situation with juniper networks where they had -- their job is cyber security, really. and they felt that they had strong encryption and yet there was a vulnerableabili nenerabil were hacked and put the data including the data of the u.s., i mean, the fbi and the state department of and department of justice at risk and we still don't know what was taken by our enemies. did you think about the juniper networks issue when you filed the all writs ask report, you know, remedy in san bernardino? >> no. but i think about that in a lot of similar intrusions and hacks all day long because it's the fbi's job to investigate those and stop those. >> i was struck by your comment that apple hadn't been hacked but, in fact, i cloud accounts have been hacked in the past. i think we all remember in 2014

the female celebrity accounts that were hacked. from the cloud, from i-cloud and c nbc had a report that china likely attacked i-cloud accounts and then in 2015, last year, apple had to release a patch in response to concerns that there had been brute force attacks on i-cloud accounts. so i'm anticipating, we'll see, that apple will take further steps to encrypt and protect not only its operating system that it has today, but also, the protection as well as the i-cloud accounts. and i'll just close with this. i have on my iphone all kinds of messaging apps. that are fully encrypted. some better than others. some were designed in the united

states. a bunch of them were designed in other countries. and i'm not -- i wouldn't do anything wrong on my iphone but if i were a terrorist, i could use any one of those apps and communicate securely and there wouldn't be anything that the u.s. government, not the fbi, not the congress or the president, could do to prevent that from occurring so i see this as, you know, the question of whether my security is going to be protected by the terrorists will continue abate. i thank you, mr. comey, for being here. >> chair thanks the gentle woman and recognize the gentleman from texas, mr. poe, for five minutes. >> thank you, director. appreciate you being here. start with a little -- some basics. the fourth amendment protects citizens from government. citizens have rights. government has power.

there is nowhere i see in the fourth amendment that there is an except for terrorist cases exception or fear cases that the fourth amendment should be waived. i signed lots of warrants in 22 years. from everybody, including the fbi. four corners of the warrant. what it's to be searched. and law enforcement typically would fulfill the duty or ability in that warrant, as far as they could. which is a good thing and return the warrant. now, we have a situation where the issue is not lawful possession. fbi's in lawful possession of the san bernardino phone. lawful possession of the phone in new york. you agree with me on that? >> yes. >> so we're not talking about whether the phones are in lawful possession. the issue is whether the

specific issue is whether government can force apple in this case to give them the golden key to unlock the safe because they can't develop the key. and i know that's simplistic but is that a fair statement or not? >> no. >> it is not? let me ask you this. okay. you say it's not. apple develops this software and gives it to and unlocks the phone but this is not the only phone in question. is that correct? there are other phones that the fbi has in lawful possession that you can't get into. >> sure. law enforcement increasingly phones that can't be unlocked. i mentioned the baton rouge case, to. >> there's several. how many of cases do you have in lawful possession you want to get into the phone but you can't because you don't have the software to break into it or get into it? >> i don't know the number. a lot. >> a lot. >> an they're all different

which is what makes it hard to talk about any one case without being specific about -- >> you're in lawful possession of all these phones. this is not the issue of whether or not the fbi lawfully posse possesses them. you want iphone apple to develop software to get into this phone. my question is, what would prevent the fbi from then taking that software and going into all those other phones you have and future phones you seize? >> i see. it seems like a small difference but i think it's kind of a big difference. the ask, the direction from the judge is not to have apple get us into the phones. have apple turn off by developing software that will tell the phone to turn it off. the auto erase the fee churls to try to pass the pass word. if you have another 5c running ios 9 and make this is relief possible, i mean it when i say it's obsolete. the 6s there is no door to try to pick the lock on and wouldn't

work. if there were phones in the same circumstances, sure. you could ask for the same relief of a court to try to make effective the search warrant. >> so, rather than giving you the key, it's really you want apple to turn the security system off so they can get into the phone or you can get into the phone? >> yeah. my metaphor is take away the drooling watchdog to attack us trying to open it. give us time to pick the lock. >> i like the viper system mr. issa developed. turn off the viper system to get into the phone. it boils down to the fact of whether or not government has the ability to demand that occur. we have two court rulings. they're different. i've read the opinions. they're different. little different cases. would you agree or not, congress has to resolve this problem. we shouldn't leave it up to the judiciary. congress should resolve the problem and determine exactly what the expectation of privacy

is in these particular situations of encryption or no encryption, key, no key? would you agree or not? >> i think that the courts are competent and this is what we have done for 230 years, to resolve the narrow question about the scope of the all writs act but the broader question here goes far beyond phones or any case. the collision, the courts cannot resolve that. >> and only the congress should then resolve. when's the expectation of privacy in this high-tech atmosphere of all this information stored in many different places on the cloud, on the phone, wherever it's stored and would you agree or not? just asking. should congress resolve this issue of expectation of privacy of the american citizens? >> i think congress certainly has a critical role to play. like i said, since founding of this question, the courts interpreted the fourth amendment, fifth amendment. that's an independent branch of

government but i think there's a huge role of congress ait's congress's responsibility to determine the expectation of privacy. i yield back. >> time of the gentleman expired. the gentleman from tennessee is recognized. the's 9:45 remaining in this vote. i'll take a chance that the gentleman from tennessee will. >> if you want to go, i'll go or come back. >> i'm trying the move it along. >> thank you. >> not keep the director any longer than we have to. >> are there limitations that you could see in permitting the fbi or government and a court to look into certain records, certain type of cases, certain type of circumstances that you could foresee or do you want it open for any case where there could be evidentiary value? >> not sure i'm following you. we have to show lawful authority

and a factual basis for access to anybody's stuff. >> if we decided to pass a statute and limited in some way, maybe to terrorism or maybe to something where there's a reasonable expectation that a person's life is in jeopardy or apprehend somebody taken somebody's life, have you thought about any limits? because, you know, under what you're saying, going to a court, go to court for cases not capital cases. and that's -- i don't think anybody here is -- the public's fascinated or riveted on the fact that what happened in san bernardino was so awful and if we can find some communication or some list of -- and that was in the cloud that these people contacted, you know, osama bin laden's cousin and they get -- find out he has something to do with that, then that's important. but if you're talking about getting into information to find out who they sold two kilos or two bags or whatever is a whole different issue. where would you limit it if you

were coming up with a statute to satisfy both your interests in the extreme important cases and yet satisfy privacy concerns? >> i see. i misunderstood the question. i don't know. haven't thought about it well enough. i don't think that's the fbi offering those parameters to you. there is precedent for that kind of thing. we can only seek wiretaps, for example, on certain enumerated offenses in the united states. it has to be really serious stuff for a judge can be allske to allow us to listen. there's precedent. i haven't thought about it well enough. >> thank you. i'm slow in getting up there to vote and the republicans hit the -- real quickly, i'll yield back and start to walk fast. >> chair thanks the gentleman. we have two votes on the floor with seven minutes remaining in the first vote. mr. director, we appreciate your -- [ inaudible ]

you can watch this hearing in its entirety tonight at 9:15 eastern on our companion network c-span2. also tonight, we'll have results from super tuesday primaries and caucuses. live now on c-span. next here on c-span2 from "washington journal," nina olson, irs taxpayer advocate. >> a little over a month and a half until tax day. nina olson, served as national taxpayer advocate now for over 15 years but nina olson for those unfamiliar with your job and your role, what is the national taxpayer advocate? >> the national taxpayer advocate is appointed bety secretary of the treasury to be the voice of taxpayers inside the irs. and so, my job is to advocate for taxpayers in specific cases and in systemic cases. you know, where groups of

taxpayers are being harmed by actions or inactions of the irs. and i have about 1,900 employees around the united states who help me do that job. >> in this segment we are taking your tax questions. also invite viewers with experiences with contacting and working with the irs in working with your taxes. want to hear your stories, as well. democrats 202-748-l 000. republicans 80001. independents 202-748-8002. nina olson, one issue that you have been talking a lot about lately is customer service. >> right. >> at the irs. the customers being the taxpayers themselves. how would you grade the irs customer service? >> well, i would say last year it was a big fat d-minus. you know, the percentage of people who were trying to get through on the phones, who were able to get through on the phones and talk to a live human being, was about 37%. i think that's a "d" in any

grading scale. we are now up, this filing season, this year, because congress gave the irs some more money dedicated totally to taxpayer service this year's budget to about 67% on the phones but that will drop off significantly after the filing season, you know. so it's doing better. it is like maybe a "c" right now. a solid "c." >> explain that budget, what's happened to the irs budget over the past five or six years. >> the irs' budget between 2010 and 2015 has been cut. you know, each year. and it really is down about 19% in inflation adjusted dollars. and so, as the irs had less resources, it's given more and more responsibilities like the affordable tax credit and a significant bill looking at offshore tax compliance called fatca which is a huge lift and

then of course the number of taxpayers keep growing and, you know, and then you have identity theft, one of the major plagues on tax administration right now. and has been growing. >> and what is that budget equate to in terms of people power over five or six years? >> i think the irs dropped -- when i first game, in over 100,000 employees and now depending on who you talk to, down to 80,000, 85,000 depending on how you count, you know, full-time equivalents and things like that. that's a significant drop. and part of the problem has been, you know, particularly for the phones and for dealing with taxpayer correspondence, it's a function of people. you can't work smarter. you have to answer the phone. you have to have enough people to answer the over 100 million call that is the irs gets every year. that's a huge number of phone calls. >> as you know, the irs got a bump in that budget. >> yes. >> for this yore. >> yes. >> irs commissioner was on our newsmakers program this past weekend. he talked about how that recent

budget increase was going to improve service at the irs. want to play his thoughts and then get your reaction. >> we have $290 million more from this fiscal year, first increase in six years. it is a significant move forward. the 290 million identified for taxpayer service, cyber security and identity theft. we have given a detailed spending plan to the congress. the level of taxpayer service already has gone up about 178 million of that 290 million will be spent improving taxpayer service and we can see it's gone up already significantly over where it was last year but i have tried to make it clear to everyone that the 290 million was in response to a request for 700 million in additional funding for those three areas alone. we are making good progress thanks to the additional funding but the '17 budget has additional requests to it to improve taxpayer service. we would like to get taxpayer

service back to 83% of the calls initially and nobody waiting more than five minutes. >> john koskinen pretty optimistic. in those statements. are you as optimistic? >> i think irs' mass to restore congress' trust in it. this is the first effort to do that. 290 million. if congress sees how the irs is applying the funds, i think they are applying them appropriately, it's entirely possible that congress would give the irs more money. i don't think anybody's arguing about the need for greater taxpayer service. and i think it's just an incremental growth. i mean, i spend a lot of time trying to make the point to members of congress and i don't get any disagreement on that we need greater and better taxpayer service. >> nina olson with us for about 50 minutes or so taking your tax questions. want the hear your stories about your interaction with the irs.

she's the national taxpayer advocate here on your behalf. also reports to members of congress. works at the agency. we're taking your calls and questions. democrats 8000. republicans 202-748-8001. independents 202-748-8002. do you work at the headquarters office? >> i have about 250 people in the headquarters building. most of my employees are throughout the united states. congress has very thoughtfully required by law -- my job is defined in the internal revenue code. one of the few positions described there. i have to have at least one office in each state and we have about 70 -- i guess now 76 offices throughout the united states. and that's very important to me that there is a function in the irs that understands what taxpayers in a community are

going through, what the economic conditions are, what, you know, the disaster-type conditions are, the weather conditions that might affect people's ability to comply with the tax laws and so we are there on the ground with the community. that's hugely important. >> well, let's start your case work this morning. we'll start in new hampshire, darius calling in. line for independents. darius, good morning. >> reporter: good morning. how are you doing this morning? >> good. you are on with nina olson, national taxpayer advocate. >> caller: this has happened to me. under the iris thumb for a while. 2003, 2004 taxes, i called in. told them that the number was wrong. all right? i couldn't get in touch with the employer. i was subcontracting. get the right number. he doubled the amount. the first lady i called said her name was oh my. okay? wouldn't get a number after i couldn't remember it. this is going on for a long time and what they told me after like five or six years. i'm still under the thumb for

those taxes. because they didn't file for me until 2008. because i told them i wouldn't file it. wrong numbers. this is what they told me. irs does not check anything. you pay what's on the paper work and that's it. have a nice day with the irs because they need to be abolished. customer service -- >> let's let nina olson go in on our question and then follow up. >> okay. so there are several things in your issue. i can't -- so, so the first thing is i would say that you absolutely qualify for the services of my organization, the taxpayer service and we have an office in new hampshire and you can find the direct number to that office and say that knee that told you to call. since i'm their boss, there you go. let me tell you what happened in your case. we do see instances where employers are filing these forms an they can get it wrong and can be a software glitch, somebody actually doing it deliberately

wrong. there's a whole bunch of stuff out there. the courts have said that the irs bears the burden of proof on if you're just saying to somebody you owe more taxes because an employer or a contractor has issued a form 1099 or w-2, that it's -- that the irs has the burden of proof. but then you have to go to court to get that rule to apply. so, what you need to do is work with a taxpayer advocate service to sort of try to show what you actually made and we will stick with you until the end of your case and try -- you know, work -- we'll send the evidence over to the irs and make them look at that. now, what they did in year 2008 return because you didn't file is they look at people and they say, if you have a certain -- they get the 2099s and w-2s in and look at a certain amount of information and say you look like you have a filing requirement, we'll send you a letter. tell you to file. you've said to them, no, it's wrong and we need do get it straightened out so now what they have done is taken the

1099s and prepared a return for you. you may be married but treat you as single and you may have children but they don't know whether you have children so you need to get to taxpayer advocate service and get started and we will help you get that straightened out but that's what's happened. >> darius said he's been under the thumb of the irs for a while. another person who said that they have been under the thumb of the irs is donald trump. he said he gets audited every single year. one of the reasons he's going through an audit, that why he doesn't want to release his tax returns yet. what advise would you give to donald trump if he called the national taxpayer advocate to ask for help? >> i would treat him like any other taxpayer and we have taxpayers very low income and very, very high income. we've actually been called by countries who have problems with the irs. and so, we're sort of an equal opportunity advocate. but i would just give him the

same advice of anybody. assign a case advocate. look at how the irs is treating him in the audit, following the rules, looking at the evidence they're providing him. if he says he's been audited 12 years, i personally have no knowledge of this case but i would be looking at why would anybody be audited that many years in a row. in fact, congress has passed a law that say that is the irs cannot audit someone more than one -- they can't do multiple audits of one year and then when you have multiple audits over multiple years, you have to really look and see why that happening? that would be what we would do and why is this person selected for audit? >> it's taxpayer advocate. good morning. >> caller: yes. good morning. the 2008 first time -- credit was $7,500 but you had to pay it

back. the 2009 they revamped it for the first time home buyer credit and $8,000. you didn't have to pay it back. why is there a discrepancy in between those two? is that fixable? >> well, this is the wisdom of congress. this is where the irs has caught between a rock and a hard place because, you know, congress as you noted passed the first-time homebuyer credit first time and a certain amount of money and then pay it back over five years. and then they expanded it next year and they changed the rules of the game. they said for anybody who didn't claim it who's claiming it from now on it is a lump sum that goes out to you and no obligation to repay. and my personal suspicion is they -- the first time they did it because they were -- they needed to have the payback in order to do revenue estimates and work it work inside, the requirements of basically creating laws so they don't cost

on the books. not in reality. but on the books a certain amount of money. but that's nothing the irs can change. they cannot change what the law is and the law is as you described. so there the path is to go to congress and, in fact, in my -- i make two annual -- two reports to congress each year directly to congress and that was something i raised over and over and over again to members of congress saying, there is some inequity here in how you're treating these people. so, that's not the irs' issue. they have to administer the laws that they're given and this law congress did a flip flop. >> and the latest report from your office january 6th came out the 2015 annual report to congress. we'll go to kay, virginia, line for democrats. good morning. >> caller: good morning. yes. i think this question was meant for the irs. on book tv or newsmakers.

>> he was just on newsmakers this past weekend. go ahead. >> caller: yes. i wanted the find out, is this a session by ted cruz and marco rubio, this republicans saying that they would abolish the irs. are they delusional? do they just want to win election? that's why they're saying -- given such rhetoric? because it doesn't make any sense to me. i need you to maybe educate me and maybe the public, as well. if the irs is no longer there, how are people going to be able to -- i mean, file their taxes, make sure they get a return and things like that? >> okay. so, this is my personal opinion. it doesn't reflect the opinion of the secretary of the treasury or anybody else, really. it is just the opinion but it is the opinion of the national taxpayer advocate. i hear a lot, you know, people talking about, well, we are going to go to a national sales tax and abolish the irs or have a tax return on a postcard and abolish the irs and that does

seem to be a misunderstanding. there is going to have to be somebody processing that postcard and dealing with people who don't file that postcard. you know, there is -- for the states who have sales tax, they have departments of revenue to collect the sales tax and to go out and deal with the, you know, the businesses that don't pay over that sales tax. so, to say that, you know, by changing the tax code you would miraculously abolish the irs is, in fact, just not accurate. you can't do that. and that's -- you know, i just listen to it and go, okay. that's fine. >> let's go to jim in mar marshfield, wisconsin. you're up with nina. >> caller: yes. this is a similar question in that vein, miss olson. if we eliminated the personal income tax, and had a small transaction tax maybe, 1% or

less, on every single transaction, even on wall street, stocks, bonds, the rich will naturally pay more because their transactions are bigger and more of them. so, and what this computer technology now, this tax can be applied and taken immediately on every transaction. so, and that way individuals will have more security because they don't have all this filing and everything else and their information out there. so what's wrong with this small transaction tax on everything? >> well, i think that ideas like that are very interesting. and if congress and, you know, the administration ever get around to really looking at comprehensive tax reform, i think all ideas should be on the table. there have been people who have talked about the transaction tax having a nationwide value added tax like a national sales tax.

you know, what rate would that have to be? i think looking at other countries, you know, some of the models i have seen, i don't do this work myself. i don't do tax policy. i do tax administration. i take the laws as we have them and make sure that taxpayers are treated fairly and decentury under the laws and all taxpayer rights respected but we have written a lot about what the laws today do to taxpayers and how it's so difficult for them to comply with the laws because of the shear complexity of the code and how many traps there are. i think when comprehensive tax reform comes around you should be looking at all these things. my personal opinion is that the united states is so large and the amount of revenue that the federal government collects, even the you get a shrunk, a smaller federal government, it's still, you know, $3.2 trillion that are coming in that the irs collects. that that's sort of hard to get from a 1% transaction tax or

from a 11% national sales tax. you may have to go a lot higher and i don't know whether people want to, you know, whether that's where people want to go. but it should be on the table in my opinion. and in my personal opinion, might be a mix of a whole bunch of things but the goal would be to get things a lot less complicated. i'll say one more thing about complexity. you know, the thing about the income tax and you'd see it also in the transaction tax because some people would say, well, don't tax every transaction. you know, don't tax this transaction. this is special. like i'm going to my doctor. don't tax that transaction. well, you know, then you suddenly start carving out things and slowly you get complexity creep. and that's just what happens over time to any system so for people to think there's a perfect system, sort of ignores the fact of human existence. that we're human beings and we have complicated lives and going to want the facts of our lives

reflected in the internal revenue code. >> your job to advocate on behalf of taxpayers. everyone concerned about the personal data. can you talk about data breaches at the irs an enwhat's being done about those? >> there's a lot of attention going on to this and what really started it was the awareness of the get transcript where some folks -- they didn't hack the system per se. they were people who already had some taxpayer data. as i mentioned before, identity theft is a very large concern for the irs. and for taxpayers and people all over the place and so you have got this information and able to get into the get transcript and people criticized the get transcript which was a way do get information from your account electronically instead of calling the irs up and waiting for them to mail it to you or something like that. an enthe folks have criticized the irs and i think rightfully so for having a very low bar for, you know, the kinds of question that is they ask to get

in to get transcript and identity thefts are able to get in and some of them were able to use the information they got because when you get a transcript, you have, you know, information about the spouse, the dependents, your -- all of your w-2 sources and everything like that. that they were able to file income tax returns turning these -- the taxpayers who were the legitimate owners into identity theft victims a second time around. the irs pulled in and took down the system when they discovered it. they pulled in all sorts of experts, department of homeland security, fbi, you know, the inspector general. the inspector general is able to identify basically a million accounts that or slightly over a million accounts impacted, many of them the irs had already identified but there are about 370,000 that they are in the process of identifying right now and or communicating with right now. some of those people have not had a return filed for them but

we know their information was accessed. so we're just warning them that they have clearly -- somebody has their information. and then the others who have had an income tax return filed for them we're giving them a year of protection under equifax and also getting what's called an ip pin which is they can apply for an ip pin which is another number that they can use. i have some concerns about the ip pins. i think that they need to ramp up the way that people validate on the ip pin process, as well, and that's been a recommendation of the inspector general, too. >> do we know how many returns have been stolen through that process? is there any way to know? >> not for ip pin but -- >> no, for the original breach. >> i think they're saying there might -- i really don't want to say the number. this last batch there were about 220,000 that were new since last august that they identified. this all goes back to between i think it's january 2014 and may

2015 so there's nothing new happening. because the whole system is taken offline. >> let's do to another jim waiting in franklinton, north carolina, line for republicans. jim, good morning. >> reporter: good morning. i would like to share my experience with customer service. the good folks at obamacare gave me too much of other people's money to pay for my health premium and when i filed my return apparently i had underpaid. it was $22 of underpayment. the irs issued a code 2015-9 that said we were exempt from that. well, starting in june i get demand letters from the irs and i respond each time telling them i'm not responsible for that because of a ruling that the irs put down or somebody put down. anyway, this went on from june until january and i kept getting demand letters and i kept sending response letters and nothing happened.

so i decided perhaps since i was mailing my comments to the address that was listed on where you pay your bill maybe the address for where you pay your bill is different than the address where you complain about the letters you're getting so i decided to call customer service. i was on hold for 30 minutes. i had to type in my social security number before i could ever get anywhere, answer four or five little questions, why are you calling? what do you want to know? the nice gentleman gave me a name and an employee i.d. number. asked what i wanted. i explained that i was fighting over a $20 penalty. and i was writing letters and getting no response and i wanted the know what address should i send it to. so he said, okay, what's your social security. i had given it. what's the name on the return? i told him and said it's probably -- he said probably? i said, well, i may have used my middle initial or middle name. i don't know. what is your address?

i gave him the address. and he said, i need you to be on hold for three minutes. well, five minutes later, he came back and gave me an address and which was in fact the same place but it was a different post office box number. instead of 002 it went to 0022 or something like that. anyway, i said, okay, that's fine. he said, are you intending to pay this? i said, of course not. i'm telling you i'm disputing it. he said, i need to advise you -- i said, listen. he said, just cool it. let me tell you what i must say. now, i'm coming the end of this. >> jim -- was it worth it for $20? for you? >> caller: same $20 they were bugging me about, john. yes. it was worth it. because i have nothing better to do than watch r-span and write letters to the irs. it's a lot of fun. i enjoy it. let me say. you made my drop my train of thought. what was i going to say?

>> i want to nina olson jump in. >> i want to hear first how it's resolved or is it resolved zblet. >> i think we lost jim. go ahead. >> okay. two things. jim, if it wasn't resolved, i'm with you about the $22. i'm like people should not have to pay more than they're entitled and required to pay. if you believe that you do not have to pay this $22, then the irs should listen to you and they should make the adjustment if it's correct. or they should explain to you why that notice doesn't, in fact, apply to you so you understand it. that's common courtesy and also what the tax administration of this country owes the taxpayers who are funding the operations of this country. i'm actually really with you. the problem is that a lot of people don't have the time to fight whether it's $20 or $500 or $2,000. and particularly whether it gets in that realm of $2,000, you know, you may want to hire somebody and costs you $2,000 to fight for the $2,000. and you never get, you know,

paid for the $2,000 for an attorney or cpa. there are a lot of exemptions under the affordable care act whether you paid too much, you haven't paid enough of the subsidy or whatever for purchasing health care or they gave you too much of an advance subsidy. and i think that your points are really legitimate. when's disturbing to me about that whole transaction and we mapped this out in our 2014 annual report, is just the path that you have to go to to get to a live human being and last year in particular because the wait times, if you had a half an hour, you were lucky. the wait times at points hour, hour and a half on the phone lines and that you actually got through. you were lucky. the same people who answer the phones are also the people that do the correspondence and we were finding, you know, you move them from the phones to answer the correspondence and don't answer the phones. move them from the correspondence to answer the

phones people don't open the mail and the letters probably going up against the wall being shelved some way for someone to look at some point and no one getting looking at it until it's way late and meantime and this is the most disturbing thing of your discussion is that the person was just basically focusing on, well, will you pay this? and i have really tried to emphasize and i certainly emphasize it to my employees, listen to the taxpayer and find out what they're saying and then take your cues from this in terms of a solution. unfortunately, a lot of directions to irs staff an they're just following instructions. is to say, you know, start with if there's a blns due, can you pay this in full? can you pay this in six months? >> bill collection. >> installment. it's a bill collection thing instead of being a tax agency that deals with the taxpayers as customers. >> let's go do brian waiting in virginia. line for independents. brian, you're on with nina

olson. >> caller: hi, nina. how are you today? >> fine. >> caller: hello? >> go ahead, brian. >> caller: okay. great. nina, thank you so much for coming on. great listening to you. nina, i paid anywhere between $60,000 and $80,000 a year in federal taxes and also a high stakes gambler and collect a lot of wtts a year and i collect a lot of win/loss letters from the casinos i go and i don't think a year goes by i have a win/loss letter that says i won money which is unfortunate. so when i do my tax return every year, i always do it just with my regular wages and my withholdings and always getting a refund and as soon as i put in my gambling winnings and then subtract the losses and always equal, i always end up losing my refund and owe money. and i always find it interesting just because my gambling winnings, you know, increased my

earnings i owe more money to the irs even though i didn't make any money gambling. >> you know, i think that -- yeah. so first of all, are you doing your income tax return yourself? >> caller: yes. >> you know, it might be worthwhile one year to take it to a cpa or an enrolled agent and have them look at how it's working and how the laws are applying to you bah i do know that, you know, gambling income and losses are treated differently under the internal revenue code and the other thing i would say is sometimes, you know, i'm -- if you're using tax software, sometimes the way it's being entered into the system may get you a different result. but i would really suggest going to someone, you know, a cpa just for one year just to say, am i doing this right? that's really what i would suggest. >> caller: okay. that's great advice. i'll do that this year then. thank you very much. >> let's go out to hawaii where

mary is waiting on the line for democrats. good morning. you are on and on with nina olson. >> caller: good morning. i've been listening to you on the tv. excuse me. good morning. >> good morning. >> mary, just turn down your tv. we're listening so go ahead with your question. you can turn down the volume on your tv. >> caller: okay. i just get social security an i'm not able to work anymore. and when i do my taxes, the state taxes, every year we get $85 for doing that. i called the irs the first time they started sending the amount that we was getting for the food and to see if i should, you know, file that. they said just for $85 in th? that's ridiculous. is that right? >> well, if you're getting a tax

refund from the state, if you i tellized deductions in the prior year then the refund from the state is taxable income but you sound like you haven't been able to file a federal income return and living off of social security and your personal exemption and your standard deduction would probably bring you below filing threshold so the 85 doesn't really function. also, if you were getting things like food stamps or other kinds of assistance, the welfare assistance or benefit assistance is not taxable under the internal revenue code so if you had a filing requirement that might not be taxable so they would right i would say. >> harold, easton, pennsylvania, line for republicans, good morning. >> caller: yeah. every year when i send in a

payment either for estimated tax or regular tax, i wound up -- they insist i put my social security number on a check. is that really necessary? or worry about privacy. >> that's a really good point. i think the irs is moving toward the last four digits of the social security number on certainly on their own documents that they're mailing out. and they may get to the point where they can say we can track you down and make sure the payments are applied correctly with the last four digits. i personally have been thinking, you know, the irs has been working for those victims who have identity theft that they're getting this ip pin which is a separate number from your social security number, that only you would know and you would only use it for tax filing purposes. and, you know, i've been really playing with the idea in my own mind with all the rampant

identity theft and this is where we need to go. but again, that's a major shift. and but i do know that the irs is really looking at can we just live with people notifying themselves, sending in documentation by the last four digits. >> the irs looking for more information this year as a result of the affordable care act. what will they be looking for? what should taxpayers know about forms 1095-a, b and c which we have laid out in front of us here? >> yeah. so this is the first year where employers, insurers and the affordable -- the health insurance marketplaces, known as the exchanges, are required to file with the irs and tell them whether a person has been covered by insurance, what months the person was covered by insurance, whether there were other family members on that insurance policy, et cetera. all that information goes on

basically on your return. it allows you to be able to say i'm covered fully and not subject to the individual shared responsibility penalty penalizing you not covered by insurance for at least i guess it's nine months of the year and then the other thing is for those people who have gotten the advance premium tax credit, you know, to help pay for their insurance subsidies, they will those forms to fill out another form to reconcile that they have gotten enough -- they got the appropriate amount of premium tax credit. some people will get a refund. they weren't paid enough. and some people will have like the previous caller have to pay more because they got too much premium in advance of subsidy in add vns. >> let's head out to south dakota and tom is waiting. line for independents. tom, good morning.

>> caller: good morning. i'll tell you right off that i'm 90 years old. world war ii veteran. and i'm very upset about the irs because they're so badly run and they treat people badly. now, i'll give you a couple examples from my own life. the first one happened in aberdeen, south dakota, when i was living there and i had a little company there. and i got a call from a woman at the irs and she was rather nasty. and i told her so. and she said, you'll be sorry. and so, what do you know? i was audited for two years. and i've never been audited before. well, they did find that i had -- i somehow had lost a receipt from a motel that i had stayed on traveling on business so i had to pay a little bit of money for that. but they didn't find anything

else wrong with my returns. but i tell you what that was. that showed bad employee behavior and not only that but bad management because they don't oversee or train their employees properly. give you another example that happened some years later that showed very bad employee training. i was -- i had sent my return in and later i got a check from them for about $8. and i wasn't due any refund. so i called up and finally located an auditor in the irs who said, send the check in to me and i'll take care of it. well, the way they took care of it was they sent me a notice that i owed that amount. i had to pay it back.

so, i didn't sit quietly. i contacted the branch of the irs that handles cases. and i made a complaint and got in to the court and i won. now here's where the real fun comes in. so the judge, the irs judge, said, ball ud out the people that made the mistake because i simply sent back a check that i wasn't owed. and then they came back and tried to collect money from me because of that. so this judge bawled them out and what they did start doing? they started sending me that same check. >> tom, thank you for sharing your story. nina olson?

>> yeah. you know, we see in my office the taxpayer advocate service so many cases of this back and forth and back and forth. i want to say a few things about customer service. i mean, i try to talk to my employees this way. the irs is the most power creditor in the united states if not the world and, you know, it holds the power to really harm people's lives. and with great power you have to have great courtesy and great care how you use it. and you have to give the taxpayers of the united states the feeling that the irs is not going to come down with a sledge hammer on you if you've just made a little mistake like lost a receipt. i've always felt audit is not about assessing more taxes or giving a refun. it is about educating the taxpayer or educating the system that the irs learns something, that it didn't know. it missed something or the taxpayer learns what they did wrong. and this then can go forward and

be compliant going forward. and the way you approach taxpayers is to give them the benefit of the doubt. they are the u.s. taxpayers and they are funding the federal government. and the irs is a big lumbering organization and things get lost. talk to one persone ed and the r person doesn't know what was said. that's what happens with the checks bouncing back and forth. the irs of today -- that's not true of the past -- but there are so many functions and so separated from one another that the people you are talking to on the phones have nothing to do with the people who are selecting returns for audits. if you have a bad interaction with someone, unless you are talking to an auditor on the phone, the person who is auditing you -- if you are talking to someone on the regular line and it's a bad interaction and then your return gets selected, you can really trust that it's not because of that interaction.

it's because of the selection system on the audit side. on the other hand, how the people in the audit side treat you is vitally important. i will say this. if you feel that you have not been treated well by the irs, you should insist on speaking to the manager. now, people don't get that opportunity a lot. but you should get the badge number, the long number the employee is required to give you, and their name. if you feel that you are being mistreated by one of the irs employees, you have two options. you can go to the taxpayer advocate service. we were created so people could come to us to help smooth out what's going on there and find out what really are the issues and what the taxpayer needs help with. and the other thing is you can report to the treasury inspector general for tax administration. and the inspector general's required to investigate harassment of taxpayers. so you have some options there. and you shouldn't be taking poor treatment silently. because that's how the irs is

going to change. >> we have about 15 minutes left with nina. she's our national taxpayer advocate. it's the independent organization within the irs that serves as an advocate for taxpayers to theirs. taking your questions, concerns. vera has been waiting. good morning. >> caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i have two or three questions. i will be quick with the questions. can you please tell me -- i know you don't deal with the policy. you only deal with administration. but why not make the tax filing less complicated than it is now and easier to understand? what's with all the schedules? can you explain why so many schedules? and what are they for? the second question is, when you file and you have debt forgiven to you because you modified your

loan maybe because your house was under water and you didn't have money, that's why you modified your loan, and the irs turns around and treats your debt -- they have forgiven debt as income. >> let me take the last question first and i will talk about the complexity of the code. the law -- the internal revenue code actually says that if you were given loan proceeds when you took out your loan, you had -- you received something for that. but because you have an obligation to pay it back, it's like -- it comes out as a net zero. over time you will pay it back. but if somebody forgives you the payment back, then the law defines that as income. it's actually called cancellation of debt income. now, there's some exceptions to cancellation -- to whether cancellation of debt income is taxable. the general rule is, you have a debt forgiven. it's taxable income. that's the law. that's what congress wrote, not what the irs wrote. and then they created some

exceptions. and the exceptions are if you were in bankruptcy and your debt was forgiven, that's not taxable. there is an exception for personal residence indebtedness if during the foreclosure crisis your debt was forgiven, then the rules are about it but a certain amount of of it would not be taxable. so you need to look at that situation. you may need to go back to the irs and explain what happened with your debt being forgiven, because one of those exceptions may apply to you. what i just described is an example of why the law is so complex and why there are so many schedules. because you have a general rule which is that cancellation of debt income is taxable. and then people say, but wait a minute. what about if i'm in bankruptcy or what about if it's farm indebtedness or what if it's personal residence indebtedness or what if i'm insolvent and i owe more debt than i have as sets overall? congress each time, they think about it they vote on it.

they pass legislation that carves out an exception. each one of those exceptions requires you to tell the irs about your specific circumstances, which means we have to have a form on which you tell us that so we can apply the law correctly. that's how you get the internal revenue code today and the tax forms today. >> line for republicans, sandra, good morning. >> caller: good morning. am i on the air? >> yes, you are. >> go ahead. >> caller: all right. mine is very important. i just voted for the -- i'm in california. my husband did that. i got married. do i do my tax separately or do i do my taxes together? that's one question.

the next one or wait for that one? >> go ahead. we will take them at the same time. >> caller: that was one. this year, i went to college. but i only took a class because i wanted to understand and read and write spanish. i'm american. so i took a class but didn't -- i'm not going there -- but i got a piece of paper, what's this for? they owe me $19. that's weird. why? i paid a lot of money. i didn't even drop the class. i just left the class. now i have this $19. what do i do with it? do i keep the $19? how do i get the $19 back? do i file taxes on that $19? >> i will let you jump in. the first question about marital status. if you got married, i'm not sure whether you got married in the end of 2015 or you got married

in 2016. but if you got married at the end of 2015, for filing your 2015 returns, you have two choices. either filing married filing jointly or married filing separately. if you file married -- this would apply for if you got married in 2016 in 2016 you have two choices. which is married filing jointly or married filing separately. the difference is if you file married filing jointly, you will report your income and your spouse's income. and the deductions. that means that if either one of you makes a mistake, you are jointly liable for whatever adjustments the irs might later make to your return. unless you can qualify as something called an innocent spouse. that's got a separate bunch of rules. you have to think about whether you know everything about your spouse's income. do you want to sign on that joint liability? the vast majority of married

couples say yes. it actually works better for you if you file married -- you get better tax rate schedule and things like that if you file married filing jointly. but for those people who don't know all the story about their spouse or they are in the process of separating or something like that, you really have to think about whether you want to file -- you should file married filing separately. on the tax -- the education thing, i really couldn't understand what you were saying about a form. there are -- the institutions are required to tell you how much in tuition you paid because there are all sorts of tax credits that you can get on your income tax return for continuing education or undergraduate education or secondary school education. so really, you would have to go and look at the instructions and the forms. now, you know, there are

volunteer income tax preparation sites around the united states. a lot in california. it might be worthwhile going to one of those. they're called vita. you could look up on the irs or just look in your newspaper, because sometimes they will promote where these vita sites are and get an appointment and go there and a volunteer can look at the documentation and tell you whether you need to file. >> five or ten minutes left. lots of callers for case work for you this morning. let's get to them. larry, alabama, line for democrats. go ahead. >> caller: how are you doing this morning? >> good. go ahead with your question. >> caller: yes, sir. i have three quick questions here. number one, earned income credit. how much can a person earn from earned income credit? is it $3,000 per child or $3,000 per -- is it $1,000? the second question on the

earned income credit, has congress renewed the earned income credit for 2017? and also, on the third question on the flat tax, i would like to know, how much is a person making if they make over $9,000 a year on the flat tax or over $100,000 on the flat tax? i agree with you, must go through your supervisor if you are having problems with the internal revenue service. however, it's congress who passed the laws. it's not miss owens either the irs. it's congress. that's who you have to folk tuesday on. thank you for giving me the opportunity to say this. thank you. >> thank you. so earned income tax credit. it's not per child really. it looks at the amount of earned income you have. and as you start from zero earned income, whether it's from work or self-employment income and it goes up. i don't really remember all of the thresholds, but it might go up to about $12,000 a year.

the amount of dollars you get increases. then there is a difference between if you have one -- zero -- one child, two children or three children. with three children and between i think it's $12,000 and maybe -- i don't know the cap of it. it goes up to $30,000 i think is the maximum. you can get up to $6,000 a year. then it starts declining as your income goes even greater. i think it's in the $40,000 depending how many kids you have where it sort of tapers out. the idea is to encourage people to work. and then there's a plateau area. and then as you make more money, you don't want to keep giving the same amount of money to people as they earn more money in the upper reaches. to your question about whether they renewed it, the earned income credit is part of the internal revenue code. what congress did enact was they had temporarily passed some extra money for a third child. they did codify that. they did make that permanent

this year. so that is the difference. now, what was the other question? >> flat tax. >> flat tax. i don't -- there's so many different plans about the flat t tax out there. i think what's interesting -- we have a site on our website that asks people to make recommendations for tax reform. and a lot of people write in and say, we need a flat tax. we need to tax people who make income from zero to $25,000 at nothing. and then from $25,000 to $50,000, we should do 10%. from $50,000 and above we should do 15%. they say, that's a flat tax. that's not a flat tax. that's a progressive income tax. you have a zero rate, a 10% rate and a 15% rate. a flat tax would be, zero to infinity, you are taxed at the same rate. i think what people don't really -- what they think is a flat tax is not a flat tax. it has fewer rates. but it's not a flat tax. >> let's go to robin in

kentucky, line for independents. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i have a couple of questions. i first want to say this. i believe that i was defrauded by people who defrauded your agency and other agencies as well. i attempted to report what i suspected. was subjected to aggressive and harmful retaliation by these folks. my questions are these. one, why is there no protection for whistleblowers and/or collaboration with those who report by the irs and the federal agencies to ensure th that -- prosecution of the cheaters. second question is, why don't local and state taxing agencies ultimately answer to the irs or the oig for the irs so that there's a real accountability in

areas where nepotism sometimes help people who abuse their position escape accountability? a quick note, here in kentucky, red lining of property taxes still exists. in areas where racial minorities and under educated whites live, the properties are sometimes taxed multiple times their value. >> so you are raising issues of state law. under our constitution, you know, federal and state taxation is separate. the irs doesn't have any authority really over the state the way that the states and the state legislatures decide how to set up and run their tax systems. i can tell you for individuals on the federal level, there are whistle-blower protections, both for people reporting, you know, fraudulent tax activities to the

irs and there are also -- there are whistle-blower awards that can be given. we have -- i have criticized the administration of the award process just this year and made some legislative recommendations to congress. one of those is that there isn't, for whistleblowers to the irs, there isn't an anti-retaliation protection as there is in the laws that for whistleblowers to the federal government and other areas. i recommended they extend that protection to the whittle blowers to the irs. if you talk about the state level, you have to go state by state and see what the state laws are about whistle-blower protection, whether it's about what you are saying is nepotism or just the way the laws are administered. it's a patchwork of 50 states. some states are very strong on that and some states aren't. >> for more information about all these issues, the website is

taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov. appreciate it when you stop by. come back again. >> thank you. c-span's washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. and coming up tomorrow morning, texas tribune political reporter abbey livingston will join us to discuss the super tuesday reports from the primary in texas. also lawrence huhurley will cal in live to discuss the first major abortion case to go before the supreme court since 2007. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal beginning live at 7:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow morning. join the discussion. i will go here with aarp. the candidates are standing about social security and how they are planning on saving it. if they are, what are they going to do to save it? >> i'm participating because i

feel like it's very important to get out and vote, because this is really the only way, besides local elections, that we can voice our opinions. u.s. customs and border protection commissioner gil kerlikowske briefed on his budget request. he took questions on the influx of unaccompanied minors at the border, implementing visa waiver program restrictions and combating drug trafficking. this house appropriations subcommittee hearing is just over an hour and 45 minutes. >> all right, i'm going to call the hearing to order. today we welcome gil kerlikowske. his third appearance before the subcommittee. commissioner, welcome.

appreciate you being here and your service to dhs and the nation, thank you for that. fiscal year 2017 budget for customs and border protection is $13.9 billion. an increase of 686 million above fiscal year 2016. unfortunately, gimmicks in the department wide budget have created a $2 billion gap that requires this subcommittee to make hard choices. therefore, the increase to cbp may not be affordable as it's evaluated by the totality of this budget. we discussed this between the two of us yesterday. or the other day. commissioner, as you know, i discussed this with you. we're really concerned about cbp's hiring problems that have to be fixed. to secure and expedite trade, the budget requests funds for

23,861 cbp officers, which include 2,000 officers funded in 2014. commissioner, taking four year, to hire 20,000 cbp -- 2,000 cbc officers is way too long. i know you plan to send a request to the authorizers, asking them to pass legislation increasing the number of cbp officers. knowing that wait times don't deserve cbp because cbp isn't likely to have these officers on board for years. 2014. look where we are now. likewise, the border patrol is losing more agents than it can hire. currently, cbp is 1,268 agents below the mandated floor. the budget takes advantage of

this by increasing the mandate. unfortunately, the reduction isn't supported by any analysis proving that border security won't be compromised as a result. commissioner, as you understand the important national security role these agents play, but we are concerned that cbp isn't able to sustain the existing workforce, let alone the mandated floor levels of the agents. these are urgent problems, which must be fixed. now, we'll have to discuss how you plan to correct this. this request also includes a contingency fund for potential surge in unaccompanied children. we look forward to an update of the current estimates of the uac. other increases include $55 million for tactical communications, $47 million for vehicles, $26 million for

aerostats and relocatable towers and many other smaller increases. i look forward to working with you over the next few weeks to determine the priority of these programs. the request proposes a realignment for appropriation structures to be more mission focused. while i know it is challenging, it is an effort that i have supported for several years. i want to commend you and your team for making the effort. lastly, commissioner, sovereign nations control and manage their borders. and sustain the integrity of their immigration systems. these objectives are your duty and i expect nothing less from you and from the men and women of cbp. now, let me turn to my distinguished ranking member miss roybal-allard for remarks she wishes to make. >> thank you. good morning, commissioner, and welcome.

the request for u.s. customs and border protection in fiscal year 2017. it's $11.3 billion, an increase of $609 million above the fiscal year 2016 level. about half of that increase is attributable to the proposed transfer of the office of bio metric identity management from mpd to cpc. you have served as commissioner now for nearly two years and cbp has made good progress in a number of areas under your leadership and i'd like to highlight some of those. this includes the establishment of the task force west for the southern border. the assumption of criminal and investigative authority for allegations of misconduct and use of force incidents involving cbp personnel. the expansion of the preclearance program which helps address threats before they reach our borders. a new use of force policy and the establishment of a use of

force center of excellence. business transformation efforts that are reducing wait times for passengers and expediting the flow of commerce. good progress toward a more rigorous technologically based methodology for determining situational awareness at the border. a more risk based approach to border security. and enhanced capacity to target high-risk individuals and cargo, including a new counter network program focused on disrupting transnational criminal organizations. so i think there is a lot that you can be proud of, even if there are still significant challenges that still remain. one of those challenges has been the struggle to hire new agents that officers and manage attrition, particularly border patrol agents. as a result, the number of border patrol agents and cbp officers are significantly below the target levels as the chairman mentioned. other ongoing challenges include

humanely managing the influx of unaccompanied children and families fleeing violence in the northern triangle. i look forward to a productive conversation on these and other issues. once again, i appreciate your joining us. >> thank you. >> all right. commissioner, we'll hear from you and what your comments are. we all have copies of what you submitted to us. of course they'll be narrated for the record. you may proceed. >> good. chairman carter, ranking member roybal-allard and members of the subcommittee, good morning. during this past year, i certainly had the firsthand opportunity to travel not only throughout the country and visit with thousands of our personnel, but also to meet with our international partners in customs and border protection, particularly in south america, mexico and canada. these are countries we share common goals with and strengthening both our country's

security but also our economic growth. i highlight this because with all of our responsibilities to protect the united states from the entry of dangerous people and materials, we also have to facilitate the flow of lawful international travel and commerce. and these goals are the same for many other countries. while i'm reminded of the diversity of our operational environments, the complexity of our mission and the commitment of our dedicated personnel. and thanks to the critical resources that this committee has given to cbp, we've not only enhanced border operations, we've also laid the foundation for the changes that will increase cbp to be more operational agile, effective and efficient. many of these changes are focused on improving the hiring and retention of frontline personnel. i think we've made forward progress and i look forward to working with the committee on this. our budget request of $13.9 billion reflect some of the progress that we made and

supports our continued investments and personnel and technology and initiatives that are going to strengthen our security and streamline our business process. detecting and preventing travel to the united states by a foreign terrorist fighter is our highest priority. we recently made additional enhancements to the electronic system for travel authorization. we started immediately enforcing the restrictions in accordance with the visa waiver improvement, and terrorist prevention act in 2015 and we canceled 17,000 travel approvals immediately. we're expanding preclearance operations. i'd like to express my thanks to the subcommittee for the statutory changes that significantly improve the reimbursement mechanism to fund cbp's preclearance operations. it's a critical capability for addressing threats long before they ever arrive at our borders. furthermore, with the funding provided by the committee and the consolidated appropriations

act of 2016, we're initiating counter network operations at our national targeting center. this capability enhances our comprehensive understanding of emerging threats not only for foreign fighters but also for drugs and human trafficking. and it advances our ability to disrupt the networks from that targeting center many of you have visited. along the southwest border, we monitor and respond. the numbers declined from their spike in '14 but we did see an increase in the numbers this past fall and we remain concerned about seasonal increases later this year and in fiscal year 2017. the budget request $12.5 million increase in resources for cbp to provide for safety and security of children and families who are temporarily in our custody. in addition to a contingency fund of up to $23 million to support up to 75,000 children

to ensure that we can respond to that potential surge. along with all of the border environments, our land, air and sea, continued investments in technology, surveillance technology, other operational assets really increase our situational awareness. the cornerstone of our approach to identify, disrupt and interdict illegal activities is key. recapitalizing some of the most essential equipment that was mentioned, radios and vehicles, increasing our ability to respond quickly and to keep our frontline officers and agents safe. we continue to improve the secure and efficient movement of people and goods through the entry. that's a function critical to our economic competitiveness. the budget request enables us to continue frontline hiring efforts, incorporate new technologies into our travel and trade processes including bio metric exit and expand our public/private partnerships key components of our efforts to optimize resources, ease the flow of low risk lawful trade

and travel and free agents and officers to focus on high risk cargo and high risk people. in all our operations across the globe, we continue to instill the highest levels of transparency and accountability. this past year, we implemented new use of force policies. we continued to test camera technologies to find solutions that can meet the wide variety of operational terrains and climates where our agents and officers work. thank you for the opportunity to testify. thank you for your support. i'm happy to answer your questions. >> thank you, commissioner. before we begin with the questioning, i want to recognize how the chairman of the committee for a statement he wishes to make. >> thank you, mr. chairman. commissioner kerlikowske, gil, good to see you again, thank you for being here to discuss your budget for cbp.

i greatly enjoyed our association and working together in your earlier chapter of your life when you were director of the office of national drug control policy, the drug czar, and of course your experience back home. and the police, that wonderful city. in the drug czar role, you graciously took time away from your busy schedule to visit my appalachian district to learn more about our challenges facing prescription drug abuse. so you bring a unique perspective i think to your job as -- at cbp. as the prescription drug epidemic has exploded onto the national scene. now giving way to heroin. controlling the influx of this dangerous drug and the violence it fuels in our border

communities and elsewhere around the country is a top priority for you and for us. so i look forward to hearing about your efforts to reduce the supply of opioids in the country. over 60,000 employees. one of the largest law enforcement agencies. if not the largest. you're tasked with protecting the united states through a number of critical missions including preventing the illegal entry of terrorists, weapons, narcotics from the air, sea and land. on a typical day, i'm told, cbp welcomes nearly 1 million visitors. screens more than 67,000 cargo containers. arrests more than 1,100 individuals and seizes nearly 6 tons of illegal drugs.

that's a day's work. you're busy to say the least. before going into the merits of your budget request, i'd like to express my sincere gratitude to the men and women under your charge including yourself who serve our great nation. many of whom put themselves in harm's way on a daily basis to keep the homeland safe and secure. your fiscal '17 budget request, 13.9 billion, which constitutes an increase of 687 million above the current level, i want to commend you on the improvement you've made to the visa security program, although i did have some concerns with the gaps that still remain. i also look forward to the expansion of the preclearance program which will push our borders further and further out.

your appearance here today and our testimony on this issue reminds me of this subcommittee and 2003 when we ushered it into existence and i became the first chairman of this subcommittee and have followed fairly closely since the activities of the department. and it's a tough, tough job. mr. chairman. you're trying to meld together some 22 federal agencies. i think there's 16 different unions. and like 20 different pay scales. so the work continues. and we've got our work to do as well. but you're on the front line. there's many positive things in your budget request. i'm disappointed with the efforts to ratchet down border

security and our immigration laws. for example, the budget proposed a reduction of 300 border patrol agents, decreasing the statutory floor to 21,070. at a time when drug cartels from mexico and elsewhere are flooding our communities. urban and rural alike with heroin. we've never seen the like. and yet the budget proposes we cut back on the people fighting that surge and that scourge in our country. others in the administration have rightfully labeled the abuse of opioids as a national epidemic. the director of disease control who says that overdose deaths, heroin and prescription pills, are taking more lives than car wrecks in the country. he calls it a national epidemic. and yet we hear from the administration well let's cut back on trying to fight it.

well, don't be surprised if things are different when we get through with your budget in that regard. we lose 100 americans every day to addiction abuse. and yet you've proposed to reduce our first line of defense against the entry of these dangerous deadly drugs without the benefit of any supporting analysis that border patrols mission won't be compromised. as i mentioned, you've been in my direct. you've seen firsthand how these drugs are destroying rural communities in appalachia. of course, you've been all over the country and you see the same. while you and i agree that reducing demand through education and treatment is critical, we mustn't lose sight of the fact enforcement remains a critical prong of our wholistic strategy on this scourge. stakes are high. we must do everything in our

power to combat this scourge. i look forward to continuing to work with you to provide the resources that you need to do just that. another crisis being caused by the drug cartels is the massive influx of unaccompanied alien children and families at our southern border. we've seen a surge in drug cartel and gang violence across central and south america. fueled by the production and trafficking of drugs. these thugs and murderers are wreaking havoc on millions of people. forcing many to flee to other countries including the u.s. recently, there's been an unprecedented spike in unaccompanied minors crossing our southern border. in the first four months of fiscal '16, border patrol has apprehended 20,000 unaccompanied alien children. that's double the number that

were apprehended in the same time frame last year. unfortunately, this humanitarian crisis does not appear to be subsiding any time soon. the reality of which is reflected in your budget submission. you've requested resources to support a revised baseline of 75,000 unaccompanied child apprehensions as well as a contingency fund should that number be exceeded. our committee will analyze this request and my hope is we can provide the necessary resources for cbp to handle the influx of these children at our borders. in addition, virtually half of the 5.2% increase in your budget request comes from the transfer of 305 million for the office of biometric identity management which, as you know, like fees,

requires authorization from other committees. unfortunately, the president has sent us a budget, after budget, after budget, that requests large increases in funding and offsets them by using budget gimmicks like increasing taxes and fees that he knows are dead on arrival here on the hill. finally, i'd be remiss if i didn't mention president obama's executive order on immigration. as you know, this still remains one of the most divisive issues in congress and in the country indeed at large. the president's unilateral action demonstrates he has no intention of working with congress or respecting our constitutional authority. unfortunately, you and your agency are caught in the middle of this fight. and it has made passing an annual appropriations bill for department of homeland security incredibly difficult.

it also makes it impossible to move forward on any meaningful immigration reform while the president remains in office. so mr. commissioner, thank you for being here today. thank you for your service to your country. we thank you for leading this agency. >> thank you, mr. chairman. start off with the questioning here. i was talking to you, staffing is something you were concerned about, i'm concerned about and i want us to discuss it. hiring. we'll talk first about the border patrol and afterwards about aviation hiring. i understand the border patrol is currently 1,268 agents below the mandated personnel floor of 21,370. a floor that's not new.

it's been around for a while. so the under execution of agents is not due to hiring up to a new level as it is with the customs officers but sustaining the existing workforce. i'm going to have a series of questions. we'll pause for some of those, then we'll move on. what are you doing to address the exit of agents from the border patrol 1234 while we have been hiring cbp officers, we have consistently lost border patrol agents over the last year. to ensure that stations are manned to the suggested and needed levels, do you foresee a need to reinstate a hardship designation for certain stations or create other incentives to help prevent the attrition of agents, with the reduction of overall numbers, do you anticipate and need to re-examine and restructure how the border

patrol man stations and forward operating bases? >> i share very much the concern we've discussed on this hiring issue. and for the border patrol to be in a downward spiral, which means that we are not able to hire as fast as attrition is very concerning. i've talked with your staff also about the number of programs that we put in place particularly to speed up the process. so in these new hiring hubs, we can get people through in 160 days until at times well over a year. that's important. the close cooperation with the department of defense as people leave the department of defense and the active duty military to be able to hire them into the border patrol or into customs and border protection is particularly important. working with congress on additional pay for some of the very difficult locations that they work on hardship reimbursement would be

particularly helpful. along with things that we've discussed around the age issues. when we talk about the border patrol, you know, we realize that their salaries were cut anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000. as a result of the auo, the additional overtime money. but we've now transitioned to the border patrol pay reform act. you should be very happenty to know that 96% of the border patrol agents who have now opted into the number of hours that they would work have opted into the maximum number. so instead of a 40-hour workweek, they will work a 50-hour workweek for the additional money, which they are clearly deserving of. actually results in us getting more boots on the ground. >> the '17 requests calls for reduction of 300 in the overall strength of the border patrol.

however, we understand that many stations along the southern border are facing staffing setbacks for a variety of reasons. there's no empirical data to inform how many agents we need. when cbp cannot articulate a validated requirement for the number border patrol agents combined with the technology requirements to surveil the border? when will we see validated requirements and resourcing models similar to the model used by the office of field operations? >> i don't think there's anything that's more frustrating to the heads of the -- to the executives of the border patrol or myself or certainly the secretary on not being able to have a set of metrics that actually said how many border patrol agents do you actually need. it has been unbelievably difficult and complex and it's as complex as when we tried to decide how many police officers we needed in seattle versus how

many police officers were needed in a city like washington, d.c. but we're closer. we're much closer now to developing that set of metrics that would be helpful. as you know, the offset in the reduction of the 300 personnel would be to fund radios, improvements in the radio system. the vast majority of which would go to the border patrol and to their vehicles. many of which now are reaching a life-span that makes them not as serviceable as they should be. there's nothing more frustrating than having an agent who can't go out to do patrol because the radio is not operable or because the vehicle. so we're looking at using those funds for that. >> commissioner, while we have long discussed the hiring of customs officers and border patrol agents, i'm equally as concerned with the vacancy for interdiction agents.

by your own numbers, cbp is 12% below the goal. 93 below the goal of 775 agents. how can we officially utilize if we don't have the pilots to fly the aircraft? it's my understanding corpus christi is only manned to fly two, maybe three missions at a time. yet we have six p-3s and three uass stations at the facility. do we hire more agents or do we retire the aircraft? are vacancies impacting air operations? further i hear pilots coming out of the military who have been flying combat missions overseas are failing the cbp polygraph.

what is cbp doing to address hiring and polygraph issues? how do we address air crew vacancies for the p-3s who are mostly former navy when the navy is no longer training p-3 air crews? >> so one of the difficulties in hiring for air and marine is it's a very competitive environment. one of my last flights, the first officer had been a pilot for us in san diego and was now flying for delta. and so we know and we've seen this huge increase in both domestic passenger travel and also international travel by air. so we're in a competitive environment. one of the difficulties has been, though, this requirement that a pilot coming out of the military must also undergo the same level of scrutiny or screening that someone hiring from outside will go through. quite frankly, they come with a top secret clearance if they're

a pilot in the military. i don't see any reason why we can't continue to work with the office of personnel management and others to bring them on board much more quickly without going through as many hoops as we would go through for others. the last thing i mention is amongst all those different job descriptions in air and marine, we have i think four different pay scales, and we are interested in working toward the same law enforcement pay system that the fbi and the marshals and dea have. which is law enforcement availability pay, leap pay, which provides an additional 25% of their salary for the extra hours that they would normally work. and we kind of like to level that playing field for all of them. so we'll continue to keep working on that. but of course i think you know too our push has been to hire with the appropriated money the additional customs and border protection officers, plus to stop the bleeding in the border

patrol. >> commissioner, i would like to go back to the whole issue of border security and the fact that we don't have enough border patrol manpower there. we also hear a lot about the fact that, you know, we have to secure our border and when i go back home, i hear a lot anxiety about that because the impression is that our borders are fairly open and that they're unprotected. in practical terms, how does cbp define its border security mission? and what are the measures by which we should be judging cbp's performance? >> we look very much, particularly with the border patrol, between the ports of entry. we look very much at the security that the border

patrol -- do they have operational awareness or what we'd call situational awareness. do they know the number of people that may be attempting and the particular areas that they're coming across? they also have the information and the liaison with their state and city and county partners all along the border. we know many of those border cities from el paso to san diego to tucson have some of the lowest crime rates of any of the large cities in the country. so understanding and recognizing that there are also places where we use our unmanned aircraft. there are also places that are so desolate and so rugged and so difficult that we're not seeing people attempt in any way, shape or form to cross or enter the border illegally. well, if they're not using those locations, we need to take those finite border patrol resources and allow them and put them into places where we do have greater numbers.

but, you know, as a police chief, i was always held accountable for managing our people, responding quickly, making sure that we're trained and have the equipment they needed, but i was never held accountable for a crime-free city whether it was buffalo or seattle. there will always be gaps and we will work very hard to make sure those gaps are narrowed. >> i'd like to go now to an issue that we discussed during last year's hearing. that's the treatment of unaccompanied mexican children who cross the border, which is different from those children that are coming from central america. last july, j.o. released a report on the treatment of unaccompanied children in dhs custody. we made a number of recommendations pertinent to mexican children. gao found that cbp personnel were not appropriately following the requirements of the trafficking victims protection

reauthorization act. cbp forms lacked specific indicators and questions agent officers should use to assess whether a child was -- has credible fear of returning to mexico, could be at risk of being trafficked if returned, or was capable of making an independent decision to voluntary return, voluntarily return. the report found that cbp personnel did not document the decisions they made relative to these factors. goa found that cbp repatriated 95% of unaccompanied mexican children it apprehended between 2009 and 2014. including 93% of mexican children under the age of 14. even though cbp's 2009 memorandum on the treatment of unaccompanied children states that children under 14 are generally presumed to be unable to make an independent decision.

i saw that the department recently signed new repatriation agreements with mexico. to what extent were those agreements in response to the gao report? and what specific changes to repatriations do they entail? >> as a result of the questions and discussion last year. also as a result of the gao, we did a new series of training for the border patrol to make sure those questions are appropriately asked and that the responses are appropriately recorded for that decision involving mexican children. the same time, within the last month, assistant secretary bursen and director from i.c.e. were in i believe arizona to sign new repatriation agreements with mexico to make sure that there was close coordination with the government of mexico.

so they wouldn't be returned at night. they wouldn't be returned in an environment that may be considered hostile or dangerous. and that their property, whatever property they cross the border with, would be also returned with them. so i think the progress and the training and progress in the additional repatriation agreement with mexico is helpful. as you know, the vast majority of the unaccompanied children that we are apprehending are coming from the three central american countries and really not mexico right now. >> i see that my time is up. thank you, mr. chairman. >> chairman rogers. >> mr. commissioner, you and i have been working many times together over the years to curtail drug trafficking and abuse. i've said many times and i've heard you say it many times that

there is no one answer to the problem. that it does take enforcement, treatment and education. holistic approach. the president's budget rightly puts prescription drug and heroin abuse in the forefront, but largely focuses on treatment and the demand side of the equation. if we want to see any further success in treating victims of abuse and educating the public about the danger that's present, i think we've got to be sure enforcement on the front end is emphasized and, in fact, ironclad. your agency's charged with protecting the borders and you've got the primary role to play in all of this. dea says heroin seizures in the u.s. have increased in each of the last five years, nearly doubling from 2010 to 2014. your agency reports seizing over

9,600 ounces of heroin during fiscal year '14 and yet your budget would reduce the number of agents patrolling our borders by some 300. how can you justify taking boots off the ground in spite of this huge increase in heroin interest introduction? >> mr. chairman, i go back to a couple things. one is on the heroin issue, the majority of any heroin that we seize is not between the ports of entry, it's smuggled through the ports of entry. whether it's in san ysidro or jfk airport, heroin seizures also predominantly are through a port of entry and carried in a vehicle or carried by an individual. we don't get much heroin seized by the border patrol coming through. i think just because there's a

lot of risks to the smugglers and the difficulty of trying to smuggle it through. but when i look at -- when i look at the number of border patrol agents that we are already down and i look at offsetting, being able to provide additional radio equipment and additional vehicles as a result of using some of that money or the majority of that money to the border patrol, i think it's a decision that will help. we know that technology is better for their safety and it's also better to get them out to be able to patrol. >> changing subjects. >> okay. >> the visa waver program permits citizens of 38 different countries to travel to the u.s. either for business or tourism purposes up to 90 days without a visa. in return, those 38 countries

must permit u.s. citizens to remain in their countries for a similar length of time. since its inception in 1986, that program has evolved into a comprehensive security partnership with many of america's closest allies. the department administers the visa waiver program in consultation with the state department. they utilize a risk-based multi-plmulti multi-layered approach to detect and prevent terrorists, serious criminals and other bad actors from traveling to this country. with the advent of the terrorist era that we're in now, the congress deemed it impossible to live with that kind of a free border program with 38 countries in the world for fear of terrorist infiltration

undetected. so we passed the visa waiver program improvement and terrorist travel prevent act of 2015. which established new eligibility requirements for travel under the visa waiver program to include travel restrictions. they don't bar a person from coming to the u.s. point blank but they do require that the traveler obtain a u.s. visa which then gives us the chance to investigate the background of the person. so in december, that law was passed. can you outline for us the program changes concerning aliens from these countries, how soon you'll be able to implement the changes if they're not already there?

>> secretary johnson several months before the passage of this authorized additional series of questions to be put into the esta. this system in which we would record information with more detail and more specificity. for instance, more specificity when it comes to the location that a person would be staying. additional contact information such as cell phone and e-mail, those types of pieces, and then when the law was passed, particularly the fact of dual citizenship with the four countries that were outlined, we canceled 17,000 travel approval requests that were already -- had already been basically approved. as you know, the esta system lasts. you can use it within a two-year window. one thing that isn't always recognized with this system, though, is that a person is continually vetted. those names are run against databases every 24 hours.

so if you applied and you weren't going to travel for another nine months, every single day you name would be run series of database because we don't want you to suddenly say now i'm going to go ahead and use the esta. it's already been approached. i'm going to get on a plane. we say, well, wait, in the last 48 hours or 72 hours some information of a derogatory nature came up and needs to be worked on. we work closely with the department of state. i testified recently of two hearings on this issue. i think the fact we were able to cancel the 17,000 visas or estas and require those individuals then go back to an embassy or a consulate and get a waiver, and we will continue including standing up at the national targeting center along with the state department personnel sitting right next to us,

terrorist prevention group that will look at us much more in depth on a 24-hour basis. >> are you staffed to handle this workload? >> with personnel at the targeting center. i would think frankly if there's a real jewel in the crown and cbp when it comes to prevention i would say our national targeting centers for cargo and passenger anticipation of things that could be dangerous or people that could be dangerous and i know a number of members and a number of staff have visited it and i would encourage them to visit to see that operation. as for additional people, including working in a counternetwork division to work on human smuggling and drug smuggling is a good prevention technique. >> the legislation also required program countries to validate

passports, report lost or stolen passports, use screening and start passenger information exchange agreements. can you tell us what the requirements are and how they would be put in place? >> they must vest or check that foreign passport against interpol's lost or stolen passport database. they must do that. the requirement with visa waiver i think is not often talked about but is really quite helpful is the fact that it will bring these countries who are like-minded who want to prevent terrorism and want to prevent smuggling. it brings us together in a better information sharing environment. we have in cbp a permanent liaison to interpol. we have two permanent liaisons to euro poll policing.

and we have at our immigration assistance program a number of cbp personnel at airports where they don't do enforcement on foreign territory but work closely with their foreign counterparts. the benefit of frankly the visa waiver program brings us together to all assess risk and realize we're all in the same boat. >> the legislation directed you to terminate program countries for failure to comply with certain agreements. >> i'm not familiar with that. i know secretary johnson in counsel with secretary kerry and also the director of the office of national intelligence just added three additional countries to that, to the original four that congress passed. and so that increases our workload, but it also improves our risk assessment and our

safety and security. >> thank you, mr. commissioner, for your service. >> thank you. >> mr. price. >> thank you, mr. chairman. welcome, commissioner, glad to see you here again. >> thanks. >> i want to pick up where the ranking member left off on the question of border security, how you conceive of that going forward in terms of the mix of elements that would go to make up the kind of situational awareness and border security you're talking about. i understand this is a mix of personnel infrastructure and technology that we're talking about here. i share the concern that's been expressed repeatedly this morning about the short fall in personnel that this budget would apparently leave us with. something like 700 custom officials, 1,300 border patrol agents. my own view, i think it's widely

shared, is in the long term, true and effective border security isn't going to be achieved, even with all the money we might throw at it, without comprehensive immigration reform. and since it's been brought up here this morning, i think maybe a little reality check is in order. the president, in fact, pushed very hard in cooperation with the congress for years for comprehensive immigration reform. he worked effectively at it and successfully with the senate. the senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill. but then the house never took it up. that's the problem. and it was only after months, indeed years of that kind of stonewalling that the president did take executive action. it was limited action, it is

very well reasoned and legally sound action, i believe. >> to exercise a degree of prosecutorial respect to those we initiate immigration enforcement on. then the republicans take that executive action as new excuse, a new excuse not to act. so frustratingly, we fall short, far short of the comprehensive immigration reform that might deal with this larger issue. so we return to border security. and that, that issue, too, has become inflamed in recent months. thanks, largely to the presidential campaign. people with little or no immigration enforcement or policy experience, including some high-profile presidential candidates have said once again,

we can simply build a fence. we can seal the southern border. and one actually says we can send the bill to mexico. now when i was chairman of this committee, the fence loomed very large. and we appropriated on this subcommittee for hundreds of miles of pedestrian and vehicle fence. we attempted with mixed success, i have to say. to exercise some measure of cost/benefit analysis with these various segments of the fence. but we built it there was a huge political push on at the time to build that fence. now the fence is back. and i'm going to give you a chance to comment explicitly on this. what does a secure border look like? and do we need more fence? >> it does mean that when we have that situational or operational awareness and we know what's coming and where our

gaps are, the fence that's been built is 600 miles of different fencing, including tactical fencing, very high fencing. double and triple fencing in some locations and some to prevent a vehicle. the border patrol uses that type of technique and those types of fence technologies in order to move people that may be attempting to come across, into different locations where they can have more resources. we also you know, clearly recognize that anyone who has traveled and spent time on the border, as i think every one of the members here has, that there are lots of locations in which fencing and walls would, would not be able to be built. would not work and would not be able to withstand, and even with the fencing that we have, we spend considerable resources repairing and keeping that fencing in line. so you know, we think it's the combination of all of the other things that we do, tactical aerostats, patrols, infrared,

fixed towers, ground sensors, on and on. that make for a more secure border. >> would it be your judgment that the budget you submitted gets that balance right? in terms of the mix of elements going forward? are there major gaps, major omissions that you would look to be addressed in later years? >> i think the budget that we submitted is a very realistic budget. i think that i would be very happy as i'm sure every member of the committee would be, if we could hire and get the number of border patrol agents and customs and border protection officers fully trained and on the job. that right now, that is, that is the number one priority, because regardless of all the

technology, this is still a very labor-intensive and people-oriented kind of business, whether it's at a port of entry or between the ports of entry. but i think we've submitted a realistic budget that will help us get there. and quite frankly, the committee has been very supportive of a number of initiatives in the past. and i think that's why we've made progress. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. stewart? >> thank you, mr. chairman, commissioner, thank you for many years of service. and to your peers as well. law enforcement, all around the country, it's a difficult time to be in law enforcement. and to want you to know that many of us support you and the efforts you're trying to undertake. i'm going to ask you a couple questions. i'd kind of like to explore, do we know what we don't know? do we have a good feel for some of these things, for example i want to follow up on the chairman's conversation about the visa waiver program. you've indicated something like

17,000 who have been denied or revoked to date on the esta program. do we have any idea of those 17,000? is that 90% of those who we maybe should have identified? is it 50%? do you have a sense of how successful that is? >> the 17,000 are the dual citizens with the four countries. >> that's very easy to identify. >> i would tell you that looking, it is a mix of people, is there somebody in that mix that probably might not have or should not have gotten that? i think that's very possible. but also, it's people who fled iran during the overthrow of the shah in 1979, that have been, haven't been to iran in 40 years, and but still have dual citizenship. and they were canceled. so you know, it was a broad brush, widely supported by congress and the president. >> that's a relatively easy thing to do.

identify those who have the dual citizenship of those targeted countries. i'm guessing you identified most of those people. wouldn't you say? >> we identified them through the fact that they already, we knew in the system that they were dual citizens. >> much harder to identify those, that the visa waiver legislation required us to identify. those who had traveled to some of these countries in question. do you have a sense for how successful we've been in identifying those people? and let me elaborate and then i'll allow you to answer. they may be traveling from europe. that we would be unaware of that travel, were it not for our european partners or counterparts that have made us aware of that. and the homeland director was firm on several countries, france, belgium, germany, italy, greece, gave them a february 1 deadline to fix what he called

crucial loopholes. can you give us an update in how our partners are doing in providing us this information? we would be unaware of it without their input. they hadn't gotten a good job of giving us that information? >> visa waiver results in a lot of partnerships that including the exchange of information. so one, the relationship particularly after the attacks in paris, continues to get strengthened about the necessity of exchanging and sharing information. you are exactly correct when you talk about how difficult it is to detect people because of broken travel. we rely on another partner in another government to perhaps tell us about that. also, people do self-declare. about having travelled to one of the countries.

and then lastly, when you enter the united states and the passport is gone by through the customs and border protection officers, just as we did during the ebola screening, we do come across people that have traveled to one of those countries. i think 2011 was the cutoff date that you put in place. >> commissioner, being short on time, let me ask you, the department of homeland security gave the partner as february 1 deadline to close the loopholes, would you say they've done that effectively? >> i would say they're much better. but i couldn't answer for every one of them and i'd be happy to provide that information to you and your staff. >> i wish you would. some of them are more effective than others. let me ask very quickly, one of the things we identified and one of the things that many of us recognized that we had to expand our capabilities and that was to use social media to those who may be entering our country and

pose a threat. san bernardino there were indications and i'm not talking about radicalization. i'm talking about those who are radicalized, trying to enter a country. if we use social media as a tool, we would raise red flags and say this person, is someone we should look more closely. but previous to that, we hadn't done a good job. i don't think it was a policy to use that tool. can you update, how is that being implemented to use social media to identify those individuals who may be a threat as they're trying to enter the country. >> sure. the social media checks would apply through dhs, to i.c.e., et cetera. and secretary johnson has stood up a task force within dhs to look at expanding and moving forward on the ability to research and use information and social media. that applies to dhs-wide, not gist just for cbp. >> do you know when that task force is supposed to give their report? >> i believe general taylor from

intelligence and analysis is in charge as the chair of that task force. i don't know the date. >> we'll find out and follow up with that thank yo. thank you thank yothank you. >> mr. quayle? >> mr. chairman. >> i believe you said earlier this might be your last hearing, i want to say thank you so much for all your many years of service. i appreciate it. and also appreciate your moderate approach to this. i'm from the border. laredo is 96%, most hispanic city percentage wise in the country. i think people know my policies. i like to see a moderate approach. we don't want to see open borders. we believe that if somebody has been put in detention, they ought to be treated fairly. we should have detention, have some sort of deterrent. alt at the same time, we think

that the immigration reform, sensible immigration reform, we think the wall is a 14th century solution touh a 21st century problem that we have. we would like to see moderation. because we'd like to see order at the border. don't want to get political, but the folks that i represent on the border, wouldn't give me 95, 90% of the vote every time i run, i assume they support my policies. which is pretty much what you do also, a moderate approach. one of the things we've talked about lately is to extend our border beyond the u.s. mexico border. a couple of years ago, we, i think we put about 80, $85 million to secure the mexican border with guatemala. i saw some figures that over a period of time, they deported more people than border patrol did over the same amount of time. so just $80 million did a lot to help mexico extend our border. we were in costa rica, the

cuban, a totally different issue. the costa ricans were telling us in december that the people who are coming in trying to get into the u.s. they had people from ghana, somalia, nepal, and literally name the country, and they were there. my question to you in extending the border out besides the u.s. mexico border. what else can we do to help the mexicans and our central american folks to help us secure our border? the more we stop outside the u.s. border, the better it is for us. so if you want to address biometric equipment. training, we can do that. i know you're doing that. what can we do to step this up? >> congressman, i think the government of mexico has done a really admirable job, particularly in the last year plus on increasing and improving their border. cvp and other components of dhs

have a number of advisers and technical assistants both in places like tapachula and other locations, but also within mexico city. we visited the training center for those personnel. we visited the detention facility. i visited it particularly. they have made marked progress in, in, in the work that they've done. and i think we couldn't be more pleased with the government of mexico as a partner in this. so we'll continue to look at can we assist in biometric identification process, other types of things. but i think the last thing and probably the most important in all of this, would be that if those three central american countries, honduras and el salvador and guatemala had better safety, better security, a better educational system for

people, and better hope for the people that live in those countries, they wouldn't be fleeing and making an incredibly dangerous journey to the united states. as mr. allen as i sat on the floor with a father and his 4-year-old daughter not that long ago. he said you know we had several murders down the street. he said the last thing i need to do is to leave my wife with one of our other children and for myself and my daughter to flee. this is in el salvador to flee and try to get to the united states where his mother, where his mother lives. but he said, i can't, i can't raise her in that environment. if those countries are more stable, i think people don't want to pick up and leave and come here. >> well, i hope you work with the state department, because as you know, mr. chairman, and members of the committee, we

added $750 million working with kay ranger, for the central america, the northern triangles, hopefully you're all a part of that process. the more we extend our security out instead of playing defense on the one-yard line, but extend it to the 20 yard line, the better it is. so there was $750 million that hopefully all-will work with the state department, thank you so much for your time and effort. >> it would be helpful to have an ambassador, too, in mexico. >> i think roberto jacobsen should be the ambassador, it's unfair that she's been delayed for something -- roberta jacobsen. she's been delayed for something, that's unrelated. >> thanks for your service. >> i'm going to follow up with what the chairman of the full committee asked about a little bit. which is the role of your organization now, in controlling drug traffic. i think there was testimony last year.

that. your department doesn't have a zero tolerance policy. people found crossing the border with marijuana, or other drugs, actually, there's no zero tolerance, you don't refer for prosecution everyone, who poisons our youth. i've got to ask you, why? >> i don't know of any policy like that i know that people are apprehended with drugs, whether it's small amounts that they're carrying for some personal use or whether it is multi-ton or multi-kilo loads. all of those to my knowledge would be referred to the united states attorney and it would not be up to customs and border protection to make a decision for the department of justice as to whether or not prosecution would be accepted. and frankly, if i did find out that we did have a policy where

we were making those decisions. rather than where they belong with the department of justice, i would reverse that policy very quickly. >> you were head of the office of national drug control policy. would you be disappointed with the department of justice, if in fact they had set minimum amounts of marijuana to be brought into this country before they would be prosecuted? >> i would tell you that -- >> it seem like it would be a waste of time for your agents, your agents go, track them down, find the drugs, they think they did a great job and turn it over to the doj, and the doj looks the other way. and says we're too busy. >> i would tell you, i understand depending on the united states attorneys' offices along the border from texas to california, that the number one client for prosecutions is customs and border protection. we keep them busy with everything possible. i think they're clearly going to be cases that they are not going to, and these are questions that are answered by them. i think they're clearly cases that given the finite resources

that they have, they're not going to be able to accept for prosecution either because of prosecutorial merit. or because they've set some guideline. but i would tell thaw we make those referrals all the time. and we're happy to make sure they have everything. i've assigned attorneys in our office to be cross-designated as assistant united states attorneys just to help out in those areas so they can have additional prosecutors and if we need to assign more attorneys to do that, to help them out, then that's what we'll have to do. >> thank you very much. >> i was a little disappointed, back in 2009 i guess, you know the administration decided and i think you agreed, to stop using the term -- war on drugs. and honestly, i think if you

look at the heroin epidemic we have now, it's exactly the result of the leadership of the country, saying that we no longer have a war on drugs. just my personal opinion. rhetorical question. let me go onto the visa waiver program. i just have a question about this. because as you know, part of the controversy is this decision was made to on on a case-by-case basis, permit waivers for people from business people from iraq or iran who are conducting business, i believe those are the two case-by-case. can you tell us since that program was put in place, how many, since it was case by case -- who makes those case-by-case decisions? >> the process, if there was a question, and to my knowledge, there's not even a pending request for anyone to use that

example. but we would use the unit or the group that we stood up in the national targeting center to review those. they're a series of questions that a person would have to answer if in fact for example it was a business case. we know there that there are waivers already in existence, general waivers in the law for government officials and for military. but there would be a whole series of questions. and we would have to validate through that system. but right now. there's not a single pending request or even one that's been made. >> iran's objection seems to be much ado about nothing? >> i don't know if it's merely too early in the process for some of these additional requests. but i do know that no request has been made. >> one final point and it would be pretty brief. it has to do with the integrated fixed towers contracts. these were supposed to be important parts of our first line of defense and yet the first tower you know was, the certification was delayed. now there's no, is there money in the budgetses for the rest of these towers? are they going to proceed on time?

>> there is money and they are proceeding on time. the border patrol was required under the contract, and rightly so, to certify that these expensive pieces of technology are actually operational and are helpful. and i think as many members of the committee know, the attempt to build a virtual wall resulted in pretty significant vestments of taxpayer dollars in some technology that did not prove to be useful to the agents on the ground that actually needed it as i understand it the border patrol has certified that the integrated fixed tower is a

useful, helpful tool that expands their visibility on the border. >> thank you very much. yield back. >> doctor, as you'll recall, i mentioned the a pretty strong rumor on the texas border of the 200-pound rule on marijuana. i didn't get a response from the attorney general, i asked her about that. mr. young? commissioner, welcome. nice to see you, thanks for what you do. i want to talk about a little about custom and border protection uses of unmanned aerial systems. i had gone down to the border last year, early last year and noticed things, uavs and aerostats, can you talk a little bit about where those are being used, how they're being used, and where they're being used. are you seeing a drop in border activity? because it seems to me like many times this can simply be a real deterrent by seeing these intimidating blimps or drones up in the sky. and can you just reassure us or talk about the relationship between using the uass and in conjunction with your agents. and is one meant to supplement the other? you're not phasing out agents with the use of uass are you? can you talk a little bit about this?

>> they're all designed to enhance and even in my earlier statement. the fact that it's still a labor intensive job. it still requires boots on the ground but it can be greatly enhanced with technology. so i think the tactical or the tethered aerostats are particularly helpful. with the camera systems that are in them. >> do you know about how many aerostats we are at now? >> i think we're at five and we put another one in mcallen area, so we're now moving to six aero clzstats. they are fairly expensive to operate baecause we use contractors to operate them. but frankly, i don't want to take a border patrol agent off the road. and then have them operate the mechanics of the tactical aerostat. so i think they are helpful. i'll be down in mcallen next week for my 12th or 13th trip. and the agents down there feel that they're a definite deterrent and visible. i kind of thought that even if

we had some extras without the equipment we ought to just put them up in the air. and see how that works. kind of like when we park a police car with nobody in it. and see if people slow down. >> or the inflatable tanks they used in world war ii. >> on the road. but we'll have to see if they take up my idea. >> thank you for that. >> last year, i asked you about guidance given to cpv personnel to keep administration's policies in mind and if these priorities supersede the law. last month the house judiciary committee, her testimony from a cpb agent that undocumented immigrants are no longer given a notice to appear order and are released without any means of tracking their whereabouts. are you know, i have serious concerns about this. i know some of my colleagues do as well. are agents being directed to ignore the law? or is this coming from within

their own decision-making? or are they given guidance on ignoring the law on this? >> they shouldn't be releasing anyone and the border patrol shouldn't be issuing the notices to appear without going through and without having i.c.e., immigrations and customs enforcement. we don't need to be in that i think everyone is very familiar with policies in the past. called catch and release. in which people were not documented. reports were not as well written. people weren't questioned. there's no one that's apprehended today that isn't, unless they're under the age of 14, that isn't fingerprinted and photographed, that isn't debriefed about how did you get here. was there a smuggler involved? who did you pay? how much did it cost? all of that information. but we don't need and don't want an i would not stand by if the border patrol was releasing people without going through all of the formalities that are required. >> did this concern you when

this border patrol agent gave this testimony before the judiciary committee about this? >> the concern i have is quite often the border patrol council, which is the union, is probably not the most knowledgeable organization about what's actually going on. i think unlike, you know, when i had police officers in seattle, they would follow the law. then there's room within the law to actually do things. and if they weren't happy with doing that, it's kind of like well, if you really don't want to follow the directions that your superiors, including the president of the united states and the commissioner of customs and border protection, then you really do need to look for another job. >> there's some serious concerns out there that the law is not being enforced. last year when saldana was here, she gave a statement saying their goals and principles and priorities should take

precedence even over the law. so that's very concerning to myself and many others. on this panel. and just throughout america. wondering why if it's not happening, the law is not being enforced. it's a very serious thing. i urge you to keep an eye on that, please. thanks. >> thank you. >> all right. i think we'll start a second round. first, going back to something one of my colleagues brought up. i think mr. harris, the integrated fixed towers, the reality is that the first certification of one of these towers, was last friday. isn't that correct? so it's a very, very current event. >> yes. >> and on those towers, here's the question, the texans would like to know. when will your budget install towers in texas? what will you use in texas, if not the integrated fixed towers? >> so i think that part of the delay with the integrated fixed towers was the fact that the

contract was protested. and as we know, when a contract is protested, it take as long time then to overcome that but that fixed tower in arizona is up and working and we know the additional aerostat in texas is very helpful and if there are other locations, including those within texas with which the fixed tower would make a difference, i would like to move forward with that. i couldn't be more specific but i'm happy to get back to you on that. >> it's not it wouldn't be the first time that we've looked around and seen resources going to arizona that we really needed in texas. so i think i'm required to ask that question. >> i got the message. >> okay. >> we understand that the department is exploring an outcome-based approach to metrics that would measure the

effectiveness or of our border security. how is cpb working with the secretary on this initiative and how will it change the current cpb metrics which are more input-based instead of outcome-based. what does the preliminary data suggest for border security between and at points of entries? i understand reports different compare with existing metrics. >> the secretary and i think everyone including cpb and the border patrol is frustrated with either the lack of metrics or the metrics that exist, what do they really tell you. i believe dr. aris said -- you don't know what you don't know, would be one of the questions. so the secretary brought in a number of people from the department of defense and others that have been working pretty closely with all of us to gather as much information as possible. about what are the measures and what should be looked at and what are the determinations that would be most useful in things like determining the number of border patrol agents, how secure

is the border, what are we missing, et cetera. it's very complex. i don't know the exact timeline, but i know that he is absolutely focused and intent on trying to have this done and out, certainly before he leaves office. >> so you already know don't really know anything, the difference between, you know, input and outcome basis? do you have some examples as to what the differences might be? >> i don't. the last bringing i had from the people that had come over from defense, was probably three or four months ago. so i'm not all that familiar with where they are now. they wanted to gather a lot of information from i.c.e., not just border patrol. but also, at our ports of entry. so -- >> have you got anything that gives us a hint? would you share it with us?

>> i'll be happy to. >> okay. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i think we look back on the record of the last hearing last year, i do not believe that saldana said or implied that the law should not be followed. commissioner, late last year, you briefed me on the results of cameras, which this committee submitted as a way of increasing the accountability of cvp personnel, as well as protecting them from unfounded accusations of misconduct. the budget request includes $5 million to examine how body cameras might be used across cvp's varied operational environments looking at the expanded efficient use of other camera technologies could be beneficial. can you elaborate on how this

funding will be used? and how that activity will be different from the feasibility study that cvp conducted last year? >> yes, sir. we've tried to move beyond. the fact that one customs and border protection is a very camera-rich environment now. every port of entry, certain checkpoints, lots of locations, including all the cameras along the border. so we have lots of cameras and we use a lot of cameras. expanding the cameras in two areas would be particularly helpful. one is that our marked vehicles, do not have dash cameras as many police departments have. like los angeles and others. we want to be able to use part of that $5 million to put those cameras in those vehicles, we do end up in apprehensions and pursuits, et cetera, where that record would be helpful. expanding cameras at the checkpoints, the permanent checkpoints, the number would be helpful. and also on our boats, we've had two fatal incidents, one off the

coast of california and one with british virgin islands, within the last year, of fatalities involving enforcement actions. our boats are not equipped with those cameras. the difficulty we've had with body-worn cameras for in our air and marine agents will be testing them out as they interact with people. at locations. the difficulty with the body-worn cameras for our border patrol agents, we did not find a cam a ra that camera that withstood the environment that they worked in for more than about three months. we've had a number of discussions with vendors who have come forward with either ideas or ways to improve those cameras, because we think it would be helpful. i spent time over coffee with a number of the agents who field-tested the cameras. they were very positive about it. the border patrol council, the union in this particular case, has indicated support for

body-worn cameras. >> how long do you anticipate the next phase will take and when can we anticipate that cvp will make a decision about improving and expanding use of cameras, including the body-worn cameras? >> it's a relatively easy to improve an expand on the cameras. and all of the locations i talked about. except for the agents out in the field and the rough terrain. i would certainly make a goal of mine before i leave office at the end of the year. to make sure that we've developed body-worn cameras that agents can wear and rely upon. >> what progress has been made in addressing the major procedural and policy challenges associated with using the cameras? >> i think the most help that we've gotten has been from the nongovernmental organizations who are very involved in body-worn camera issues for state and local law enforcement.

they have been a part of the discussion and over what would be the best policies. but we also know and i think the city of los angeles looked at a pricetag just for that city alone of over $50 million and wants to make sure -- and i think you brought this up, too, mr. chairman. there are huge numbers of costs when it comes to retaining information, foia questions, et cetera, and all of that needs to be included in the analysis. >> when you arrived at cvp, i and many others had significant concerns about allegations of the improper use and misconduct among cvp personnel. a short time later in 2014, you updated cvp's use of force handbook, incorporating many of the representations made by the inspector general and the police review of cvp, use of force cases and policies.

you also announced the establishment of a use of force center of excellence. the budget request for fy 17 include as $4.2 million increase for the center. which is based on cvp's advanced training center in harper's ferry. can you elaborate on the purpose of the center, what it has accomplished to date and how the proposed budget increase would be used? >> the center has been helpful in two areas. one is less lethal technology. there are a variety of less lethal from tasers to pepper ball launchers and on and on. they can be used before having to resort to the use of a firearm. so part of the work that they do is the training and looking at the new equipment. the other is the simulators. so we're in the process of purchasing 21 simulators that will be assigned throughout our field of operations from spokane, washington, to florida,

where agents and officers can go through a simulation. we make our own videos, based upon the environment, particularly that the border works . at the same time, we added a s . variety of fence together with the border patrol training facility in new mexico so that agents can practice before they ever leave training, they can practice in the environment that they are going to be operating in. we've seen great progress and we'd like to make more. >> have you seen the use of force instance decreased over the past year? >> our assaults on agents so far year to date in this fiscal year are down about, i believe, 25 to 30%. so assaults on agents are down. we released our use of force information and our uses of force were even though last year we did see a flattening or the same number of assaults on agents, we saw a reduction in

the use of force by agents. and part of that is a result of better policy, better training, better equipment, et cetera. >> question. as you well know, it is critical for cvp officers to be able to transfer information they gathered for national security purposes. concerned about some findings issued by the homeland security committee that while cvp officers can pass along information collected at borders, the process isn't automaticed and it isn't -- isn't automated and isn't incorporated into the federal government's databases. i see you're requesting $48 million for the office of intelligence staffing. i want to be sure, i know everybody does, that maybe you

can talk a little more about the intent sbeg grags and clab of systems and technologies to address this. >> when i arrived at cvp and examined each of the components, including the office of intelligence, i saw that the office of intelligence was very much tactical and very much focused on particular targeting. but that means that, as i described it, it was kind of an inch a mile wide and an inch deep. no. vice versa. it was very much targeted or very much tactical. so it was very important that we brought in a new assistant commissioner who came from the office of director of national intelligence and the fbi and said let's broaden our intelligence scope and work more closely with the other intelligence agencies and feed the information to our targeting center. we needed all of the other information. for instance, we're negotiating on preclearance with nine other

countries. we need that broad-based intelligence. that's where we are. that's where we're headed. and the relationship with the intelligence community to be able to access other databases is progressing well. >> it's progressing well. >> it is. >> do you foresee any impediments that you're facing that we can help with? >> no, we couldn't have -- you can always help but we couldn't have better partners than director clapper and comey. i think they see the value of what cvp brings to the table on these issues. >> thank you for that. mr. price? >> thank you, mr. chairman. commissioner, i'd like to ask you about two distinct but related areas to push our borders outward. the first is cargo screening overseas. the second, preclearance for

airline passengers. first, on the cargo screening, as you know, the 9/11 act required cvp to scan 100% of maritime cargo originating in ports prior to landing on american shores. for a variety of reasons, from costs to technological restraints and inadequate harbors, this requirement remains elusive and perhaps it's not ultimately possible. i think this committee has recognized that. in fact, in our 2016 report, we acknowledged as much. we acknowledged the expectation that the department in light of this would provide to the congress an aggressive alternative requirements that relied on the abilities achieved to date.

i'm quoting. so we directed to provide a briefing within 45 days of enactment for the improvement of maritime scanning at foreign ports. not so much a question as a comment. i do think that you have a case to make here. there may be elements that you need to develop earlier. we had a report on this from your agency which was very brief and not totally adequate. so there is a history here. i hope you will take this briefing very seriously. i think this subcommittee needs to be assured that in light of this very difficult perhaps impossible statutory requirement that you are filling in the blanks with a risk-based screening program that we can rely on longer term. we put great stock in your filling out that information. >> we do. the secretary has made it very

clear the importance of this. we have a lot of screenings in place, both overseas and here. but it does not meet the requirement of the law. and that's important. and also, of course, the direction through the law of bio metric exit and that's why we've moved very aggressively since we were given the mandate in 2013 to move to a biometric exit process. we have a biographic exit program which is pretty robust but we need biometric exit and i think part of this budget is the request that the office of biometric information be moved to cvp so that if you're going to hold me or the next commissioner accountable for biometric exit, we would have the tools and resources to actually make that happen. >> but my reference is to this prior statutory requirement for screening overseas and this

committee on a bipartisan has been aware of the short and long-term plans look like for the screening of particularly risky cargo coming from overseas. now, preclearance, airline passengers. this has been in some instances a very controversial process involving canada, ireland. in the case of abu dhabi, not so controversial. in terms of convenience to passengers and the cases are pretty strong but we do need to make the case and understand how the department assesses the work done so far and what kind of projections you make into the future. so i wonder here, you may want to submit more for the record but i wonder if you could briefly give us an assessment. how many places is this going on

and what do you think would be desirable in terms of the future reach of this preclearance effort. what kind of a progress report can you give? >> so the discussion with ten airports in nine countries is continuing on. it's very robust. tonight i'll be meeting in new york with a group from a country of seven people flying in from another country to discuss final discussions. i believe that before the end of this calendar year, we'll have several signed agreements with countries for preclearance and then i believe in 2017, preclearance operations will actually be operational in a couple of those locations. for safety, security, benefit to the traveler, for costs to the taxpayer, i don't think with -- and certainly with the support that congress has given on this, i don't think that we can go wrong with pushing our borders out. >> abu dhabi in particular, do

you have any comments on how that has worked and particularly on the security for that arrangement? >> well over 1,000 people who wanted to fly from abu dhabi to the united states, our recommendation to the airline was that if they arrive, they would be deemed inadmissible and the airline then made a decision not to admit them. and that doesn't mean just citizens from uae but that's people that have flown through abu dhabi, to then continue on travel. so from a security standpoint, i think it made sense but i'm very cle pleased that in the current negotiations, all of these locations have american fly carriers that fly into and out of them. >> that's the requirement going forward? >> yes. >> it was not true of abu dhabi at the time. >> right. that seems remarkable, just on the face of it, 1,000, you say?

>> yes. >> do you think those thousands of people otherwise would have come to this country and be dealt with at one of our ports of entry or is there something attracting these people to maybe try their luck? >> we apprehend and deny admissibility every single day and they would have landed in the united states. they would have been deemed inadmissible based upon the information we had. they would have -- the airline would have been required to place them on the next flight back -- the next return back. they would have been held during that -- they would have been incarcerated during that period or maintained in a secure location until getting back on that flight where we escorted them back on the plane and they left the united states. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> dr. harris? >> thank you very much. let me ask you about the oig report on the forward operating

basis which i'm sure you've seen and i understand and they say that your organization responded but it seems it's pretty serious because this is a pretty important operating basis. are you committed to addressing all of the problems they found? >> the first problems and the ones that were certainly most significant involved the quality of the water and we made changes. one of the difficulties with an organization this vast and this widely dispersed is sometimes by the time the information gets to me is what is being done and how many days has this already gone. i've made it clear that the safety and security of our personnel, whether it's where they work is key to that so these forward operating basis, which can be quite helpful and remote, need to be secure and need to be maintained and we

need to work with our staff and gsa to make sure that these locations are better. >> okay. thank you. i appreciate that. you're right. our agents do indeed need to have secure facilities and good facilities where they are, working. with regard to export enforcement, i just have a question, obviously the sanctions that prohibit u.s. exports to iran with the exception of civilian aircraft, what steps are you doing now that there is this enhanced relationship with iran to monitor for illegal exports, to make sure that we're not exporting illegally to iran? >> you know, exports, including ours did not see the same level of scrutiny and review that certainly imports. over the last couple of years we've taken a number of steps to do a much better job to look at what is leaving. there is a program in which

large numbers of exports from well-known manufacturers here in the united states may leave the country and that the manifest of what was leaving the country would not be transmitted until it was already on a ship and already going out. so we're working with industry because we want the manifest in advance before it ever gets on a boat or ever gets the ability to leave and we need to make sure that we're working closely with the intelligence community and others on things that may be exported to a country that could be hostile to us that they never get to that country. >> and one final question, i'm just not sure this is, you know, your jurisdiction but the homeland security sector is supposed to deny anyone studying for nuclear science or nuclear engineering. makes great sense. we don't need to train our

enemies. the law is to remain in effect for the next eight years. my concern is, i have five children, four have been to college and changed their major during college. do we have a safeguard to make sure that iranians don't come here and literally gain access to what i believe is the best education in the world to go back and build weapons against us? how do we safeguard against that? >> dr. harris, it isn't in my -- >> it's probably i.c.e., isn't it? >> or uicis. we could get with your staff. >> i would appreciate that. that's of some concern to me. because people can come here and we don't know their intentions. they'll say they want to be a history major and end up in an engineering school and learn things that come back to bite

us. thank you very much. i yield back. >> mr. chairman, thank you so much. two questions. where are we with the officers? at one time we were delayed because of security background. where are we with that and tell us a little bit about the agricultural staffing issue and tell us where you are on those two issues. >> sure. one, i also would be remiss if i didn't thank you to speaking with our personnel whenever they have their large personnel meetings and talking about professionalism and on and on. it mean as great deal when members of congress spend time with them so that's very helpful. we're about 700 customs and

border protection agents below what the 2,000 that we would have hired. remember, we've had a lot of attrition. in december, we hit the highest number ever of customs and border protection agents on board. so we're making progress with them. that's particularly helpful. we also did not ever have a staffing program or a workload analysis for our agricultural specialist. and quite frankly, after 2003 and the fact that we were put together as a result of that combining in the department of homeland security, it was all security all the time and our agricultural specialists who are the most highly educated by the way of our workforce did not receive, in my estimation, as much support as needed and when you think about the things that could harm this country, from pests and diseases and agriculture, we've worked pretty

hard to try and improve and increase and show the recognition for the important work that they do. but the staffing model will be helpful. >> okay. the sect question has to do wita letter that governor abbott and myself wrote to the secretary. and i see the response and i told the secretary i respectfully disagree. especially, i think the chairman said a while ago that y'all are 12% below the goal for air intradiction officers, is that correct?? >> yes. >> so if there's air crew vacancies and we provided funding, full funding to the national guard -- and again i disagree with the way the secretary had looked at -- he does a great job and i appreciate it. he was looking at it one month in january to -- december to january. when you lack at the longer one,

it's actually 171% increase on kids, 102% on families. regardless of all of that, if we're short, we have vacancies. the national guard got funded. i would ask y'all, with all due respect to the letter i got from the secretary. i would ask y'all to lock at that again one more time. because mr. chairman, i am going to request some language, especially if we fund it that we put that back again. especially if your numbers are correct and they've been confirmed that 12% under the goal. and all we want to do is provide the men and women the support, the air support. i can understand we didn't provide the funding, blame congress. but in this case we did provide the funding. i would ask you to respectfully consider or request again. >> sure. and we would never blame congress. >> and again my last question

again, thank you for all. i wish you the best for the end of this year. i really appreciate your dedication and the men and women that serve along with you. thank you so much. >> thank you very much. >> commissioner, i too want to join my friend from texas in thanking you for your hard work. please convey our appreciation and thanks to all of the members of the u.s. customs and border protection agency. they do a tough job in a tough environment. and as we talk and question, we all know, was all of us have been there. and those that haven't are going to go. they need to know the kind of rough environment that y'all have to work in. and we hope god blesses each and every one of you. thank you. >> thank you. >> we're adjourned.

wednesday a hearing on the bioethics of fetal tissue research with members of the house committee special investigative panel. live conch at 10:00 a.m. eastern. in the afternoon the joint economic committee hears from white house committee of economic advisers chair on the current state of the economy. that's live at 2:30 p.m. eastern. c-span needs your vote. we selected the top five student videos and now you get to select the fan favorite. this week watch the top five student videos and cast your vote online at studentcam.corst.

the fan favorite winner will be announced on march 9th, live on c-span. ♪ interior secretary sally jewell testified before the house natural resources committee on the president's 2017 budget request. she took questions on her department's plan to proposal to repeal oil sharing a lotted to gulf states. this is just over three hours. we're going to get started. this hearing come to order. we're examining the department of interior spending priorities in the fiscal year 2017 budget. any oral opening statements are limited to the chair, the

ranking minority member, the chair and a designee of the ranking minority leader. therefore i ask unanimous consent that any other members opening statements if they wish to have some be included as a part of the hearing record. if you submit nem to the clerk by 5:00 p.m. today eastern time or the close of this hearing within whichever comes first. so without objections it will be so ordered. i also am going to ask for unanimous consent that greg wall don be allowed to participate in today's hearings. seeing no objection it will be so ordered. as we begin this process i sarcastically said the other day that the only thing positive about this budget is it's the last one we're going to see. that is both sarcastic and oversimplification but unfortunately terribly accurate. with a $19 trillion deficit,

this is a $20 billion budget that is basically the same old. it rewards friends, punishes enemies, listen to some, ignores e e 0s. the people that ed need on the cared for or served are not going to be heard in this particular budget. it omits tens of millions of dollars that are going to be use for frivolous lawsuits. these lawsuits together with 200 regulations it issued last year stifle economic development but the benefits of the land, the wildlife, the air, the water resources or the people who live in that area or the people who come to reck rate in those particular areas. the rule like the hydrolic fracturing rule, the rules that redistrict millions from gulf offshore resources toward a flawed climate action plan, withdrawal of 10 million acres for a habitat that is doing poorly on federal land but great

on private land because they know what to do. and a i am also perplexed by the department's double standard for stringently enforcing esa consultation apparently on the epa's claimed power plan rule or when the epa dumps millions of cramp into the river, that's an oops. we'll whitewash the entire thing. last week this committee received subpoenaed documents from the army corps, a partial response from the interior department. the staff will be reviewing those and will be following up awaiting your response. we have a $19 billion backlog that's facing this department yet we want to add more lines. we are undercutting future grazing on federal lands with the sizable increase to grazing fees that in addition to a 25% increase that occurred last year. and rather that informing congress of the ranchest grazing

increase in years, they chose to leak tight an join line news agency. i learned of it when a reporter asked me a question about it. the esa regulations, we have a department budget that does nothing to address the west drought problems when we could be putting 200,000 acres of land into agricultural productions, instead we're diverting more more water. you have a program in there that deals with drought mitigation. those of us in the republican basin are going to get $3.5 million of that, the other 62 we do not. the drought hits all of the west. it's not a blue or red state drought but you wouldn't be able to recognize it by this budget. we deal with the plan that by law had to have consultation and coordination with local government and yet the city has not been consulted. when the county made calls, they

were never returned. but a special interest group panelist that happened to be there, i don't understand, they always pick up my phone when we call. there are some groups that are are openly listened to, some groups are ignored and this budget does that same thing. it has no creative solutions. it will not expand or strengthen the energy portfolio, nothing for catastrophic wile fires, nothing for severe droughts but it gives opportunity for more jobs going overseas, higher taxes and higher fees for the american people. when we go into this part of the process is when i turn it over to my friends on that side of the aisle their job is to defend their budget. it's going to be a difficult job to do. i understand. that's what i had to do in the last two years of the bush administration. when you're in the minority, you get to do that. but your spin is going to be the envy of every las vegas

contortionist. i think it's a blueprint for future partisan bickering and aspects it's not what i could have been. i feel bad about that. i will yield back my and notice the first issue, i have 30 second left. trying to get everyone to ask ms. jewel questions. i will yield to you can start this defend the undefendable. >> thank you very much for this rare opportunity to defend. thank you, secretary jewell for being here. only one person in the room i might add has actually produced a budget for the coming fiscal year and that is secretary jewell. despite announcing they would have a budget by now, house republicans can't seem to agree on a plan. the failure is due to internal bickering and the same republican extremism that caused government shutdowns, debt crisis and resignation of our previous speaker. when it comes to appropriations,

the last time the house passed a stand alone interior bill was 2009 when the house was controlled by the demeanoocrats. the budget request the budget secretary submitted will result in $10 billion of revenue flowing sbo the pockets of american taxpayers. the request includes legislative proposals that if enacted would result in another $4.5 billion in revenue. if congress just got out of the way, enacted this budget request for the department would pay for itself and have more than a billion dollars left over. house republicans have not budget of their ownant can't pass individual appropriation bills. but that doesn't stop them from having loud opinions about the administration's proposal ps as with health care policy, foreign policy, defense policy and even nominees to the supreme court, the president is the adult in the room while the house

republicans criticize and attack all of the administration's work. fail to do your job and criticize those who are doing theirs is hypocritical and irresponsible. i would encourage my colleagues across the aisle rather than spending your five minutes attacking the budget, take your time to exmain your own views on what our spending priorities should be and how you suggest that we pay for them. the budget request would spend $78060 million including $300 million in mandatory spending to mark the 100th anniversary of the national park association. the committee has yet to move on mps sen tenl legislation. this budget includes $2 billion in mandatory funding to respond to the impacts of climate change in at risk coastal communities. this committee has yet to consider legislation related to climate change impact and is not even clear that that the majority of the committee

believes climate change is real. this includes realistic spending proposals to address wildfire and drought, tw of the most devastating problems facing the west. this committee continues to hold partisan hearings during which they blame trees if are the fire and fish for the drought. this budget contemplates the real investments of clean energy. this committee addresses in the old rhetoric of drill baby drill. this calls for meaningful invest until the programs serving the first americans while this committee pursues deals that will destroy native american sites and harm the quality of life in indian country. i expect some of my colleagues will ignore these specifics and spend today railing against the democratic spending in general. to them i offer a reminder, only two presidents have reduced a deficit during their tenure, bill clinton and barack obama. producing a detailed bumt request the entire government is

an enormous task. attacking this bumt without producing an alternative requires none of the above. with that let me yield back. >> thank you. ms. lumus. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you secretary jewell. it's always nice to have here here in dour committee. the department of the interior managing 500 million acres of the land. it's about one-fifth of the whole united states. half of my state, half is managed by the department of the interior. so you manage as much as i'm responsible for representing in that state. blm is the majority of that of course with smaller portions being controlled by the fish and wild life service, national park service. the bureau of ocean energy management governs the waters

generally past three miles offshore, except for the gulf of mexico out to the territorial limit. or it's 1.76 billion acres. i know that's a lot to be responsible for. but in the part that i'm responsible for, which is the state of wyoming, we are officially back in recession with only four other states. and it's because in large part, i would argue, of the policies of the department of the interior, especially with regard to the coal moratorium and the rules on blm lands and oil and gas management. and the rules are putting people out of work. there are railroad locomotives sitting idle in my state for the first time i can ever remember just parked. hundreds of them. in fact, nationwide i asked someone with the union pacific railroad this question and she

told me the union pacific railroad has 150,000 locomotives parked with nothing to haul in the nation right now. that is the extent of the slowdown that agencies such as yours have put on this economy. we are unable to produce the wealth of this country in a way that can emphasize the importance of having clean, reliable redundant energy and concentrate our time on making it even cleaner all the time. now, of course, a lot of that energy comes from land managed by the department of the interior, more than 40% of the coal produced in america is produced on federal lands. of course the vast majority of that is in my state of wyoming. wyoming also produces a large share of the natural gas and oil that's produced from federal lands, along with production in

new mexico and the gulf of mexico. so our energy industry is facing huge challenges right now. so you can expect my questioning to focus on how the department of the interior intends to respond to this situation, the recession, the lack of jobs, our inability to effectively produce the wealth this nation holds. also i'm interested in hearing about management of the national park system for the centennial and updates of management of wildlife and i look forward to your testimony, secretary. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> thank you. i appreciate that. we'll turn now to mr. sablom. >> thank you very much mr. chairman and secretary, welcome. thank you for your service. many of the questions i have for

secretary jewell are local in nature. i'm interested in the programs that the department funds. but there are two concerns that i have that are larger. and so let me just make that my focus right now and i'll trying to be brief. the relationship between the united states and the republic of pa low is based on the administration of ronald reagan. today with the expansion of china, reagan's foresight that palau would be an adversary. palau and the island of guam are links in a chain of violence that form a strategic perimeter to the east of china. china certainly understands how important islands can be. right now china is actually creating islands where none existed before. so i'm glad to see the department of interior with a proposal to submit their

relationship between the united states and the island nation of palau. the agreement negotiated in 2010 to extend the contract for 15 dwreers. the department is positive for that agreement and says legislation will be sent up to congress to make it happen. i think we do need to approve that compact in this with the aggressive assistance of this administration. in fact i have legislation already reduced and referred to this committee for that purpose. mr. chairman, with all due respect, i hope we can find time to schedule the hearing on hr 4531, because we need to get on the strong defensive nation created by president reagan, china is not sitting back doing nothing and neither should we. on the other issue, last thursday this committee held a hearing featuring a representative of the treasury department on the obama

administration's debt crisis. it was the action taken by this committee since the speaker's public announcement instructing the house committee jurisdiction to come up with a responsible solution to the physical, demographic crisis in puerto rico by march 31st, 2016. on february 4 committee ranking member john connors wrote the judiciary committee chairman to address this fiscal crisis. while i still await your response, time is fast running out if we're to meet the speaker's deadline. it could be a humanitarian crisis on the island of puerto rico. thank you, mr. chairman, and i yield back my time. >> thank you. with the close of the opening statements we are now being able to hear testimony from the

secretary of the department of interior, nz sally jewell accompanied by deputy secretary connor, i believe and the secretary of policy management and budget, ms. sarri. we thank you for coming here, taking your time to be with us. our entire written testimony appears in the record. now we would like to turn to you to an oral presentation. you know how to lights work. the time is yours. thank you for being here. >> chairman bishop, ranking member and members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to discuss the department's fiscal '17 budget request. i would like to take a moment to mention the incident at the wile life refuge. the fbi with support of state and local law enforcement ended the occupation as quickly as safely as possible after more than 40 days. it was incredibly disrupp ty and distressing for our employees, their families and the community. i'm proud of our d.o.i. law

enforcement personnel who supported the response and helped keep our employees safe. we continue to cooperate with doj, the fbi and others as the investigations move forward and we remain committed to working with local communities on the management of public lands. interior's fiscal '17 budget ask is $13.4 billion. half a percent above the 2016 enacted level. it builds on the successes we're achieving through partnerships, the applications 0 science and innovation and balanced stewardship. it gives us the tools to help communities strengthen during climate change, secure clean and sustainable water, promote a balanced approach to safe and responsible energy development and expand opportunities for native american communities. these areas are core to our mission and play a vital roll in job creation and economic growth. the budget invests in your public lands providing $5

billion to support operation of our national parks, historic and cultural sites, wildlife refuges and habitat and sustained yield on our lands. the western sage step and the arctic and proposes ten year $2 billion coastal climate program to support at-risk coastal states, including funding for communities in alaska to prepare for and adapt to climate change. as the national park service begins its second century, the budget provides $3 billion and includes a proposal for funding. i calls for full and permanent funding of the land and water conservation fund and extends the expired authority for the preservation funds. it reflects the administration's strategy to budget for catastrophic wildfires. and in response to drought challenges across the west, it

continue to safeguard sustainable water supplies. we continue to engage the next generation of american to play, learn, serve and work outdoors with $103 million for youth engagement. this is mentoring opportunities, urban community partnerships with, scholarships and job training for youth and work opportunities in our bureaus. there's $20 million for every kid in the park initiative which introduces america's fourth grauders to their land, providing transportation support for low income students. we continue to promote a balanced approach to safe and responsible energy development that maximizes a fair return to talks pa taxpayers. nearly $100 million for renewable energy development and

infratruck chuf. offshore this supports the environmental enforcement with funding to strengthen responsiveness, overnight and safety of gas development. $20 million supports blm's development, modernize and streamline permitting and strengthen inspection capacity. we're expanding educational and job opportunities for native american communities with $3 billion for inian affairs, a 5% increase, to support native youth education, alaska families, public safety and building resilience to climate change. the president's budget calls for a $1 billion investment in indian education and $278 million to fully fund contract support costs, a cornerstone of tribal self determination. the budget supports or commitment to resolve indian water rightings settlements and support water management with $215 million, a $500 million

increase. cybersecurity controls across the areas, $150 million for natural has cards at the ggis. funding will continue development of a critical new satellite expected to launch in 2021. it this is a smart budget to strengthen partnership to balance the needs for today with opportunities for future generations. thanks. i'm happy to take questions. >> thank you. thank you very much. we'll now turn to the members for questions. i would remind them we have five minutes for questions and also one other thing. secretary is the on one who's down there answering all of the questions. we get a chance to wait, gear up for it and go on the offensive. but i want you to be respectful of the time she has. give her enough time left to answer the question or don't ask it in the first place. because i want to go through everyone, i'm going to cut it

off at five minutes. we've got to get everyone through here. please be respectful of that. >> mr. chairman, we will cut our questions short as long as she cuts her answers short. >> all right. you can argue that as time goes on. i'm only concerned about the total time. as soon as it goes to zero, that's it. unlike other traditions, i'm going to start off with the first questions if i could. and i'll cut myself off at five as well. i noted earlier that we received documents subpoenaed from the gold king mine disaster. as we review the documents, we're going to wait your full response. when you testified last december you said the king mine disaster was an accident, specifically you stated we do not see any deliberate attempt to breach a mine. before we go into that do you want to amend that statement or retract it it all. >> i completely agree with it.

it was an accident. >> i want you to look at the e-mail dated on august 7th, 2015. that's two days after the spill. the e-mail was sent by the blm's abandoned mine lead in colorado who is working on the project. they sent the e-mail to senior leadership within the blm colorado state staff. he wrote the e-mail after talking to the epa's on-scene coordinat coordinator. your employee talk to the epa in charge and e-mails all senior leadership at blm and basely says the epa was deliberately removing a small portion of the plug to relieve pressure in the mine when the blowout occurred. there was nothing intention with a their actions of breeching the mind. they fully intended to pull it out and breach it. it was a major mistake but it was done on purpose. once again do you want to do anything about that before i go on? >> the epa work was preparation,

as i testified when i was before the committee and i stand behind the testimony and the conclusions of the reclamation study. >> which don't go with this document or any of the others. one of the most frustrating parts, you gave us 6,000 pages, much of it redacted information, but this particular document we only got on the day we actually submitted the report from this committee that we had to go out and ferret out ourselves. this is a key e-mail that should have been there as part of the information that was given to us. one of the reasons we had to subpoena more. this we should have had well wfr the first hearing that we ever had. this should have sbn part of the information that was given u to us and it was not. your except sat on it past the december hearing until we actually gave it out. that's if first day we received this document is the date we submitted our report. that's un acceptable. in the last five years your

department said that 99% of the department's acquisitions have been inholdings. i doubt that but what i would really like to know is what sur pen taj of the total acquisitions are using the monies that actually abut federal lands on at least a majority of the borders which should be a definition of inholdings. what percentage of that comes from the lwcf funds. >> i don't have that percentage. >> as we've mentioned 9% of the property are in holding, blm and fish and wildlife refuge boundaries. >> that's not what i'm asking. we have a different definition of inholdings. how many are abutted by federal lands on a majority of their sides? >> that's something we'll have to get back to you on. >> i wish you would. anything else we're spinning it again in something else. what percentage of land easements required by lwcf money

were owned by a land trust that had land or land in an easement category. >> again, that's something that we'll have to get back to you on. it is very valid often to protect these lands for nonprofit organizations or other stakeholder to acquire those as we wait on funding. to help with the acquisition. >> but that doesn't help us in our efforts to try to figure out what our policy ought to be. if the definition of what a inholding is, and it is from what you're saying to what reality is then we have a problem. i would like to know how many are going to land trust before we buy it and how can we guarantee recreational activities on the lands once you get hold of them. let me say one last thing. in every national moniment you've had somebody in the local delegation dumb enough to support it. if you were doing something in beer's ears, i want it very

clear, there is nobody in the utah delegation, the senate or the house who supports it, no one in the state administration who supports it. you can't find a state legislature who has that area who supports it. even though the only elected navajo we have is in that particular county and she's a posed to it. the charnts that live in that area are opposed to it. i'm going to say there's going to be a different standard. if there es ooh something done in utah you don't have the same kind of local support you do -- i'm done. you're recognized. >> thank you very much. let me start off, madam secretary, with an easy question. the newspapers recently reported that the illegal occupation of the national wile life refuge in oregon has cost taxpayers $3.3

million in state and federal law enforcement expenditures. we've not seen an official estimate, i understand that the cost will be significant, potentially in the tens of millions of dollars once restoration of damage is complete. when can we expect a full estimate of the costs, madam secretary, and what can congress do to ensure that the lawbreakers, not the taxpayers bear these costs? >> thank you. >> that was an easy question. >> the answer is we're only now getting sbak into the refuge after the criminal sweep has been completed by the fbi. so i don't actually have a number for you or a time frame but's something that we're estimating right now. it's cost a significant amount of money. we don't know the damage yet to the cultural resources or the natural resources. >> thank you. the gold mine, madam secretary, is the environmental protection

agency in the department of the interior? >> no, sir, it's not. >> okay. some of the majority seem to be a little confused about that when you were here a few months ago. since epa is not in the interior department, do you have any authority to compel documents from them? >> no, sir, i don't. >> and as you're aware, epa was working at the gold mine when they released 3 million gallons of wastewater. this is nothing compared to the 330 gallons of that the mines in the area leak every year which is what epa was trying to fix. but it's something worth trying to understand. to my knowledge is there anyone investigating what happened at the gold mine that does have the authority to compel documents from them? >> i believe that the epa's own inspector general is doing an assessment of the decisions made by the epa within that. but the limitation of our review was strictly technical in nature

and that us with done by the bureau of reclamation. >> okay. if one addressed climate change will continue to make the american west drier and hotter. can you discuss the steps the department is taking to address the effects of climate change as it relates to the west water supplies in. >> i'm going to ask my colleague to take that question. >> thank you for the question, congressman. we're taking action on a number of different levels with trying to build resiliency in our water system to address ongoing droughts as well as climate change for the long term. we're investing significant dollars in this budget. and in previous years in the water smart program, through the water smart program we've developed conservation actions, invested in water refuse opportunities and overall have created or otherwise conserved almost 1 million acre feet feat

oef the last seven years. in addition to that we continue to work with many different communities to identify integrated plans to look forward and evaluate supply and demand and balance and individual river bayens work with stakeholders for plans lond term from a balanced standpoint, looking at the environmental needs. those are just a samp ling of the activities. we're just looking at this across the board from a water supply environmental storage and conservation perspective. >> thank you. land and water conservation fund, an important tool from your perspective. what do we need to ensure that remains a successful tool well into the future? >> i don't think there's very many pieces of legislation that have been as successful and

important to the american people as the land and water conservation fund. over 40,000 projects every county in america, local ball field to inholdings like some were trying to put together in the park right now that the con man is well aware. this are willing sellers, a desire of people to have easements for sportsmans access for fishing and hunting. lwcf has been a critical point. >> activities act's designations of monuments, whether it's barriers, grand canyon, other areas being talked about. the prerogative with the president and i would hope that that doesn't slow down at all. >> ms. lamas. >> thank you, mr. chairman. madam secretary, regarding the onrr's proposed coal value

ration rule making, the blm's evaluation of the royalty rate increases, the coal leasing moratorium that was initiated by your agency. you're destroying my state's economy and i'm not exaggerating. wyoming has the smallest population in the nation by far. and when half of our state is controlled by the department of the interior and the policies that you have initiated with regard to jacking up coal, oil, gas royalties and proposed to increase them at a time when coal companies are going bankrupt, railroad workers are being laid off, coal miners are being laid off. there are coal miners jobs declining every month in 2015. and the year just passed. there were coal mine jobs lost

every single month. in the face of the desire of this administration to literally destroy coal, oil and gas, how is it consistent with getting a fair return on the value of federal lands? because no leasing means no financial return. that's my first question. >> congresswoman, wyoming is blessed with many natural resources. they also are tied to worldwide commodity prices. oil, gas and coal are tied to commodity prices. you also have a situation in the case of coal where natural gas has become a competitor to coal for electricity generation. there's no question that coal has been an important part of our energy past and will continue to be an important part of the energy future. but the prices of coal and how

it interplays with natural gas and other sources of energy are based on worldwide commodity charges. there is a 20% supply of coal under lease currently on public lands right now. we're taking a look at a coal program that thaz not been looked at for many, many years. we're putting a pause until -- >> and madam secretary, i am going to interrupt you because that pause does not allow companies to plan. and there is no limits on how long these programs is going to exist. why did you let the royalty policies charter lapse in 2014? >> i'm not familiar with that. >> the royal policy committee was specifically tasked with providing advice to you on royalty management issues and other mineral related policies. and i know because i used to sit on that committee. and i don't think the committee

met during the entirety op president obama's administration. and these listenings sessions that were held around the country, 6 blm listening sessions, were -- if you would have listened to what was said in the listening sessions, you never would have put the moratorium on coal in the first place. so the policies of this administration are absolutely geared towards killing coal, limiting oil and gas production on federal lands, diminishing the revenues available from those lands which hurts my state more than any other state. and the manner in which this administration has treated my state is absolutely deplorable. i love yellow stone national park, i love grand teton national park, devil's power, i

louf right next to the bridger national forest. i love those spaces. that's only part of our state. the things that are being done at the national parks are fabulous, incredible. and i applaud you. but what's happening elsewhere in my state, which is the vast majority of my state is destructive policies that are destroying my state. families, jobs, ability to earn an income. our population will decline again as a result of the department of interior policies. i want to tell you i'm grossry offended by what this administration has done to my state. mr. chairman, i yelled back. >> mr. chairman may i have a quick response? >> you've got nine seconds. no, you don't. i'll come back. >> not much time left. >> we'll come back. actually be careful. your firm may be an inholding.

you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i have -- first, madam secretary, it is good to see you again and i'm sorry i was unable to be at the igia meeting. i was in the pacific. i appreciate this year's budget request. it maintains compact inpact discretionary funding of $3 million in this year's budget proposal. with budget constraints mandatory funding for compact inpact is only a fraction, approximately one-fifth of what gsao estimates the jurisdictions need for providing jurisdictional services for the migrants. i understand that interior's budget proposal does not include a request for palau compact assistance. instead you're anticipating passage of the administration's legislative proposal which includes proper rations through

2024. palau is an important pacific ally and i'm concerned about any lapse in assistance. should there be a lapse, how does interior plan on continuing assistance. can you comment on the impact that not passing the palau contract? >> i completely agree with you about the importance of palau and the importance of a long term fix rather than a discretionary year by year portion of our obligation to palau. we believe we need to step up and provide the full amount. we did have a recommendation to do that with a fund used for other purposes. we would welcome other opportunities to work on a permanent solution. i would say if we are not able to secure that, we're going to have to provide the annual amounts. palau is strategically important and been a very important ally of the united states since world

war ii. >> i certainly hope that, you know, we'll be able to continue assistance if it doesn't come through on the administrator's proposal. secretary, i appreciate oia's focus on the coral reef management and evasive species control. i understand that there is an overwhelming need for funding from the technical assistance grant program or t.a.p. could you explain how the request of $21 million for t. t.a.p. measures up to the grant po poles that oia receives annually. >> the grant program is a small fraction of the money that we receive. having been to guam and spent a lot of time with the representatives, it's much much smaller than the identified need that we've seen in all of these

places. >> and secretary, as you know, we have a problem with invasive species like the brown tree snake and coconut rhinoceros beetle. in developing the biosecurity plan for micronia in hawaii, there's a plan for the evasive species. elaborate on how the interior budget request addresses interior's role in implementing or bp's recommendations, in particular how does the budget address the challenges of evasive species? >> i'm going to ask kris sarri to respond. >> it's an extraordinary threat to the natural eco-schls and to the economy. one of the best thing can can do is early detection and rapid response when an evasive species

is spreading. there's also investments in u.s. gs to look at rapidly emerging evasive spee shoois shees and try to help communities with that. >> i have a minute left. could you discuss how oia's budget request this year internally addresses some of the needed measures, such as a unified metric across jurisdictions that will more accurately represent compact inpact costs? >> i can say that we, as you know we've put one stop centers in both guam and hawaii to try to streamline the process of compact impact. i'll have to look into specifically the latter part of your question. we've got a small amount, $30 million in the budget. the impact on guam, $144 million a year in unreimbursed costs, in hawaii $163 million a year.

it pails in comparison. we'll get back with you on the specific question. >> i yield back. >> thank you. mr. young. >> thankfully this is the last time we have ms. jewel before us. ms. jewel you say you want to increase your budget 1% is that correct?? >> it's a half a percent, sir. >> what was the enacted budget of '16? >> kris, do you have the total budget for '16? >> excuse me, it's 13.3. >> no it was $18.3 billion. >> we're talking about the discretionary. >> it's what was enacted. when you're saying it's 1% yb you actually have 11% increase, $2 billion over last year's budget requested by this administration. the other thing, the fish and wildlife propose rules in the state of alaska that take away our authority to manage fish and game. and your agencies assert the actions allowed by the natural

wildlife refuge system improvement act. i'm an original sponsor of the act and i know the law, taking priority to any conflicts regarding refugees in alaska. now why is fish and wildlife doing this? >> well, sir -- >> you want us to go to court? >> the alaska department of fish and game manages wildlife. the fish and wildlife service and the park service also have charged with managing wildlife consistent with its rules. >> it's very clear. read the law and you have not done that. the law makes it very clear the state of alaska has authority to manage fish and game on the represerves and on refuges nap's the law. i suggest you get your legal beagle we'll go to court. i already pass anytime the house to take away that authority. you're going against the act of

this congress. i suggest respectfully you do that. you don't mess with the state by regulation. of course this administration does. taking away a right of the congress that passed it for the state. second thing, i'd like to know, we have an area called acec, special management areas designated by the blam to protect culture and scientific values. fish and wildlife resources our natural process of systems. and three of them popped up in the state. two are in the 40-mile mining district. 700,000 acres set aside with restriction against mining. the other bun is in front of the gas line quarter so the mine can be developed. where did those restrictions come and what were they based on? >> the acee stands for areas of critical concern.

>> what were they based on? >> based on an assessment -- >> do you have the assessment before you or are you aware of it? >> i do not have the assessment before me. >> both of these areas are minutely rich. one is a gold mine that needs a gas line and all of tud sit pops up, ladies and gentlemen so we can't get the gas to the mine. what's the reason? >> i'm sorry, sir? >> what was the reason? >> the blm is updating its resource management plan -- >> is it the fish and wildlife? >> i believe the resource management plan you're talking about in the 40-mile situation is -- >> i'm talking about the mine right now. >> i'm sorry, i don't know. >> you don't know. >> i'm happy to get back to you for the record. >> and yet you're secretary. when you said i don't how many, 175 thousand acres habitat for polar bears. did you consult with the native group that's up there?

>> the work on the polar bears was largely done at the end of the prior administration and there was -- >> no. you set this land aside recently. habitat. fish anwildlife did it. was there any consul station with the native groups along the coast. plain? sfl are you talking about in the natural refuge, sir? >> you put the polar bear as habitat, set aside 175,000 acres of habitat for the polar bear. was there any consultation with the native organizations up there? >> the fish and wildlife -- >> do you have any consultation? did you have any consultation? >> it's based on science and work with people in the -- >> that's not my question, madam secretary. did you consult with the people directly affected and they have the right to take the bears yet they cannot do it under your recommendation of fish and wildlife. >> the office is located --

>> they did not consult with the people. that's an example of this administration. >> mr. costa. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman and the ranking member. i have some issues with regards to both the national parks service and the bureau of land management. but i'll confine those and submit those later. most of my focus will be on the devastating drought that has impacted the west in california and i suspect the undersecretary will be the default to answer the questions that i have. clearly this is impacted, as we all know, farm communities, farm workers, farmers. last year over 600,000 acre that went unplant. the current drought demonstrated a devastating impact the combination of five dry years have had, clearly the climate is continuing to change. but the regulatory impact combined with those five dry

years has been, i think, a double whammy in terms of the impact to people. during the five-year drought, let me give you a comparative analogy. the central valley project agricultural water supply were 100%, 100%, 50%, 25%, 25%. in the 20 years since that drought, regulations have been proposed rededicating water supplies to ore purposes were and limiting operational capacity in the central valley project. while this effort has focused on readdressing the use of the water, no effort or little or none has been used to invasive species or predator fish which was in an earlier subcommittee hearing last week testified to be a significant cause of a decline in the fisheries. the result has been a stark

review -- when we recently look at the central valley project and the surface allocations begin in the ninth wettest year on record, which was 2011, your allocations in a comparative analogies from the late '80s and '90s to 2011 were 80% allocation, 40% the following year in 2012, 20% in 2013, 078% in 2014, 0% in 2015 and likely an expected zero allocation this year as well. and it is that devastation combined with five continuous dry years plus this regulatory scheme that has been so devastating to the people i represent. it seems clear that the regulatory reform is essential to providing the project the ability to meet contractual obligations. can explain to me that even why

in years like 2011, the ninth wettest year in our historical record the central valley project was only capable of providing 80% of its krot chul obligation? >> i can provide a general yof view as to why i think that happened in 20 -- we've basically been in drought for the last eight years. >> e all get that. >> in the central valley of california. we were in drought halfway through 2010 and -- or mostly until about 2011. >> well, yeah. >> the rains and precipitation came late in the year which is why the allocation was late. >> i respect all of your good work but i don't have a lot of time. for 20 years we've had an increasingly layer of regulatory requirements that are e deuced the water supply from 90% to 40%. that's just the bottom line. i guess i would feel better about it at the same time the water reliability had significantly decreased that we

were increasing the populations of listed species that have declined and are at the lowest level that have been recorded. i'm talking about the native species. it's very clear that the current regulatory controls are not achieving their intended purpose for species recovery. that's just the facts. do you believe that in fiscal year 2017 your budget provides the agencies under your jurisdiction the necessary tools to implement measures that will result in goals of increased water reliability for californians and species recovery? >> i think we are investing in both areas of water supply reliability as well as species recovery. the drought has taken a devastating impact not just on the water supply but also with respect to fish and wildlife populations too. there are metrics that have been -- that fisheries provided that indicate in the first few years of the biological opinions for the salmon species that they

were doing better. the preplacement rate was inproving. >> i've got ten seconds la left. what do you think the alloy occasions is going to be this year? >> at this point, yprobably a zero from where we're at right now. >> did you say zero? >> zero. >> ooh i'll submit my other questions. thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. lamborn. >> thank you being here. in that order you note that there have been two previous moratoriums on coal lease sales that were in response to legislative action by congress that the enactment of nepa and the fiscal year 1984 interior appropriations act. but in your order you do generally cite skrars existing statutes but there has not been specific legislation that would

offer a similar moratorium today. what is the specific legal justification for your order? >> we will provide a solicitors opinion if that's if that's hel. we went through this in detail, looked at the historic record, looked at what had been done in the prior two times there had been a review of the coal program under reagan and nixon and applies the same tools -- >> without the direction from congress in this case. >> we followed the lead of what congress did last time -- >> which we didn't do this time. >> we're doing a pause on the program because it has not had a review in 30 years, sir. >> but congress didn't ask for this. >> no, but we did listening sessions around the country. we did listen, contrary to what was heard before and we felt -- >> this will be sorted out in the courts. changing subject, according to energy information

administration, marketed natural gas production has increased by 35% from 2005 to 2013. everyone knows it's increasing. but at the same time, epa data shows methane emissions have been decreasing. in light of that, and in light of the fact that the epa is continuing efforts to reduce methane emissions from industry sources, why has blm jumped into this and is promulgating its own methane regulations, which sometimes overlaps with epa rules? >> the blm oversees the oil and gas activity on federal and tribal lands only. it's a different authority than the epa. it is our responsibility to both collect revenues on behalf of all american people, and when methane is vented or flared, no royalty is paid to the american people on that, and second, to do energy development in a safe and responsible way, which means

environmental responsible. so our venting and flaring rules, which we've done in consultations with states, including your own, colorado, have been to bring those into alignment and recognize that venting and flaring natural gas is not getting taxpayers or tribes royalties they deserve while also wasting valuable energy that's impacting the environment. >> there are those who are saying that the blm proposed regulations overlap and even conflict with epa. in light of that, are you open to extending the comment period so that people can talk about the conflicts that are being caused by two agencies? it looks like they haven't consulted with each other. >> we've been consulting consistently with the epa throughout this process. in cases, we'll allow an extension. in other cases, we believe there's been adequate time. i'll have to look specifically

at that. we always entertain that, but if comment period has closed, we take them throughout the process. we are intending to keep the venting and flaring efforts on track and believe there's been sufficient time to comment and i can reassure you we have been consulting with the epa throughout to make sure we're not in conflict. >> i would ask you to extend that period. now, because the blm venting and flaring rule impose new cost on federal oil and gas production, that's going to drive out marginal plays. it will drive out small players who don't have the resources to retro fit new techniques and equipment. isn't this counterproductive to the obama administration's policies? there's a war on coal, and that means a shift to natural gas, but this reduces natural gas, so isn't that counterproductive.

>> first of all, let me say, there is no war on coal. those are your words. second, i don't think it's counterproductive. i don't think it's okay to vent and flare natural gas into the atmosphere without efforts to collect it. that's a resource that belongs to all americans, to go up in smoke, or up into the atmosphere. we believe it should be collected. it does cost money. i'm sure there's also money to be gained from the production of this oil -- from the natural gas associated with oil. >> thank you. >> mr. splom? >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. madam secretary, i want to first thank you for your continuing commitment to the expiration of the potential geothermal energy, particularly on the island of saipan. let me ask you, i have some other questions that i probably ask for response, but for now,

the close-up program brings -- to wash each year, to learn how their government works, actually a government, they don't have direct participation on. we don't vote for president. their delegate doesn't have a vote, but it's a valuable use of federal grant funds. in fact, several people -- several of my colleagues in the northern mariana congressional office got interested in government. your office recognizes close up is a program that is, quote, necessary on an ongoing basis for the insular areas and because there was no other source of funds in the federal budget, end quote. that's a quote from the oa budget. and close up had a specific line item of $1.1 million in your fiscal year '16 proposal. but for fiscal year '17, they've

dropped any reference to close up. and i'm not sure what to make of that, so it's troubling. so i would like to receive today, madam secretary, that even though there's no specific mention in your budget documents, the office of insular affairs will continue to use technical assistance funds to report close up at the level that the program needs and i can speak for my colleagues that the representative from american samoa, guam, the u.s. virgin islands and the northern mariana, has wrote to your assistant secretary asking for that commitment. we've got no response. so i'm going to ask you today. >> i believe we have a million dollars in the budget for the close-up program. but i'll have to check to provide more specifics. >> because she has not responded to a letter. if she had responded, i wouldn't be asking. >> okay. >> thank you.

madam secretary, there's a special resource study to see if it will be feasible to have a national park there. there's something i worked since my very first year in congress. i would like to hear from you that the study has started, a schedule and that you have them in your fiscal year '17 proposal to keep the study moving forward and on schedule. >> and i don't have an answer to that either, i'm sorry. i'll have to look into that specifically for rot. whether it's specifically in the budget or contained within the national parks broadly. so we'll get back to you. >> okay, i have very little time left. we have in the northern mariana memorial park, dedicated to the war on saipan. so we recently had a devastating typhoon last august. electricity and water services are restored.

schools are in session. life is really getting back to normal. i have been on two visits and i am hearing from constituents, however, that the american memorial park which the park service manages, has been slow to clean up debris, repair damage and get the park fully open to the public. so i would like to ask, is it a money issue? is it because the park is supervised from guam, and that means an extra layer of decision-making? what can we do to speed things up, madam secretary? >> we'll follow up with the park service directly. we are constrained for resources, but i haven't -- i was not aware of that until you just brought it up. >> thank you. thank you. and again, finally, i guess -- well, not finally. the igia met left week, i was traveling and not able to attend. i think the white house led

response is great, but i'm concerned about results. i have never seen a report on what the outcome of this igia meetings has been. are the problems the island governors raised being addressed? are the governors satisfied with the results? is the igia process working? i don't know. so i would like to ask if your office could provide me with a respect on the problems the governors have raised at igia over the last seven years and what the outcomes have been, have we got them resolved? would that be possible, madam secretary? >> i'll be happy to ask insular affairs to do that. i was at the last meeting and i believe we're making progress on the areas that were raised. >> i'm out of time, but thank you. >> mr. fleming. >> thank you, mr. chairman. under 131-32, no agency should promulgate any regulation that has federalism implications and

is not required by statute unless the agency in a separately identified portion of the preamble to the regulation, as it is to be issued in the federal register, provides to the director of the omb, a federalism summary impact statement. madam secretary, yes or no, did the blm prepare a federalism assessment for the hydraulic fracturing rule? >> i believe we followed all of the appropriate regulatory -- >> i believe we followed all of the -- >> we seem to have this problem each time we speak. did you or did you not do this? >> i'm sure we followed all of the appropriate rules associated with it -- >> well, apparently you didn't, because it didn't happen. blm believes there will be no financial impacts to states as a result of this rule. that came from your department. well, it appears that your agency was quite wrong in this assessment. several states sued the department of the interior,

alleging that irreparable harm from this regulation will occur. and as you know, a federal judge has now found that there exists, a quote, incredible threat, end quote of irreparable harm in the way of lost revenue. this finding was on the basis of the four states claiming in their briefs and arguments that there would be lost revenue. north dakota specified an estimate of loss of revenue totaling over $300 million per year. secretary jewell, in light of this state's statements, do you believe your agency was correct in not providing a federalism assessment? >> sir, because this is a matter of litigation, i don't think it's appropriate for me to comment. >> well, i have to say, the american people are so angry at washington and they have a right to be. i mean, this is absurd. you pass regulations without laws coming through congress. you just simply roll them out,

they have negative impacts on states at a very critical time in history when it comes to the economies of our states, and you're not even willing to comment on the actions that you take. i just see that as very sad. but let me change -- >> i stand behind the need for fracking regulations. >> in the time that i have, i have another question. this goes to the national oceans policy and i'll quote from it as well. the order shall prepare and make publicly available an annual report, including a previce description of actions taken by the agency. now president obama signed the executive order 13547 july 2010 to create the national ocean policy. what steps has the department of interior and its agencies taken to implement the national ocean policy? >> the intention of the national ocean policy was to facilitate interagency coordination on cost-cutting ocean issues and also to work closely with

states. so it's something that we actually integrate into our work whether we're talking about science or looking at -- >> okay, but what i'm specifically wanting to know is about this annual report. have you been providing this annual report? >> that's something that i would actually have to talk to the council on environmental quality about, as they're the lead quality on this for the administration. >> i can give you the answer right here, no you have not done any reports, even though it's required. but what's interesting is this. in the order, it says, it shall be applicable with international law, such as that reflected in the law of the sea convention. are we a party to that convention, that treaty? >> no, we're not a party to it. >> okay, then why is it that the administration fails to comply with laws that have been active, but intends to comply with laws that have not been agreed to?

again, the american people are tremendously angry at washington, because we have a president and those who work for the president who insist on creating their own laws and not complying with the laws of the land. even though we all take the oath to faithfully execute all the laws of the land. so with that, i'll yield back. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you secretary jewell for appearing before the committee today and for your service at the department of the interior. i for one appreciate your work on behalf of the multi use mandate, which is inherent in the department of interior's management of federal lands, and the department's critical role in protecting these lands for future generations. this is obviously not without its challenges as we're hearing today, but it is important that we keep in mind that these lands belong to all americans, that they're part of our national heritage, and that we have to keep this in mind as many

difficult decisions are being made. i want to focus on the national parks and i want to special thank you for coming to visit my district this past fall as part of my river day. i know that i'm not the only member of congress where you've made a point to come out and see the remarkable national parks that so many of us are home to. and one of the real highlights of that visit was the opportunity to hand out and every kid in the park pass to local fourth graders. some of them had come from a nearby city where there wasn't a resident national park. not all of us have the opportunity and i don't think any of them had ever been to a national park, so i think it's such an important initiative that you're taking, especially as you seek to engage diverse populations for the future. so important i think to the long-term health and -- not viability, but understanding of the important role that our national parks play in

protecting our great heritage. in that vein, i see great numbers in recreational use of our national parks and i want to give you a chance to simply highlight that and it was great to hear congresswoman lucas speak so highly of the national parks in her district as well. >> thank you for the comments and appreciation for the national parks. we had record visitation last year. 307 million visitors to the national parks. this is the centennial year, 2016. i'm quite confident we'll see an increase on that number. it drives tremendous revenues to local economies, billions of dollars. the outdoor recreation industry estimates in total $646 billion. a big chunk of that through national parks. chris, you have the specific numbers for our latest national park study. we'll provide that to you as opposed to scrambling through the paperwork here. but as you know from the park in your state, as the chairman

knows from national parks in utah, and our other national parks, these are big drivers of revenue and tourism and jobs across our country. >> i actually have the numbers in front of me. in 2015 alone, the national park service confirmed 302.7 million visits, which was an increase of 292.8 million visits. i wish we could get more of those visits. 11 parks had more than five million recreations visits in 2015 and overnight stays were up over 2014. so i think obviously a broad recognition across this country of just the unique opportunities that our national parks present. but yet despite widespread public support for the national park service, its budget has been decreasing. in the past ten years, the park

service has had its budget decrease by 22%, compromising its ability to ensure the long-term protection of this great heritage. in my own district, lowell national historical park has had a 15% reduction in staff from 2010 to 2015 and a 22% reduction in the park's base budget. similarly at minute man national park, which commemorates the beginnings of the american revolution. there's been a 27% decrease in staff time, which is so important to fulfilling the mission of the park and an 8% reduction in the base budget. so despite all that, how you all are doing a remarkable job and i think the visitation numbers reflect that. with that, i yield back the balance of my time. >> miss mcclintock. >> thank you, mr. chairman. in the 1970s congress passed laws such as neepa and esa that

have been abused to drastically affect our ability to manage our forests. we've seen a decline in timber harvested and an increase in the acreage destroyed by catastrophic wildfire in the same period, which is proving that excess timber will come out of the forest one way or another. it's carried out or it's burned out, but it comes out. trees that once had room to grow, now fight for their lives against other trees trying to occupy the same ground, making them susceptible to disease and catastrophic fire. after 40 years of laws that promise to improve our forest environment, i think we're entitled to ask, how are our forests doing environmentally these days? >> we welcome the bipartisan recommendations on how we affix budget for fires and budget for

healthy forests, fuels remova removals -- >> you're not answering the question. would you say the environmental health of our forests has improved or deteriorated over the past decade? >> i would say it's deteriorated because we haven't been able to do the work. >> we need to look at the policies that are causing that deterioration. problems such as water smart at enormous expense have conserved a million acre feed of water over the last seven years. yet in the last seven weeks, in the sacramento delta, we have lost a half a million acre feed of water to the pacific ocean due to the -- the water powers committee was told none of that water was used for any other purpose than delta smelt releases. it was all water that went to the ocean. what moral authority has the government to demand draconian

conservation measures from citizens when their own government thinks nothing of squandering water on a massive scale, to adjust water temperatures for the fishes was done last year, or in this case, to save one delta smelt. [ inaudible ] -- costs us a half a million acre feed of water because one delta smelt was caught in the pumps and you don't call that draconian. do you understand how that sounds to the american people? or the people in my region who have stretched every drop of water in the homes, have watched their lawns die, have lost their prized gardens, all in the interest of conversation and then are watching this kind of squandering and you don't even call that draconian? i would call it -- >> conversation measures through

o our water program are not draconian. we have restrictions in place because of the status of the endangered species. having said that, we are working as best we can -- >> we just received testimony that the endangered species are declined despite all these policies. so they're not working, but causing enormous economic harm in the west. let me get to the question of our national parks. tourists don't go where they're not welcome. the number of overnight stays at the national parks has declined dramatically. yosemite in my district has just changed management. this is the first day of new management and they just announced they're banning bottled water from sale anywhere in the park. how does this encourage americans to enjoy our national parks, when you're systematically removing the amenities that makes their stays pleasant? >> we certainly have no intention of removing amenities

to make stays pleasant. i would say garbage has been a huge problem for us in parks and bottles in particular -- >> and yet there are bans and replacing the bottled water with boxed soda. how does that reduce the garbage situation? >> when people can refill their water bottles and -- >> but you're selling boxed water. >> i don't know what you're talking about with boxed water, sir. we'll have to look into that. >> let me ask you one other question. at peak tourist season, we have lines over a mile long at yosemite. you have instituted in certain parts a pilot project that makes scanning of passes available so that people can gain instant entry. are you planning to bring this to other parks and yosemite and if so, when? >> answer that in the next

round. you can come up here. >> okay. >> besides, you're never going to get people coming with dr. pepper, forget about the water and the gatorade. >> thank you, mr. chairman. madam secretary, you are holding your own with strength and dignity despite the disrespectful bullying, demeaning washington politics tone of this partisan line of questioning. i want to say thank you for your pursuit in helping southern california prevent the catastrophe of the receding salt and sea, and the funding for the wed lands which is very much appreciated. i want to get your ideas on what we can do to further prevent the -- of the sultan sea. >> the salt and sea has been very encouraging. recently the state has stepped up to look at how the salt and

sea restoration can be revitalized. we announced $3 million investment in the research program. so i think we collectively need to stay through that process to develop the appropriate restoration plan that will build upon the plan the fish and wildlife financed. i think that concept of restored, managed wet lands and a smaller sea is the way that we can manage the public health issues that exist there as well as look for water supply. >> thank you. and i understand that the desert renewable energy conversation plan is in final stages of development, and i want to thank you for the work the dwepartmen has done to see this through to completion, so there may be clean energy development across southern california while assuring our pristine desert landscapes remain protected. i understand there are acres in the drecp labelled as

unallocated much of this lying under the salt and sea, what do you have in place to review these lands over the next several years? >> congressman, there are unallocated lands as it's been developed. we'll have to look into the ones that are allocated under the salt and sea itself, i do know that we've worked very closely with imperial county and i believe we've got consistency with the drc planned -- >> i would encourage you to come up with a plan for the unallocated acres. my last question, but certainly not least, i want to thank you for making many significant investments in indian country from the focus to native children and their health, security, and family stability to providing critical needed staff for the bureau of indian education. i look forward to discussing these matters in greater detail with someone from the department later this month. however, what are your priorities for indian country and travel policy moving forward this year?

>> thank you for the question and for your support. indian education is critically important. we have a third of our schools that are in poor condition, getting ourselves on a path way to replace schools, which this budget begins to do, restructuring indian education and we appreciate reprogramming the support we got from the house and senate to do that. looking at the whole family to address issues like suicide in indian country, which is at epidemic pro portions, we have to work together and we're doing that across the whole federal family, through the white house council on native americans affairs, so from the initiative for education, to law enforcement and providing opportunities for economic development, all these are part of our budget and the significant increase of 5% that we're asking for in 2017. >> thank you very much. can you elaborate on the work to prevent suicide within native

american areas? >> yes, i'd say it's multi faceted, and it's also with hhs in particular, through samsa and the indian health service. when we dissect the issues of suicide in indian country, so much of it ties to very deep and persistent issues in the family structure. schools are a safe place where people can come. we are looking at pilots to use schools as places for training of parents, counselling. there are a number of youth programs out there. unfortunately, where youth are the first line of defense against suicide, but in many cases, that's the safest place that kids feel they can go. we're working on all those programs, with a pilot at pine ridge, but looking at learning from that and taking it throughout indian country. >> thank you very much. i yield back my time. >> mr. thompson? >> thank you, chairman.

madam secretary, thank you for being here. let me jump right into my questions. i'm pleased that the fish service recognized the whites nose sind yom was the driver behind the dedecline of the bats. and has ensured the rules allow for activities to continue that are not impacting the bat. however, it appears as if the sierra club and the centers for biological diversity intend to file suit regardless. can you provide the committee a sense of how you intend to defend the services used that was for the authority? >> well, i would say that lawsuits are not uncommon, from all points in this job. i believe the fish and wildlife service has a defensible position, recognizing the primary threat is the white nose syndrome, but also recognizing the importance then of the remaining bats to having habitats that is conducive and the 4d rule looks at that and we believe it's legally defensible,

but we'll have to determine that if we're sued through the court process. >> so will you commit to battle that in the court if the suit is filed, and i hope it's not, versus what has happened in the past, which appeared to be some back room deal where there's a compromise, even a compromise to the endangered species act law. just want to assure that you'll do your best to use the resources you have to defeat that effort. >> well, i'm not familiar with the lawsuit in specific if it's been filed, but i know that we regularly defend our 4d rules and the actions that we take in the fish and wildlife service. but until i look at the specifics, it's hard to know. >> appreciate it. look forward to staying in contact with you over the issue. part of the budget request was a 350% increase for federal land acquisition. you know, according to the

congressional research service, the deferred maintenance backlog facing federal agencies is almost $19 billion. how much of this backlog can be attributed to lands that were acquired use the land and water conservation funding? >> i don't know. we'll have to get back to you with that for the record. >> okay, when the department of interior purchased land, using land and water conversation fund monies, does it commit -- is a part of the process committing to, when that acquisition is planned and then placed? is there a commitment to performing short or long-term maintenance on that parcel? >> let me just say that, you know, the conflation of dlefrd maintenance and larnd and water conversation fund i don't think is accurate. in many cases, when we make acquisitions, they might be for in holdings, where we reduce our costs because we don't have to provide access. they may be for conversation easements across private property. so there's a wide variety of

uses and i don't think it's appropriate to conflate the two. something? >> i just wanted to follow up. often the acquisition can ease the management and operation cost for public lands and we take a look at that as part of the acquisition process. but in terms of the backlog issues, 50% of our backlog is due to transportation issues, so that's not directly related to land. >> but i want to deal with the percentage that's not, which is significant with the amount of acreage that the federal government owns and has taken off the tax rolls and put into the public sector from the private sector. is there a consideration of affordablity when that decision is made? i mean, there's an acquisition of 42 projects, according to the president's budget, projected. 350% increase for federal land acquisition. was a part of that process whenever who put that pen to

paper and put that plan together, there was a consideration of affordability, not just for acquisition, but the maintenance, the making sure that those lands are managed in the way that's best for the public? we see a lot of republic lands are not today. my colleague talked about the wildfire situation, invasive species. creating problems that spread around the public lands that many times are inappropriately required and poorly maintained and bleed out into the private sector. those flames and invasive species don't honor boundaries. is that affordability considered? >> we do take into account -- >> how much weight is put behind the affordability issue? >> i don't know specifically the weight. there's a complicated process -- >> could you put it in somewhat -- put it in congressional terms or make it simple and forward it my way or

to the committee, i would appreciate it. >> mr. kauffman? >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you to the witnesses. madam secretary, you and your team have maintained your composure and professionalism, despite a difficult tone that was set at the outset of this hearing and continued through some of the questioning. it's hard to have a civil discourse when you are greeted with an aggressive partisan gauntlet at the very outset. we heard every manner of attack and insult. i was half expecting to hear a call to arms for people to head to their local wildfire r-- wildlife refuge. i can't help contrasting the low regard that american people have for this congress, with the very high regard they have for your agency and the national park service in particular. i know we're celebrating the 100th anniversary of the

national park service and a poll from 2014 gave the park service 84% approval among western voters. and this was the case in every single western state. strong majority everywhere from wyoming, to nevada, not only support your good work, but they oppose these proposals that we keep hearing to give our public lands from the federal government over to the state. and if we needed an even more recent ratification of your work, we got it in the nevada caucuses recently where none other than donald trump opposed that idea. his opponents were very much pounding that tired old narrative that we need to hand our public lands back over to the states. but he said that would be a bad idea. and i don't often quote donald trump or give him props, but he said, i don't like the idea, because i want to keep the lands great. and you don't know what the states are going to do.

we have to be great stewards of this land. i'm going to stop there with the nice statements about donald trump, but i found it interesting that he trounced his opponents despite taking that position. given the bipartisan support that we've historically had for keeping public lands great, i want to ask you how your budget addresses threats to our land like extremists, like those who recently occupied the refuge in oregon. and specifically, americans want to know how are you going to ensure that the cost to the public, in terms of the damages to property and the desecration of sacred sites and properly compensated? >> well, thank you for your comments broadly and specifically around that. there's no question the safety and security of the public and our employees is of paramount importance and the situation that happened at mallier was very frightening.

we had people that had to pull their children out of town and leave town, that were being followed around the neighborhoods, in stores, being accosted by people that did not leave in their home community. and i don't think you get over that quickly. i have met with county judge and elected county commissioners from that region and they want to get back to normal. we have a thin law enforcement presence for the most part in our public land management agencies. they will be patrolling more in twos than singly as they did before. we will do everything we can to make sure they're kept safe, but we are very gratified for the support from the fbi in that stand-off. i would say that while the safety and security of people will be of paramount importance, it's going to be difficult to do with the budget that we have. >> what about the costs that we incurred, which must have been very significant during this

period of this siege, and the damages that occurred to public property during that time? i think americans want to know that those that were responsible, the law-breakers, are going to reimburse us, and that the taxpayers aren't going to pick up the tab for this joy ride that these criminals took with public property. >> i think it's fair to say that right now the taxpayers are picking up the tab. fortunately, there are a number of people that have been indicted and i hope that restitution will be a part of that. but whether there's any money collected will be a long time into the future. >> can i quickly add our budget proposal does include a proposal for fish and wildlife service to have cost recovery. it's part of our budget proposal and we think it's applicable now. >> in a couple seconds that i have left, we continue to hear this narrative about hundreds of thousands, 500,000 acres in the west being lost to the delta smelt. secretary conner, that doesn't

jibe with my understanding of how the system has operated. would you agree with that? >> i think it's correct. i don't know what the assumptions are there, it looks more like 60,000 -- >> you're over. and i appreciate your application for secretary in the trump administration. way to go. mr. benishek? >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, madam secretary, for being here. and contrary to what he said, i want to say something nice. unfortunately we're dealing with a lawsuit there and a judge has reinstated the listing, but i appreciate your agency actually delisting a species that has recovered. and we just passed legislation here in the house this past week

to rectify what we think is a bad decision by the court and affirm the position of the u.s. fish and wildlife service in that instance. so there you go. i said something nice. [ applause ] i do have a question, though, and i think many of the line of questioning -- >> say anything nice again, they'll take away your time. [ laughter ] >> i think, though, that there's a position here that we don't understand why we're acquiring more land when we have a maintenance backlog of just maintaining the land. i think that's a theme that's been presented here fairly accurately. the answer of just buying in holdings, that doesn't ring true to me. it's a 350 percent increase in the funding there. and especially in my district, we have several national park

service facilities, dunes, national parks, and i'm looking at some of the critical infrastructure issues that are there, and somebody mentioned the $19 billion backlog in total, but in my district, for example, at let's say sleeping bear dunes, there's a $19 million backlog of maintenance, with $4 million critical -- it's called critical systems deferred maintenance, according to this nps inventory summary. so i'm reading over these documents, trying to figure out, well, what is the solution here, this is a huge backlog. but i also noticed too that, in a note here, it says, the

parameters used to calculate the data in the report do not match the federal real property profile parameters or the federal accounting standards advisory board parameters. so these are apparently the standard way the federal government evaluates land and values, but they're not using this report. do you know why that is the case? >> i'll need the specific language in what you're talking about. i'm not sure what that refers to. but can you clarify this 350% increase that you and mr. thompson -- >> it's a blm number here that we've got. proposed budget including $88 million for blm land acquisition, including $44 million in appropriate reetion, this is more than the $19

million enacted in fiscal year 2015. >> so this is specific to blm? >> that's the proposed budget? >> yeah, because the increase for the conversation water fund is not what you're suggesting. so i just need to coordinate on numbers. but let me say this, maintenance backlog is an issue. our budget proposes a way to reduce the backlog, 12 billion. of which half of that is transportation. >> you mean roads? >> yes. typically paid for out of the highway trust fund. >> so why wouldn't you use the standard accounting techniques that the rest of the federal government use in developing these numbers? >> chris, do you know what he's talking about with that? >> i mean, we're trying to -- is this number too high, too low? why don't you use the same numbers as everybody else? >> i'm actually not familiar with this. so i'd be happy to get back to you on the record with this. >> i'm reading a national park service asset inventory summary

published by the national park service. these are numbers that congress we look for, $19 million in backlog -- [ inaudible ] -- government measures things. >> we'll have to look back into that for you. i don't know. >> i don't know why we're not using the standard way and how does it affect the numbers. is the number too high, too low? how can i judge what to do if we're not getting accurate numbers and you're not using the standard way that the federal government reports numbers? that doesn't make sense to me. >> we'll have to get back -- >> i applaud you with the wolf thing, but to me, in order to make a judgment as to how to proceed at my level, we'd like to get standard numbers, so i would appreciate a response in writing.

>> i'm sorry. i was so enthralled and i lost the list. who comes next? mr. cartwright? >> thank you, mr. chairman. and to you secretary jewell for appearing here today and discuss the president's 2017 budget. secretary jewell, i'd like to discuss the abandoned mine lands and also the power plus programs to see what we can do to help clean up these old sites and provide economic development opportunities to rebuild our historic coal-mining communities, for the people of pennsylvania, especially those in my district, the problem of abandoned mines is one that we have lived with for decades. in fact, there are 575 abandoned mines in my district alone. creating 382 miles of asset drainage affecting streams.

many live in communities struggling to recover from the decline of the coal industry, and with coal production lessening and major coal companies declaring bankruptcy and in light of the u.s. geological survey's recent revelation that coal reserves are not as abundant as once thought, this problem will only worsen nationally. i've introduced my own legislation, to provide more funds for clean up. offered amendments for the regions that need the money the most and i am the lead democrat on a bipartisan bill to direct unexpended aml funds toward clean-up projects that provide economic benefits. now i know the administration has been pushing to use these unexpended aml funds to clean up our abandoned mines and also to create jobs. and i look forward to continuing

to work with you toward that laudable goal. my first question is, madam secretary, do you know approximately what the aml balance is right now, and how much is expended every year as opposed to what is brought into the fund every year? >> the total, i believe, is $11 billion. while we're continuing your line of questioning, we'll see if we can get the answers, if not, we'll respond for the record. but there's a lot continuing with power plus, that we'd like to accelerate, and the recommendation is $200 million a year, a billion total over five years, be accelerated to address this issue right now. >> and i don't mean this as a pop quiz, if you want to get back to my office later, i'd be obliged. second, is there a scarcity of good projects and how large is the problem, or some reason to delay funding the projects?

what is the total impact of these mines on public health and the environment? >> the impact is probably beyond measure when you look at the water quality, the sink holes, particularly in our own state, which i've seen first hand, the inability for people to develop on these landscapes because of the porous nature of the underground mining that took place before. so the situation that was rengeed earlier with the gold king mine spill, which is not coal, but that is indicative of problems across the entire united states, both hard rock and coal. so we'd welcome an opportunity to work with you on a solution on a ban in mine lands and taking this money set aside by the coal industry, and put people to work at addressing it now. >> thank you, madam secretary, and i yield back my time. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

secretary jewell, when can we expect the next five-year plan for oil and gas lease sales to come out? >> so we have submitted the draft proposed plan. this spring potentially, even this month, we'll have the proposed plan, which will have taken input from the draft proposed plan. we hope to finalize the proposed plan to a final by the end of 2016. so there will be an opportunity to take additional comment on the proposed plan, which will be released this spring based on comments from the original plan. >> this seems like it's drawn out a lot longer than past five-year plans. is that the case? >> i don't believe that's the case. >> i'm going to ask mr. chairman, if we could submit for the record a letter to secretary jewell and other letters as well, requesting that areas in

the south atlantic, mid atlantic, be included in the five-year plan. >> without objection. >> thank you. do you think your five-year plan will mirror the dpp as far as the areas available? >> well, there's been tremendous input that we have taken since the dpp and when the proposed plan comes out, you'll see the answer to that question based on the input we've received. >> i appreciate the input you have taken and i hope that it does. are we seeing any serious movement on permits for g and g activity on the south and mid atlantic? because last year this time and a couple of times last spring, we had hearings with boeing and some of the sub agencies that are under you about g and g activity. and they've been slow walking these permits. i know that's u.s. fish and wildlife service doing that, but are we seeing any movement on that? >> yeah, actually it would be noah fisheries with the marine

mammals works closely with. we had 13 conventional permit applications. three were withdrawn. one is being held pending additional information. one was issued, but they didn't choose to use it, and it expired january 11th of this year. eight are under review. six of them have applications with the national marine fisheries service. one hasn't determined if he needs one yet and one of them has not even begun that process. so we are being responsive as the requests come in. >> okay, i appreciate that. could you just put that in writing to my office for me. just so i'll have that. we're asked about that quite a bit. want to shift gears. followed the story of the siege of the refuge closely. and i was looking at the history of that, i understand the ammons had water rights and grazing rights on blm lands within the

refuge and then at some point in time, their access to that water was fenced off, and their access -- road access to grazing areas was blocked off. that's based on what i read in numerous sources, as i was investigating that. and i'm not going to get into oregon's issues, but are those common practices within the u.s. fish and wildlife service, within blm, to block off permitted grazing rights, or to block off water access? >> let me just clarify. i believe you're hawking about the hammons. that's completely separate from the people that occupied the refuge. and those two individuals who are serving time for arson charges on federal public land, basically distanced themselves from the people that took over the refuge. >> i agree. it was the ammons, but their arrest and re-imprisonment was all part of what led to the occupation. so let's go back to the ammons

and leave the refuge out. the ammons had grazing rights on blm land permitted, and water rights in the area that were fenced off, and the grazing rights were blocked. the question to you is, is that normal practice to do that when people have permitted grazing rights? >> we operate within the rights that people are granted. so i'll have to look specifically into the circumstances that you bring out. but there's nothing that i have heard from the blm or the fish and wildlife service that suggested that agreed upon rights were not provided. and that's consistent with the way we protest. so there's something specific, we're very happy to respond directly on that. >> okay, we'll do that. >> okay, thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, madam secretary. i spent two hours in the dental chair before i came here and i think i had a better two hours than you're having. last week, and i thank mr.

duncan for the tone of his questions, because i do think that the secretary's really doing a good job and the interior department is important to protect our natural resources in our country. last week, the leaders were in talking to us from the great lakes basin region and as you know, and the number one region that's on everyone's minds is the asian carp. we have 20% of the world's fresh water. as you know, thousands of jobs are tied to it. $16 billion recreation industry. so protecting the delicate eco-system that provides drinking water, and lord knows drinking water is on everybody's minds throughout the country. and as it stands, more than 3,500 species of plants and animals. the presence of a single carp in the lakes could disrupt the

entire eco-system and cause significant damage. and your budget request was a very modest increase of 669,000. how will this funding help the department prevent asian carp from reaching the great lakes, which you know, has us all very new on t newerotic, and nobody else asked you this, but is it enough? >> short answer is, on this invasive species and others, it's not enough. and i hear it from every state and from both political parties. we have $13.5 million specifically for asian carp. the usgs and the fish and wildlife service, preventing the carp from getting to the great lakes, it's a serious issue.

we don't want it to get away from us. this is really critical funding to maintain the work that we've done. if there was more money, we'd be able to put it to good use as well. >> thank you. i want to also applaud the fact that your budget proposes money for our ref yus system. i think a lot of people are not appreciating that it's a national treasure, a network of lands and water which have been established for conversation management and appropriate restoration of fish, wildlife, and plant resources, so we're protecting these habitats from generation to generation. i was shocked to see more than 400 staff positions have been eliminated since 2010, or have been lost. your proposal to increase funding by $25 million for the refuge system would go a long way toward making the

investments we need to be making in the system. what consequences have you seen from the elimination of these jobs, to invest adequate resources in the refuge system and how will you use the increased resources you're proposing and i hope we're going to give you? >> i'll give you an example from one refuge i visited, which had a staff of 16, is down to about six. they had a volunteer volunteer coordinator that burned out, because it's a full-time position. and this is a refuge that's located close to an urban area. so the budget that we have, does prioritize urban refuges in particular, to begin to give some of these children that are so disconnected from nature in urban areas an opportunity to understand what's at risk, but it doesn't go close to addressing the issue of where we were a few years ago in terms of providing access, resources,

invasive species control, hunting/fishing access, which is so important to people on refuges. so i appreciate your support. we will put it to good use, largely around visitor experience and the urban refuge partnerships, but it's nowhere near where we were just half a decade ago. >> thank you, madam secretary. i'm respecting your time limitations and would request asking a question for the record. >> okay, thank you. but you're just in pain, right? you're just in dental pain, that's the reason you're doing it, right? >> i'm in dental -- that's right. tooth implant, i don't recommend it. it's more fun than this, though. >> probably more productive. >> thank you, mr. chairman. we appreciate you being here today. notwithstanding the intensity of questions today, they're very important, because we get the same intensity in my district

where the glowing poll numbers on blm and parks isn't the same as the people that live next to them when they're subject to burning forests, wolf introduction, mountain lions and all this other stuff they have to live next to, getting after their pets, live stock and their families. so it's different when you live next to these areas as opposed to the cities where they get the polling from. we've worked many hours with folks up and down the region who are impacted by this situation, as well as my colleague who is here today, offered a draft bill they think would really go a long ways towards resolving these issues and providing a water supply certainty to these folks in the region. so now what we have is a pressing forward of the dam removal. so what i have here is a copy of

an agreement in principle. you just signed this last month, in which the department of the interior agrees to work to great a so-called non-federal entity. it proposes dam removal, leaving the water supply issues of the basin unresolved and they're doing so without the approval of congress or consultation. so is this non-federal entities you agreed to, subject to open government and freedom of information act requests? and since my time is short, i'll ask you for a compact answer, yes or no. >> the non-federal entity has not yet been formed. >> subject to freedom of information -- >> it will be depending on how it's structured. i don't know the answer to your question right now. >> well, there's federal involvement here with your agency and others. >> it will be a non-federal entities formed by the states of california and oregon. >> but you're signers on the

agreement? >> the agreement in principle, which will include provisions to create this non-federal entities for the states of california and oregon. >> this seems like a front company to avoid public scrutiny. my own staff had to work hard to get involved in the sacramento meeting. and we asked to be part of the one in portland and they didn't get back to us, but they will be there anyway. that sounds like a "no" to me, because there doesn't seem to be an opportunity for open government and freedom of information. i have another document here. it's a confidential settlement communication discussion draft, which was circulated at that meeting i mentioned last week in sacramento. it specifies the non-federal entities must be created yesterday, due yesterday, was there a signature made by your office yesterday on the creation of the entity? the target date was february 29th. >> no signature by our office.

>> okay, very good. this was just a month after the first document, the aip. and did congress authorize the administration to create a non-federal entity? >> the administration is not creating a non-federal entity. it's not a creation of the administration. it's a creation by the states of california and oregon. the whole premise here is, there has been a desire to have the federal government removed from the dam removal process. i understand that was an issue that was one of the reasons why the restoration agreement legislation was not -- >> well, these are -- >> now you're taking the federal government out of the dam removal process. >> these are administration goals. now here's administration involvement, including this being a budget hearing, unless you're doing a pro bono, it's going to impact your budget as well. so the very fact you're involved and signed an agreement indicates that we are spending federal dollars in this process.

is this a pro bono process? >> there has been significant environmental analysis done on the question of dam removal, and the bureau -- >> no, but are you spending money from your agency towards this effort? >> toward the analysis associated with -- >> the answer would have to be yes because you're spending your time and agency and staff people? >> that is correct. it so they don't feel it's important that they need authorization from congress to participate in this project, even though we're supposed to budget for it? >> there is federal authorization for dam removal through the federal regulatory commission and the proceeding will go through the federal energy regulatory -- >> the process of creating a non-federal entity, a shell corporation, basically? >> that is not part of the regulatory process. that's a creation by the states of california and oregon. >> i'm out of time, mr. chairman. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chair. and thank you, madam secretary for being here and for answering

all our questions. i want to talk about coal. and i want to thank you for pushing the pause button on federal coal leasing while you take a long overdue review, long needed review of the program. you've said before that this sort of thing, this kind of pause has been done multiple times in the past and i believe by republican administrations. is that right? >> yes, that's correct. both under nixon and reagan. >> so both under nixon and reagan, it's been done before. we've had a bipartisan precedent for this pause, and you've made it clear that this will not impact existing operations. even with a pause on new coal production, since coal companies now hold, i believe, approximately 20 years' worth of coal under lease. but i think it could be even more than 20 years based upon

current amounts of production, that coal use, as you've, i think, indicated earlier today, is actually on the decline and according to information i have from the energy information administration, coal production in 2015 was 10% less than in 2014. and that our use of coal to produce electricity in the united states is now less than 30%. i think that's great for the climate. i think that -- i hope that number gets even smaller as we move forward and that we work with the department of interior to development more renewable sources for energy rather than coal. can you tell us in your words again, why is coal production down in the united states? >> largely coal production is down because of a change to natural gas in electricity production. we are the world's largest

producer of natural gas. natural gas is both a cleaner burning fossil fuel than coal, as well as less expensive to construct new plants, and we have seen a significant transition. that, plus renewables and conversation is a large reason why coal has declined in its use. >> isn't it also true that other countries are now becoming less interested in purchasing coal and would rather also purchase more natural gas, is that not true also? >> yes, that's correct also. we've seen significant declines, for example, in china. >> that's interesting. i think it's really important for us to get on the record, to say that these changes in coal production are not due to administrative policies, but they're really due to the marketplace. and that the marketplace now is driving down coal production, not administrative processes or policies. actually, i think we have

unfairly, i think, been subsidizing coal production, such as from the powder river basin, and letting coal be produced or mined at rock bottom prices. so i'm glad you're taking another look at how we lease coal, that we don't give it away too cheaply, madam secretary, but while you're doing this review, i'm just wondering, are you going to include some of the external costs that burning coal produces on our environment and on our public health? >> it's our intent to look broadly at the coal program, which will include the environmental impacts of the mining and burning of coal. and that will be scoped as we continue with this process in the coming months. >> well, i thank you. i think it's very important that we take this over-arching careful look at coal. i also want to commend you and your department for taking a number of positive steps, for

example, the recent methane venting and flaring draft rule, is in my opinion, a win-win, both for the environment and the taxpayers. just last week, gina mccarthy said that the oil and gas industry is emitting far more methane than was previously assumed. so i think this rule will be timely and it's critically important. i also want to thank you for the proposed rules to strengthen oil and gas oversight in national parks and wildlife refuges. i think ranking member gra hal va and i, with over 50 of our colleagues, asking her to finalize those rules as soon as possible. and the last question i have, there was a proposed renewable energy competitive leasing rule which was published almost a year and a half ago. when might we see that finalized, that rule? >> mike, do you have the answer

to that? >> on the removable energy -- >> we'll get back to you on that. i can't scramble through the book in time. >> thank you, and i yield. >> mr. graves? >> thank you, mr. chairman. secretary jewell, thank you for being here, thank you all of you being for here and i want to commend you for including in the budget request, i've seen some of the projects you've participated in around the united states and i think when you acquire land from willing sellers, you make sure you're using the right investment principles that preserves opportunities for recreation, i think it's the right move and i want to commend you for funding the program. but i want to pivot on that a little bit. atlanta water and conversation fund as you know is derived from offshore energy production. and so, while you were proposing to conserve lands in the west primarily and protect lands, in the west primarily, you are

taking money from offshore energy production, which is primarily, in some years, up to 90% of offshore energy production, off the coast of louisiana. as you know, your budget request further slaps the gulf coast in the face by proposing to take those funds to fund the --