown all over the place, let's say there's 70 items thrown on the floor, 69 to be exact, and they only pick up seven of those items, you don't look at the 62 remaining on the floor and raise

their allowance for having made some progress. the ongoing problems that the sba as gao identified span the entire breadth of the agency, from information technology and security to staff management issues, from disaster response to fraud in lending and contract programs, it's a safe bet that small businesses in our districts on both sides of the aisle are paying the price for your agency's failures. what we have here is a failure of confidence in the sba, and unfortunately, for good reason. before this hearing is over, i hope to hear a commitment from you to resolve as many of these problems as possible by june 30. and i mean this year. i do appreciate how accessible you have always been to members of this committee, and i request that your office start providing monthly updates to our staff documenting your progress. if i were you, i would start with these i.t. and cybersecurity deficiencies.

that's what worries me the most, and i'll tell you why. we've seen the irs hit, the state department, opm and even the white house hacked. small businesses trust the sba, your agency, with their information, oftentimes sensitive information. they don't want their neighbors or the u.s. government to have access to. yesterday the sba told us this information is not adequately secured, and that cannot continue. i want to make this simple. we are not asking you to defend the sba, we are asking you to do your best to fix it. and i would now yield to the ranking member for her opening statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for holding this important hearing. as the only agency in the federal government charged specifically with helping small businesses grow and succeed, the small business administration is critical to our nation's overall

economic health. all of its functions serve to strengthen and preserve the foundation of our economy. for small businesses to fully reap the benefit of sba's program, it is important for the agency to operate efficiently, effectively, using tax dollars wisely. one of the most important roles of this committee is conducting vigorous oversight of the sba and its activities so we know the agency is serving small businesses well while spending taxpayers' dollars wisely. yesterday the committee heard from the government accountability office as it described a management report requested by myself and former chairman. the gao testified about a wide range of frankly very troubling challenges, many that we have persisted for years. i do fully recognize that many of these problems took root

before administrator contreras-sweet's tenure. and furthermore, she has demonstrated a commitment to addressing them. with that said, there is still much work that needs to be accomplished in terms of addressing gao accommodations. with only 15 out of the 63 recommendations closed, there needs to be more attention not just to check the box but to improve the agency. with that said, i understand that frequent changes in political leadership create real difficulties for management. that is not an excuse, but rather a reality of the environment sba functions. so here you are, miss contreras, in the hot seat. you are the administrator, and you will be asked to respond for 64 recommendations that have been made not only under your

leadership but for previous administration. and i feel optimistic of your commitment to tackle those issues, and we are here to discuss with you how do you intend to execute those recommendations? first, the agency's complex organizational structure may be impeding its ability to perform its mission effectively. yesterday it was raised time and time again that sba's operation, our silo, resulting in inefficiencies and duplication. there also continues to be significant information technology problems as well. the agency has yet to implement more than 30 recommendations made by the.

this race has concerned about whether sba data insists them. standard operating procedures are also in need of updating. 74 of these provisions require revision, and 31 is should be counselled while another nine still need to be. >> yet we will not in her et a time frame as to when all of these will be accomplished. these are just some of the long standing issues raised in, where there is always room for improvement, i was heartened to hear that sba has accepted most of the gao's recommendations, and i look forward to learning how the administrator is instituting change. i recognize that as a political

appointee, she is in a difficult position to often having to answer for her work with her predecessors as well as the korean officials that may drive decisions. with that i would like to thank the administrator for being here, i know your schedule is busy, so as always, we appreciate it. i yield back. >> if i'm rating this, we put down how much each of us talks. if we need a little leeway, i'll give you a little more as long as we keep it in house. we'll go back and forth between republicans and democrats, of course. i'm not going to go into a long explanation of how the

administrator is. she's a 24-year-old of the contreras business suite. we recognize you this morning, and you're recognized for five minutes or perhaps a little bit longer if you need it. thank you. >> let me just thank you and ranking member velasquez and all the members of the committee for engaging in the work and giving me this opportunity to testify before you today. it's nice to see you. i'd like to open quickly with the fiscal year of 2015. it was one of the most successful years in our administration's history. under our flagship guarantee program extending a whopping $23.5 billion in gross approvals. this represents a 22% increase in the number of loan approvals

to prior last year. a 23% increase in their dollar value compared to 2014. these gains matter because fda data shows that conventional small business lending has only returned to 84% of pre-recess n pre-recessionary levels. filling those gaps in the marketplace was the very purpose for which sba was created. we made notable progress giving loans to businesses with the greatest accessible capital. the dollar value of our loans was up year on year, 23% to women, 23% to minorities and 103% to veterans. our number of loan approvals was up by 29% -- again, i just said that. these successes would not be possible except for the swift work of your committee. due to our record-breaking year, sba rose up to our statutory

lending cap 60 days before the end of our fiscal year. at the urging of our stake holders, in less than a week -- i want to repeat that -- in less than a week you passed a $4.5 billion increase. your leadership allowed entrepreneurs across the country to continue to access the recquisite capital they need to start repair and grow their businesses. sba also shattered our record for small business investment under our sbic program. we grew our portfolio by 10% to a record $25 billion. in fy 16, the 7a, the 504 and the sbic program share an important, common thread, and i know you'll appreciate this. all these programs are expected to operate at zero subsidy this fiscal year. thanks to this committee for

working across the aisle to include in the omnibus bill the permanent restatement of the 504 refinancing authority and an increase in sbic's family of funds limit. both of these policy changes will inject much-needed capital into our small business ecosystem. another priority for the sba is federal contracting. the u.s. government awarded an all-time high of 24.99%, well over our governor mandate of 23%, supplying 350,000 american jobs. we reached a precedent of small business jobs to aging and veterans. we earned a record year investment and a record year in contracting with no taxpayer subsidy needed to maintain this

momentum. this is the context in which our hearing takes place today. let me take this opportunity to acknowledge the government accountability office for helping to confirm the areas of shared concern and for offering constructive suggestions to address them. from my first days in office, i have prioritized the need to modernize sba operations enterprisewide to respond to the technological, the demographic and the globalization changes that are transforming our small business economy. to that end i agree with many of the recommendations and appreciate the opportunity to address them to fully bring m, . chairman, the sba into the 21st century. my banking experience will be brought to bear to make sure you feel comfortable and the american people feel confidence in our systems. whether it be the enterprise management board that i've established and all the other systems i've put in place.

we've implemented a number of litigation measures that i'll get into later. but my background starting three businesses also impressed upon me the importance of optimizing roy, return on investment, when putting precious taxpayer dollars to use. we have to take every measure to use those dollars wisely based on the best available data. in july of 2014, i established an impact evaluation working group charged with initiating and refining program evaluations for entrepreneurial development programs. i've held numerous meetings with key resource partners, our spdc's score, vets and so on, expressing the importance of collecting meaningful metrics. we're currently performing in-depth training programs across the agency. this includes the most comprehensive assessment of the sbic program in our history in collaboration with -- yes, i wanted to make sure you had confidence so we went to the

library of congress to do this work. our report is due out this spring. we've also made significant strides in addressing the information technology challenges included in the ga report. in fact, we're well under way with a major upgrade of our i.t. systems. it starts with the comprehensive structure of the modernization to give our systems greater capacity, transparency and reliability. we're in the final stages now of moving our entire e mail system into the cloud for more security, reliability and capacity. we're investing in mobile technology recognize that go our sba field staff must go beyond the walls of the federal offices and go to consumers and to small businesses where they are. we also watch projects to modernize our lending and contract systems to reengineer our disaster credit management system, something i care deeply about. this entire modernization agenda

complements our work for platforms, bringing advancement of things such as modernization, digital signatures -- yes, i said e-signatures -- and on-line management to the customers we serve. these are talents that have encouraged bankers to come back to sba in many instances or to expand their lending. we've taken important steps on our human capital management efforts. i'm proud to work alongside the thousands of hard-working, dedicated public servants at sba and our resource partners. i'm committed to ensuring that the agency has the talent required to effectively service america's entrepreneurs. we're currently crafting a comprehensive work plan which will include both a skill cap assessment and a gap enclosure plan. we've taken steps to address the sba's aging work force not just unique to sba but across the

federal government a challenge. as a launch of the veteran sba program, i understood we wanted to offer employees to make decisions, create openings so we could begin to fill those competency gaps. sba is organizing our presidential management fellows program to increase our impact. we're working with our veterans, we're attracting more peace corps to our programs, and -- i know you're going to love this -- we installed the first ever chief learning officer at sba. i have been on the job for 20 months and i'm proud of the progress at this time, but the truth is that i couldn't have done this without your commitment, and i'm grateful for your support. as a result of your leadership and the daily efforts of our dedicated staff, i inherited an agency highly leveraged, operating effectively and focused on advancing and fulfilling our statutory mission. again, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, in the eating, and i think the record of our historic achievements

speak to that. there is always room to improve, and that's what we're here to talk about today. so yes, i am committed to working with you to improve the services and give small businesses the agency that they deserve and that taxpayers expect. thank you. >> thank you very much, and i'll yield to myself five minutes to begin the questioning. madam administrator, as i mentioned in my opening statement, the gao witness yesterday testified that sba's i.t. security, the i.t. security, leaves the central information of small businesses and their owners vulnerable to hackers, to theft, to fraud. yet the sba has failed to implement more than 30 of the office of the inspector general's recommendations leading to i.t. security, leaving small businesses and individuals exposed. what's being done to address

these problems? >> i think that's a fair question. technology drives more and more of our lives, from our microwave to our cell phone, so it has to be a central part of our strategy at sba. just as an example, to show you the progress i've made since i arrived, and the last time i was here, you asked me about the loan management system. that is the main body with which we interact with our lending partners, an important function and working its way through. i committed to you that i would get that done and that is -- to say that we are now off the main tram and we have a come pat sfibl. it's a wonderful achievement that even many fortune 500 companies don't achieve and many in government. i'm proud that sba has achieved that. >> i'd like your commitment to

resolving the outstanding gao recommendations by june 30 and having our staff believed on that progress on a monthly basis. do i have that commitment? >> i commit to you on a regular basis and we'll work with godspeed to make your deadline. >> let's get it done. >> mr. chairman, i was able to touch the pope while he was here, so i'm hoping it infused me with the ability to -- >> you got closer than i did, then. let me move on to another question. when the gao interviewed your district personnel so they could do their review, your folks insisted on having a lawyer present. now, when this came up yesterday, when the gao was here, trent kelly, a member of this committee who happens to be a former prosecutor and district attorney himself made, i think,

like people speak up like your folks did, it often means they have something to hide. >> what made the decision th that -- at the request of the former chairman and the ranking member. so this was a bipartisan request. >> again, i did not know that was happening, i wasn't briefed. if you ever met our district staff, i got to tell you, nothing sbintimidates these people. we go out, there's lawyers in the room, and they still tell me of the problems and challenges. >> shouldn't you know who in your agency gave an order like this that interrupted with the gao's effort to conduct an investigation. we all get a paycheck.

the taxpayers donwill pay for i. we shouldn't have to lawyer up. >> i have no idea if it was the reverse, the reciprocal. i will look into it and get back to you. it could have been some of the employees felt intimidated by an investigation and maybe wanted someone in their presence. but i understand what i did get briefed on was the i.g. in particular said he had independent ability to follow up through e-mails and was able to get the information. and clearly by this report you can see nothing is being hidden. >> it should take until june 30 to find out who made that decision, so get back to us soon. the gao review of the sba stated, and i quote, in the december 2015 report, we found that the sba has not resolved many of its long standing management challenges due to lack of sustained priority attention over time.

gao went on to say, this raises questions about the sba's sustained equipment to addressing management challenges. in other words, dealing with the sba's shortcomings, deficiencies and failures apparently isn't just a priority to some of your folks. it's a priority to this. you've indicated that you're willing to do that. i appreciate that, we're willing to work with you, so it can serve the needs of america's small businesses all across this country. >> with great lament, when i read the report that these issues had begun in the '90s and some even as far back to the 0 '80s. so i appreciate that i've been and with the good lord, your

progress is this is the meat. it's effective. sometimes it's not pretty and it should be prettier given our documentation and processes. but when you think in our history we were able to make a match.com. the point is seriously that -- >> just for the record, i know nothing about it. >> i just want you to know that with that system we are now able to get dates for prospective borrowers, but this date is with the lender. 22,000 people have already been connected in just a few short months. that's a remarkable, sba won! where we are now introducing a new platform with our lenders. . but i want you to know that the work is getting done. >> thank you.

my time has expired. just to we view the number one. we need to do our best for them. i'll now. i would just like to enter into the record as a matter of clarification. in fact, sop 4072. it is a requirement -- an illegal counsel to be present when district stuff is being interviewed. and so here it is. it's part of the sop. i would like to ask the administrator, i would like to recommend to you that you start with 40002 to remove barriers for gai.

and you could be updating it to know that there is no intention or gao in the business administration. with that said. >> will do reforms when this committee offered me when i was in 1928. i heard the gao's answers yesterday but i would like to hear your answers as well. >> how has your son being listened, number one, i learned that we actually had promulgated

an we put the rig in and out. when we created a round table. what they said is that the idapt, the immediate disaster assistance program. >> so what is the timeline for doing so? >> i'm just saying we, and i would deploy to start using it. when you ask a bank to over 10 years, it's something not attracted to them, especially because it has a low interest cap. somehow we have to make it more attractive. in the spirit you want, i wanted to show you the office of disaster does supply loans, and we already did a collateralized $20,000 loan that is new being misdemeanor in new york.

and so many people, businesses, who qualify for those long to be able to apply. if you see these and think there needs to be some legislator fix. let's get this program. up and running. >> we can't wait until the next all-dale disaster strike and come back here in the same position asking the same -- didn't want to a lie on hearis a. that's out and available, and as soon as we get that normal comment we'll respond back to you on what those remedies might be. in the interim i'm also pushing forward on the edap and the

padap to make sure a-- disaster assistance is something very, very important to the date of this. i went to the state of north carolina to meet with nickie haley when she was experiencing here's. we a dozen individuals in germany to determine the. >> once's declare a disaster, we' we've. >> i want to congratulate you on many successes, including the. the cdc is up to 10%. we need to update those sops.

because if the agency as to how the program is said to operate, that will impede the success, and for businesses to be able to get the assistance that they need. so what are you doing so far and what do you plan to do to further address the sop problem? i didn't want to impress upon you that you provide a report every month, but i want a commitment that tells us that you are really -- you're going to do everything you can. because then the administration would be in place a year and a half from now, and we need to see what type of energy and resource that you're going to put into place. and if there is a lack of adequate resource for your agency to do the work, we need

to know so that in the next budget submission, it's included that you need more funding. >> gentlelady, your time has expired, but i want to make sure we do want monthly progress on the issues gao has set out in its review. >> i understand, sir. this is a complete review and overall of a department's way of operating. some of these are inches tall. this is an important body of work, and i want you to know that we have completed more sops in the 20 months i've been than the prior five years combined. to show you the momentum in which i'm taking this so seriously, because i'm working hard to make up lost time, but i also wanted to have is institutionalized so that this

work is someone that's been harnessed and seized. we already have 30 more sops that are monumentally. just know i take those issues seriously for the institution of our legacy. >> the gentleman from new york is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, gentlemen. i appreciate this hearing. with due respect, i'll say right up front, i'm a little disappointed so far in the approach of the hearing in terms of the responses. the chairman set a tone, i think, at the outset that we really want to work together going forward identifying all the deficiencies and the shortcomings. but, you know, the opening said remarks i certainly appreciate how you've pointed out what you

did with the resources to support small businesses. i want to state that clearly and sincerely. but the focus here is on improving what our very disturbing findings from the gao. towards that end, my colleague from new york, mr. hanna, leads a subcommittee, and they did, i think, very strong work on behalf of the american people with regard to procurement reforms. this was incorporated into the national defense authorization act in 2013. but yet among the findings of the gao, there has been no action taken. the law was very clear that action was to be taken within six months of the implementation of that law. so my question to you is, you know, what explains why nothing has been done on this score? do you disagree with us on what was done? and if you do, it would have

been nice to know that before now, but if you do, why has nothing been done? >> first of all, let me thank you for your service. i know you're an admirable veteran and i really salute the work you've done in particularly difficult zones in our world. but let me just speak to if i haven't shown or exhibited the level of seriousness with which i take this work, i apologize. but let me just say, when i looked that up just to see the momentum, because i thought that i should stress this to you, under prior administrations, like in 2002, for example, there had been one debarment. in 2003, one. in 2004, zero. under my term, i've already completed 47 of these just to show you the momentum with which i'm approaching this work. so please don't under estimate the commitment i make to you.

i came from the state of california. in california i had 42,000 employees to work with in one state. do you know here to the ranking member's question, i have fewer than 2,000 employees. so in procurement, we have to partner, and we work very closely with our strategic partners. if you just took the air force alone, do you know that the air force has 22,000 captains? 2200 captains, just captains alone. again, i have fewer than 10,000 employees across the agency, and yet we're managing a portfolio of $120 billion, the most complex system of networks. we are procuring -- we are redirecting 23% of the largest procure in the world to small businesses successfully. and yes, we are pushing to debar because i don't want any fraud, waste and abuse. i can tell you when i started my own personal business, i

couldn't get certified as a woman-owned business. i couldn't confirm that i was a woman-owned business. so for me to show we are doing those procurements are important, but also to make sure we get rid of people who don't deserve to be in the program and are abusing the program and taking contracts away from people who deserve them. so i'm up against energy department officials, our small business advocates are in those places where people don't like them to be because we are sharp elbowing them to make sure every appropriate small business opportunity goes to a small business. >> so thank you and appreciate the passion that you're bringing in the leadership to the organization. one quick follow-up on that, then. as the chairman mentioned, we're going to be anticipating reports, monthly reports. i would hope that in the first one we'll see an official response to the implementation of this fy-13 national defense

authorization act as it relates to the requirements we levied on the sba. i have very little time remaining. let me just say that from my experiences leading formations, one of the things that concerns me is the level of turnover in the sba, and so we're not going to have time for you to respond, but also for the record, i would like to know from your vantage point as the leader, what are you doing to ensure continuity in terms of transition periods when you -- so really, two points. one is are you taking any executive action to lessen the turnover. and two, given those realities, what sops do you have in place to ensure that when new folks come on board that there is a good and effective transition? mr. chairman, i'm sorry i'm over and i yield back. >> the gentleman's time has expired, but if you can give a brief answer, and we'll be receiving our reports so you can go more in depth, but if you can make a brief response. >> to me one of the most

important things is to show people what their job is, to give them clarity of purpose and to reward them appropriately, and to provide an environment where they're well resourced, their scope of work is clearly defined and they're well resourced, as i said. to that end i put in the first ever sba chief learning officer. i've upskilled the chico functions in our office where now i have somebody who actually has the theoretical and the practical experience. i'm holding town halls. i'm visiting every district office to learn of these -- you know, what the challenges are across the country. but let me just say, across the government, we have an aging work force challenge that we have to address. and so i've gone with my chief of staff to try to recruit more people. we're holding job fairs across the country. just in the short time i've been there, i've hosted ten job fairs. i've reached out to the peace corps and our veterans to try to attract more skills and competencies of discipline,

entrepreneurship and perseverance. and i think it's beginning to pay off, sir. >> thank you. >> the gentleman's time has expired. the gentlelady is recognized for five minutes. >> good evening, mr. chairman, ranking member. i really want to thank maria contreras-sweet for being here, and just sitting here listening to your answers in the first couple questions has really restored, you know, my passion for small businesses and what this agency is doing. i had the opportunity to work with her when she was secretary of california business transportation and housing agency, and as the administrator, what i've really appreciated is your district staff, victor parker and you both have come to my district, and we've held round tables and we've toured small businesses together. the chairman's opening comments, and all we hear is from our own

constituents about some of their problems, i think you've actually heard the problems yourself because you've been on the ground, you've been in our small businesses, and while certainly this hearing is about the recommendations that we're trying to get responded to and reformed and in the administration, it's clear that your record year of lending to small businesses, investing in contracting is really what i care about. i know maybe the priorities on this committee are maybe a little bit different. but that's my priority, because that is what i always heard, was, you know, access to capital and federal contracting. and you're certainly addressing those previous weaknesses in the agency. and it's clear that the sba has been around since 1953, and many of these issues that were pointed out in the gao report have existed long before you and

long before this administration. but -- and whether or not you can address every single one of them by june, i don't know, but i have no doubt that you're going to try, and that's important to you. but one of the issues that -- in the report that was important to me, and i understand it's also a priority for you, is the women-owned small business program. this is, of course, a program that allows woman-owned small businesses to compete for federal contracts. unfortunately, one of the things we found out was there were problems verifying the eligibility of the applicants, resulting in contracts being awarded to men. yikes. but i know you're working on this. can you tell us where you are in the process of making sure that those contracts indeed are being awarded to the women-owned

businesses? >> thank you. as you know, when i arrived, we were -- you mandated that we achieve a 5% goal with woman-owned small businesses. to my great lament, we had not reached a 5% goal for contracting with women. women are 50% of the population. i think it should be something that should be achievable. and so we came to you again, and i was delighted that congress has given us a brand new tool, sole source authority, where we have now the ability to begin to certify businesses so that we can take out any fraud, waste and abuse, and so we're now -- i just published the anthem to get the proper feedback to make sure we're following the right procedures and practices and not just implementing something willy-nilly. i'm pleased to tell you already we've got that out and we're already beginning to get comments, and we're going to formalize them and create a

process for certification that will assure the people understand that a woman-owned business, what that is, that we have the standards set and we have people trained to be able to certify them. >> thank you. i appreciate that, because certainly in l.a. county, we have more women-owned businesses than any other county in the country. we're very proud of that, and we know that for me that's a priority in this committee, is that clearly we are supporting the women-owned and minority-owned businesses in my county for sure. so i appreciate your work on that one concern and recommendation. >> but you've been a stalwart on behalf of women not only for the state of california but for our country. thank you for your leadership. >> the gentlewoman yields back. recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'll yield back my time. >> the gentlelady from american

samoa who is the chairman of the subcommittee on health and technology, miss ratawagner, is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and ranking member. considering the offices built that may not provide redundant roles in close proximity, was there any thought given to the u.s. territories? can you explain your rationale? >> i'm sorry, the rationale for what? i'm sorry. >> let me give you the question again. the u.s. territories. >> yes. >> the question was, considering the recent new offices built that may or may not provide redundant roles as other offices in close proximity, was there any thought given to the u.s. territories? >> yeah. i heard the question. i was trying to understand. are you saying that we're building offices? i was just trying to clarify.

>> i think so. >> because i'm not aware that we're building an office there. i'm trying to understand the context of the question. let me just say that i would be delighted to sit down with you to understand if you are not getting the service levels that you deserve and that you expect to come back to you with a plan. >> thank you, madam administrator. next, what functions are performed by personnel in the agency's regional offices? >> what are the personnel functions? >> yes. what are the functions performed by the personnel? >> oh, i see. >> in the regional offices. >> thank you, thank you. what we have at headquarters is policy offices, and so you'll have, for example, the gcbd, the office of general contracting and business development. you'll have an office of capital access. so we have the various offices that operate the various programs and staff and line functions. in the district offices where

the magic all comes together. so there in the district office you will have a lending relations specialist. you'll have a business opportunity specialist working alongside an eds, an educational development service specialist, and all these people work together to create a sense of community, to provide the full complement of services that our research partners need and entrepreneurs need and our lending partners and local governments. i'll give you an example. we have a challenge today where while we can be a program provider, we also want to be a voice for small business. so one of the challenges that we found in local communities is that they're the ones that license small business formation, and in many instances, capital formation. so we launched a program called start up in a day. start up in a day is where we go into the city to make sure they can put on on-line responses so that small businesses can start their business in a day without having to go through a labyrinth of regulation.

so they execute on programs such as that. >> have you examined whether those functions could be performed by other personnel either at headquarters or in the district offices and thereby provide full-time personnel for functions such as an increase in the number of procurement center representatives? >> honestly, having been an entrepreneur and a community banker, i have thought about that, and it was a tough call for me. you know, i could convene and have everybody centered and headquarters in washington, d.c. and not connected to community, but i decided it was more important to be embedded in the community and a part of the community and understand what those nuances are in each neighborhood. and i think that the numbers prove that that's working well. >> thank you. you do not have a chief information officer, a position i presume that you consider critical to the operation of the agency. where are you in the process of finding a permanent chief information officer? i appreciate that you've got a

chief learning officer. >> yeah. the chief learning officer is more of a learning -- you know, more of a human resource function, i should say. but what i did is i went to silicon valley. i wentreel, i went to the east coast to try to find a really thoughtful, successful person who knows how to procure and execute. . i really want to say that i have the top level of advice. so i have a strong person who's been a dedicated employee of sba as the acting and i would now put in what i call a chief design officer -- digital officer, excuse me, that is working with us to fully compliment that team and fill it in. we're getting candidates and going to places to find the right people. attract top technology talent because of salary structure and

compensation in government compared to the private sector. >> i think you do need a chief information officer. >> agreed. >> the gentle lady is correct. in fact, by statute, it's required. so we urge you to get that done, please. we'll now move to the gentle lady from new york who is the ranking member of the agricultu agriculture, energy and trade subcommittee. >> you skipped a card. >> sorry about that. i was given the wrong card here. ms. lawrence? >> did you get here when we started, though? >> yeah. >> all right. i've been -- go right ahead for five minutes. >> i want to thank the chair and the ranking member. i want to say, madame administrator, your response to the questions have been -- i'm

used to speaking to our department heads and leaders in our government. and it's refreshing to have an administrator who has been able to answer with a proactive response to these questions and concerns. so i want you to know that that's refreshing and i appreciate it. in addition to that, it is important that we have department reviews. we, as a government, need to look at those areas. but our commitment and our focus should be on how do we move forward. so, with that, i want to say i'm very encouraged by your leadership.

>> i wanted to follow up with something that i'm very gna passionate about, and that's women-own women-owned and minority-owned. so if you want to say how did we grow our economy? it was on the women-owned and minority-owned businesses in america. so we should be very committed and very focused in that area. the majority of businesses have been in health care and social systems. how has the sba encouraged women

and minorities to open businesses in technology, manufacturing and the engineering industry. >> that's a very, very important question. we have to make sure that we're moving forward in terms of america's work force. and so i appreciate where you're going. let me just give you two broad answers. one is that just to make sure that we're getting more people who traditionally have not been given access to capital, we've taken some very aggressive steps. we have zeroed out fees almost under $150,000. credit unions, they willingly agreed to enter into a partnership with sba in an unprecedented way. instead of having people knock on the door for a bank and another bank and another bank,

what i wanted to do is put up this program that i call link. it is where a prospective borrower answers some simple questions and then is connected to an institution. the last time i was in this room, it was a woman sitting in this audience who said that as a result of link, she was able to take a very low-rate loan and make it a more attractive loan and, as a result, increased her cash flow and is now growing. those are the kinds of stories i get across the country. the second point about making certain we're getting people in the tech, in the stem fields, which you allude to is we've launched a program we call invater. it's an outreach initiative. but what i want to do is say to women who we don't see in silicon valley and doing the scale-ups at the same weight. so invat her is spelled h-e-r,

the last three letters to reach out to women to say hack, disrupt, invent, change industries. you, too, can be in cyber security. you, too, can be in precision medicine. we need to get women in the-traditional fields. so this effort of rolling this out is getting women engaged. we had last year a hundred various competitions. so i'm proud of that progress. but, again, we will continue to do it. and we invite you to come in and participate this women's history month in march where we'll be convening the winners of those competitions. >> thank you so much. before my time roll out, i also wanted to comment on how you're addressing standard operating plans.

>> i want to make sure that we're supporting you for the actions you take. when you identify that there are areas that the government could support the small business administration, that we're giving those on a regular basis. thank you. as i've stated earlier, we've closed 14 sops, more than four times in the prior four yearings combined, as i said. we have an additional 41 pending and working collaboratively with the gao. so the momentum is strong. and i do commit to you that we will double what we did last year. thank you. >> the gentle lady's time has expired. recognized for 5 minutes.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. >> madame administrator, i've got just a couple questions. one of them is on the line of the cio. and i know you've been there for 20 months. this is a critical position. i understand that someone is overseeing this position as an assistant. would we believe that that person would have the same responsibleties as the cio would? would they respond to your expectations? would that continue to be when the cio is hired from a future date? would they still continue to respond in the coo or would they come to you? >> that's a fair question. let me just say, the operations, we have a deputy administrator who is sort of, if you will, i

don't want to use the term, but you could say the chief operating officer. it is generally the way it's operated. so this person reports in through that function and it's working -- this person has been hugely successful. you know, i just had him present at an entire town hall. i want to tell you that few people in our agency, you know, enjoy these when we put them on. but we think there's important ways for the administration. he's allowed us to put on the cloud. to make that move. he's getting now, laptops for our fields operations people so that they can go to participate.

>> i understand day-to-day operations, but there are going to be decisions that have to be made by you or be on your doorstep. so i just want to be sure that that's clear when a cio is hi hired. the 69 items, and you being 234 there for 20 months and these items coming up after that. seven items being clear up. there must be prioritization and you must start working on the issues that you think are number one through number, in this case, 69. would you say that any of these items are not on that list?

there are some of them, and just by one of your statements, that you say that some of these might not be needed. could you explain? parts of these or any of these issues that might not be needed or that you might not want done. >> you know, i track these. i just want you to know that i track them and i received this report on a regular basis. and what i tell you is i've dissected them, and i know you have, too. we're working through them, as i mentioned. but i'm doing that. in other words, i think they're all important and they're all vital. but i'm prioritizing. so, for example, the disaster. there were two that were disaster oriented. and we pushed those out as a

priority. so i'm going through and sifting. >> basically, what i want to get to is that we have a prioritization of basically one through 69, we're going to knock these items out. and, lastly, we have an ageing work force in many industries. but there's probably no more difficult industry than the i.t. area in this country. it is very difficult to get them into government jobs, as i understand, the pay is not as good. what kind of policies, what are you pushing for so that we can get these young 20 to 30-year-olds that know up-to-date i.t., up-to-date software. >> well, thank you.

i'd like to have if you would, the budget the ge had. you know, too bad you're not going over to a hip happy place. i feel their pain, do you know what i'm saying? so we are, we're really trying to reach out to peace corps types, to veteran types, i'm going to college fares. we're traveling to the coast as well as the middle part of the state to, if you will, brand sba. and, to that end, we're working through millenial channels. i just retained a fabulous producer and very popular gentleman who is now doing video spots with me and placing them out in different industries. i partner with anybody who is

willing to amplify the opportunities at sba. more important and to the point is that i write the correct job description so that we're not just hiring the same people again. that's what i've undertaken as a priority is to make sure that the job description speaks to the future. and then, when they come in, for example, the pmfs i have right now, i'm giving them very limited training budget. i give them rotational opportunities. >> and i appreciate that and i know my time has expired. >> now the gentle lady from new york. i apologize for the mix-up before. >> that's okay. thank you, madame administrator for being here today and also for all of the work that you've been doing traveling throughout the country to various districts and hearing directly from small businesses about their problems and concerns.

i, too, echo the sentiments in appreciating your passion, enthusiasm and great efforts while being administrator. my question is in response to the gao recommendation, the agency has said it's currently restricted from collecting data from resource partners or that the abc doesn't have adequate systems for some programs, which makes program evaluations difficult. can you explain how these restrictions a and the lack of adequate collection systems are conducting evaluations and what efforts can congress undertake to help remove any data collection restrictions and help sba collect important data from the resource partners. >> i think data collection is fundamental in assessment and tra teejic planning.

so i'm pleased that in each of my outreach efforts, just stop me if i'm using too many acronyms, i apologize. i don't like jargon so i don't need to do that. but our resource partners say they are collecting rich data. but there's a natural screen in how much they give to us. so we've reached agreement on 10 measure that is we can agree on about encounters, capital formation, business start, con tracting, those kinds of things. so that data is collecting, it's mined and it's utilized. and then we get qualitative data. we also work on focus study groups and interactions and round tables that i've hosted with you around the country and with the chairman and the

ranking member and others. but my disapointment, if you will, in a way in which you could help me, is that for me, a critical data point would be a unique identifier. i'm not trying to invade privacy. it could be any numeric number. it could be part of an alphabet. but, for me, when someone says that they've served a hundred people in a day and then, you know, i don't know if that's something that came in twice in that one day or if that's 100 different people. and so i think a unique identifier would be very useful in being able to attract longitudinally what our efforts are. sew that's what i'm very seriously looking into. i've discussed this with our resource partners and i feel they're more amenable than others. but with your help, we can get there. >> and my last question is about human capital management. i know pushed upon this a little

bit from yesterday's hearing. we talked about how the report identified challenges that the agency wanted, which was the need to prioritize in the area of human capital. do you agree and what is being done. >> yes. i just wanted to mention to you that more to the point about your prior concern is that at the agency, we've put together an interagency evaluation so that all the program heads are not just working with our resource partners, but also what measures mattered to them so that they're mining the correct data and we can build proper evaluations to be responsive to what we're addressing here today. with respect to human capital, we talked about the district offices as the congresswoman from the islands mentioned earlier. our teams, because we have one

of the best leverage factors around, again, understanding that we're only fewer than 2,000 employees leveraging these kind of numbers for the world and the kind of thing that is we do, we do leverage. they have five or six employees. and when we host a conference with 500 people, it's a lot of lifting. in any instance that we can take a serious look at the structure, meaning size of sba, i think it would go a long way. >>. >> thank you, i yield back. >> thank you, gentle lady yields back. the subcommittee on agriculture, energy and trade. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you, madame administrator, for being here

today. i think frequently, one of the most often complaints is that government is unaccountable. and yesterday, in the gao representative's testimony, one of the things that struck me the most was the gao perceived a break down in communication at the sba that employees don't have forums in which they can express their frustrations, perhaps their views on how things can be done differently. do you perceive that there's a culture at the sba where em proi yees don't feel that freedom to express their views, to share their concerns and to share perhaps their contributions with regards to how the sba could be

run more efficiently, more effectively and more competently. >> i think communications is foundational to running an effective organization. and so, you know, there are formal and informal processes. sometimes people communicate more standing by the water fountain than anything else. we have to make sure that we're communicating because the absence of communication does challenge an organization. so just to show you, first and foremost, we start with an annual, strategic meeting, one time where we bring the entire field operations together with the heads of program offices and we have a full interaction for a three-day setting to set priorities and to talk about execution and accountenty and time frame and so forth. that's number one. number two, i'm on the phone or

my chief of staff on a weekly basis, every district director and, in many instances, the triple d, the dep day district director are engaging with us. on a daily basis. i have to tell you that people are drawn to this because it tells you exactly what's gone on any given day. and i visit district offices, the program offices visit district offices. and then i hold round tables. so we have informal, formal and then we have special, as-needed events like town hall. so we don't wait for those. if we need to have a special town hall, we engage in that, too. i've got to tell you again, these are people who are fighting for success every day and i don't see them being shy about communicating.

>> madame administrator, sometimes communication only flows from the top down. you were comfortable that at the agency right now, there's an environment in which employees from the rank in file to those in leadership positions can express their views, their frustrations, their joys with their superiors. and really what i think is essential for the competent functioning of any organization. you feel comfortable today. do you think there could be improvements? do you find any validity in the concerns expressed by the gao with regards to communication within the sba? >> well, if the gao stated that somebody must have said to him that there was a challenge, and so i have to take that seriously. there's no question i have to take that seriously. again, my reality is that they

accept fully a town hall. i take people out to lunch and say what's going on? i say tell me what your day is going -- i get e-mails from people. so i feel that if the gao is making this comment and i look into it, then it must be a challenge. >> thank you. thank you very much. >> i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from new york is recognized for five min you wills. >> very well, thank you, mr. chairman. and i thank our ranking member. i want to thank the administrator and just say to you i want to thank you for a number of things. one, for being engaged on the front lines of the small business marketplace and being a visible change agent. i can attest to the fact that you have been out across this country. you were in the ninth congressional district meeting with small businesses. and i think that that is refreshing in and of itself.

you're dealing with an agency that has challenges. there's no doubt about that. but i think you have demonstrated here today through your testimony the passion and drive that you have for the small business system across our nation. and you've displayed at today's hearing a response to the challenges of the 21st century sba. i appreciate the innovative and creative approach that you're taking to doing more with less. one of the things has not been really drilled down on and really struck me in this conversation today is the fact that you have 2,000 employees for the united states of america and its territory. when you think about the numbers of small businesses across this nation, you're doing a man's task. but what i've been impressed with today is your commitment to meeting these challenges head on.

an that's critical. i believe deed, you're able to lead that legacy for whomever would be next in your shoes. that would take us a long way in making sure that the 21st century sba is meeting all of the goals that we have for small businesses in our communities across this nation. the one thing that i'd like to do, because i think i've heard the answers that i need to hear today with respect to the recommendations of the gao, and i feel assured that you're paying keen attention to those recommendations, is that i want to encourage you to look at how you can do more engagement with small business echo system in the u.s. territories and the district of columbia, strengthening them, quite frankly. i use the example of puerto rico because of the challenge that they're facing ek notchically. there's going to be a need for small business.

and to the extent that we can be a part of helping them to stabilize the marketplace or the ground for small business will go a long way as families struggle with the climate that has been created due to the challenges that puerto rico is facing overall with this economy. so, having said that, if you'd like to respond, that's fine. if not, go to it. i'm convinced you are focused like a laser on what needs to be done. i want to encourage you to keep up that stride. >> thank you. >> i yield back. >> thank you. >> may i respond? >> oh, i've got a response. >> i just wanted to again, compliment you on the out reach that we did in your district. and i thought it was really superb.

so thank you for venaling such a stellar group of people. but i think you raise an important point. that is that we have a program called the hub zone program, the historically under-utilized business zone program. and so i traveled to puerto rico to meet with the governor, to meet with the communities and local officials to understand the rate of debt that every puerto rican is assuming, lose large. it is a serious issue. i have some tools. so i wanted to deploy those tools that we had. so we went there, again, with our contracting relationships. we went in to say a couple of things. we said that we want to make sure that we're bringing corporations in to procure from the small businesses here. we want to make sure that the federal government is showing up here. we put on a conference of about 30 major procurers to focus on puerto rico. for small business, even when they get a contract, what

happens is sometimes it takes government too long to pay. so we have to look at, you know, the minutia on some of those things. so we've launched two programs and one is called supply or pay, which is where we say to large corporations, we'll pay you in two weeks if you pay small businesses in two weeks. and a quick pay program, which is we pay small businesses in two weeks if they're doing business with the federal government. it's giving people more cash flow to be able to grow their business. >> thaurng, mr. chairman. thank you madame administrator for being here and answering questions. >> i, too, am encouraged by the fact that it seems like you want to fix all of these things. and i'm very encounselored by that. that being said, i've found in

whatever walk of life, whether it be district attorney or pros cueing a motorcade or whether it be work for greys, which was a department store, i've often found that priorities are so important and i've heard a lot of talk about what you've done. and i'm very impressed with that. i'm also very grateful for your response to mississippi to the recent tornadoes who allow several district lives in my district. i hope you'll keep a check on checking on my folks and making sure that sba does all they can, the disaster relief in mississippi, which has been declared a federal emergency. so i guess my question is, have you prioritized the 62 of the 69 gao objectives that you've had. have you prioritized those. and if so, going back to

college, per cpm and those things, you can do some things simultaneous. do you have an overall strategic plan? further, this is a person who has a rose pinned on them to accomplish this. and the suspense or deadlines are a plan of action for each of those 62 that have not been accomplished. furter more, you've got to get the cio hired i think in order to address the issues appropriately. so i would encourage that you do the same thing that the ig pointed out. >> thank you. a lot was stated in that.

again, let me just say that as i mentioned earlier, that i looked at them, prioritized with them. rated them if you will and started with what i think is the priority. that's what i'm doing. you're right. some you can achieve until the other is complete. >> that ice why i went to the library of congress to study that. it's why we put in an evaluation program for six different items here. and we'll continue to do that work. but let me just continue to share with you that process does matter, as you say. i started three different businesses and i left my small business to do something here. if it's not enduring, then what was the point.

that's why i'm here in a cleej yal fashion. to make sure that the next person will be in not so many months. >> let me tell you, i came in with a whole different attitude that i'm here now. i think you've got some opportunities. so if you don't put in writing, i can tell you as a commander, if it's not written, it doesn't matter how good the organization is. the second thing, you talked a lot about sops. sops are so important. they've got to be current. they've got to be active and applicable. i hear you saying you're putting 41 sops in the follow up attraction. how many of the old sops and the

due pliktive sops have you taken out of action because when people are confused, it's just as important to do away with the old as it is to enact the new. i'd like to hear if you address the depliktive or otherwise. >> again, one of the last businesses i started was a community bank. i have to tell you.

you know, the 80/20 rule. thank you. >> the gentleman's time has expired. ms. adams, who is ranking member in the investigations oversight is recognized for five minutes. >> i'm going to skip asking about the implementation on the recommendations. we've already asked about that. i'm going to assist the sba in moving more expeditiously. >> i very much appreciate the question because absolutely there are budgetary constraints.

to travel, to have somebody to travel, i have to put them up. i'm trying to be more per diem to use local tools. i'm putting people in clusters, whether they're doing mentoring. i'm trying to do what i can with what i have. but if you want to have a serious confers about the budget, i start in california. i have 14 different budgets, highway patrol, dmv, cal-trans. it was a challenge to run them. i have a you neek opportunity that most people don't have and that is to create a department. it's still operating as one of the better government-run programs in the state of california. but it was an entirely different thing to start with a clean slate and say this is the

talent, this is the court competencies that i'm after. it is a little more nuanced than it is to just start from fresh. i'd be delighted to engage in that conversation. that requires a thoughtful conversation that you deserve. the lack of program evaluations without evaluations, sba lacks critical evaluation ensuring the validity and effectiveness of goals and strategies as well with both new and existing programs. for example, sba has, for many years, conducted an annual client survey who evaluates the effectiveness of training programs. so are there any plans to survey

sba loan recipients to determine if the sba loan guarantee programs are declined. and if not, why not? >> i can just give you an example of some of the data points that we're receiving. business starts, revenue growth, job creation retention, new markets, which ones are exporting, contracts are acquired, innovation milestones, the usefulness of the services and, most important, customer satisfaction. so these are metrics that we are tracking. as i mentioned earlier, i'm interested in a unique identifier so that i can track the person longitudinally. i think that's really a vital point. so, again, that's on the specificics of our public to understand what they're using. what we're also doing is trying to understand where the entrepreneurs are. so i understand that we're in federal government space and, to

my disappointment, things are coming to the sba for entrepreneurial support. that's why i've deployed our team and to find them these innovation hubs. the growth accelerators that are spawning across the country and we're learning there, too, what millenials need that might be different from our women, veterans. these are market segmentations. with the advent of technological evolution, we're not able to do much more targeted digital marketing to people. i'd like to have that kind of capacity and how to discern we are actually fulfilling the customer satisfaction and to compete in an ever-globalized economy. >> thank you very much for your responses. and, again, that you think for your services. i yield back. >> thank you. the gentle lady yields back.

chairman of the subcommittee on oversight regulations is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chair. i, too, am excited and grateful for your energy and your passion in which you're trying to accomplish here. but, still, i have concerned. i'm concerned about what i've read. i'm concerned about what i've heard and what i've seen. this agency is the council to assist and protect small businesses. they're supposed to act in a manner that is efficient and nimble like our small businesses are. so i think it's $30 billion in small business financing. this is large numbers concerning yet. we have serious challenges out there with this administration. this is troubling for the

economy. vital in that growth. and has been assistant in that growth and economy. that shows how important this department is. but with these concerns that the gao has, i have a couple questions here for you. what is the simple impact on the sba utilizing the outdated sops. another question i'd like to go is ask you, you've been here 20 months. whier why is the average -- what's going on. >> you know, i thought as i looked at the chart, i was really intrigued by the gao's

report and how far back it went and, you know, two things is, and i did a little research one evening because it was just interesting to me personally. and so i saw in some instances, the administrator was -- you have to have certain skills to be an entrepreneurship. we're a victim of the political process with every administration. you have a new appointment. and, generally, people take a four-year run and then leave and then you bring in the second bench. so i hope i'm not the second bench. >> it appears to me that you've been the longest here. and i appreciate that success. >> so what you said is sba is an

effective valuable and critical organization in our country. i just met a young man named kevin who said after $150,000 loan, he was able to go to a company underarmor. with a low bid of help, they were able to build an international global marketplace. >> i'd like to ask a question, though. do you have a succession plan in place? >> yes. so to that extent, i'm not just meeting with our political appointments. it's on a weekly basis to inculcate and to view the entire organization down to the bowels of the organization. you write it for institutional purr potss.

utilizing what is the impact of small business utilizing the out dated sops. do you believe there's a major impact here? >> i think, since we have so many different vehicles -- >> i'd just like a yes or no. >> okay, sir. yes, we are reviewing the sops, as i mentioned. the ones that i mentioned as i'm addressing them faster than any administrator in the last few years, we're making good progress. and i will continue to address that work. >> also, in your testimony, you stated that it requires senior management to be directly responsible in ensuring and viewing if dissemination of the sops. >> they're required, sir,

standard sops. we have already overhauled, for example, the disaster one, as i mentioned. we've overhauled the sbic one, as i mentioned. this is the kind of work that we're missing. we're doing them. we're undertaking them at unprecedented levels. we commit to reporting the momentum that we're building on. >> thank you for your service and construction and your rancher. you have a marvelous story. >> he studied well. >> thank you, sir. >> the administrator is not the

administrator for nothing. she's doeb her research. this is being broadcast by c-span. so from the tens to dozens of people all across america that are watching this, an sop, by the way, is standard operating procedure. i'm sure they're all wondering what that was. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and to our ranking member. and madame administrator, once again, good to see you. and the opportunity to have you in my district for a small business round table, not necessarily with me, but with senator corey booker. but it fell in my congressional district. >> we have two, actually. >> so i won't hold that against you. >> you got the podium for quite

a while. >>. >> you know, first i want to commend you for moving around the country as you've done during the course of your tenure. it doesn't go unnoticed. you really have spread yourself far and wide across the nation in your efforts throughout this country. there have been some issues with tension around the senior leadership. if i'm going over something that has already been addressed, please, forgive me. there have been 41 changes in

senior level positions at the sba in the last decade. the gao reports that it gave multiple recommendations to increase human capital, specifically it noted the sba still hasn't developed work force plans, conducted skill assessments, updated sops or established training goals. what are you doing to address these human capital issues in senior leadership and the sba regional district offices. >> again, i think the continuity is important to ensure that we have continuous program aif he can chewuation. so i'm committed to that work. as i referenced earlier, we are reconstructing many of the job

conditions and communication standards. and just generally, the way entrepreneurship is going, earlier, mentioning the importance of being anymoring. and so it is an art form as well as a science, i must say, to be able to be nimble at once and make sure that you're funding sops. and the modernization act and jobs act 2010. and dodd-frank and this is my life, right? to make sure i'm crossing every t and dotting every i. in response to the globalization of it. it is a challenge. and you want to have the best and the brightest. i must tell you, i was really disappointed.

these allegations are valid. i must tell you that each and every day, we're talking half a dozen people. these people have to be diligent and strong communicators and branding opportunities. so it is a very important skill set that we need. the salary structures are somewhat restrictive. i think that, you know, again, we will continue to atract people to show them that their work is meaningful. people care about compensation. but, more important, they care about the meaningfulness of their work. i'm here to remind them of that

every single day. there isn't anything that makes me happier than like the man i just met on my last airplane who said he was an aspiring doctor. he received a $50,000 loan from sba and he became a doctor and is now 72 years old and served our country by providing health care services to america. >> so do you feel the compensation levels there your department may be curtailing your ability to curtail the best and the brightest? >> the sba structure is not comparable to other cabinet offices. so i would be happy to address that. so, in many way, it's a complex challenge. in many way, i want mobility. you want it to create up.

opportunities for the other folks coming in. on the other hand, you want historical framework. these are delicate challenges that i address each and every single day. they're now getting opportunities. that's the good news. the bad news is that now, while i have upward mobility, i've got to find new talent. >> okay, thank you. >> thanks very much. the gentleman's time has expired. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i just wanted to -- i got in a little bit late, but i know you commented on missouri, my home state, which has experienced a

weather disaster, recently. we certainly welcome you to come. my only comment would be to spend your time there if you have your folks be willing to respond more quickly. that would be really aappreciabluated. where do you see the sba going? >> so, first, let me just assure you that i deployed my team even before we've been designated as a disaster in the area of certain circumstances that has to be met. i already have about ten employees already assessing and going out and conducting that study. so as soon as we are given the orders and are able to go, we're now getting there in 24 hours.

it's a remarkable achievement. overall, as i mentioned, i traveled to washington to see how we responded there. i traveled to texas, to north carolina to meet the governor i'm trying to understand what the requirements are. as a result, we have put in some important changes. we used to do this manually where we would send out the information of victims of disasters. now, when they come into offices, we have the technology to do it so we can track them better. >> so we're gibing to be able to deploy the folks to be able to do the work. that's great. the next question i have is in regards to 2008.

why are we not i were leapting this, especially in a time like this. >> i think that's the idea. >> a program worth having. i guess that's the first question. >> the financial institutions are having a problem adopting it. they say that it's hard for them to process a $10,000 loan. that, if not repaid, by our disaster program that we do, then they have to advertise it at a very low interest rate. i'm asking to put them on the record for formal comment as to what we need to do to make them work. >> it doesn't work. he's got two choices. fix it or get rid of it. >> that's the point. that's what we're working with to get the answers. but meanwhile, sir, i think this is important.

what we put in is an uncollateralized, $25,00 loan and we're processing them now in seven days. so in the spirit of what we're trying to accomplish here -- >> are you authorized to make direct loans? >> that is what they do. we make direct loans for people who are physically or economically affected by a disaster. so, for renters, as well, it's important to note. this is the only office that makes direct loans. >> that's news to me. last time we had a director in here and she didn't want the ability to make direct loans, which was interesting. also, with regards to what's going on, all of this information that you're going to be accumulating with regards to the hacks that have been happening with opm and the irs. how are you protecting your data? >> there is -- first, let me just say, to assure the american

people, as the term just mentioned, we have other people listening in. the sba operates with financial institutions. they don't join our system until they're assured that their data is protected. >> that begs the question, do you, at the sba, have the same protocols and the same secrecy laws and concerns and protections as the banks are? >> we operate under nist, the national institute of science and technology. we operate under different guidelines, but similar protocols. so, in that regard, we're working to a rev 4 level. but you're not there yet. >> you said you're working toward it.

so, obviously, you're not there yet. >> i want to be honest with you. >> are you sure they're basing concerns about the protection of their information? >> the gentleman's time has expired, but, go ahead and answer. >> again, the fact that the financial institution who review our system and audit our system are comfortable connecting gives me some sew lis. but i have an auditor who comes in to tell us and they found no material weaknesses. i have, none the less, made sure that we have processed -- we've moved our mainframe to a modern -- >> do me a favor. just as a closing thought here, i appreciate what you're saying. you say we're doing this according to all of these protocols and you have a gao study with getting things done in regards to their assessments of not having to do everything. when you have standard operating

procedures that are being called into question, i'm not sure the citizens can have great faith. it concerns me to work on it and i appreciate your comments. >> the gentleman's time has expired. >> i just wanted to say that i promised you lunch the last time if i didn't fulfill my goal and i want you to know that i think you owe me lunch because we are now up and operating. we have several thousand banks that have joined us and it's working. you've got to take a look at it. >> i think the cafeteria is still open. but -- >> 20 minutes from the next meeting. >> in all seriousness, i want to thank the administrator for her participation today. i certainly appreciate your ensthuz yachl and your energy that you brought to this hearing. i especially appreciate your willingness to do everything within your power to implement

the 62 out of 69 gao recommendations that still need to be resolved. my greatest concern is on the it security issue. we have seen the white house, even, hacked. these small businesses give you a lot of sensitive information. the sba is working in collaboration with homeland security, with the fbi and all of the other organizations, so i want to put confidence into the system.

i yudsed to run the dmv. this is something that has to be an effort on going. >> i totally agree with you. there's nothing that brings the comforts of people than dealing with the department of motor vehicles. if there's no further business to come before the committee, we'll add joun. thank you much. >> thank you, sir. >> as president obama prepares for his state of the union address on tuesday, he released this video on twitter. >> i eem'm working on my state the union address. it's my last one. as i'm writing, i keep thinking about the roads that we've traveled together these past seven years. that's what makes america great.

our capacity to change for the better. our ability to come together as one american family and pull ourselves closer to the america we believe in. it's hard to see sometimes. but it is who we are. and it is what i want to focus on in this state of the union address. >> c-span's coverage starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern with real clear politics congressional reporter looking back at the history and tradition of the president's annual message and what to expect in this year's address. and then, at 9:00, a live coverage of the president's speech followed by the republican response by south carolina governor plus your reaction by phone, facebook, tweets and e-mail. as well as those from congress. and we'll re-air our state of the union coverage and the republican response starting at 11:00 p.m. eastern, also, live

on c-span2 after the speech, we'll hear from members of congress with their reaction to the president's address. the chair of the house foreign affairs committee congressman ed royce will talk about some of the global security threats facing the u.s. you'll have live coverage at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. here on c-span3, we'll have live coverage at 9:00 a.m. eastern. next, nick mulvaney talks. from washington journal, this is 40 minutes.

>> joining us on the program, nick mulvaney. good morning. how did you vote? >> i voted to repeal. i think it was the 40th time i've been able to do that in the house. because of yesterday, it will actually get to the president's desk now. >>. >> the number of time. >> this is the one that really counts.

>> 4 is the one that actually counts. >> even though it will most likely get a veto? >> we told a lot of people that. people accept that. folks elected in 2010, 2012, 2014, know that with barack obama in the white house, we're always going to have obamacare. they wanted to know that republicans would stand up to present the other side of the story. go back in 2009, 2010 when we were discussing obamacare as a nation. there wasn't that much debate. there was sort of this general debate about what we should do about health care. but it wasn't much about this specific bill. we have to pass it in order to know what's in it. how can you debate something that doesn't exist yet. that -- i'm vetoing it and here's why. we can have that national debate.

>> once again, never become law as republicans celebrate the 62nd vote. >> that's all we say on that? >>. >> the thought ooft matter is we've never had the debate. there's no defense of obamacare. there's no response of the difficulties that people are facing. i want obamacare. i cannot get service. i cannot get health care.

no one takes the coverage. here's why we think it's not. here's why we can do it better. if the president misses that, my guess is that the president will avoid that. that what you saw last week about guns, it's an attempt not to have that debate. >> 748-80001 for democrats, 8001 for republicans. you can also tweet them to us. when it came to the actual budget, who has to make the fight? >> i'm a big fan to passing most pieces of legislation. i think if you had done that, then the threshold changes. the only way to get this to the president's desk was by using this arcane set of rules called budget reconciliation.

a very narrow area of law that does not need 60 votes in the senate. if it had been attached, the threshold was no longer 50, it would be 60. >> so, another call then this morning, what about the alternative? >> if you're going to repeal, what's the alternative for the republican sns. >> guilty as charged. we had been promised since 2012, i think that we would offer our alternative ideas. they're there. the republican study commission has had a comprehensive plan online for four years i think. for some reason, previous leadership was afraid to bring

it up. i'm hopeful that now we will have the nerve to stand up and say not only do we not like obama care, but here's our idea of how to fix things. if we don't do that, we will have failed the country and failed the party. >>. >> what are some of the alternatives? >>. >> you'll never get people to look at the insurance systems that work. homeowner's insurance works. most of the time, your employer picks it for you. if your window gets broken on your car, you sit down and do a

calculation. i could make a claim against my insurance, but my insurance might go up. we don't do that with health care. if you go in and the doctor says you need an mri, you get an mri. it's the only thing that we buy that somebody else pays for. it's a completely broken system. you can look to examples for the next ten years. the only insurance that's gone up is health care insurance. if you look at the list of things that could improve models elsewhere, we talked about state lines to promote competition. if you go and do an internet search, you can get right to it.

>> why do republicans let the democrats say that the republicans are trying to limit women's access to health care. they're trying to limit their access to murdering babies. >> the short answer is we can't dictate what they say. so if your question is why do we let them say it, we have to let them say it. the better question is why don't we respond. and we do. we tried to make the case last year that we were simply trying to move last year from planned parenthood to the qualified clinics. in fact, they better serve the lower end of the economic

spectrum. we tried to have that argument. if the media won't drive that out, we're left to drive that message out. this was not about women's healthcare. we tried to make it very clear that we were not simply taking it away. we were moving it to other places where it could better serve women's health. >> from missouri, democrats, john, good morning, you're next up. >> good morning. yesterday, we had another republican from the south and he was talking about -- i've got to talk about that. but what he said was if the republican congress could pass some law if the president would just work with him. well, did the president come and work with you on repealing this

health care law? or are you just sad that you could do it without the president's help? now, every time we have a discussion about health care and c-span, which is dozens and dozens of them: the only thing ever discussed is the cost of health care insurance. why don't we ever just discuss the cost of what health care actually does. and how he's running all the hospitals, running all of these medical groups are just flat overcharging everybody for everything they do. i recently went to a hospital three times, three different days, did not stay overnight. was just protesting. and after medicare, my co-pay was $8,000. and this was just for testing.

so how in the hell can these medical groups and doctors' groups and hospitals combine with this overcharging. it's the medical groups, the hospitals and the doctors. >> john, thank you for your comments. we'll let our guest respond. >> a couple of different things. back to the original point, i still don't know who my white house liaison is. i was reading a book the other day about the founders of the nation. the very first thing the president did was write a letter to congress, writ, by the way, to john adams. and congress asked him to write the response. to actually write a letter to himsz. the example is there. but the president sort of works. i don't know if he knows how to do that. i'm not sure if he knows how to

work in that building down the hall. he's part of a legislative body. it's what he wanted to do. but things the house could do? yeah, the house passed an amendment two years ago to increase federal funding for the background checks. it's difficulty between the states. they were not communicating very well with each other. if you were adjudicating in north carolina, and north carolina is a specific example, but it applies generally. so you could drive down across the state line and move and go to buy a gun and wouldn't turn up in our background system. that was broken. i voted for that as many, many republicans did. it died in the democrat controlled senate.

the president may have been able to fix that little piece of the puzzle. those types of things don't get done. let me just respond to john in a sense. just because his bill is $8,000 doesn't mean he was overcharged. i have no idea what services were performed. $8,000 might be a great deal for the level of health care that he got. and my fear is that most people just want it to be free. that's the code word here. they think they're entitled to health care as a matter of law. that by virtue of being here, they're entitled to a certain level of health care. and i think that's a dangerous position for us to take. every time we say we're entitled to something, we have to realize the flip side of that obligation. the flip side is something else is obligated to me.

as soon as you say i'm entitled to health departmentcare, what that means is somebody else is obamaly gaited to pay for it for me. i'm not one to go there. >> next call is patty from connecticut. independent line. go ahead, you're on, please. >> thank you. please, don't cut me off. i just want to say that a columnist always said the republicans do this all of the time. they get the bill right up to the limit so that they can say oh, we tried. he gave the store away. he's going to be worse than obama, the jack kemp boy. they're trying to placate the republicans. that's why donald trump is making headway. now, i'm just sick and tired of it. this health care thing is a

ploy. it's doing nothing. just like everything else yous do. i was a republican. no longer. thank you. >> a couple of us actually agree with her more than she realizes. the donald trump phenomenon is real. i've seen him in south carolina, i think he's leading in south carolina. i go and i get that sense of why trump is doing so well. it's real. there's a broad swath of not only the republican party, but simply angry it's real. we've done a lousy job of

over-proemsing and under-delivering. we've done a terrible job of following all of those promises. see all the thing that is we haven't done, haven't everyone tried to do. so that anger is real. i will take issue with patty, at least for the time being as mr. boehner. i don't see that. don't judge him by the omnibus. the bill, to me, still had the dead hand of john boehner reaching out. most of that deal was cut before paul came into office. you cannot do an omnibus deal in five weeks. judge by 2016. that's what i tell folks.

he's done with all of the stuff cleaning up you can judge by what's going to happen now. you can say he's doing the conservative caucus. he's got one year. we'll have a chance to judge him by a year of his own actions. so yesterday's bill is a step in the right direction? >> absolutely. it was a promise kept. people will cry it's meaningless. but we knew that was going to be the case in 2010. everybody knows that. that shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. especially patty who obviously follows politics. we made a promise, we kept a promise and we're trying to drive a debate. how great would it be if it's a result of what happened yesterday in the house and previously in the senate.

and by sending this bill to the president, health care becomes a focal point of the presidential debate. it's all about isis or who hates everybody more. let's have a national debate. we should have had that in 2008. we didn't. we didn't have it in 2012. we need to have it now. we need to have a national debate about health care and what republicans tried to do yesterday, is drive that debate. we'll see both parties take it up. >> thank you very much for taking my call. i wanted to take it in health care. i do this anonymously. one, you're breaking it up.

two, it's not what you're getting. also, the issue is medicare or medicaid internationally. just say you want to do so. you want to charge someone else. if r the the same process is with the democrats in the majority of the house. i just wanted to put that out. it's a very good point. they have rights. someone else won't have to pay for it. you will have to pay for it. the numbers do not lie. i's continued to grow. first they had medicare and medicaid expansion. see what happens.

>> you've put a lot out there for our guest. we' eel let them respond. >> i got this question a lot about using the same process to repeal obama care with the senate and the house used in 2010. that's partially correct just to clarify for the folks who watched the show. clearly much more educated than ordinary folks. that's partially correct. keep in mind that the first pieces of obamacare were actu actually passed when the democrats had 60 votes. so that's why the first part of it went through. that's one of the reasons that we weren't able to repeal all of obamacare. it's being described as obamacare. but technically, reveals most of obamacare, but not all of it.

but the point of working or not working. it's working forsome people. all we've done is move the group of people who were uninsured. it used to be if you were very poor, you could not afford health care. i think the cheapest policy you can buy is $19 a month. if you were working, if you were a little bit up front, a one-income household with a couple of kids, well, now, you can't.

>>. >> woe're talking about the cost of insurance, not the cost of health care. there was a several thousand dollar deduktble. people can't afford to have health care. when they first came out with obamacare, they were eager to take people in the reimbursement rates were pretty good. and then the hospitals ended up being on the books for a bunch of more unpaid bills. we've not fixed the problem by any stretch of the imagine nation. also a report to state as well as financial support from the government. that's going to start

decreasing. south carolina did not expand medicaid. i'm actually very supportive not to do that because i've learned a valuable lesson. i can assure you that when times get tough the first money that we cut up here is the money that we give to states. all of these promises that have been made, if you live very closely, the president's last budget proposal, you'll see that he's already starting to telegraph that he wants to reduce the federal support for those state programs faster than originally promised. it was a pig and a poke. it was a drug dealer saying here, just take this one for free. but i think states are going to come to rue that decision. >> here's sam from monasis of virginia democrat's line.

>>. the man who said he pays $8,000 for co-pay we're not asking that it's going to be free. you always say that they want it for free. it's so unfortunate. >> i won't use the word and i apologize if i've offended you with my word choice. i think i can make the argument in a different way. question're talking about

affordability. i have no idea what service the previous caller had. let's assume for sake of discussion he received a hundred thousand dollars of health care and that's the fair value. you're paying $8,00 for it, that's pretty affordable. that's talent. if you've got a hundred thousand dollars worth, that's pretty affordable. that's the kind of conversation you have to have unless you want to make the argument that it should be free. we have a way in this country to figure out a way to make things

more affordable except health care. and the reason that is is while you paid for that ipad and i paid for that phone, we don't pay for health insurance. we've disconnected the market forces that work every place else. and, as a result, we're seeing this product, health care, react in a way that's different than everything else that we buy. that's my argument on the health care bill. this is sam's argument. again, you're not going to sit here and see me defending the indefensible. i saw the 20, 30, 40% increases in health care. and i kept waiting for my party to address the problem. all we did was talk about traditional marriage amendment to the constitution. that was wrong. i thought my party had started to start talking about things that weren't important to ordinary americans.

i think i'm hopeful that we shall do a better job in 2016 what ideas should be if they put us in charge. they didn't do that the last time they put us in charge. i think it tells us what we would do. speaker ryan, where does he go from here? >> he laid out specifics. >> i'm so excited about paul being excited for speaker of the house. what has paul done in the past. how do you fix social security? and then we voted on him.

tax reform in the same way. we actually voted on some big things. they were hard votes. they drew a lot of political fire. you saw the democrats running adds, mid session, of a guy that looks a lot like paul ryan pushing a lady off the cliff in a wheelchair. >> here's george from north carolina. home of the pickles. >> yes, hello. it's been four years since i've called in, so, please, let me say my piece. i'm not sure if the american caller listeners know how many tax dollars you're taking for your health care plan. congress has taken over $13,000

per congressperson per year to subsidize their hemtcare. and you are a very part time employer. and then about three years ago, you passed a law that says congress gets it for life. so i want you to tell us how many tax dollars are you taking to subsidize your health care. if you say you don't know, one, you're a liar or two, you don't know because you don't care. you got yours. if he doesn't know, he's got people there in the back room who can make a phone call and get the answer right away. tell us how many times, sir, have you taken for your health care. but then you have the gall to say sorry, there's not enough of our money to take what you give to yourself. have a great day. bye, bye. >> thank you for the opportunity, pedros. i hear a lot of this on the internet. a lot of folks getting a shamed

e-mail from the 28th amendment about here's how you can fix congress. you can make them apply laws to themselves. i'll go down the list because i've done this many, many times before. people think that we get full pension after one year in office. i can assure you, that is absolutely false. i'm a big fan of term limits. give those people full pensions after one year and they'll all leave. but no, we do not get that. we get 1.5% accruing after 5 years or something like that. but it's not full benefits after one year served. people think we don't participate in ssz. that is false. people think that we don't have to repay student loans. that's false. i am the only class of citizen

in the united states of america who is prohibit ed prohiblted b law from participating in the health care system. as a member of congress, i am prohibited from doing that. i have to go on obamacare. and i am on obamacare. we are prohibited by law from participating in our program. i do get an employer of contribution towards my premium. i think it's 857.92 tlars or something like that. >> can you get a subsidy on top of that? >> no, i get the same thing that other employers get.

when i was a member of congress before the obamacare kicked in, i was still paying less for better service. i went to my doctor, the first time i was on obamacare, i went to my doctor. not a large corporation. and i walked in and they said hey, mr. mulvaney, how are you doing? i gave them my card and they said i'm sorry, we can't see you. they wouldn't see me. i said look, can i pay cash and you can give me the prescription because we all know what it is? they said i'm sorry, we can't do that. it's real. and we live it. there's a bunch of reasons, george, there's a bunch of reasons to not like congress. we're not very good at our job.

we're better at talking than we were at doing. but you don't have to make up reasons. >> caller: hello, i wanted to say that either 2008 or 2009, obama did have a summit with all republicans and to see how they can improve obamacare before they passed it. all they did through the whole summit, because i watched the whole thing, kwuz they were debating like they were trying to get into office. they didn't want to do anything. they didn't even tell'm, no, they wanted to start from scratch. i don't know what scratch is because he gave them all the opportunity to say, okay, if you want to start from scratch, where do we start. all of the sudden, nothing, no issues were coming up. nothing. so i really think it's their

fault because it was a debate. so they're misleading the people saying that, no, they're democrats did this, you know, where he actually wanted the republicans get involved with this. so everybody could have a fair share. they did not do that. and don't say it didn't happen. i watched the whole thing. and it's just sad that even now, you don't think it's a right for us to have good health insurance. and that's a shame because we're losing america. i paid my fair share working. with the company.

and, now, it's almost, like, they're taking everything away. they're trying to take social security, medicare, you name it. >> couple different things. i wasn't aware of a summit. i did see this. i saw the debate. by the way, louise, if you were disappointed with no issues being brought up by congress. the democrats were in charge then. don't blame the republicans. the democrats were completely in charge of this place in 2008-2009. to the extent there was no meaningful debate on health care. the republicans were asked to read the bill and they were denied that opportunity. there was blank pages up at the floor that were not available to

be read. if that's how you like the system to run, then you got exactly what you wanted. and if you believe that the end justifies the means, then i guess you got what you wanted. clearly, you got it the way that you wanted. you want it to be free. i would love it to be free, but things aren't free. and it wasn't free way back when, as you mentioned. someone paid for it. i say again, one of the reasons that the health care system is broken, we consume something that we don't pay for. we have no idea what it costs to have a child. think about that. that's the only thing we buy that not only do we not know what it costs, we don't care what it costs. all we know is that someone else pays for it and if a doctor says we have to have it, we want to have it. i recognize the fact that this comes across as cold and sort of too economic driven, but the fact of the matter is that's the only product or service that we buy that is treated like that. if you want to know why health

care is different than anything else, you can look to that. ask your doctor how he feels about filling out paperwork. 20, 20 people in his office filling out paperwork. that's it. think about how much more affordable health care would be if he actually were just in the business of providing health care and not in the business of pushing paper. here is ralph, hello.

>> i'm thinking that as long as a congressman, this discussed for over 20 years. and during that time, you're telling me that no congressman could have staff members working on that so it wouldn't be jamd down your throat? i would have stopped what i was doing and let it. how many times? over 57? >> the other thing is chad cruz said that he had to get on this affordable health care because his wife lost her job which meant it's my mentor.

why is it that he would opt to get on that instead of taking on another insurance policy, which i'm sure he can afford it. thank you, pedro. >> i didn't have the option that ted cruz has. my wife stays -- i have 15-year-old triplets. so the key options about the bill being discussed for 20 year, why didn't you read it? again, very quickly, it wasn't available to read. we voted on the bill before it was available to read. but let's deal with the larger issue of this is a major piece of legislation. that's something that everybody can agree on. it's probably the largest social piece of legislation that we've dealt with.

you go back and look at the civil rights act. why is that? so that it doesn't become devisive. it's exactly what obamacare is. that's one of the reasons i fall to the democrat leadership. for not recognizing what they did. we paint with that very broad brush. when we do the really, really big stuff, we do it on a bipartisan basis. the last big thing that we did was reagan's tax policy in the '850s. i know it was a democrat house that approved it. when we do the big stuff, pedro, we're supposed to do it as a country so that it does not divide us. and that's exactly what obamacare has done because of the way we passed i. >> we'll take one more call from

centerville, massachusetts. good morning, independent line. >> good morning, pedro. >> good morning representative. >> hi. >> obamacare originated here in massachusetts, if i'm not mistaken. it was called romneycare. here, it works. and what they did, the problems that they had with it, they seemed to work them out. now, you're from south carolina. your governor opt out of the engs change. so if your doctor isn't take you willing you as a patient because he doesn't know which way your state is going, he don't know what to charge you. i know how much it would cost me

to get an mri. hoump it cost me to get a cat scan. my premiums don't go down every year. >> enough with how it's working, massachusetts. i understand it was one of the plans calle romney care. one of the reasons that we didn't have this debate in 2012 was having to elect the person who was most singly capable of taking obamacare. we didn't opt out of the exchange. we chose to opt out. but the ones that i use and not what the objection is there. we did opt out of medicaid, which i happen to agree where because i think it was a formula

for the economic failure. >> governor will be giving the state of the union response. the delegation from south carolina, do they get the chance to address it? or how does that work? >> my guess is they worry about it. i found it out about it on the news, just like you did. but i think she'll be fine. unfortunately, i think the downside of giving the speech is probably harder than the upside. she did a really nice job. marco rubio did a nice job. the downside is a high risk. >> nick mulvaney, south carolina, thanks for your time this morning.

>> we need to know how many people are reading us. so if they're coming to us through facebook or through google or twitter or through snap chat, or through any of these other venues, we should know that. >> sunday night on washington post, talking about the changes of the post since he took over. he also discusses the depiction of his work in the boss ton globe in the movie, spotlight.

>> i think it's important to keep in mind that you have to compress in two hours. you had to introduce a lot of character and had to introduce the important things with that investigation. >> next, former diplomat and academics discuss the israel-palestinian conflict and the possibility of creating stability in the region.

ladies and gentlemen, we would like to start with please turning off your cell phone. >> my name is yono alexander. i'm the director of the university cent er the universiy studies that are administered by the policy studies as well as the university center for legal studies at international law institute in cooperation with many academic institutions, universities around the world.

specifically i'd like to mention the center for national security of the university of virginia school of law. on behalf of the diplomatic institute, unfortunately, is out of the country, as i understand. at any rate, of course genere, who is the chairman of the board of regions and the 29th commandant of the marine corps

but, at any rate, let me welcome the speakers professor to my left and obviously contributed a great deal, i think, to understand mod rat islam and receivabled as a professor of political science in jerusalem. and will make a presentation today and, obviously, many of you are familiar with the

contribution of his family. we do have the information about the speakers. i won't go into detail. speaker from the israel embassy in washington will also participate and he also is well-known to the audience and participated in a number of our seminars and contributors to our report on the process and so forth. now, basically, our mission, i

think, today, is to deal with the question of jerusalem whether the excavating ascension and violence in recent mons in the last three months can ignite the religious war in the middle east and beyond. and, yet at the time of christmas that the world is celebrate i celebrating peace on earth, the question arises whether the spirt of the second city of jerusalem, the city that is honored through christianity and islam will encourage building the foundations for domestic piece in the middle east and so on. this and other issues would be

included, discussions for example, the historical context background of the political aspect as well as the various issue in the role of religion, for example. so i would like to invite the speakers that will take over in a few minutes, i would like to thank c-span radio and television for bringing the seminar to the attention of a wider audience in the united states and internationally. in addition to that, as always, we'd like to manage anniversary dates related to violence with

some of the negative aspects with the realization of conflicts and trying with justice. so number one, we remember the victims of violence and terrorism. let me mention two, specifically. one, in fact, related to today dates december 21, 1988. which is the 27th anniversary of the american flight 103 that destroyed 259 passengers who were killed, most of them

americans. many of them remember that libya was responsible for that tragedy. and, also, on christmas day, 2009, the nigerian who attempted to detonate plastic explosives on the northwest side of 253 over detroit. of course, it was connected with al-qaida in the arabian peninsula. clearly, we ask to remember many of the other members in recent time all the way from paris to

california ultimately to jell ruse line up and siani and so forth. one footnote as a moderator. . i feel that i feel that for 25 years, i live, studied and worked in jerusalem. they both came in 1921 in their late 30s. i grew up in the city of tell vooef, but i always consider myself a member of the population of jerusalem. i was involved in teach iing at

the university for some 25 years related to war and peace and terrorism. i would like to mention in june, 1967, i had the great privilege and honor to open the campus specifically since we do have a few lawyers here at the law school. and i have a group of students, about 30 stubts, who came from the united states and other countries. so the first assignment that i gave was not to write a paper, but to clean up the classroom that was not used for about 19 years. because of the separation of the

city in jerusalem. and since that time, we, as scholars who came from all over the world to join us and participate in our academic work, including some of the people from paris, we have also clergy, christian, muz rims and others who participated in our work. i'd just like to mention one particular study related to our topic today, not for publicity purposes, but back in 1973, we

had a project at columbia university, school of journalism, in the middle east will produce a book on the role of communications in the middle east. middle east. i'm mentioning this because there is no way that one can discuss the issue of jerusalem separate from the arab palestinian conflict, arab israeli conflict or conflict between the muslim world and the international issue. so let me just begin by reminding all of us, we are familiar with jerusalem the same way we're familiar with the washington and berlin and elsewhere. but again, just to remind us what are we talking about going

back to the oldes thement, the new testament, the temple in jerusalem and the journey will go into some details right here, the church of the holy -- in other words, we're tacki italkit the sacred sights in jerusalem and the status of the sites and the mosque and, of course, the wailing wall, the western wall, the remnants of the temple that haro herod the great built and the mosque and of course the pilgrimage pope francis of jerusalem, the wailing wall and elsewhere. so again, i think we have a big agenda.

and again, the question i think that we're going to discuss today, what are the factors that encourage violence and terrorism and perhaps might trigger a third world war, as some people predict. how can we diffuse some of the negative theological elements from a political conflict related to israel, palestine, and so on and perhaps serve as a model for of other conflicts around the world. so with this i would like to invite reuven azar to come up and discuss some of the issues. >> thank you, yonah. good morning, everybody. it's really a pleasure for me to

appear before the -- here in the potomac institute again. i think that the key for peace, if we want to avid confrontation of war, the key is acceptance. acceptance, it means acceptance of the other. i could speak here for a whole hour, maybe for a whole day regarding the connection between the jewish people and jerusalem and talk about the history of jerusalem, how it was established as the capital of the israeli kingdom by king david 3,000 years ago, and about the first and second temple and the fact that jews pray three times a day every day, going back to jerusalem to restore jerusalem as the capital and as place in which the temple is restored, et cetera.

we mention jerusalem in funerals and weddings. it's part of our -- part and parcel in the life of any jew. but in order to get to peace we have to accept also the other. and the other has to accept us. another thing that we have to do is instead of exploiting religion to radicalize we have to exploit religion to moderate. and that is a very difficult task, especially today with the situation we have in the region because unless we defeat the radic radicals, we won't be able to do it. sometimes i'm hearing in the last few months here in washington and other places when it comes to isis people say that isis are ignorant. unfortunately they are not. their methods are terrible, but the leaders of isis have an ideology and they are educated. so the problem that we have is that the radicals are educated.

and unless we defeat them it will be very difficult to promote the message of the acceptance of the the other and to use religion to promote moderation. one of the problems we have in jerusalem, also in jerusalem, i was raised there, is that religion is being manipulated. in the last spark of violence that we are suffering from now, before that there was a campaign, well organized campaign, actually by the islamic movement in israel, claiming that israel wants to change the status quo of the temple. now, this is not the first time that religion is being manipulated in that way. it goes back to the beginning of the conflict. even not only before '67 but before '48. in 1929, for example, when terrible massacre happened in

jerusalem, hebron, the very old community of hebron was erased from the map, people were killed. it was sparked by initiative of jews in the wailing wall to put a separation between men and women. so this sparked a rumor that the jews are going to take over the temple. and what happened is that before the '20s, it was well-known, including in the publications of the world at that time, i think it was world settler from the washington institute that found this booklet in the -- actually in the labor of congress or archives that mentioned the -- a publication in 1993 that said that the temple is the same location in which the temple of

solomon was built. and actually the term like in hebrew is something that is well-known in actually one of the isis-related organizations. they, you know -- they exist in sinai. so this trying to rejectionist of trying to rewrite history and disconnect the narrative of the jews and their connection to the holy land was part of a nationalistic, anti-nationalistic or anti-zionist movement and it was there to see what we know today as the palestinian movement, although the first -- those rejectionists are the first ones weren't necessarily defining themselves as palestinians. so how can we deal with

rejectionists? that's a very, very difficult challenge because -- and i to followed it when i served in jordan, in ayman, we were dealing on a day-to-day basis trying to settle this problem that we have, that the approach of israel has been very interesting. because when we came to jerusalem back in 1967, after all these years, hundreds of and thousands of years of praying for jerusalem when he came to the temple mound, he sat on the floor, he called for the priest and he gave them the keys for the temple. the idea of the leaders at that time was that in order for us to solve the conflict what we have to do at the end of the day is to separate between religion and religious rights and to show religious tolerance and not to take over the places are sacred

for the others. another very important event was in 1994 when prime minister rabin signed a peace agreement, peace accord with the jordanians because that was the first time that any leader in the world recognized the role of the hashumites on the haram. why israel do that? because israel wanted to maintain and to promote the idea that you can separate and solve religious issues separately from national issues. we have a national conflict, we have to solve it. but if we draw religion into the conflict, we won't be able to solve it so we have to respect other religions and respect the role and also the religious role of the legitimate religions in the region. it was vst interesting because at that point in time no other arab leader has declared that it

respects the role of the family in the haram. in israel was the first one. last year i think or two years ago abu was the second one to recognize the role of the hashumite family and the hashumite kingdom in jerusalem. in the last two years i think we are also having another phenomenon which is worrying for us because has although israel is a democracy and we respect religion and we are being -- although we are being attacked for many years, there is a red callization process in israel itself as well and we have jewish radicals. of course you cannot compare to what's going on in the region but we have to deal with that and we have seen in the last year or two an increased in the number of victims of jewish terror and we've seen some people in israel that are trying

to call for the change in the status quo in the temple mound, in the haram. israel is trying to fight the radicalization. the president, the prime minister, the security is doing as much as they can in order to thwart the radicals, whether it be the hintu or other people trying to promote violence. but also i think the government has come out and said very clearly that israel is not change the status quo on the temple mount. there is incitement around this, there's propaganda. and people around har rab world are completely sure that the israel wants to take over the mosque, haram al sharif but

we're not going to do that because although jerusalem, and that place, the most sacred place for us has a connection to us, we have to respect also the aspirations and the religion of others. so just to wrap it up i would say that if we manage to find partners, that not only we join us in promoting moderation but also we'll recognize our narrative, then we have a chance of negotiating peace. you know, we have negotiated. even jerusalem in the last few years, when -- under the barack government, the omar government, and suggestions on the table were very, very revolutionary and very ambitious. i think that we can get to that

point when we hear from other side, from the leaders of the palestinians and leaders of the arab world that they are willing to recognize the historic connection of the jews to the holy land and to jerusalem, the religious connection, and the national connection. if we manage -- if we hear that, if israelis hear that from the other side i think it will be much more prone to compromise on the -- on the issue of jerusalem. so that's more or less wraps it up. thank you very much. >> we're not going to let you go. i know you have a schedule conflict here but let me ask you some questions. number one, to provide some clarity, you mentioned the role of jordan in particular. very unique role. and just for transparency

invited also the diplomats from the embassy of jordan because of schedule conflict they couldn't make it, but clearly, by the way, i attended that ceremony with jordan and israel. now, the question is related to the status, number one of jerusalem. the whole idea of the internationalization of jerusalem that was initially advanced, 1947 and later on. secondly, the status of the sacred sites. not only in jerusalem but elsewhere like bethlehem, nazareth, and so forth. in other words, since we do have a number of people here, i thought it would be of great

interest. >> thank you. i think we're going to have to separate between national rights and religious rights. we have a conflict with the palestinians. we think that, you know, jerusalem is the capital of israel. because of our connections that i already mentioned with the city. and this is something we have to settle with the palestinians. and there were different stages in which we negotiated such a solution. on the religious side i think that we have to stick to the principle that we are not going to mix religious rights with national rights. and it's interesting because in our area of the world, unlike in the west, in our moto of democracy we don't separate religion and state. but even though we don't separate religion and state,

because of many historical and cultural reasons we can, we can separate them and i think this can help us in getting into the solution. and such solutions, when it comes to control of religious sites, we are already almost there because the holy site is controlled by christians and the haram al sharif is controlled by muslims and the wailing wall is controlled by jews. so we can find -- when it comes to religion, as long as everybody has a right to exercise their religion, we can find a solution. >> maybe we can go deeper into this issue, the claim of, for example, that israel is trying to change the status quo of the

temple mount and so forth, and again, this actually does encourage, i think, more attention and environments. it reminds me very vividly going back to 1969 when i was, again, teaching in jerusalem and there was an australian christian who set fire to the mosque in jerusalem and this inflamed actually not only the people in jerusalem, the palestinians, the arabs, but muslims all over the world. so my question is, what is basically the israel/palestinian vis-a-vis to preserve the status quo in jerusalem and elsewhere? >> i'll answer it with an

example. when i was in jordan i saw that there is something going on in the jordanian press because the jordanian press was translating the protocols of the meetings of the israeli c knesset and they e asking why cannot jews come to the mosques and pray. because it would be their natural right, according to them. so that jordanian opposition was translating that. and that created a sort of series of attacks of the position in jordan against the jordanian government, against the -- against the king. and it played into the conspiracy theories that the

leader of the islamic in israel that corporates with hamas, it played into this game. so it didn't help how many times israel said it's not going to change the status quo and it doesn't matter whether israeli police actually polices the place and every jew that comes to the temple mount or to the haram is being watched by police, so he doesn't open his mouth and pray. okay? this is so delicate. so the government is doing its work but the problem is that there is a lot of people around that they're trying -- that are playing with this, that are playing with this because they want to -- or because they are zell lets or they want to benefit from this politically. and our challenge is to cope with it. so fortunately we are now engaged with the jordanian government and we are trying to advance this project of putting cameras on the temple mount so people have a chance to look

directly live at what's going on. usually what is to happen is that because of the fact that people that are -- that were called linked with the islamic movement, used to go to the mosques, to the mosques, stay there for the night. and then in the morning try to disrupt either jews that coming as tourists to the mount or throw stones at the wailing wall. so before the last jewish feast at the beginning of the year the rules apply, actually to use explosion ive explosives. that is something that generated this whole series of ensitement and violence, et cetera. so we have a challenge. and as much as we have cooperation from the jordanians and we wish we had cooperation from the palestinian leadership that has to not to promote incitement but to condemn the

incitement. if we have that, we can take control of the situation. if we don't, it will continue to be a very serious problem for us. >> reuven, i have actually a question before we open it up to questions from the audience. and this would relate maybe to your experience, again, in ayman and cairo and the peace negotiations, because many people are concerned that you cannot solve the problem of jerusalem without solving the palestinian/israeli conflict with the palestinian authority and so forth. are you pessimistic or optimistic that that's particular conflict, not only between the palestinian and the israelis but the israelis with some of the other arab countries

such as saudi arabia and the muslim world at large can be resolved and thereby you can also resolve the issue of jerusalem? >> i'm optimistic, first of all because i'm an optimistic person. but in addition to that i'm optimistic because first of all, i believe in the power of the jewish people and the state of israel that prevail these attacks. but also i'm optimistic because i think that something very substantial is going on in the region now. and in the world. people understand what are the dangers of militant islam, of radical islam. and people in the region also understand how undermine they are by this fight of ideologies. and a few years ago when i was -- we were doing our annual research, my previous position i was head of the research, and we -- we identified that there

is a phenomenon that ask actually a stabbizer within the destabilized region that we have. and this stabilizer, instead of calling it the grass of the neighbor's always greener, we say the grass of the neighbor is actually darker. for example, arab israelis, look what's going on in the region or when palestinians in the west bank look at what's going on in gaza. and they look what's going on in syria. many people have a sense of how threatened they are by these radical forces. it's not that they are becoming suddenly very in love with israel, okay, but they understand what is realistic and what is not. they understand that, first of all, for example, as arab israelis they have a chance to fight for equality. jordanians and egyptians understand that israel is a force for stability in the

region. and it doesn't generate love for zionism, okay, but it generates a realistic sense that we have to work together to fight extremism, to fight the iranian threat, to fight isis, to fight all the other threats that we have in the region right now. and in that sense i think that we have a chance. we are cooperating much more than we cooperated in the past with the jordanians, with the egyptians, with the palestinian security forces because they know that if we don't cooperate at the end of the day hamas and palestinian islamic jihad and isis and you name it, they will take over. so if we manage to exacerbate that and to cooperate that and to combine it with strong leadership and a peace process, that includes acceptance, then i think we will be better off. >> okay. reuven, a few minutes, also, ask

the audience some questions. if you have a question or comment. yeah? >> hi. my name is ron taylor. i'm a senior fellow with george washington university, center of cyber and homeland security. but i do a lot in counter terrorism. so from the outside, the mideast always looks unstable and stability, unstability are sort of a time -- have a time dependence to them. you know, whether you're stable for a long time, a short period of time is kind of a relative thing. and i guess my question is, you know, what do you see as the future of, you know, and i just keyed off of your comment about israel being a force for stability. and i can see that in other countries in the region. what do you see as the future for the nation state itself in that area because, you know,

that also is an example of -- of a possible degeneration of the nation's state concept. >> right. i think that's a great question. and this is a question i was trying to discuss with my researchers back when i was in jerusalem. and when we're looking at the region, for many years we wering looking at the region and we had mubarak and hassan and hussein and it's like, you know, it wasn't very thrilling. it was very stable. we didn't foresee many changes. and now you have to open every day a new fight for the new organizations and the new people that are becoming active in the region. so at some point i told to my team, look, let's stop looking at countries. let's start looking at institutions. okay? we try the institutions in the region that you can count on to

be influenced, to be of flint. and when it comes to your question what are the institutions that we can embrace and we can bring force in order to cooperate with us. so when you look at the egyptian army, for example, okay, people are not very prone or they don't like in the west egyptian army. i can understand that. when it comes to israel, also it's not very encouraging, you know? there is this famous joke about -- it's not famous. maybe it will be now. about -- about when the muslim brotherhood had broken a cease-fire between israel and hamas so many nationalists in egypt were saying, he's a zionist, no, he's cooperating with the israelis. when sisi broke the cease-fire between israel and hamas the muslim brother was saying he's a zionist. so if both of them were rightmost of the egyptians will be zionists but unfortunately

they're both wrong. this is is situation, these are the institution that we have, whether it's the egyptian army or the muslim brotherhood or any other force, any other institution that takes power we have to look -- if, you know, if it's not completely -- it's not completely doing that because it kills everybody like assad or isis. we have to see how to re-enforce those players and institutions. in jordan you have a strong government, you have a strong intelligence service. so you have structures. you have a strong financial banking system, let's work with those. let's re-enforce those that have the chance to deliver. okay? the same goes for the palestinian authority. we have a process of 20 years in which we invested. okay. we are not saints. israelis, maybe would have invested if we would invested more we would be better off, but you have an investment of 20 years. that failed. you have palestinian security apparatus at work but they are

not capable of falling by hamas, for example. so how can we change that? how can make -- we can make the palestinian security apparatus to deliver for palestinians including against hamas. if we succeed in that maybe we will have a palestinian state. the approach has to be bottom up, is what i think. >> anybody else? >> yes. >> hi. don lawson, thank you for your time here. >> if there's to be negotiated mutual recognition, palestinians would like to raise their flag in jerusalem and at one time that was no, no, no by israelsy. is it conceivable that the arab sector of jerusalem can become a palestinian capital as well? >> it's going to be up to the leaders at that time to determine. we can be -- we can be in a

situation that this is sold some way or the other. and flags is part of the solution. now, it's -- you can imagine anything. and you have to imagine everything if you want to reach a settlement, but the question really is how to get there. because we thought for many years, and you know people are telling us, especially now that you have the arab spring you should have used the -- this for the advantage of promoting peace with the palestinians. but you know one of the most difficult things that -- most difficult chal laelenges that t face here in washington is to sort of give the sense of the israeli psyche. professor gentleman january an worked on that and tried to pass the psyche of the palestinians i'm failing as an israeli to communicate the psyche of israelis to americans because when you see isis decapitating

some heads in syria people here get very mobilized a they want to fight radical islam, right? imagine what happens to israelis in times like this when they see what's going on in the region, how more conservative they become, much risk adverse they become. so of course we don't want to be in a situation right now that we give territory back and you have an isis flag on the other side of the border. so we have to build bottom up in order to secure the region by having a player there that will be pro western, that will be democratic, that will be uncorrupt, that will make the future palestinian state thrive and not as kissinger said, i think it was two months ago, when he came to a commemoration, not to establish another arab fixed state in our border. we don't want that. >> okay. another question right there?

>> hi, my name is hassan. i was born in tehran. jerusalem, as you know, is interest of major religions. and for many years there were struggle between everybody. now we like to know at what point would people of israel feel secure that the conflict can end? so you have some kind of vision what a security can be, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years from now? because it's been born about six years. so i'd like to hear that. and also, one more question. since most's peace came upon him out of egypt, it's been about, what, 3,000 years, 4,000 years.

how many jewish people do we have in the world? >> well, the last question, today the estimation is there are about 18 million jews. you know, the jewish religion is unlike christianity and islam, does not -- is not in the business of getting more -- more converts. and being a jew was very difficult for many centuries, for reasons that you already know, programs, attacks against jews, et cetera. but going back to your question, i think that we are going to feel secure when we have -- we have a situation which we have no more rejection but acceptance. and that we have security. if you have -- because even the -- not only the israeli right. the israeli extreme right is not in favor of controlling the life of palestinians. so the question is whether we can get into a regime that is

strong enough that we maintain security in a way that we can also withdraw from places in which we mutually agree with palestinians that we will be the future palestinian state. that can happen in five years, in ten years, in 100, i don't know. but we have to work on it so it happens. >> thank you very much. mike craft, counter terrorism specialist. my question is about jerusalem myself. i first visited jerusalem as a young reporter in the '67 war. it was a pretty deadly city, frankly. i've been there since then. a fair amount of integration, you would see arab families in the malls and things of that sort. but since the recent outbreak of violence i understand that barriers have been put up between two sides of jerusalem and the cities are more or less

divided. do you foresee that things will go back to, quote, normal or, very quickly, if the violence ends or how do you see the future of jerusalem functioning as a city? >> well, unfortunately we have experience of that and we have seen waves of violence before and as much as the waves were higher, the security measures were also -- were also tighter. what we are trying to do this time, i think what the government is trying to do, is to keep normal life as much as they can. i'll give you one example. there is a movement from palestinian workers to israel. you know, there are about 120,000 palestinian from the west bank that are coming to israel to work every day. and although a very small number of them, one or two, have been involved in stabbings, the israeli government is retaining a lot of pressure from cabinet

members and from other people to put a closure on the west bank. now, when it comes to jerusalem itself, you know, we have erected this fence and wall until jerusalem in the second. we didn't want to do that. actually the right wing in israel was against it. the center and left israeli were for it because they wanted to protect themselves from attacks. they wanted to protect life, which is the main right that you have. now, whether we can redo that, i hope that we can. i hope that if we not only see this way of violence wining but we reach a settlement, we can remove those security measures and we've seen in the past, after the second fatah after the situation was stabilizing we removed many restrictions. >> i know the clock is ticking. do you have a question? okay. one more question. >> hi.

daphne, potomac institute. in view of the isis escalation around the world right now, do you foresee any i think cha in the government position now or in the -- in the israeli government positions. >> regarding what? >> regarding peace and regarding security. >> well, i think that prime minister netanyahu said in his last visit to washington that, first of all, we have an opportunity to cooperate with our arab neighbors, arab countries, that are interested, like us, in fighting the radicals, the islamic radicals, in fighting attempt to change, to subverse their own regimes. and we can maybe, in the right circumstances, create a dialogue, regional dialogue, that will be conducive to the bilateral effort between us and the palestinians. so i think that there is a hope of doing that. having said that, as i said

before, we will have to overcome a lot of animosity and fear that is created exactly by this kind of forces. and, you know, i don't have to go far away. what happened after several attacks of isis in this helms steer. how people are reacting in this hemisphere, in this country. so also israelis have to overcome that. the fear fact that you know, people, one of the great traumas of this nation is 9/11. israel has been in 9/11 for the last 67 years. so the possibility to change a psyche and to go from a situation which you become less risk adverse is going to be an enormous challenge. we have to work together with our neighbors to try to lower those barriers of fear. >> okay. i know you have to leave. i cannot resist but ask you a

final question. we focus on the palestinian and some of the arab states. can you comment on the role of iran, of course everyone is looking at the iranian nuclear ratio but how is the link with the issue of jerusalem? in other words, the iranian, non-arab states' view related to the solution of the jerusalem problem. >> well, this is another impediment. you know, the irany raef lugs has create wad we call -- you have the marches in tehran every year. today the iranian regime wants to challenge not only the legitimacy of israeli control of jerusalem but also the legitimacy of control of the saudis of mecca. it's a march, a much larger

conflict and rivalry that you have there. and the other problem is that iranians are much more powerful. decapitation of isis are having intimidating but what happens with countries that assess -- are trying to possess nuclear weapons and they have missile technology and they have forces in the region that are working to assist players like assad and others. that's much more difficult challenge. but i think that we've proven in the past that we can overcome that. when, for example, we did also with the palestinians. yes, the iranians were there in '94 to try to foil that, to promote hamas, to promote the suicide attack of hamas. we are going to have all the time, the iranians trying to foil any peace that we broker between the palestinians or arabs. we've seen this aversion of iran in jordan, for example. so we have a challenge but it

doesn't mean that we cannot continue to thrive for peace. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> for coming. i know you have to leave. we'll continue with professor dajani. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. i'd like to thank yonah alexander and the potomac institute for inviting me. what i'd like to do is explore the status of jerusalem and the hope of offering insights and to help resolve the problem i'll start with introducing my family association with the city and then talk a little bit about the history of the city and then discuss some potential way of trying to resolve the problem of the city.

actually in 1529 sul on the suleman appointed my father to be the custodians of the king david tomb. so it was -- and then the first mayor actually, the empire started the municipalities and the empire by having one in istanbul. the second one was in jerusalem. and abdel dajani was appointed and mayor in 1918. this is family picture for the family in 1942. this is my father's wedding. and actually in 1948 the dajani family saved martin buber and his family hiding them in the rooms in the arab quarter after

the jewish quarter failed and saving people alive from being burned. so that was the family association with the -- there is a lot but i just mentioned it. this is a verse in the koran that actually reflects this talk that i'm going to talk about. and let me just say that god, between people. so that's why what i be focusing and what i'm saying is that the rule over jerusalem has been alternated between the muslim, the christian, and the jew. and so it is basically from the ancient -- throughout history jerusalem has been the site of glories and a stas tro citifies. a place that has been witness to transition and occupation by a diversity of nations and target of pilgrimage throughout the nations. jews believe that the red sea was opened to to allow the jews

to cross safely and then closed to drone pharaoh and his army and spoke to god on mt. sign ney and received from him the ten commandments. jews believe that jesus russer is rekted the dead. and muslims believe the nocturnal journey of mohammed to jerusalem carried by al buraq stead where he met arc angel gabrielle and ascended to heaven and met the prophets and god. to each is his narrative. part of the solution to the conflict is to respect the narrative of the other and not to deny it or to refute it. and 638 muslims conquered jerusalem and call lich omar ibn arrived in the city on a camel and was taken by patriarch. when it was time for prayer, he was invited to pray in the church. but refused fearing muslims would turn churches into mosques. which some of them did later.

he prayed outside and on the side of worship rose the mask of ham mad. if you go to it facing you you would be facing the mosque where reprayed. it has to be taken to the secular from which prophet mohammed ascended to heaven. he built a mosque near it which is called now al axar mosque. omar allowed jews to return and reside in jerusalem after they were being banned from doing so. they later built the dome of the rock mosque on the side of the same rosk where abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son and it was said that also noah had put -- that the ship of noah also has landed on that rock which is very holy. so basically in 1852 sultan abdul majid issued the status

quo declaration which regular nated mutual rights of christian institutions in jerusalem and asserted the status quo in jerusalem should prevail. and actually this status quo has been respected even until this very day. though the turks surrendered the city of jerusalem in november 1917, dajani relayeding in goin the city until 9th of december to coincide with christmas celebrations. austrian troops left the city in 1916. and then actually he dismounted from his horse to enter it on foot in respect for the city. and it was partly in response to the pompous entry of german kaiser wilhelm on his white horse in 1998 and thus the wall was partly broken. actually here there are two

things that the -- both of them -- both visit s harm jerusalem. one is the visit of kaiser where the war wall was actually breached to allow him to go in and this began. so he walked in on foot and then he actually met -- he delivered his victory speech pledging jerusalem to be the city of peace. in november of 1947 the u.n. partition resolution decided to nationalize the city. basically it was divided and -- and palestinian was divided into an arab state and the jew wish state and jerusalem was supposed to be internationalized including bethlehem. however, the fighting, when the british left, palestine, the

general was asked to womhom did you leave palestine. his response was, i left the key under the doormat tre mattress. so after the 1948 war, 85% of jerusalem was captured by jewish forces which became west jerusalem. and 11% of the city including the old city fell under the control of jordan. and 4% of the city was considered no-man's-land in which the u.n. headquarters was established. so on december 13, 1949, declared jerusalem the capital of israel in violation of the international law and u.n. resolution. on december 19, the u.n. responded by restating the intention of placing jerusalem under a permanent international regime. however, the city remain eddie vided under israeli and jordanian rule.

so it was -- in june 1967 israel reunited eastern and west jerusalem but the city remain eddie vided socially and psychologically. in june '67 the israeli knesset extended the israeli jurd to east jerusalem despite the initial law. so here we have -- and this is the crux of the problem because people would say why should israel give up jerusalem or should concede anything in jerusalem. so the question lies here in international law because in 1948 jewish forces captured west jerusalem and later declared it capital of israel. overriding an 1947 u.n. resolution to nationalize the city. later declared it capital of juda, overriding a u.n. resolution not to change the capital of the city.

i will come to that, to the significance of this later. however, israel kept the administration of the al sharif compound and continued to be contained by the jordanian religious sect. the declaration of principle listed jerusalem as one of the issues to be negotiated at a later stage. and the israeli foreign minister at the time, sharon perez, promised that nothing will hamper the activities of palestinian institution on the fulfillment of this important mission is to be encouraged in jerusalem. in october '94 also the treaty of -- treaty between israel and jordan reaffirmed the status of jordan as the custodian for the holy places. so here we have three initiatives that also focused on jerusalem and granting the

palestinian and the israelis equal status in jerusalem which was the road map, the clinton plan, and also the arab peace initiative. also joint initiatives between palestinians and israelis calling for the formation of a palestinian state and having jerusalem serve as the capital for both. city of jerusalem has a special place in the consciousness of the great religions. for centuries it has been vital center of worship for the three world religions, ju dichl, christianity, and islam. any lasting solution should take into consideration this religious and this historical attachment of the three religions to this city. so here we have two clashing narratives. the palestinian considered jerusalem as the capital of the prospective state of palestine

and israel maintains that jerusalem is united as eternal capital but without international recognition. so basically what i'd like to focus on is the present also status. here we have 350,000 palestinians of east jerusalem who have residency rights in jerusalem. they carry a blue identity card. and they can move from jerusalem to the west bank or even from jerusalem to israel without any problem. the hold israeli identity cards that give them the right to work and move freely across the country and the west bank and to cross-check points and the separation wall built in 2003. 45,000 palestinian residents live outside the jerusalem separation wall, while 195,000 live inside the separation wall. and more than 10,000

palestinians do hold -- who live in jerusalem, do hold israeli citizenship. however, here we want -- it is important to note that the clash in jerusalem between the palestinians, the israeli, focus also on the way things are in the sense that there are a negative side to the israeli policies in israel. although palestinians benefit a lot from being residents of jerusalem from the israelis, particularly in health care. palestinians have a much better health care in jerusalem as residents of jerusalem than they do in the west bank or in gaza. and even they take the benefit a lot from the health care, israeli health care system. however, they suffered from also the certain policies that are there, which is one the

judization of the city within the also ten years have accelerated a lot in which even names of streets have been changed and. in the past israelis used to put three languages, hebrew, english, and arabic. but now the tendency is to put only hebrew or -- hebrew and english. also the threat to strip palestinians from their residency rights. p this is a very serious problem that makes palestinians very insecure and unstable because of this threat that any time that id can be revoked. so we have poor public services in palestinian compared to the -- in jerusalem compared to west jerusalem. there is a big gap between what we call west jerusalem and east jerusalem. although east jerusalem

palestinians comprise 32% of the city's total population. now this percentage is decreasing. they pay 30% of the city's budget, yet receive less than 5% of the municipal budget. now because of a lot of pressure on the municipality this has been improving, that the municipality is paying more attention to east jerusalem, which it was not. so jerusalem, when six times on jewish residents than palestinian residents. you can see that in terms of public services like parks, like children and clinics, like different facilities within the city. so, for instance, the municipalities in charge of the israeli schools where the students are being provided with a lot of facilities, actually the same -- the same palestinian

schools are in very bad conditions. so actually when you are talking about a young kid who takes a knife and goes and commits terrorism, it is also on the education because they are receiving very bad education. he hates to go to school because there are no facilities. and this is also part of the problem that we are having. residential buildings are converted to schools. crammed school classes. the schoolyards are narrow. there are not much sport facilities, no computers, labs, or libraries. no heating in freezing winter. poor lighting. so we are having a lot of problems where students -- this is why students hate to go to school. we have to make them love to come to school rather than be on the street. and that's also part of the problem. also the whole demolition policy is affecting their psychology. and also that is a lot of

despair as a result of the political statement and the frustration from social and economic neglect which has resulted and then explosions as we are -- as we see what is happening today. militant muslims extremists have exploited these degenerating conditions to intensify detentions. so also here we have the problem that there is a lot of donations that arabs and others have made to improve conditions for palestinians in jerusalem yet the money disappears either with the p.a. or with the leaders of the religious leaders of the community. so the palestinians do not see much of that -- of those donations. so here if we want to seek solutions, we have to seek solution for jerusalem issue. we need to filter out the symbolism, religious overtones, and nationalist rhetoric from

the political reality. political reality today is that israel rules the city but without international sovereignty and recognition. so this is where the arab lies in the sense why should israel be able to actually share jerusalem and what will israel get if it does want to share? it is international recognition. that's actually part of what israel may benefit from a deal on jerusalem. so actually if we look at jerusalem, we note as jerusalem originally is divided into two cities in reality. this is the old city which was divided into four quarters. the jewish quarter, christian, arminian, and muslim. and the vast areas have been annexed to jerusalem.

so if you see the old city, it is very small. it is more than 30% of that area has been added, annexed to the city. and so this is where, if we look at jerusalem we see twin cities. this is the holy city which is referred to by religious holy books is in the old city and all -- and this is -- the old city was surrounded by a wall built by the at mans. so basically we have there the three holy places and that's why this is the old city is the holy city. and so this is -- this is the old city. so basically only the old city and its immediate surroundings constitute the historic what we call jerusalem. jerusalem that's been mentioned in the bible and different holy -- different holy books. it is the old city.

but it is the municipal city that has been added and if you notice, it has been added in a very erratic way. why? in order to include areas and then exclude population there. so it is a very odd way. but not as the old city there, it is there. the rest is not jerusalem. when you want to decide on the future of jerusalem you have to make that definition -- that distinction between the old city and the municipal city. the cities that have been enlarged. so reconciliation in midst of conflict is that we need to agree on such issues as municipal service, day-to-day living problems, status of holy places, and to degree to disagree on issues such as political sovreignty. so the proposed solution is to have the holy old city, to have

a special international jewish-christian-muslim custodianship. while the municipal city is a shared local custodianship. this is for the arab jerusalem which is muslim and christian and then the west is the jewish jerusalem which is -- and then the city will be without barriers or restrictions. so basically israel will transfer its responsibility of this sewage, roads, school, child care, health and social services in east jerusalem to the palestinians. but however taxes collected from palestinian residents will be transferred to be used to improve the living conditions of palestinians in jerusalem neighborhoods. so basically if we have a look at that, it is a win -- whether it is a win/lose situation the way it is now standing, it is ethnically divided, religiously.

israeli contends control of the entire city but it is unrecognized by international community. however, it's a win-win situation if we would share the city and then this way to have the city opened to the world, to come and play and particularly to the muslim, christian, and jewish communities. this way it will be recognized by the international community. it will bring in security and stability. so thank you very much. that's actually my take on this -- on this. thank you. >> thank you very much. mohamm mohammed, your session triggered many, many questions. for the benefit of our young students here and the future leaders, it really reflects the

complexity of the issue and the problem we have to look at the -- really approach all of the way from the historical and the soe soesh logical and religious and so on and so forth. let me ask you specifically if i megan to come back to the question of internationalization of jerusalem. we try to deal with that to some extent though before, but as i recall the u.n. petition resolution that the united h 47 actually recommended that the status of jerusalem can be decided in about ten years.

whether the three religions would turn the city into international city, tragically that's the resolution. another resolutions were overcome by realities on the ground, in terms of the conflict, for example, between israel and jordan when jordan controlled in 1948, the east section of jerusalem. so what i'm really trying to say that obviously i think your presentation provides opportuni opportunities for -- i think some sort of compromise because the art of compromise is more powerful than judgment. and so on. but my question to you in regard

to the internationalization of jerusalem, again, since now we are in the spirit of christmas, peace on earth, what do you think the religious communities can do to advance the cause of some sort of solution in jerusalem with the spirit of jerusalem? for example, the pope, when he visited the holy land several years ago and most recently in africa, for example, in south african republic, when he tried to bring together the muslims and the christians, he had a message of peace, of tolerance. the humanical approach. how do you think in your long

experience, and again, a -- you're very distinguished family in jerusalem, how do you think the role of religion can be actuallied actually advancing some of the proposals that you made? >> that's why i'm focusing on two aspects. the religious aspect and political aspect. i'm thinking in terms of -- for the old city to be dealt from the religious point of view. and it's a holy place. and people want to come to pray, whether they are muslim, christians, or jews, or even non-muslim, non-christian, non-jew and this is a holy place and people might want to come to visit there. that's why i live this religious aspect within the old city to a special custodian ship where actually it should be

international, it could be muslim, christian, jew wiish international, special status for the whole city. and outside this city is where we can deal politically because, no matter what we say, what we do, outside the city is a psychologically divided into an arab sector where it is muslim and christian palestinians and then there is the west jerusalem which is the jewish sector. and that is a psychology -- and if you go to -- if you want to pick up a taxi from the israeli side and ask him to take you to the palestinian side, he will look at you and say, are you crazy? go walk there. and so the areas that are palestinians, israelis do not feel secure to go to. areas now which are israelis,

palestinians do not feel secure. in the past, palestinians used to go to the malls. but now, nobody is going to the mall or to the israeli section because they are afraid. there is fear on both communities. so basically what i'm saying is that we have to deal with that fear. and we have one way is to have recognition of each other, rights of each other, history of each other, comfort, each other's attachment of the city. and this way to share the city. so i'm not in favor of having jerusalem to be capital or jerusalem to be political capitals. i believe they can be religious capitals. and if we can have east jerusalem to be the religious capital of the palestinians instead of palestine, the jerusalem could be the religious

capital of israel. and this way, we will be able to disassociate between the politics and the resolution because there are an explosion i mix when they get together. but if we can separate them and i'm trying to do that. i'm trying to separate the political from the religious by thinking in terms of outside the city which is not holy, which has been annexed in the last five decades and when you talk about jerusalem, nobody refers to that area as jerusalem. to defy that particularly between the two parties, the two people, the two communities, not without -- without wars, without barbed wires, without checkpoints to have it open. this is my vision for the future. >> my question again, century,

it seems so -- how would you respond to those jews who claim that if, for example, you establish a muslim regime in east jerusalem, you exclude the jewish connection, let's say, to the temple mount and to the wailing wall and all that. captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008 captioning performed by vitac