the worst ones, the worst fat is trans fat. and that's from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. we could talk more in detail, but harvard scientists estimated that was causing in its heyday, the 1990s, 50,000 to 100,000 excess deaths every year. so just astonishing. these are from the ingredients that people thought for decades totally harmless. salt and sugar are on our kitchen tables. and trans fat has been used in crisco, was used in crisco, no longer, since about 1910. so everybody was familiar with it. and you know, just thought it was innocence. >> you have pounded on trans fat with great substance. i mean, he is sort of a watchdog on the food and drug administration department of agriculture and his staff, along with him, working regularly,

tell us about the progress in trans fat and mayor bloomberg and other efforts. >> well, trans fat makes for a great story. industry in the '90s was marketing about 8 billion pounds a year of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. and up through -- up until 1990, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil was considered perfectly safe. the government published a couple reports, one in the '70s. one in the '80s that looked at all the research and found shreds of research suggesting it was dangerous, but the studies were never confirmed, so it was continued to be considered safe. until 1990, a european study showed that trans fats raised the bad cholesterol and probably lowered the good cholesterol. a double whammy.

and that was confirmed three years later by a department of agriculture study that really was a key study. it shows the value of independent government funded research. and so 1993, we petitioned the fda to require labeling of trans fat. and i don't want to go into all the details, but it took fda ten years to require the labeling of trans fat. >> and you're saying, what, just what are some of the products that people eat with trans fat? >> there's crisco, and everything with vegetable shortening. mcdonald's and every fast food restaurant's french fries, fried chicken, we were drenching our foods in transfat. and the controversy and then the labeling made tremendous progress in getting rid of it. so the 1993 mandate for labeling

and right about then, denmark banned partially hydrogenated oil. and so the fda is still talking about labeling. denmark is banning. we petitioned, and the evidence had gotten so strong with both those clinical studies and epidemiological studies that warranted us to urge and petition the fda to ban partially hydrogenated oil. which the fda didn't do until 2015. another ten-year delay. but trans fat really became a dirty word. and so many companies started labeling their foods, no trans fat. and it has been largely whisked out of the food supply. 90% or more of trans fat is gone. 7 to 7.5 billion pounds a year. it really shows the impact, starting with the scientific

research, because that really has been the foundation. and then years of advocacy, pressure on food companies not to use it, food companies told oil processors, give us better oils. oil processors went back to farmers and said, grow better, different kinds of soybeans and ra ra rapeseed and canola and so on, and we'll pay you more money if you do. so the farmers grew this stuff. the oil processors had more raw materials. they sold to the food companies. and so this is -- >> a success story. >> huge success story. >> let's turn to -- let's turn to sugar. by the way, all those national tv programs, they're gone now. mike cannot get on any of these shows like the phil donahue show, 10 million people, and all the other shows. you look at what has replaced them. total junk. masochistic, sadistic, who says

whose that? that has not improved. and you're unable to reach the number of people you reached. and here's how he would do it, for example. the classic coke can, and the classic pepsi can, and you say how many of you have had this? all the hands go up. you say pretty sweet, isn't it? yeah. let's say you were making this coke drink, and you put the water in, you put the secret formula from atlanta, and you want to put the sugar that you want in it. how many teaspoons? some would say one, two, three. fewer hands would say, i like it really sweet. four. how many teaspoons of sugar? >> ten teaspoons of sugar in each 12-ounce can of coke. we dramatized that in a video called the happiness stand, where we show the making of this

happiness potion. >> now, the damage of excessive sugar, for example, take far, far more sugar in their diet than 1900. what's the advantage? what's the harm from all that sugar? >> well, when i started in the early '70s, tooth decay was the harm, and we would go out there yelling and screaming, and people would be, some people would be irate about sugar causing tooth decay. but beginning -- beginning around 2000, there was developed solid evidence that sugar was a major contributor to diabetes and heart disease. and obesity. and that really turned the tide. and so since 2000, there's been major progress in reducing soda consumption and sugar consumption more generally. >> how much does that do to a bottle of water? more people taking bottled water instead of coca-cola?

>> well, it's hard to know cause and effect, but bottled water sales have skyrocketed, and drinking bottled water now, environmental problems aside, is seen as being hip. soda is being considered more kind of retrograde. and soda consumption per capita has declined, and this is full calorie carbonated drinks, declined by 27% since 1998, which is an astonishing change. the tide is really turning. and partly because of bottled water, but also just the image, and more people hearing the scientific research. center for disease control has funded new york, philadelphia, seattle, los angeles, other places, to run advertising criticizing sugary drinks. you know, so it's a remarkable change. >> yeah. completely reversed. the old story, the blasphemy of

today becomes the commonplace of tomorrow. all right, let's go to facts. >> one more thing about soda. the soda industry, coke and pepsi, they know that soda sales are tanking in this country and will probably continue to go down. so they are investing literally billions of dollars a year in marketing soda in developing countries, a billion -- coke, just coke, is spending -- is investing a billion dollars a year in china, a billion in mexico, a billion in brazil, a billion in india. $1.5 billion in africa. just astonishing investments. china and india, people drink this much soda a year. here we drink this much soda. they see those as the huge markets for the future. >> and replacing fruit drinks. native fruit drinks like guarana

in brazil, so they're trying to wean people off more nutritious fruit drinks with this type of soft drink. yeah. it's often said that coca-cola has reached more areas of the world than anybody other than mosquitoes. >> i it's a close call. >> yeah. let's talk about salt now. we had a meeting with the secretary of agriculture, mike and i and some others, and i think mike sort of startled the secretary of agriculture vilsack when he talked about salt and why do they put so much salt in the food when you don't even think it's in there. go ahead. >> it's the cheapest flavoring there is. so we're consuming -- so there's been evidence about the harmfulness of too much sodium for 75 years or so. and the evidence builds up every single year.

so in 1977, i hired a young nutritionist, bonnie, to look at the health impact of salt and see what we could do about it. so in 1978, we petitioned the food and drug administration to limit the amount of sodium in different categories of processed foods, and to change salts regulatory status. there it was, killing thousands of people a year, and it was considered generally recognized as safe. so there began the long saga of trying to do something about too much salt. and the fda said they're not going to regulate salt. but asked for voluntary industry action. nothing happened. we got sodium laled on food packages in 1990. got a good nutrition facts

label, then we went back in the early 2000's to see what had happened to sodium consumption since the labeling law was passed and since our original petition. nothing had changed. despite all kinds of admonitions to industry to lower sodium levels. so we petitioned the fda again. and we got the institute of medicine to do a report on what should be done about excess sodium. not whether or not it's harmful. that had been settled, but what should be done. and the institute of medicine basically endorsed that 1978 petition saying the fda should limit sodium levels in cheeses, in breads, and different levels for these different categories of food. the fda immediately said it wouldn't limit the levels, but it might set voluntary targets. so it took another six years,

earlier this year, well, for five years the fda didn't do anything. we sued the fda for inaction, public citizen represented us. and that got the fda to get off the dime and propose voluntary targets. so if we're lucky, those voluntary targets will be adopted as final voluntary targets, with two-year and ten-year goals. the ten-year goals would bring sodium down to safe levels. >> mike, i wanted to ask you, you have been pretty critical of the food and drug administration and u.s. department of agriculture. before we get to how you have educated tens of millions of people and how difficult or beneficial that was, what's your brief view of their regulatory protection of consumers now? >> well, it starts with the laws. and the laws are not bad. but if you get a law passed, then you have to fund the program.

and conservative congresses starve the programs. so the food labeling, the food safety laws are reasonably good. they could be enforced with great vigor, going back to the 1958 food additives amendment. but the fda doesn't have the staff and it doesn't have the guts to enforce the laws with vigor, to regulate salt or sugar or we have asked for warning labels on soda pop because soda pop causes heart disease and diabetes and obesity. but fda is in a bit of a pickle because if it does anything brave, congress would crack down and through appropriations writers, stop it from taking one action or another. and they just don't have the staff to do many of these things.

so the fda inspects with the meat inspection acts, the usda inspects a chicken soup plant factory every single day of the year. even though it's sterilized, the soup is sterilized, it's not going to harm anybody. a food processing facility that does not have meat or poultry like a vegetable soup factory, gets visited every five or ten years. so the fda just doesn't have the resources. and it's very important to insure that agencies, not insure, desperately try to get the agencies sufficient funding to actually enforce the laws. >> have you expressed your view on efforts by the meat and poultry industry to have privatized inspections, to sort of self-regulate themselves instead of having daily or

frequent u.s. department of agriculture and meat inspections. >> it's really rather continuous inspections of the slaughtering and processing of the animals. and those where it's -- and their inspectors check to see, look at every carcass. that's almost worthless. what they can find are obvious defects. you know, a serious bruise or a tumor that are more quality than safety. things that the food processors should monitor on their own. tyson doesn't want to have chickens with big bruises on them, so they should be responsible for that. those inspectors that are scrutinizing a chicken, they get one or two seconds to look at each chicken. >> that's how fast the assembly line is. >> they're whizzing by. and they're looking for bacteria. you're not going to find bacteria looking at a chicken carcass.

you need stronger systems. and that's how the laws are moving. where the companies will look at the bruises and tumors and government inspectors will monitor for the systems that should be in place to keep the products uncontaminated. >> do you think the penalties are strong enough, though, for violations? >> they could be if they're brought about. the peanut corporation of america, which killed many people, poisoned thousands of people with contaminated peanuts, the chief executives got thrown in jail. but as russell has indicated earlier, those kinds of penalties are rarely invoked. >> mike, some people in the consumer area think you're not tough enough on certain issues.

let me throw some on the table. a lot of consumer groups are upset with gmo crops, genetically modified crops. they say that argument for it is based in secret corporate science, not peer-reviewed. completely opposite of the way you have operated. monsanto, for example. and that there's no evidence that it increases crop volume around the world and that it migrates and effects other neighboring farms and contaminates other neighboring farms and it just produces its own backlash with the so-called killer weeds, mutating and resisting monsanto's seeds so monsanto has to up the ante on those. what do you think of all that? where are you on gmo foods? >> genetic engineering is a

powerful technology, kind of like electricity. when such a technology comes before the public or society, i think we should try to maximize benefits and minimize problems. like with electricity. electricity fries people every year. little babies stick their innocent little fingers in the outlets, and they're dead. we need to try to control that because electricity, arguably, has provided benefits. though some are arguable. and same thing with genetically modified crops. some of them may be beneficial. some of them may be dangerous. we should look at each one individually. have the -- has the government evaluated the safety adequately? are farmers using the products appropriately? and sometimes yes and sometimes no.

but i think it's crazy to do away with a whole technology that is providing some benefits, could be providing much greater benefits here and in developing countries, in terms of drought resistance, crop yield, and so on, and it's naive to say get rid of the whole technology. when it can provide really major benefits. >> what about food irradiation? instead of focusing on sanitation in plants, you just irradiate the food before it gets to your dinner table? >> i think it would be stupid to have, for a company to be producing dirty food and then trying to kill the germs just before it leaves the factory. there's no real evidence that irradiation is harmful. maybe it would prevent some of

the thousands of food borne illness deaths every year. it's expensive and it would be far better to have safety systems in place that would prevent the germs from getting into the food in the first place. >> i have to finish with a story. when i was a little boy, my mother put on the kitchen table fresh celery, radishes, and carrots. and i said, i don't want to eat it. she said, what? i don't like it. i went through, i don't like it. i don't want to eat it. so she leaned over and said, who's i, ralph? i? it's me. what do you mean, who is i? is i your liver, your kidney, is it your lungs, your heart? i didn't know what she was getting at. she finally concluded, i know who i is, ralph, and you say you don't want to eat carrots and radishes. they are very good for you. i said, who?

she said i is your tongue. why are you turning your tongue against your brain? eat up. so this is the -- now, in this massive educational efforts that mike jacobson and his colleagues have engaged in, that has to be one of the issues because the advertisers focus on taste, taste, taste. after it gets past your mouth, it can be very damaging to your organs. how do you dual with that? in conclusion, tell how people can get nutrition action, which i read every time it comes. it's a terrific publication. >> well, the tongue is more powerful than the brain in so many cases. but i think people -- you know, we're not going to get through to some people, so you try to make the food as safe as possible. you know, if salt is dangerous, limit the salt so it's just not as bad. and either the food gets tastes

less salty or some of the saltiness may be replaceable with other ingredients. people -- so many people have learned that healthy food, it actually tastes terrific. tastes better than the processed foods with kind of the cheap taste of sugar and salt. but it can be hard to persuade somebody who has been brain washed by eating this kind of -- >> tongue washed. >> tongue washed. for eating this kind of food, since they were infants, practically. >> well, you see what just a few people can do. mike came to washington, he had no money, no contacts, just knowledge, persistence, and a sense that he wanted to make food safety and nutrition his life's work. so i guess when you told me that you were in for the long haul, back in the 1970s, i guess you were in for the long haul.

>> didn't know what i was getting myself into, but i have to answer the second part of your question. go to cspinet.org. cspinet.org and sign up for subscription to nutrition. >> in print and online. i like the print version. >> so do i. >> nice colorful newsletter. >> if you bought the color monitor, you would get it in color on the internet. >> he's talking to someone who uses an underwood typewriter. thank you very much, mike jacobson. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> thank you, ralph and mike jacobson.

our next speaker will be talking about empowering consumers, subject near and dear to my heart. he teaches -- he's a professor of law at georgetown university law center. where he teaches federal court civil procedure, administrative law, and seminars in first amendment litigation. he also co-directs the georgetown institute for public representation, which is a clinical law program there. formerly, he was the director of the federal trade commission's bureau of consumer protection and he has also spent 25 years with the public citizen litigation group, public interest law firm here in washington, where he has handled multiple cases before the united states supreme court and more than 60 cases before federal courts of appeals and state courts of last resort.

he's a senior fellow with the administrative conference of the united states and an elected member of the american law institute. he is also a scholar with the center for progressive reform. welcome david vladeck. [ applause ] >> so i spent a mere 25 years working for ralph. i will never forget my interview with ralph, the first question was, did you read the paper today? and yes, i had. he said, okay, what made you really mad? and so let me talk about what makes me really mad about the state of consumer protection in the united states. so ralph talked about the blasphemy of what's going on with food protection. well, the blasphemy about consumer protection in the united states these days is that very strong notions of freedom of contract are essentially

corroding what we think of consumer protection. and this is a pincher movement that comes from two angles. one comes from essentially the disintegration of tort law, contract law as we know it. these days, consumers ordinarily have no bargaining power with respect to the contracts they sign. these are often the i accept little box at the end of a form contract that you may or may not read. in many instances, consumers are not even presented with the contract prior to entering into them. the contract is available if at all after the fact. and in those contracts, there are generally provisions that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago. so one common provision gives the seller the unilateral right to modify the contract. so if the seller decides, well, you know, i think i can sort of

eke more out of this relationship with the consumer, they're free to modify the contract and send you a little note down the road. there are all sorts of sort of bombs put in these contracts that often go off to the detriment of consumers. one i'm going to come back to this, one sort of ubiquitous contract provision these days is a mandatory arbitration provision that requires consumers to go to a privatized system of justice that's essentially invisible rather than exercising their rights in court. but i'm going to come back to that. but there are other waivers that are generally attached to modern contracts. for example, forfeiture of remedies one might be entitled to under statute. so, for example, in many cases, it involves contracts, a

disappointed consumer would have the right to have his or her case heard before a jury. well, contract provisions these days often include waiver of the rights of jury trials. contracts also include the forfeiture of remedies that would otherwise be available to the consumer under state law. many of the contracts you have entered into require you forfeit your right to punitive damages. you forfeit your right to statutory damages. often, statutes contain what are called liquidated damage provisions. provisions in which a certain amount of damages are assumed, those provisions are also, those rights, statutory rights, are often waived in contracts. so you're asking, wait a minute. these are statutory rights. these are rights congress thought were important enough to enshrine to statute, to guarantee the consumer has this remedy in the event of breach. how could those rights be

waived? well, the supreme court has held in many cases that arbitration substitutes the procedures and indeed oftentimes some of the substance that would otherwise be available if resort to court were available to the consumer. so for example, the supreme court has upheld arbitration agreements even where it is clear that a statutory right cannot be vindicated in arbitration. so even where it is clear this is a case called italian collars where rights that congress thought were important enough to enshrine in statute could not be vindicated through an arbitration agreement. tough noogies. the right is now unenforceable. and class action provisions also often include sacrifice of procedural rights that would otherwise be available.

if you sue in court, you have certain rights of discovery. you can get access to the other side's documents. you may be able to take all statements, depositions of witnesses who have information that is pertinent to the case. class action, excuse me, class action rights are often afforded by statute that are obligated by contract. so the kinds of form contracts we see today not only deal with the underlying transaction but include essentially a long list of rights that consumers forfeit by entering into a contract. and the courts have shown no interest in pushing back. making matters worse, the courts arbitration jurisprudence has been essentially go away to consumers. there are a number of cases involving form contracts, a case

involving at&t where the court split 5-4 on the enforceability of these consumer contracts that could only be vindicated by groups of plaintiffs suing together because the dollar amounts were reasonably low. and so one form of assault on consumer protection has been the court's enforcing contracts literally, even to the extent that they sacrifice statutory rights and the supreme court's aggressive affirmance of private dispute, private ordering over transparent judicial proceedings where the public at least has some insight into what's going on. second form of assault, and this gets back to mike's point earlier about shrinking government. so 20 years ago, grover norquist

famously said his goal was to shrink government to the size where it could be drowned in a bathtub, and in large measure, he has succeeded. so if you look at the staffing of the important federal consumer protection agencies, they have been hollowed out. i was the director of the ftc's bureau of consumer protection for four years. the ftc today is about two thirds the size it was 20 years ago. population of the united states has grown by a third and the economy has doubled, yet the number of regulatory cops on the beat has shrunk. if you go up and down the list of the regulatory agencies we all depend on for our health and safety, they are quantitatively smaller. my colleague, my former boss, joan claybrook, who is head of national highway transportation administration, responsible for overseeing auto safety, truck safety, tires, everything that moves, they have about 600

people. to regulate the entire global automobile industry. really? i mean, that is sufficient? the commodities future trading commission, a small agency, but has regulatory authority over most of the commodities traded in the united states, is about the same size. the ftc, which has both consumer protection and anti-trust authority, has about 1,100 people. in contrast to the 1,600 it had in the '80s and '90s. even the cfpb, the new sort of, the first line of defense in terms of financial products and services, at the most, will end up having about 1,400 people. so you know, when people rail against the size of government, you need to understand that with respect to the agencies we depend on to protect us in the marketplace, those agencies are very thinly staffed. they're overworked, and to make

matters worse, the states which used to be an equal partner in consumer protection matters have also been hollowed out. when i was at the federal trade commission, i worked closely with state attorney general's offices. they, too, have been cut because of budgeting and other state restrictions. to the extent we depend on government to be our first line of defense against egregious misuse of marketplace power, the government does what it can. but it is -- it is a very thin line that is spread thin. and i want to echo another point mike made, which is there's a lot of talk about agency officials being feckless, not being tough enough. well, they're between a rock and a hard place. the tougher they are, the more they face funding cutbacks.

at the tc, we were very aggressive, and i was called up to the hill with some regularity to basically say, you know, your funding is in jeopardy and tough be careful. and so it's a very difficult position for federal regulators. let me talk about one other market failure. which is the courts to have been equal partners in some extent in the ratcheting back of consumer protection. so take one field. so identity theft is now rampant in the united states. last year, the justice department estimates that 17 million americans were victimized by identity theft. i measure this because the federal trade commission has essentially a self-help part of its website where people who have been victimized can go and get access to standardized police reports and other forms that they would need in order to try to reclaim their own identity. last year, half a million

americans used that site in order to file claims about identity theft. so the identity theft is the predictable debris of an internet economy where data security is not taken seriously. and so this is an area where congress has refused to act. the federal trade commission and other agencies have asked for authority to force the people who store your data to take adequate steps to store it, to safeguard it. ironically, of course, they safeguard their own intellectual property data very well. your data, your payment card information, your social security number, the prescriptions you take, whatever other personal data these companies have, is not very well protected. and part of the reason is because there's no economic deterrence for companies to have lax security.

the courts have repeatedly turned away people claiming injury from identity theft, and the supreme court's recent decision in a case called spokeo versus robins leaves unsettled the question whether you have a right to sue when your personal data has been compromised due to a data breach. so all right, so that's the assault. and the assault is real. and the erosion of our rights has been steady and predictable for the last, i would say, decade or 20 years. so what can we do about this? there have been some bright signs on the horizon. the passage of dodd/frank and the creation of the consumer financial protection bureau is an enormous step forward. now, the agency has been in existence for only four and a half years, but has already done some important things.

itis taken some enforcement actions, it's done policy work to protect those people who are not entitled or not eligible for anything other than subprime loans to protect them in the market. it has proposed some, some curtailment of the right to mandatory arbitration. but that's just the first step. that agency is under assault constantly in congress. i talked to my friend rich, he stopped counting the number of times he's been hauled up to the hill to testify. it was, i think, 50 at last count. he's not only been there for a few years. we need more legislation, and in order to do that, we need to organize. we need to personalize these stories, and we need to look at the level of powers that are available to us and try to exercise power. so let me talk about a few things.

one is if you look at mandatory arbitration, congress understands how powerful a force that is. there are exemptions to it. when dodd/frank was passed, the most fierce lobbying was not done by the banks. it was done by the auto dealers. why? because they wanted a provision in the bill that made it illegal for the auto manufacturers to require the auto dealers to arbitrate disputes. one of the few odd carve-outs in dodd/frank. well, the auto dealers had a point. and we need to -- we need to force congress to take a hard look at arbitration, mandatory arbitration. the only way we're going to do that is if we come up with a number of stories that drive home just how unfair, undemocratic, and essentially how perverse that process is. the other thing that we need to do is we need to win the battle

in the courts. this is where you're going to hear from paul bland and people from public citizen litigation group early on. we have been fighting these battles in the court, but the court is now up for grabs. justice scalia's seat remains vacant. justice ginsburg is 83. justice kennedy is 80. justice breyer is 78. the next president will remake the supreme court, in all likelihood. most of the decisions i have been fretting about have been 5-4 decisions. one vote can make an important difference and one vote on november 8th can make a huge difference. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you, professor. all right, our next speaker will

be speaking about stopping corporate power and money in politics. he is the president of public citizen, a group that you have heard about and you will hear again today. he's been leading public citizen since 2009, where he is now spearheading the effort to loosen the chokehold that corporations and the wealthy have over our democracy. following the supreme court's decision in citizens united, he established a democracy is for people program, which is a project of public citizen, and it's specifically intended to fight for a constitutional amendment to overturn the ruling and curb money in politics. please welcome robert wiseman. [ applause ] >> thank you for your stamina for democracy, for breaking through power. fortunately or otherwise, i'm the last person between you and

lunch. so try to amuse you. unfortunately, this microphone is taped down and i can't walk around. i don't have pictures, so i'm just going to talk. but i was suggesting to someone that maybe we could entertain a little bit with shadow puppets because of the good light, we have the people and the koch brothers. pounding on the people. we'll come back to that puppet metaphor later on. so there's a convention, a story of conventional wisdom which is america is a country deeply divided. we're red and blue states. heard some detailed reporting on this on npr this morning, with some interesting -- actually interesting reporting, and some shocking views. we're plainly a country divided profoundly by race and equally as profoundly and less often recognized by class. and i say that that political story, that's the dominant

narrative of trying to explain what's going on in the country, that we're a divided nation. it has some truth. that story has some truth, that's why it works. but, it overshadows another story that is at least as important, i think, probably more important. which is that we're actually an amazingly united country, when it comes to the policy agenda that americans favor. astoundingly united. i'm about to read you a set of statistics, but by way of background, compare them to the fact that 4 out of 5 people agree that the earth revolves around the sun. that's a marker. and it's not -- as an aside, that's not a -- nothing to do with american science teaching. it's cross culturally true. that's about the number when you look across countries. however, 83% of americans think that the top 1% have too much

power and have used it for economic advantage. three quarters of americans favor a steep rise in minimum wage, by about 2 to 1, people oppose corporate trade deals like the trans-pacific partnership. the vast majority of americans favor breaking up the big banks. about 9 in 10 say we need stronger financial regulation. 4 out of 5 voters favor expanding social security. not protecting it, not defending it, not stopping cutbacks, but expanding social security. by a three to one margin, americans want to close corporate tax loopholes. the president's controversial clean power plant is favored by a two to one, a small 2 to 1 margin. 3 out of 4 americans favor stricter air pollution standards. the clean water act has 80% support. if you give people the completely ridiculous and misleading choice between environmental protection and cost to the economy, 59% say they want stronger environmental protections. more than 9 in 10 americans want

origin of labeling, country of origin labeling for meat. 83% of americans favor giving medicare the right to negotiate drug prices. more republicans rate drug prices as a -- republicans rate high drug prices as a higher level of concern than obamacare. they're more concerned about drug prices, republicans, not the country, than obamacare. almost 9 in 10 americans say we should have tougher enforcement of law and regulations that apply to corporations. so it is an amazing consensus in the country behind a progressive populist agenda. there's also, as david, mike, and others were saying, amazing lack of progress on that agenda. there's a huge disconnect between what americans want by overwhelming numbers and what we get. what do we get out of congress, what do we get out of executives, out of state, out of city councils? you can't explain that adequately in my view with

anything other than looking at the power of corporations and especially the power of the corporate class in our elections. so corporate political power is not only expressed through money and politics but that's the cutting edge. and the problem long proceeds, of course, the citizens united decision oliver was talking about in 2010, but it got a lot worse with that decision. that decision held that corporations have the right to spend whatever they want to influence election outcomes. most of you probably are not in the business of reading supreme court decisions, but if you want to pick one, although it's a long one, it's worth reading citizens united because it is astounding and even though it has some law stuff in there, you'll understand immediately why it's astounding. it's predicated on the idea that the first amendment protection right of oppressed people, oppressed classes to express themselves, and you read the majority opinion from justice

kennedy about this connection between the first amendment and the right of the oppressed and it's eloquent and moving until you recognize that the oppressed class he's talking about is the corporate class. and that he's worried about the right of dupont and exon and walmart to speak out and not be discrim natd against. that's why we have citizens united, another decision later that deepened it a couple others. what it stands for, this right of corporations to spend whatever it wants, but what it has enabled is the wild west era in campaign spending. so the world has become -- the political world has become materially worse since that 2010 decision. in 2012, there were about $6.5 billion spent on federal elections, which was a huge record. you get these records, it becomes numbing. this year, we're going to smash that for sure. those numbers totally undercount how much is actually being spent for a variety of reasons. the advertising business says they spent $9.4 billion in

spending on political matters in the 2012 election cycle and expect to get, almost approach $12 billion this year. that itself would be an underaccount. the amounts involves are just extraordinary. what are the impacts? most of the things that fall from this are familiar to people, but actually how bad it is may not be completely obvious. one thing that has long been the case is that the need to fund-raise for political candidates means they spend their time with rich people, and that affect what is they think and say and do. president obama may have spoken and written about it more eloquently than anybody prior to citizens united in his book "audacity of hope." running for senate, what was he doing? increasingly, i found myself spending my time with people of means, law firm partners, hedge fund partners and venture capitalists. they were smart, interesting people, knowledgeable about public policy, but they

reflected almost uniformly the views of their classes. then he said i started to think the way they thought because i was hanging out with them all the time. just, you know, more precisely, if you look at the 2012 election, the "new york times" reported right at the end of the election that the president obama had spent, attended twice as many fund-raisers in the course of the election has he had attended campaign rallies and mitt romney disappears for long periods, only doing an event a day because he was so busy fund-raising. if you wonder what happened to hillary clinton in the august period, part was a strategy to see if trump would shoot himself in the foot or head every day. didn't work out perfectly, unfortunately, but a lot was she was spending her time fund-raising. where was she? if you have friends in los angeles or san francisco, they can tell you traffic was messed up every day because clinton was riding around going to fund-raisers. it's kind of funny. but even all this, so that's

sort of what happens with the candidates, but the money we talk about is worse than it seems most competitive races and all this outside money, the superpac money and dark money that citizens united enabled and spurred along coming in at astounding numbers. a billion dollars in 2012 and way more this year. it gets focused on the races that are tight. most of the time the outside spending groups spend more than the candidates themselves. they get to decide what is being debated and discussed. they spend almost all their money on negative ads. everybody hates negative ads but they work. that's why people use them. the candidates are a little deterred fromution negative ads because they can be held accountable. but these outside groups, american future funds, whatever colbert's parody is is

indistinguishable from the real thing. americans for tomorrow's tomorrow. they spend money on attack ads and that becomes what the race is about. it's meaningfully degraded. and then, of course, we have a lot of that money coming in the form of secret spending and dark money which means you can't trace where the money is coming from. one thing to hold the groups accountable is identify who the funder is. when all the funders are secret, you can't do it. you hear the number the koch brothers were going to raise almost a billion dollars. they'll spend easily $500 million to their network. you won't see the koch brothers with anywhere near that money. they'll come in in disclosed spending and all the money they're pouring in is through groups that don't actually report. we do have some rules still on the books about campaign finance. but they're not enforced, and they're honored in the breach as the former chair of the federal

election commission will tell you. anyone is free to break the rules because there is no enforcement from the enforcement agency. superpacs, you aren't supposed to coordinate with candidates. no one thinks that doesn't happen. used to think it was a wink and a nod. they're out and out coordinating. money sloshes around between different organizations so you can't follow and track what went from whom to where. and thanks to another supreme court decision in 2014, the mccutchen decision, you can put together these strings of political committees that make it possible to donate up to $3 million to candidates. there was a huge fund-raiser that was controversial during the democratic primary that george clooney hosted for hillary clinton. to sort of get a good seat, you had to contribute $300,000. and it's worth asking, why could anybody contribute $300,000 if

the maximum contribution on primary is like $2,700? that's because the supreme court said you can string all this money together, write one check and it's all fine. so stuff is really honored in the breach. that's kind of like the lay of the land of some of the key elements of this. some of the consequences maybe aren't sufficiently recognized. there's two that are sort of dominant. they're sort of obvious but maybe less obvious than first appea appears. the first one is that all this money that's coming in, it's provided by an incredibly small number of individuals and corporations. think about them together as a corporate class, like a really, really small number. occupy wall street which did a great service to the country kind of got it wrong. all this discussion about the 1%, right? it doesn't explain what's going on in campaign funding. if you talk about -- need to talk about the top 0.01%.

the top 0.01% take about 4% of national income. it's about 30,000 people. they take -- they provide 40% of all campaign contributions. the top 0.01%. even that, actually, under sells the story. if you look at super pacs, cutting edge stuff, you are looking at 100 people from election to election who dominate what's going on. usually the top 100 donors are responsible for three-quarterses of the super pac money. in 2012, there were 52 people or families who gave more than a million to super pacs. this year already at 100. so i guess the benchmark for being taken seriously rises. not surprise, these people are overwhelmingly male. people of color don't have this kind of wealth. almost all of these giant

contributions come from white people. the other thing that's really under appreciated is the extent to which all this money controls what's debated. if we connect back to that long list of things that americans agree on, mostly not even talked about or not talked about as much as they should be given the consensus in the country. they're not talked about because that interest doesn't line up with the -- unlike rudy giuliani here getting a cell phone call. sorry. that interest doesn't line up with the donor class interest. and the politicians have to be responsive to the donor class to be taken seriously. so at the end of the day, the donors decide effectively who runs. they have a huge influence over who wins. they have a giant influence over what's debated, what's even raised as serious political consideration and after the election, what's going to be talked about seriously in

congress. so what do we have to do about it? the policy agenda is pretty straightforward and americans don't have any disagreement about that. like all those other numbers. americans are completely consensed on the need for far-reaching reform depending on what poll you look at, it's between 80 to 10 and 90 to 10 who want reform. "the new york times" had a remarkable poll that said the country is split not over the need for reform but whether the system needs fundamental change or to be completely rebuilt. i'm not actually sure which is the more radical one of those two. but that's basically everybody agrees on one of those two things. nobody agrees the current system is fine or even needs small changes. and the changes we need are familiar. the small thing is to have disclosure. all the money -- outside money, direct contributions, all has to be disclosed. just have to end the silliness of secret money dominating our elections.

a system of public financing for our public elections. good systems in new york and elsewhere that show us how to do that. and we have to overturn citizens united and other supreme court decisions that both entrench this ludicrous notion that corporations should have the same rights as people to effect our elections but also make it possible to have all this outside spending. the good news is that americans completely agree on that agenda. but we know from the first part of the conversation that aagreeing on the agenda isn't enough. people have to get mobilizeod it. and since citizens united have been. and we've had a change in what the conversation is on money and politics from a boring, good government thing to a fundamentfundament al democracy issue, corporate power issue and understanding the connection between the money and politics and corporate power and everything else that american -- the whole agenda that americans want to see realized. just using the constitutional amendment as a marker. we went from two senators who supported the amendment in 2010

when it was thought to be either frivolous or too extreme to 26 in 2012 when it started to gain traction. 54 u.s. senators voting for constitutional amendment, remarkably, in 2014. one of the presidential candidates now says that she would introduce an amendment within the first 100 days of taking office. it's a core part of the agenda for the democratic party, remarkably. so we haven't broken through all the way to when this used to be a bipartisan issue. mitch mcconnell has stopped that, but it will be again in the near future. the total key to winning is mobilize, right? the polls are insufficient. everything is about showing there's passion and that people care. this past spring, we had the first large demonstration around democracy issues in a generation. 5,000 people turning out to

support the agenda i just talked about as well as a broader democracy, focussing on the crucial voting rights as well. that was a good, small first step. we have to be at least in order of magnitude bigger. people literally laying down in the streets to make a difference. that's what we have to do to win, and we have to win on this issue to win everything else that's being talked about at this conference. we're talking about breaking through power. this is really a central issue for breaking through power. last thing to say, okay, how do you get connected. if you don't yet know the website, it's citizen.org. please sign up for our e-mail list. we will send you a lot of fund-raisers but also a ton of information about things you can do. if you actually care to be really involved in organizing, want to get you hooked up with you on the ground and what's going on across the country in these red states and blue states to win this fundamental

democracy reform. thank you very much. c-span, created by america's cable television companies and brought to you as a public service by your cable or satellite provider. >> tonight on c-span3, british foreign secretary boris johnson appears before the committee on foreign affairs. a discussion on food safety and biological terrorism. and a new survey out finds dissatisfaction with american political culture. but first, an update from the road to the white house. >> the "time" magazine cover story out today, total meltdown and a caricature of donald trump co-written by philip elliott, washington correspondent for "time" magazine. thank you for being with us. we appreciate it. >> of course. >> let's begin withior piece in which you mention that donald trump is "consumed by petty

grudges, angry over leaked recordings and now free of the republican party shackles." what has been going on? >> well, it has been nothing short of an epic meltdown inside trump tower. we've talked at length with several people trying to advise mr. trump off his ledge to get him back into a more traditional mode. he is just not going there. he is going to leave everything on the field, to use a tortured sports analogy, and just use this in the last remaining days of his campaign to settle scores and to basically relitigate every wrong that he feels he has been suffering. this is a candidate who has, as we, quote one official, just taken the party and has forced it to the darkest places possible. nurturing the worst instincts of

some of the conservative members of his party and torturing -- and that is not an exaggeration -- torturing the establishment minded republicans who have devoted their entire lives to building up a conservative party in this country that can debate ideas and can talk about its history and this is about as far from a party of george h.w. bush as you can imagine. >> so where does that put house speaker paul ryan, the senate republican leader mitch mcconnell and the so-called mainstream republicans as they try to maintain control of the house and the senate and figure out where the gop is going next? >> paul ryan is an interesting character here that he always had an uncomfortable, an uneasy marriage with mr. trump. okay, this is the guy who is the nominee of the party. it behooves the republican brand to not have -- to not lose a third consecutive presidential

race. it would be good for down ballot candidates if mr. trump's supporters decided to show up and vote for republican candidates for senate and house. that is no longer the mind-set inside speaker ryan's orbit or leader mcconnell's that they see mr. trump as a toxic figure inside the party that is -- that could very much drag down candidates like kelly ayotte in new hampshire. one of the perhaps most endangered republican senators facing re-election. democrats only need to capture four more seats and the vice presidency to capture the majority for the first time since -- it's a very real thing. republicans are defending 24 seats. that's a very large vulnerability for them. paul ryan over the weekend said that enough had been enough.

he uninvited mr. trump to appear in mr. ryan's own congressional district. instead invited mike pence, the running mate, to fill the spot. mike pence was, no, i'm good. he took the weekend off the trail to figure out where this race goes. appearing with mr. trump has now become -- it will become a liability for republican candidates because they will be forced to defend the indefensible that mr. trump has said about women. and the accusations he is facing on a nearly daily basis of past wrong actions, not just words. >> yet donald trump is turning his attention to the media, "the new york times" saying that based on these wikileaks, the clinton campaign in collusion with the mainstream media. how effective do you think that strategy has been or will be for donald trump? >> well, mr. trump's most loyal supporters have never been a fan

of what we would call the mainstream media. attacking the media is always a good tactic for the most conservative parts of the base. but he's not running against "the new york times." he's running against hillary clinton. and every hour he spends trying to fight with reporters and journalists and anyone in that orbit is a minute he's not litigating his case against mrs. clinton. the clinton campaign says you can do whatever you -- if mr. trump wants to spend the next three weeks talking about the media, it will only focus on what the media is reporting about him, which are very damning stories about mr. trump's previous actions and words. >> as you point out in your story, this is going to force the republican party to rethink its own identity for the first time since the 1960s during the height of the civil rights movement. based on that, why are some republicans, including the

chairman of the party, reince priebus, still with donald trump, in light of everything that's been happening over the last week and a half? >> where speaker ryan says this is a bridge too far, we can't go there, reince priebus is in a difficult position where this is a party that he has overseen. he is the long-serving chairman, relatively, in a job that is not known for durability. but this is a party that he's overseen. this is a party that he has shepherded to where it is. and at no point did they step in and say donald trump is not reflective of what it means to be a republican. and i think that is a true statement. but reince priebus is now -- no one in his party stepped in and said no to mr. trump. they allowed this to happen. they have to own it. at this point there's no remaking the republican party in the little time we have left.

there is only a managed collapse of mr. trump in the hopes that he does not take down with him everyone else who has an "r" after their name. but it's worth remembering that a lot of americans still don't like hillary clinton and can't bring themselves to vote for her. they might find mr. trump's behavior abhorrent, but they still hate hillary clinton. that this has been a decades-long indoctrination of conservatives to hate and -- hate is the right word here -- hate hillary clinton and everything she stands for. and that's, while the polling shows mr. trump is heading towards a loss, there is still a part of this country that can never bring themselves to vote for that woman in particular. >> and finally, philip elliott, the cover story, a 2.0 version of what we talked about in august, the cover story of "time" magazine, explain your approach. >> well, we, in august, it was a

moment where trump was coming out of the convention and having a very bad stretch. he was attacking muslim americans, parents of veterans. things looked to be going off the rails at that point. this moment is more damaging for mr. trump. he's quickly approaching the point of no return, and he's not going to take down just his own campaign. he may take down the entire republican party with him. >> the "time" magazine cover story on newsstands today and available online at time.com. philip elliott, washington correspondent. thank you for being with us. >> of course. thank you. watch c-span's live coverage of the third debate between hillary clinton and donald trump on wednesday night. our live debate preview from the university of nevada las vegas starts at 7:30 p.m. eastern. the briefing for the debate studio audience is at 8:30 p.m. and the 90-minute debate is at

9:00 p.m. eastern. stay with us for viewer reaction, including your calls, tweets and facebook postings. and watch the debate live or on demand using your desktop, phone or tablet at c-span.org. listen to live coverage on your phone with the c-span app. download it from the google play or app store. c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up friday morning, david brody, chief political correspondent for cbn news will discuss the split in the evangelical community over voting for donald trump. then celeste katz will talk about the role millennial voters are playing in campaign 2016 and what issues are motivating them this election cycle. be sure to watch c-span's "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on friday. join the discussion.

british foreign secretary boris johnson testified before the foreign affairs committee of the british house of commons today. it was his first in front of the committee since becoming the uk's top diplomat in july. he took questions on the uk's foreign policy strategy as the nation begins to extract itself from the european union and continues its part in the fight against the islamic state militant group in iraq and syria. this is about an hour and 45 minutes. >> order, order.

welcome to this session of the foreign affairs committee. and our first session with the new secretary. welcome to the committee and congratulations on your appointment. >> thank you. >> obviously this first formal session with the committee. and it's a desire in that sense to be more open session than it might usually be, inquiring into particular subjects, obviously associated with everything that is going on. and, of course, we are rather limited in the time you have available for the committee, so that is going to limit the subject coverage to a degree. and we will also then want to come back. this is going to be a long game relationship. hopefully for both our sakes for some time. but i thought it would be

appropriate to invite you to give us an opening statement. not for too long so we can get into the interrogative session. lay out things for about ten minutes, and then i'll ask my colleagues to begin questions. >> thank you very much, mr. blunt. a few years ago, i was traveling in the gulf region on a trade trip, and i was having lunch. and a sheikh who was my host turned to me and he said, what happened to you guys? you used to run this place, he said. actually, he was quite right because the british flag had only come down in that particular country in living memory. and yet we had faded from the scene. whether it was because of the loss of confidence or dennis healy's despairing decision to chop uk influence east of suez,

we somehow became less present in that country, politically, culturally, commercially and others had moved in. and as my host put it to me, with slight mystification, you left us to the french. and mr. blunt, members of the foreign affairs committee, i am here to tell you this morning, insofar as that was ever true of the uk, that neglect is being reversed with astonishing speed, as i'm sure members of your committee know. our trade with the gulf is booming. it's one of the faste esest gro areas of trade for the uk now. our relations in that area are better than ever. and after a period in which the labor government all but ignored that region, i didn't think gordon brown ever made an additional visit to the country i'm speaking of. our prime minister will this year become the first female guest of honor at the gulf

cooperation council summit, or so i'm told. the reason for this growing engagement by the uk is at least partly that it's under william haig, my predecessor, philip hammond and under this administration with the strong support of the prime minister. we have a foreign commonwealth office that is more energetic and outward looking and more engaged with the world than at any time in decades. and that outward looking spirit is present not just in the gulf but across the world. and i think it's going to intensify as we extricate ourselves from the eu treaty and we forge a new identity as the prime minister has said as a global britain. and i mean global because it is vital to understand what brexit is and what it is not. yes, it means restoring our

democracy and control of our laws and our borders and a fair bit of cash. but brexit is emphatically not any kind of mandate for this country to turn in on itself to haul up the drawbridge or to detach itself from the international community. and i know as a former mayor of this city how vastly our capital and our whole economy has profited from london's role and the uk's role as a lone star and a magnet for talent. and i believe there is no inconsistency whatever between the desire to take back control of our borders and the need to be open to skills from around the world. there is absolutely no inconsistency between ending the supremacy of eu law in this country as we will and being a major contributor to the

security and economic prosperity of the whole european region. we are leaving the eu. we are not leaving europe. and over the last three months, i've been struck by how little i am asked about brexit and how swiftly the conversation moves on to some other aspect of the uk's global role. and in an age of uncertainty with democracy in retreat in some parts of the world, large parts of the middle east in chaos, the demand is for more britain, not less. and we can see that demand now almost tragically and effectively in syria where the people of aleppo are hoping desperately that we and our allies may be able to do something to alleviate their suffering in the face of the barbaric assaults of the assad regime with the -- of russia and

iran. and i must tell you at this stage it is vital that we do not raise false hopes. we know the difficulties and the implications of a no-fly zone or no bombing zone, and no matter how easy those concepts may sometimes be made to sound, but if there is more that we can reasonably and practically do together with our allies, then, of course, we should consider those measures and, believe me, that work is now going on. but we should also take pride in what we are already doing. the second biggest donor of human taure humanitarian aid to the region, we fund the white helmets who dragged people from the rubble after the air strikes and who have themselves suffered terrible casualties. i've seen the work of british police training local syrian police so that they are able to build public trust in the areas

occupied by the mod rap opposition. we're helping to clear mines and shells and we should never forget that it is thanks at least partly to the raf crews flying repeated missions over iraq and syria. that we have helped reduce by 50% the territory of daesh in iraq and 20% their footprint in syria. so whether it's through hard power in that way or through soft power, i think we sometimes forget in this country how much britain is contributing around the world. helping to bring peace in colombia. helping to get rid of the pirates off the coast of somalia. leading the campaign to save the african elephant now perilously endangered. from the same bands of gangsters, by the way, involved in the people trafficking that's is helping to fuel the migration

crisis. you look around though world and you see that this country is a massive force for good. an increasingly uncertain world, a world that's been deprived of leadership. and the values that we try to project, whether through our embassies or through british cons ul or through the british companies or 5 million or 6 million brits who live abroad which is bigger than any other diaspora than any other rich country in the world. i think those values are not just good in themselves. when i speak of british values, i mean democracy, free speech, independent judiciary, qualities, rule of law, anticorruption support for the civil society. they're good in themselves. they'reu de their ideals.

but they're also economically advantageous for the areas in which -- the countries in which we try to protect them. you look around this city and this economy, i think it's pretty obvious that it provides the proof that political and social liberty are essential for sustainable economic prosperity. and that is one of the missions of global britain. but i think an outward looking britain is, above all, good for us. it's good for britain because we are about, in the next few years, to be liberated to go across the world and do a new set of free trade deals. an extremely exciting prospect. and to get back to the beginning of my remarks, we will be going out again to places where perhaps people haven't seen so much of us in the past in places where they thought we had forgotten about them. and we have a superb fco network

to help make it happen. we have more reach than our friends in france. more -- bigger network of embassies at only 17% of the cost. and, finally, one of the biggest privileges of my job in the last few months to meet our people who represent the uk to the world. they seem to me in my advanced years, they seem amazingly young, idealistic, very often intellectually brilliant like the two people on either side of me, and i believe they are excited about the challenge of projecting global britain and they have a -- they have a confidence, a real confidence, an optimism that i think comes with the knowledge that they are speaking for a soft power superpower. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. just before i invite colleagues to put questions to you, how we're going to manage this is colleagues will have the

opportunity to interrogate you on whatever subject they wish for. ten minutes or so and then i will come in and ask my questions at the end. i want to pick up one point out of your opening remarks. where i think i would recognize that the renewed focus on the gulf started under lord haig, but all of that optimistic view about the reach of the foreign office and how energetic and active it is is completely contradicted by the utterly dire resources position your department finds itself in. perhaps you can explain how on earth you're going to pay for these splendit aspirations given the fact that half your budget now appears to be constrained to areas that -- 0.7% of development expenditure

that the british council budget has been cut from your department. it is the view of this committee that you were going to need to double or triple the resources available if we're to meet these aspirations post-brexit, which i think the committee would no doubt share. but what comfort can you give us that you're going to actually be able to spend money in places like in europe, reinforcing our bilateral relations in the wake of brexit. because it doesn't appear to be any money kicking around. >> i think i would make a few points. obviously, in certain circumstances we have to make our money go further than before. we're doing extremely well. we can -- very proud of what we're -- excuse me.

the budget of the overall budget is rising from $1.1 billion to 1.24 billion by '19, '20. where you're spot on, if i may say, mr. blunt, is in pointing to the very considerable sums that are available to -- for oda for dividend spending. we obviously have quite a lot of oda spend that we do ourselves, but the game now is to make sure that uk oda funds are used in such a way, not just to serve development goals as they undoubtedly must, but also to make sure they mesh and chime with our diplomatic and political objectives.

i find no contradiction in that approach. and that's something the government at all levels -- >> secretary, just to pick that point up, that's fine but that only applies to those countries that are subject to development assistance. you can't spend that money elsewhere. so it's all very well having money there but where our game needs to be raised is with the rest of the world where our principle existing markets are getting to be, obviously reinforcing the work of the international trade department. but you can't do this on fresh air. and what you have is fresh air to do this on to meet these aspirations. >> i go thknow that you gave my predecessor quite a grilling about this when he last appeared. he made a good point that he

couldn't imagine bidding for more funds. now since he's the chancellor, i'm trying to camp out on what he had to say. >> all right. >> secretary, in welcoming you to your post, can we kick off, it may not surprise you, with brexit. to many of us, the referendum gave a very clear message, and that is we're leaving. the government's position is very clear on this. we're going to take back control on immigration. we're going to introduce a fairer immigration policy that no longer discriminates against the rest of the world outside the eu and we're going to obtain the best deal in accessing eu markets. it's a nonsense that there is so much noise about this, one could argue, given that 170 other odd count

countries. no reason this economy can't as well. what do you say to the alarmists? some would perhaps, unfairly perhaps, call them ramoners who believe that we're heading to hell in a hand basket, and what would you say to those who are genuinely concerned about developments and the uncertainty this is creating? >> i think that those who prophesy doom before the referendum have been proved wrong, and they'll continue to be proved wrong. i think, obviously, it will take time before the full benefits of brexit appear because after all, we haven't even begun the process of leaving. so the whole thing is really very artificial and speculative. i do think that businesses investing in the uk can have the maximum possible certainty and assurance that our partners, our

friends across the channel have a huge interest in doing the best possible deal in goods and services for the sake of their companies and our friends in the political world across the channel have a symmetrical interest in doing a deal that will be for the benefit of their constituents and the people who elect them. and that's a deal that's going to be -- that's going to promote the growth and prosperity of the uk and the eu. and i'm insure thatsure that's l produce. that's how we'll -- that's how it will end up. >> perhaps we should take comfort from the fact that the very deem predicting doom and gloom if he didn't join the euroer left the ern, many are predicting doom and gloom now. perhaps that's comfort we can take. can i drill down on negotiations. one fully understands that a roving commentary makes for poor

outcomes. and despite the silent calls of certain members ever this plaof play, it's difficult to think that can take place. the government has made clear that won't take place. there will be scrutiny perhaps but no roving commentary. but the eu's position itself is quite interesting. they are very much, and have been put it on record, that they are linking immigration with access to single market. they say it's one before founding principles if you like. it's nonnegotiable. you've described that approach as baloney. say again? >> [ inaudible ]. >> absolutely. there's a disconnect, how are we going to get around this, do you think? >> thank you very much for that question. i genuinely think there's a false connection, an unnecessary linkage in all these concepts.

i vividly remember being ordered by the belgian interior minister in 1989 to leave the country. they tried to deport me when i went to work abroad because i couldn't produce what was then called a -- i had to show i was economically viable in belgium and i have to go to the commune with a letter proving that i had a job. now this was, as you'll all appreciate, many years after the treaty of rome and after the european act. so the idea that the brownian movement of individuals, of citizens across the surface of europe is somehow there on tablets of stone in brussels is complete nonsense. it is a fiction. we are taking back control of our borders, as we said we

would, and that's what we'll do. it doesn't mean, as i said in my opening remarks, that we are get tock hostile to people of talent who want to come live and work. it's very important that we continue to send out a signal of openness and welcome to the many brilliant people who helped to drive the london economy and the uk economy. >> is there one, though, naughty problem that we've got to face and we haven't quite faced up to it or perhaps we have behind closed doors? and that is opposition obstensibly is access to the single market. and one can understand that. at the same time, we're going to be repealing the european community's act. it's that act that gave force to the eu court of justice which has jurisprudence with regard to single market. there's a little bit of a disconnect there. how your going to square that

circle? >> the prime minister made it clear a couple of weeks ago when she said the uk will be leaving the eu and thereby, we'll be leaving the number of the european court of justice. we'll no longer be subject to european community, european union law. and that's the key point. we will get the best possible deal for goods and services for the uk and the rest of the eu. >> okay. following on from that then, then it sounds to many of uand this holds no fear from many of our points of view, that we would be prepared if all else fails in negotiations to fall back on wto rules and tariffs. now your fellow secretary of state for leaving the eu said that holds no fears. you know, if 170 countries can trade on such a basis and taurives are as low as 3% to 5%, the most favored nation status,

et cetera, et cetera, i'm picking up here that it certainly hold nose feas no fea you. >> you're trying to get me into running commentary about negotiations. i'm not going to -- i think we can do a great deal that will deliver a result of both goods and services for our businesses and for our friends -- >> you wouldn't disagree with your fellow sskts state in saying wto holds no fears? >> as i said, i think it will be getting into the minutia of the negotiations. >> let's move on very quickly. >> i think there will be a great deal done. >> eu divisions, something we're not picking up on. i've raised it on the floor of the house before. but what's your take. quite understandably, the spotlight is on the negotiating position. as you look across at the eu, it's quite an interesting

situation. you have an emerging split, a growing split, in fact, between the ideaologists within the eu commission and elected politicians who realize that courtesy of the balance of trade in their favor, playing hardball may not be in their best interest. what can you tell us with that situation as you see it? >> i understand that point, and i've heard it quite a lot. i think it's important not to -- i haven't actually tested that proposition yet with some of the key commission people. but my impression is they are faithful servants of europe and the eu, and they will ultimately do what they consider to be in the best interest of the entire union, and i think that will be a deal that is beneficial to the electorates, people of europe. and that's where they'll end up. of course, a certain amount of

plaster has come off the ceiling in brussels since the vote. of course people feel they have a project. a fascinating article in the ft this morning by the french prime minister in which he spelled out this. why the vote to leave? and he very emphatically specialspelled out his vision for a federal system with very defined boundaries. i'm afraid, not an ideal to which i think the british people really aspire. and i think we did the right thing, and i think we can make it work. >> do you think relations a few years out can improve in the eu? no longer will they have to contend with those awkward brits, the thorn in their side as they merge toward a closer political union? it could make for a closer relationship? >> of course. i'm so glad to hear you speak in those terms. i think europe is at its best when it's positive about the work it's engaged on.

sets itself a deadline. i think we should view the whole brexit process as a positive thing. we are sorting out the uk problem. and after all, there has been a problem for derad decades. we decided to stay out of state street and monetary union. that was the basic moment of divergent. all else really flowed from that. what we saw on june the 23rd was theological c logical conclusio divergence, that basic drift by the british people away from that ideal which is articulated by the prime minister in the paper this morning. we don't want to be part of such a construct. and we've always made it clear. it's always been very tense. we said we don't agree with this. we don't agree with the jurisdiction of the european court of justice over this or

that. and to a certain extent, some other countries have shielded their own apprehensions behind us. but it's up to them now to get on and take the thing forward. >> finally on brexit, can i just reinforce what christian said earlier, our chairman, about resources. it's going to be -- many of us believe that actually the fc is unresources as it is. we've been poorly cited in many of our interventions. some of us have a particular view of those interventions. put that to one side. the resources are going to be even more needed now as we become truly globalist as we look outward facing. not just to the eu but outside the eu. an increase in the budget of, what, 140 million pounds. you know very well, foreign secretary, is a drop in the ocean compared to what is

required. how forceful are you going to be in lobbying for more funds within -- from where you sit? >> first of all, i'm grateful to the tenor of your arguments because they are most welcome to us and, clearly, we want to be arguing that global britain needs to be properly represented overseas. i think we can make that go a long way. very thrifty types in the foreign office. we'll make good use of that. but, clearly, we have a big network, or a robust network that needs to be properly funded. >> thank you for joining us and thank you to your colleagues for coming along. >> sorry to interrupt you, but the ones that i -- far be it to criticize bureaucrats. the unelected ones are the ones

who shortly cease to have control -- >> all right. okay. >> these are the ones who will survive. >> all right. okay. so these bureaucrats are okay as are the ones [ inaudible ], of course. in terms of your analogy on you guys going off and running the play, i'm going to take you at face value that was about trade than any other foreign policy. and one of the great attractions, obviously, to our partners overseas is access and membership of the single market. do you still believe we should retain membership? just a yes or no, foreign secretary. >> let's be clear that we are going to get a -- i think the prime minister said, the term single market is increasingly useless. we'll get a deal that will be of huge value and possibly greater value if you look at what is

still unachieved in services, for instance, in goods and services for our friends on the continent and for business investing in -- i make these wearisome points but we're the single biggest consumers of french champagne and italian prosecco. we're indiscriminate. we drink both more than anybody else. we import more german cars than any other country. there is -- this is a wonderful fact. and we are going to continue to do that. and any attempt to, as it were, to punish uk financial services or -- i don't think as the former governor of the bank of england said this morning -- it doesn't make economic sense for europe. in the end, as i --

>> that's not quite the question i asked. and also, as you'll be aware, forgive me for mentioning the french drink more whiskey in a month than cognac in a year. and i suspect that's not going to stop either. and the question i asked was, is it -- do you think we should retain membership of the single market, or is it your negotiating objective to retain membership for single market? that's a simple question without getting into so much for buying and selling -- >> i think we are going to get the best possible deal for -- >> you can't tell me -- >> i think that, as i said, i think the most useful thing i can say to you is that the phrase single market probably is one that not many people really understand. and i think that -- >> presume you understand? >> there are many countries, as mr. baron pointed out that sell very effective l ivively into te

market, and that's what we'll do. >> so we'll be outside the single market? >> we'll get the best possible deal for trade of goods and services. >> so you don't know if we'll be in the single market? that's what i take. nobody appears to have a scooby about what's going to happen. i'll tell you -- i'll do it one last time. is it even your objective to retain membership of the single market? >> we are levering the european union. >> that's not quite what i asked. >> you seem to think the single market is sort of like, you know, the groucho club or something. we're leaving the european union. we will continue to have access for trade and goods and services to leave the eu. it will be to the benefit of

both sides. >> you don't know, don't care, don't give a scooby. this is something i am pushing for as well. which commissioners have you met with since you took office? >> principally with johannes harn and commissioner mogarini. they deal with the foreign affairs. >> and i appreciate your candor on that. yesterday there was a question to the secretary of state for -- >> i am allowed to meet these people. >> -- about which commissioners he met with. i suspect it's an important relationship to have over the coming months and two years and once you've triggered article 50. hedle 50. he said he can't tell because that's part of the negotiating strategy. will they be open to tell us which commissioners? >> i'm sure they'll have no inhibitions about meeting. they are very open and, in my view, charming people.

they want to engage with us. and my relations with them is really good. we've had some very good conversations. >> okay. look, as part of this, do you still adhere to what the prime minister said when she met with first minister of scotland that there should be an agreed position with devolved administrations before any agreement is signed? >> it is certainly the case that the devolved administrations, the overseas territories, they will all be, of course, properly consulted in the course of the negotiations. >> right. but will there be an agreed position? again, foreign secretary, i'm asking you questions. i'm not sure i'm get anything answers. we've had a week of that in the chamber. will there be an agreed position with the devolved administrations? >> well, i can tell you that the devolved administrations will certainly play a role. they'll be consulted.

but this is a united kingdom. competence is something decided by the people of the uk. you'd expect them, you'd expect the government of the united kingdom to be the lead in the negotiations. just one interesting reflection on all of this sort of consultation of parliament and consultation with the devolved administrations and so on. i have seen plenty of european negotiations and treaty negotiations. and at no stage in the run-up to the climax of those negotiations has there been any attempt to pre-agree a position with parliament, let alone with the regions or their administrations. >> sure. but there is -- on the point of process you are saying there will not be an agreed position. they'll merely be consulted which goes against what the prime minister told the first minister at the very start of

this. >> i think i have answered the question. >> right, okay. let me ask you one further question on this if you can't answer that question. you talked about entering this eu law. is there any law that the cabinet signed up to with his european partners that you wouldn't have signed up to? as a full member of the council of ministers? >> i think the treaty of lisbon was a step too far. and i think it was a great mistake. and i think that we should have rejected it. i think he unnecessarily expanded eu competence and what it got wrong was the extension of eu competence to the field of human rights. and the notion that this great european charter of fundamental rights should not be -- that sets up a great deal of confusion with the court of

human rights. and it, in my view, leads to all sorts of extensions of eu judicial activism in areas that i think are totally wrong. so that would be an example of the kind of area where i might have disagreed with the previous administration. >> i think it's an area we disagree on as well. having a common set of human rights across this continent is a good thing. because i'm nearly out of time, i want to ask you briefly about syria. i'm mindful of that, chairman. in terms of syria, can you outline for me -- i mean, obviously, i think the uk has a responsibility to protect civilians. but a part of that is trying to get broader and political agreement. can you tell me of any mapping that you've done of political factions in syria and any options you're exploring at the moment for political agreement? >> well, you'll be familiar with the various maps that currently exist of the divisions of syria

and the -- >> sorry, when i say mapping. i mean of the wide variety of different groups that exist. >> one of the bits of work that we led otn, the uk has led on i building up a broad-based opposition group called the high negotiations committee, which is led by a gentleman called dr. ria hijab who came on the 7th of september with his team. they were pretty widely drawn from syrian opposition groupings. military, civil society and so on. and they laid out a case for the transition away from assad and the kind of syria they wanted to see. and it was very compelling. democratic, pluralistic, i think higher quota for female representation than there currently exists in the torry party today. and it was very -- certainly --

it was very progressive. and our ambition is to try to get the russians and the assad regime to desist from their violence in aleppo, to get back to a cease-fire, and to renew the negotiations in geneva. and in that context, those opposition groups, i believe, do carry a lot of credibility. and when they speak, you can see a future for syria that does not include assad. because that is the question that the -- that is constantly put to us. who can replace assad? well, there are answers. >> i did ask about mapping. i know i'm out of time. maybe the foreign secretary, it's a bigger question. you can write to the committees with some of the details about the work that's being conducted on mapping. >> good morning, foreign

secretary. delighted to see you in your new role. there's one word that's been missing from this morning's discussion that i've not heard from your lips, and that is the word there was going to be a c back into the fco. not much happened after that. what is the new foreign secretary intending to do to ensure the common wealth is paramount in our long-term planning and thinking for trade, cooperation and friendship? >> the common wealth -- thank you, mr. rosindell. i know you've long been a champion of the common wealth and indeed for britain and the common wealth. and it is yet another forum in which britain is able, our country, is able to express our values to get things done and to get things moving. and yes, we see it as a vital

for our future overseas. we're having in 2018 and probably coming to this city, there's still discussion about that. we are using the common wealth and our networks to principally, if you think about it, this is one of the staggering developments over the last 24 years. while the eu has been mired in low growth, it is these common wealth countries bounding ahead and yet we haven't been able, because of our constriction under the eu treaties, we vpt been able to do free trade agreements with them. many of them now stepping up, volunteering to do these deals and it's a very, very exciting

prospect. and one of of the other. australia, malaysia, new zealand, standing up and saying they want to increase trade with the uk. >> so brexit is an opportunity, in your view, for the united kingdom to do a whole lot more with the common wealth and perhaps rekindle those relationships that we neglected since we joined the common market? >> absolutely. and i yield to no one in my admiration in the common wealth office. and i walk around, this great daily state of wonder. it has many, many mannings and it's a fantastic thing. but i -- when i used to go around the world doing trade missions for london, one thing that some of the fco wallows used to tell me is actually they thought a huge operation

dedicated to the eu. but perhaps not quite enough when he went into some of the other areas. and i'm not saying i want to b subtract a commitment and other european work because that is obviously vital and 44% of our trade is with the eu and it is a colossally important. but there are opportunities. and i meant what i said earlier about the enthusiasm of the people of the fco. i think they really see this. they want to do it. and they see an opportunity here. >> so you agree with me that the common wealth flag should fly from embassy answers high commissions from around the world as you remove the european flag. >> okay. mr. rosindell, you're testing my significant u log ra if i heriu.

the flag of the common wealth -- >> highing from embassies and high commissions. >> as soon as someone can identify it to me.fhighing from high commissions. >> as soon as someone can identify it to me.lhighing from high commissions. >> as soon as someone can identify it to me.yhighing fromd high commissions. >> as soon as someone can identify it to me.ighing from e high commissions. >> as soon as someone can identify it to me.ghing from em high commissions. >> as soon as someone can identify it to me.hing from emb high commissions. >> as soon as someone can identify it to me.ing from emba high commissions. >> as soon as someone can identify it to me. >> i will have to own up. i don't know the exact configuration of the common wealth flag. >> okay, moving on. what does it look like? >> that's my drawing. >> that's a very good drawing. okay, that's effective. a lovely flag. it looks like -- wait, wait, wait, it looks like a lovely flag, mr. rosindell, but i'm not going to commit to flying it everywhere -- okay. thank you. but if you could come back on that particular point, if that's

okay, foreign secretary. could i move on now to the next item? apart from the common wealth, united kingdom actually has sovereign power over 21 territories and of of which your department is responsible for. one of which is gibraltar. particularly affected by us leaving the european union. can we expect more bulldog spirit now in dealing with madrid? can we have the more robust stance in trackeling the way spain has treated gibraltar or the line of pussyfooting which allows spain to continue to think that one day they may achieve their wish of claiming the rock under the spanish flag. >> you're going to see a completely plaquable memorial rock like resistance on the part of this government to any such claim.

and obviously we see no particular reason to be in any way difficult with our friends in madrid. if they can raise it with us and we simply make our point politely but firmly. and i think that i remember when i think the spanish foreign minister raised it with me and i felt that, you remember, marlon brando and the godfather and i must tell you, i'm sorry, my answer is no. >> and if they do get difficult and they have become difficult, they've done some things that have made the lives pretty bad over the years. can we expect a thuro and robust response from now on rather than effectively diplomatically pushing the issue into the lawn

grass? >> i think we've been clear that we see no whatever for any change to the sovereignty of gibraltar and people of gibraltar i think by 98.5% state the status quo. >> would you welcome a possibility of a visit to gibraltar by her majesty, the queen. she hasn't been for over 50 years. they've been asked repeatedly over the last five to six decades that their queen visit gibraltar. that for some reason foreign offices never seenl to recommend that to her majesty. would you make a change of policy on that issue? >> well, i'm more than happy to consult the foreign office and indeed the palace. i did the thinking behind her majesty's itinerary. but obviously, you know, a lot of people want her majesty to go

to a lot of places at the moment. and as she is a much in demand across the world as you can imagine and i think you have to be a cat about issuing promises. >> classic secretary on your well known robust stance in terms of supporting self determination for all the peoples of former british colonies. british overseas territory and the faulkland islands and you have spoken up in favor of self determination. can i just confirm that that is your view today, the view of the british government and that all people, of all former british colonies should have the absolute right of self dedetermination? >> of course.determination? >> of course.etermination? >> of course. that is our view and if you look at what's happening in the

faulklands and in argentina and we have to be careful but i think that those -- the relationship with bain bennis ares is improving. >> it's the people themselves. >> the people. >> so that is gibraltar, and does that include norfolk island as well? >> i can't remember the views of the people of -- >> would their views be equally as respected as the people of the faulkland islands to be responsible? >> we have no intention of changing government policy of norfolk island or its people. and their rights will be protected. >> self determination you support -- >> i support self determination principally. >> and of course that's british overseas territory.

their people should have the same right as other embassy's territories. would you agree with that foreign secretary? >> well, that is a difficult question because there are, as you know, those who have been loof in that area and we're conscious of that concern. and i've met some of them and we are in a state of negotiations and with them at the moment but discussions at the moment. but the position of diego garcia and the rest remains unchanged. >> and one final very last question, if i may. will the government consider the possibility of restoring a royal yacht? and if so, will you give your force to that policy? >> if it's not a government pri

priority and i must inform you that the last -- that former roy royal britania, its propeller is being sawed off and a hole carved into the side to make it into a museum, so you can't do that. what i have said is that if a consortium of philanthropists wish to give her majesty a yacht and pay for it, then obviously that's not something that i would impede. >> there is a bit of good news over the last 24 hours. in that the united states and -- united states and -- united

states are meeting in switzerland to discuss what may happen in the future. and give the -- and with russia and that must be a hopeful development. and in that case, as one speaking of myself who advocated, marching outside the embassies, and would you agree that in this case, it would be advisable to wait to see what comes out of this museum over the weekend and if it doesn't come out the way we wanted it to come out, we should involve marching on all the embassies involved in the current situation in syria. >> thank you.

>> i think that the obviously we must all hope that the contact between the russians and the americans does produce something on saturday. we've been here before. and i think everyone would agree many times, whole carrying process ran for quite a while. it does not actually interrupt the bombing and you will have seen through the front pages of today's papers that that continues. people are continuing to die in aleppo far more civilians being killed than militia men. this is a gross, gross crime against humanity. and you spoke very powerful in the house the other day about that and i agreed with every word that you said and i also thought you were right, by the way, to point out the particularity to stop the war coalition and do not think it

suitable to protest against this particular war against an innocent civilian population. and i think that's an oddity that has been noticed. and i remark upon it again. >> the point i'm making is given the number of players in this horrible situation, that perhaps if this weekend, if you don't come to some agreement, we can also focus attention on the embassy and other countries involved. >> okay. let me be very direct then. i think it important not to let a general sort of blame game diskaes the central responsibility for what is taking place. this is the assad regime of the 400,000 people who have died in syria. 95% of them have been killed by the assad regime. they are being backed up by the russians. and the iranians. those are the culprits.

>> how many have been taken -- >> my information is from the -- this is that vast majority of the casualties that have been sustained, according to stephan -- >> in result -- >> is this -- i assume you meant in the conflict as a whole? >> in the conflict as a whole. >> i've had data that 17,000 fatality in the conflict -- point i'm -- >> the thing is, the thing is i've been told that the assad regime is responsible of the 400,000 fatalities that are are regularly counted by the u.n. and special representative. overwhelming majority, to the best of my knowledge, by the

assad regime. and my point is that that should be the focus of our outrage and as i said, peculiar that they don't see it that way. >> can i ask what policy openings you think are to the uk to respond to event in aleppo? >> well, as i said in my remarks, i think it's very important not to get hopes up too high because you're you remember what point the department got to in 2013. when this house took the step backwards. i thought that was regrettable at time that i know you did too. and we left, vacated the space, which has been occupied by the

russians. and our options now are are to try on the humanitarian front to try to find extra ways of getting help into aleppo. to do what we can to help warn the people of aleppo, to support white helmets, to support all kind of humanitarian relief to intensify sanctions on some of the kwee players in the assad regime and russians as well and it is right now that we should be looking again at the more kinetic options and military options. but we must be realistic about how these in fact work and what is deliverable and certainly you can't do anything without a coalition, without doing it with the americans.

and i think we are still at a pretty long day's march from getting there. >> the situation with the kurds, so much emphasis with the peshmerga and of course the peshmerga were useful in liberating people like the yi zeetys. and how do we protect the kurds. use them and praise them, how do we protect them? >> there's no doubt that there are difficulties with the turkish/kurdish relations in

syria and the turks have concerns about some groups of kurds and they make no difference between the pkk and why do americans see things differently? i think one thing everybody agrees, including the turks, is that the and they have been taking their bits out of iraq and they have the confidence out of the leadership and that's been encouraging. >> mosul is very much on the agenda at the moment. and some people are, the public seem to be very concerned about how we protect the civilians in mosul. once the liberation of mosul is

under way and i'm not quite clear how that is going to happen. >> i think that is, going to be a huge question for all of us in the course of the months ahead. mosul must be from die esh. it is a city of least 1.5 million people and very largely sunni. they are not going to want to be deliberated, to put it mildly, by shia militias. it is going to be a very, very difficult and delicate operation. but the needle has to be grasped and it requires a great deal of thought and it also requires us collectively to think about mosul post liberation. how is it going to be ordered? how is it going to be run? these are questions we need to be answering now.

>> what is, in mosul, what is the uk doing? >> our role in mosul at the moment is to help prepare for the liberation of mosul. and to think about how we were ordered. you may be interested to know that on sunday, i'm calling a meeting about fellow foreign ministers, jop keri is coming over. and others too to discuss exactly how we're going to proceed. not just in, in syria, but in iraq as well. and i think that the general feeling is that i'm going to obviously it's good but things are happening again in geneva. but most people, and i think including john kerry, feel that

the process of argument is basically out of road and on sunday we will be talking about all of the options that we think are available to us and to the west. and i'm not going to pretend that there is any easy answer here, because there isn't. but i think most people, and i'm interested in what you say about polls from the uk public, most people i think, and are now changing their mind about this and thinking we can't let this go on forever. we can't just see aleppo pulverized in this way. we have to do something. i think the movie at the house of commons is very telling. i think it has changed from 2013. whether that means we can get the, again, a coalition together

for more kinetic action now, i cannot prophesy that what certainly most people want to see is a new set of options. >> quickly -- >> i can take it. >> yes. >> briefly. >> can i ask you about the yemen. >> yes, of course. >> are you satisfied about the protection of civilians is something in our -- given the horrible stories coming out of there, given the role of saudi arabia, given the role, our role, in sending arms to saudi arabia. >> obviously we had a very elaborate, probably the most elaborate of any arms expecting company, elaborate system of

trying to check that, our -- and look, we take all the allegations, all the news from yemen incredibly seriously. we saw what happened on saturday. it was extremely worrying. we have to encourage and we encourage our saudi friends to go for a cease-fire to sort this out, and to investigate thoroughly what has taken place and they are investing -- >> and a very substantial subject which deserves significant time, but let's see if we can create that time at end. and we may be in your hand, that one. >> thank you very much. secretary, can i go back to your initial remarks where you said you wanted to forth a new

identity as a bloeb global brit. you draw attention to the park kenyan heritage of the united states president and you of course have part american and part turkish heritage. are you part of what the prime minister would refer to as a citizen of the world? >>t used to say that honey is produced in more than one country. and i am in that sense and i think we all are. the human race emerged from africa. that's why, by the way, i was so offended by the prime minister's answer in the -- >> are you offended by the prime minister's attack on the people who see themselves as citizens

of the world? end of speech? at the conference? >> well, so we are and that's our primary identity. i also think that, we're all, you know, part of the same great species and we should, you know -- i get back to my point. we should be open to people from other countries. we really should. and it is something of an immense value and it is a two-way thing. britain is the biggest exporter ofity own people. of all the rich countries. we send brits abroad and it is a fantastic thing we do. the world is better for it. but britain is also better for having some brilliant people

working here. >> including, perhaps our plans for how we deal with the european union people working at noc and elsewhere. >> i'm so glad you mentioned that. i'm able to knock that one totally on the head. because that was absolutely nonsense. that someone rang up the foreign office and there was a phone conversation in which he was made clear, which is standard procedure and anyone working for the foreign office for for fco and as a member of staff, has to get security clearance. that's always been the case. but there is absolutely no reason for anyone supplying research data or whatever or analysis to the effort, to us, to have security. and the so it is inaccurate

report of the conversation, and presented it, somebody did, some remainor, post as post referendum changing policy and it wasn't true. and it is like, everything is now attributed to brexit. total nonsense. >> nothing changed? >> nothing has changed. >> right. thank you. can i ask you about this relationship between your department and the department for leaving the european union? the secretary of state, your colleague, david davis, came before us a few weeks ago and i asked him questions about that. and he said, i asked him whether albrecht would be reporting to him on fco. and he said there would be a

in -- or i don't know. can you report, do they report to the common wealth office or eu -- >> i've had contact with ivan rogers. he is our rep. and all european embassies obviously we run a network. but i want to stress, this has been of all the sort of fictions in the media, this is the most -- the idea that these three competing polls, it is complete nonsense, where we are working together and the fco hold the network where support is being done by both and we've got to get on with it. >> okay. that context, since the referendum vote calls by ministers in france and italy

and germany for a revitalization of the acceleration towards an eu defense policy. now your colleague, secretary of state of defense, has said that we would block such a development. but given that we are intending to be out of the eu within around two years are a so, is it wise for us to obstruct what other eu countries wish to do to increase their defense cooperation? wouldn't it actually damage the possibility of us getting a good deal in negotiations if we take that attitude? >> well, i mean, a couple of points. first of all, i think it is perfectly right to point out as michael fallon has done, that pack that undermines is a bad idea. and we have to make sure that defense architecture of europe and this probably well continues to have the americans very much in it. i think that is something widely

understood across other european capitals. if our friend want to go ahead with new security architecture as they have pledged to do by the way, many times, in the last four decades. i remember it quite well. as you've indicated, i didn't think post brexit we could reasonably stand in their way. i think what we might suggest is given we are the biggest military in the area. second biggest in the other nuclear power, it wouldn't be a bad idea if they do pro poed, do genuinely go ahead with such things, a way in which britain could be supportive, involved in the enterprise. that might be something that would lend itself to commissioner high representative and others currently involved this this venture. >> okay. finally, i'm not sure how much

time i've got left, jim. right. thank you. that's good ultimately. your predecessor one william hague in november 2012 said that the uk recognized the national coalition of syrian revolution or opposition forces add to the quote solely jit mat representative of the syrian people. now there was some questions about that. i myself queerried it in terms of did it really rep dent all the opposition forces. is that still the position of the government that national coalition of the solely legitimate representative of the syrian people? >> no, i think what we're saying is that the -- the negotiations committee, which is as broadly-based body -- >> which is wider than the --

>> which is wider. >> yes. >> i think has a great deal of credibility. they should be at center of the gentlemen neef gentleman negotiations. but i don't exclude that there might be others who could also have a claim and we should not be so artesian about it. if there are others that want to be useful to syria then of course their claims should be -- if they are democratic and -- >> to be clear, you're confirming that the government no longer regards the national coalition as the sole legitimate representative? >> well, what i'm saying is that we think that the hnc is a path and incredible voice for those opposition groups. >> okay. we need to explore that. finally, during the urgent

statement that we had on the debate which andrea mitchell introduced a couple of days ago, pa parallels were drawn with what germany is doing in aleppo to what they've did it -- and with what aleppo did in ukraine, what it did in georgia and in its own country, isn't it time for us to fund limt reassess our attitumet country, isn't it time for us to fund limt reassess our attitum t country, isn't it time for us to fund limt reassess our attitumet country, isn't it time for us to fund limt reassess our attituli thoughts to russia and the baltic states and which could potentially hit berlin as well as poland and the revelations about the hacking of the democratic national committee

and attempts to interfere in the american election process. do we not need to have a fundamental reassessment of our attitude to russia. >> well, i heard your powerful speech the other day in the commons about the russian bombing and i think your feelings are shared by millions of people in this country. i think two points. it is very important to stress that we have no quarrel with the russian people. we are not hostile to russia. as a country. far from it. and i look at it further and say i don't believe that russia is as, for allity -- it is doing many, many terrible things as you rightly say. but i didn't think that russia today could be compared with the soviet union members and i didn't think that it was as much of a threat to the stability of

the world as the former soviet union. i don't think it is entirely right to talk -- i think it is right to talk about a new cold war but it is obvious and you quickly list the ways in which russia is being reckless and aggressive. it is obvious that we have a serious problem. and our sanctions are biting. the russian economy shrank by i think almost 3.5% more last year. it is tough for people in russia but the regime seems determined to remain on its present course. i think we have to remain very, very tough. and it's the uk that is in the lead both in the u.n. security

council, in drafting passion resolutions on rush why's behavior. it is the uk that has escalated the question of whether the bombing of aleppo may amount it a war crime. and it is the uk that's in the lead of making sure we keep the sanks tight on russia because of what's happening in ukraine. and there is another terrible conflict. 9,200 lives claimed in eastern ukraine. mr. gapes, i cannot disagree with your analysis. we have a very serious problem. but we have to engage with russia. we have to persuade the russian government. you have to persuade vladimir putin. there is another path for him and his government. if he will lead the way and bring peace it syria, then he will deserve credit and the

thanks of the people of this world that if he continues on the present path of barberism then i'm afraid as i said in the house, russia is in danger of being reduced to the status of a rogue nation. and i think that would be a tragedy. if you consider where we were 25 years ago when we had such hopes at the end of the cold world. we really thought that it could all be so different. i don't want us to get back into a logic of endless confrontation with russia or every part of the world. that would be krasy. we have so much. there are things we have to do together. we have to fight terror together. russian people. russian poholiday, british holiy makers, threatened to be blown out of the air by terrorists. we have common interests. but at the is a moment, the behavior of the russian government is making it very,

very difficult to make it possible for us to ensure those together. >> before i get on to syria, what effect do you think the sanctions are on russia with regard to ukraine. and the specifically, are they changing russian policy? >> no. sanctions are biting. as i said, russian economy is, the effect of the sanctions is hard to distinguish from the result of the collapse and the price of hydrocarbons. but no doubt that the sanctions have hurt the russians, their ability to raise finance. we must continue that pressure and it's not controversial with our european friends. prime minister in the eu have told me privately that they feel their economies are feeding the

pressure of the sanctions. because after all they may have considerable trade with russia. our own trade with russia, as you know, has fallen dramatically following these sanctiones. they have an effect on both sides. but at present there is no -- >> so a difficult conundrum you face as we are now examining presumably the course of the ak over the weekend that's coming, about what to do about russian action in syria, is that so far the relievers available to us over the ukraine have no policy effect? lievers available to us over the ukraine have no policy effect?lievers available to us r the ukraine have no policy effect? . >> i wouldn't go so far as to say that. i think the balance is in effect, they are biting. i think that strategy of the russians, with the kremlin, seems to be basically to keep the region in the state of

turmoil. and to make ukraine very difficult politically to govern as a united whole. and i'm afraid that we are, we could be in for a long haul here. i think it would be a mistake. >> chart a route as to how we get to russia out of the cul-de-sac it's place itself. >> i'm afraid it need both sides in ukraine to make progress. and i do think the minx -- i would like to see for myself what was going on. you mustn't talk, you mustn't underestimate the psychological effect of people on the ukraine, of this war. they have lots of people. and they feel very, very -- >> we're going next week. >> they feel deeply and very bitterly about what russia is

doing. but it is also true and incredibly difficult as a result for ukrainian politicians but also true that they have to try and take the thing forward. the need at some stage to be a democratic process and the minx process has got to get going. that means that there must be reform in ukraine. and progress, progress is as fast as ukrainian leadership would like. >> my question was picking up your wider strategic point about the need to have a constructive relationship with russia and all that we have in common. and a at the same time you are talking about russia becoming a pariah state and the terms of the ambassador and u.n. spoke about russia and u.n. where it is extremely severe. and how do we get russia into a

place where we can begin to have that kind of constructive relation -- you have mr. burrow next to you, obviously something of an authority.aurrow next to you, obviously something of an authority.barurrow next t something of an authority.ourroy something of an authority.nurro obviously something of an authority.rrow next to you, obvy something of an authority.obvio authority.omething of an authority.something of an authority.obviously something of an authority.ow ne something of an authority.baronw next to you, obviously something of an authority.w next to you, obviously something of an authority. next to you, obviously something of an authority. >> russia, i went there when ways 16, it is an extraordinary culture and we should befriend with the russians. we should be building relations. we should be keeping channels open. we should be constantly talking to them. we must not get into a logic of being, of a new cold war. that would be totally wrong. >> but you think the route forward and knowledge that russian importance and on the world stage.

so these barbaric acts in aleppo and in syria and if they would help find a way forward in ukraine. i think you've got a -- we can see what's happened with the former soviet union over the last 25 years. and everybody can see the reasons why the russians might collectively feel that they were -- they had been squeezed. and they lost huge amounts of territory that they once conceived of as belonging to them and they see nato -- and seeing things from a certain -- to a certain extent from the russian point of view. but the russians have got to understand that the way forward

for them is to do the right thing. and doing the right thing means doing a deal in syria. and let's hope that john kerry and has success on saturday and let's see where we get and did a deal in ukraine. but the point that mr. gapes makes about russian cyber activity and all that, those are, i'm afraid, valid. and we need to think about them. but the answer is not to -- is to engage, sorry. >> moving back to syria. we're doing an inquiry into russia and to take evidence from you responsible and hopefully mr. baron, before we conclude this inquiry, returning back to

syria and our understanding of the syrian position, which is behind my question by the challenge with casualties, how well do we understand the reasons for the resilience of the assad regime? and i wonder if there is anything that we have and taken 70,000 fatalities and something which is obviously significantly more than 5%. >> and is the carnage on both sides here and are we -- is there a misappreciation of why people in syria, we might not like it, as to why they are looking to the regime for security because they are fearful of the threat. >> in it, clearly, one of the things that assad did almost immediately in 2011, as you

know, was the infamous and to create this false equivalent. so between-t ---to create this scenario and choosing to be himself and a bunch of jihadis. and that is not true. there is a significant moderate opposition. and i'm afraid the casualties to -- >> turning then to the -- >> if i can write to you about that. >> i would be grateful. turn together moderate opposition and the hard power that the hnc and the free syrian army have on the ground, give us your assessment of exactly what hard power they have in this conflict? the evidence that this committee has taken is suggesting that that's not particularly great. >> yeah. this has been a subject of a great deal of control and i

remember the prime minister used a figure of 70,000 as i recall in the house for the number of, as it were moderate opposition fighters. i'm not going to give you a particular figure. i'm told that they are -- their numbers are very substantial. they are obviously one of the disasters of what been happening. the as a result of the behavior of the assad regime and taking up and some of them have become more radicalized. i don't think there's any particular control about that but still large numbers, large areas and in aleppo and in many part of syria which are basically run by a moderate opposition and we should neverer to get that. >> syria's strategy is now under

reassessment as it is with all these meetings we're having over the -- having over the weekend. i've seen reports that these meetings might include a foreign minister meeting between turkey, iran, saudi arabia, qattar, united states, russia, can you give us a look at what diplomatic activity is, is this weekend. and how it comes together on sunday? >> well what we are couldidoingy is bringing together like-mind id countries to see what -- everyone will know that syrian diplomacy is being conducted basically through the international area and that wrought together 25 countries. very big forum with the russian

answers americans as it were sitting with the joint chairs and everyone else around the table. in the end, has not worked the last session was extremely acrimonious as speaker after speaker affectively denounced the russian position and turned into sort after slinging match in which the iranians came to the assistance of the russians and the conversation really got nowhere. we need to think about what our options are. so on sunday, we will be getting the john kerry and others, a like-minded group, i can't give you the exact at the moment

because it is in the process of being assembled, but it will be like-minded countries who wish to canvas all the options. and i just, you know, repeat my caution to the committee. those options of course include more kinetic action and they are greatly involved as the prime minister said yesterday. >> take us through the prime difficulties, the courage of the american administration has saidity face against no-fly zones presumely because of the difficulties you're alluding to. what change do you think might come with a new administration under the stated policies of hillary clinton? >> i think that it is really too early to say. and i've had discussions with some people in washington who

may or may not be close to any future administration. but i think that just we're, hillary clinton has taken a tougher line on syria than perhaps the current white house. but i really think it would be -- it's too early to prophesy. >> how close to you think russians are to achieving their military objectives? >> again, i would like to not speculate. i think the strategy is that they might achieve but they wouldn't be a victory and they've got to understand that whatever happens, that they will not have conquered, will not have recaptured syria. and even if he has done too much damage, murdered too many people, ever to have a claim to be the ruler of the united syria again and we are right to say he cannot be part of the solution. there's got to be a transition

away from assad. we do not say that has to happen immediately. but it must happen. >> and resolution 2254 sketches out the route map. six-month period of continuity. and 18 months of couldn't mndom between the assad regime and a -- but a don't forget only a few years ago in 2012 the russians were, they were on the verge of dumping it themselves. so this thing is possible. and people should not lose hope. >> we add discussion at the beginning of this about sanctions on russia vis-a-vis ukraine. what measures could we, sort of kinetic, engaged -- >> in ukraine? >> no. with regard to syria.

or sanctions would be available to give russian action in syria. and how do you differentiate the destruction with russia and ukraine. >> whole idea of sanctions against russia is much of western europe continues to take huge amounts of russian gas and there is some european countries who say that's where the sanctions should go next. that would be difficult because i think 50% of german gas supplies come from russia. that's big stuff. and that would be damaging to those economies as well as to russia. >> i got to allow my colleagues,

i hope we can continue this until 11:00. i just want to return briefly to europe. on brexit you said we will get the best possible deal for trade and services. not our gift, is it? perfectly possible there might be no deal. because we can't command the other side of the table and difficulty we face is that i think you may have had my question to the brexit secretary, that better the deal looks for the united kingdom the more difficult it is to deliver march 27. and we can't control that parliament. >> which is why i think it's so important to recast this whole conversation. and to look at brexit as an evolution in the development of the eu. and as a solution to the british

problem and to stop thinking of it as this, this acrimonious divorce. it's not going to be like that. there is going to be a development after new european partnership between britain and the eu and beneficial for both sides and that the way -- >> the first phase of that might be a two-year negotiation which does not end in a deal. >> well, you know, let's see where we get to. i think it is profoundly -- >> well it is about -- what i'm inviting you to do is assist this committee in identifying all of the consequences of no deal would be. because business and industry, would deal with a deal of sutton, if the worst case scenario is no deal, how does it mean that? what does it mean for wto? this commission was very critical of the last government and i notice in your response to our report on the implications

of brexit and your rather brief letter we might ask for substantial more reply. and you offered no defense to this committee's charge that it is grossly negligent in failing to do any contingency planning and might actually vote for brexit and i think you should be doing some -- we should be making it clear to business industry and commerce what the implications of no deal would be because no deal is perfectly possible and we cannot control the outcome of these negotiations. >> well, a couple of points. i don't obviously take any responsibility for the failure of the government to produce a plan for -- >> that was evident in your letter. >> for brexit since after all it was the charges i was making in the run, june 23. but seriously, on the deal/no

deal question, i think there will be a deal. i think it'll be a great deal. if, you know, and i don't want this to be the case, it can't be done in two years, then there are mechanisms for extending the period of discussion. i don't think that that will be necessary. i think we can do it, and we can produce -- >> i think the characterization of it is correct. first stage of the new relationships for uk and eu and it may be that we will move towards and comprehensive free trade agreement and in the usual time scale for the eu doing these things. but we need to give some to the industry and commerce. and taking over the next 2 1/2 years and is there anything in that process. >> yes. i think they can be certain that britain is the number one place to invest in this region simply

because of times and language and skills base are incredible diversity of our economy in the 21st century and sectors in the economy and we are the place to come and that is going to be a giant factor of life. and even if we and our partners are so foolish and not to do a great deal -- i think we will. i'm absolutely confident we will. so profoundly in the interest of elected politicians like ourselves, over the channel, to do it for the good of their constituents, that's what this is all about. and in the end, this isn't about theology or about the ideology of the european union, that's entirely secondary to the imperative of taking forward the european economy, strong european economy and strong uk. >> i look forward to the

assistance of the office and what will be our inquiry into the consequences of no deal. mike gapes and john baron -- briefly. >> we currently implement european implement union sanctis and we, as you said, we all -- at the forefront been pressing for those. when we leave the eu, will we still be implementing the eu sanctions or will because we have a more robust move towards a position like the united states and perhaps move towards magnetic or something similar. >> i think that's an extremely good kwquestion. they woke with them to stick within a broadway when they come to the foreign policy questions. if you do it, you have to do it within -- you don't have to be

around the table in the eu council or other intergovernmental mechanisms that we're going to produce to reflect the new european partnership between britain and the eu and we can do it in a way. either way, i think out of the treaties, whatever we do, and i think it's going to be a strong interest and instead of the approach, what the interest is, you know, it might be there will be scope for the uk, sometimes to do things to go further. it might also be that we would want to keep grants much more together. that's a discussion what's going to have the course of the

negotiation. >> my final question to be very brief in your hands. >> can i just press you a little in the sense that i would urge many of us here to be careful what you wish for and add caution when it comes to contemplating additional military force. you'll be the first to recognize that. the rivalry, saudi arabia, russia in the west. you've got the lesser extremist, et cetera. if history is anything to go by, our involvement the fact that we've almost changed sides on syria, intentional or not. we've got to progress with caution because force in the end has not always been held

positive and there are many in this place who so far remain silence, if it looks, as though, we're going down maybe repeating previous errors when it comes to military. >> i absolutely accept that and understand that. and by the way, i understand completely what you need about the voices of caution that weren't raised the other day in parliament. i think, you know, we did have kind of passionate voices raised in favor, as i say, it's part of what we consider them and we will do that. and the points that you make are certainly about it. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. just for the record, thank you for staying so long for your evidence and earlier on i asked you about which -- just after i accused you of not being -- you said you were unhappy that david cameron had sang up for the

treaty. just for the record, would you like to answer that question in terms of what david cameron. >> let me just clarify. if you remember there was a class that we were going to have a referendum, which we then, in my view, regrettably did not carry through. that's what i was referring to. >> okay. >> and i refer to modern fighters, i should say north homes. >> do you think we should suspend saudi arabia that there not be used against -- >> well, i repeat what i said about our deep concern about what is happening in yemen and on the licensing, we have one of the most robust systems in the

world and we do consider each one against the -- each license application against the criteria and meet those criteria are not licensed. we are keeping this and very careful with you. >> and decent from it. >> i did notice that. >> but there is a view of this committee about getting proper investigations, independent investigations of the operations there. >> one issue that's unresolved in europe, nothing to do with the european union is the issue of cypress. and will undertake to work with the republican and the turkish republican warn cypress to work

for a fair amicable solution on the britain basis. >> look. i think we're on the, potentially, on the verge of some great progress in cypress. i paid tribute to both on both sid sides. and i met them both. and prime minister in new york. and the turks are playing their role, the brits are playing their role, we, obviously, have a role and our basis. you know, it's huge in cypress. we're willing to see some of that territory that we don't need to help move the process forward and i think it's a good thing. you know, it really is, but, you know, cypress is one of -- few

examples in the world, who are willing to, by lack -- that these two are trying to make a difference for peace and being willing to take a risk with the electorates behind them rather than just behave solely, you know, obeying the narrow part in politics of the group that's got them into par. they are really reaching out to peace and i think they're doing a great thing. >> it's safe to say, i think a year ago, let's take that. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> so, i may refer to you which my apologies.

but, thank you. for accompanying the secretary of state. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> the meeting is now adjourned. >> as the nation elects a new president in november, will america have its first foreign born first lady since louisa adams or will we have a first president as first gentlemen. learn more about the spouses from c spans first ladies. first ladies gives readers a look into the personal lives and impact of every first lady in american history. it's a companion and features interviews with the first ladys historians. they each offer brief by og g biographies. first ladies in paper back published by public affairs is now available at your favorite

book seller and also as an e book. c span washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact here. coming up friday morning, chief political correspondent for c span news we'll discuss over voting for donald trump. then senior political correspondent from mike.com will talk about the role millennial voters and what issues are motivating this election cycle. be sure to watch c span's washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. eastern friday morning, join the discussion. >> speaker of the house paul ryan talks to college republicans in madison wisconsin about the republican legislative agenda. liberal progressivism and the 2016 election that is's live at 1:00 p.m. -- that's live at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c span.

food safety was the focus of panel of former policy makers at the partisan policy center. they discuss how to protect the public from bio terrorism and infectious diseases. this is about two hours. welcome. good morning. i'm chief medical adviser here at the bipartisan political center. i want to welcome all of you here that today's event entitled "bio agri defense policy" america's food supply health and economy at risk. today's topic for me brings back memories of our first task as a public servant at -- which were the number one work on

distribution in the event of wide scale an tlax event and help develop the pandemic. at the time in response to threat of highly pathogenic h 5 n 1, bird flu, if you will recall. in spite of much progress spanning both republican and democratic demonstrations. the 2015 bipartisan report, at the blue ribbon panel on -- reported that the nation still remains highly vulnerable to biological threats and intentional, be it biological terrorism or unintentional in the form of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases in origin. a critical consideration in the national dialogue on bio defense, includes the need to protect america's food supply. and it's $1 trillion agri cultural sector. so today's event will highlight the importance of agriculture as

well as highlight the strategies, tactics and policy solutions to ensure the of agriculture into bio defense for the next administration and congress. we are very fortunate today to have two outstanding panels of national private sector leaders and public servants to lead our discussion. so at this time without further adieu i would like to introduce the moderator of our first panel, our aspiring leader here at bbc and founder and president at the bipartisan policy center jason to get us started. >> thank you for raising the bar. i will do my best. so welcome everybody. we have a really interesting conversation here today. i think, really, it's important because it's a conversation that we think is not happening enough here in washington. i'm going to introduce our panelists and we'll get into a little bit of conversation among our leaders and then have some q and a. first, to my immediate left,

senator majority leader bpc founder of senator tom. if you know tom at all, you know he has a desire for public policy. he has led, i don't know, how many initiatives here at bipartisan policy center. he's also a member of the blue ribbon panel on bio defense. we'll have a chance to talk with tom about and i think there are very important insights that he's brought forward. i'll finally note that tom is really critical voice about how to make washington work better in senator recently wrote a book called crisis point, a very thoughtful story talking about opportunities in a clinton riot administration for the country to start governing it. we'll talk a little bit about what we see for governance around these issues. then really a pleasure to represent dick meyers here to the bipartisan policy center as

a tremendous record of national service and courage, i think is most courageous event might have been taken on the interim presidency of kansas state university six months ago. i wonder whether navigating the pentagon two hundred tenured professors. general matters i think most you know is four star general. he was the 15th chairman of joint chiefs of staff and among his many accomplishments he was also awarded the presidential medal of freedom. we will soon be joined by our friend chairman mike rogers, i believe, his shoes are being polished as we speak and i will introduce him when he joins us. so just to kind of get to the conversation started, i thought it would be useful to ask to reflect a little bit on the broad question of why is important. why is it a national security issue. why did we convince you to come here today and talk about it?

lead on. >> jason, thank you for those kind words and for moderating and your leadership here and thanks for the plug for our book. we always could boost book sales. i appreciate that, as well. thank you for your commitment and the extrood effort you've made in this regard and the leadership you've shown in so many security context. it's a real pleasure and i'm flattered to be involved it was such a distinguished panel this morning. i think these are issues that deserve the highest attention and the most critical prioritization as we look at public policy in the context of national security. and i don't think anyone disputes the importance of the issue, but i don't think is happened is we've given it the kind of attention that it so justly deserves. i must say, if i could, from a personal perspective, this is even more critical to me because

of my own experience, it's 15 years ago this month that our country experienced a series of an tl anthrax attacks. it was a trying, very terribly difficult time for our country and people feel very very vulnerable. and that experience, think, sensitized everyone to how enormously important this could be. i was majority leader at the time and so i was right in the middle of the aftermath of that, congressman rogers has just joined us. and i was in the middle of the aftermath. i can say from personal experience, regrettably, frankly, that there was virtually no coordination. there was a real -- almost a conflicting set of

recommendations on how to address the matter. and it was just a very alarming experience to me to see how poorly prepared we were. well, that was 15 years ago. we've now, i think looking back over the last decade and a half can say we've made some progress. but if you really think about it and you look at our preparatory position today, you look at where the infrastructure is today. frankly, i think we're far off the mark with regard to where we need to be to avoid what happened 15 years ago. we're having many of the same discussions we did a decade ago, right now. and so in that 15 year period, in spite of all the of the good intentions, we've had the epidemic, the pandemic of 2007 or 2015. we had h 1 n 1 in 2009.

we had ebola in 2014. we had zika this year. and there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that it's just a matter of when, not if the next natural or deliberate crisis will occur. one of the most respected authorities on this issue in the country and a friend of mind said something that a congressional hearing earlier this year that i thought was really right on the mark as is so often the case the things she writes and says, but he said she thought these natural events ought to be used as preparation and practice for the deliverables. but the fact of the matter is we're not ready for either, natural or deliverable. for the last couple of years i've been involved in as jason mentioned with the blue

bipartisan blue ribbon panel on bio defense. it was last year we issued our first report aftering 33, short term, medium term and long term approaches to how we might address this circumstance. and we addressed all the bio terror threats across the board, we drilled down on a couple, including the biological threat to agriculture. as we analyze just what we ought to do with agriculture in particular, we focused on one idea that i think has so much merit. that is the one health concept that we look at threats to animals and the environment and humans simultaneously and come up with a comprehensive plan. we also said that it was so critical that we elevate the level of leadership around this whole issue, much more effectively than we have in the past and that it actually be the responsibility of the vice president, but somebody in the

west wing has to be involved here. we have to find a way to ensure that it's elevated and given the stature that it truly deserves. we also felt that the importance of creating some -- the wherewithal to deal with this issue and the response and the recovery period with real medical applications that just haven't been developed so far. so as i look at what kansas state has done and so add my rabblely providing the leadership they have and now here at the bpc, i'm encouraged that we've elevated it. i'm encouraged that there's a call for hire priority. i'm encouraged that with this new administration, whoever that may be, and new congress that will have an opportunity to build a broader context for this whole issue that we have right now, but we've got to do one thing that we've failed to do for the last 15 years. we have to move from rhetoric to

action. we have to find ways to put an action plan into place and i'm hopeful we can talk about that today. >> before asking you to talk a little bit about the remarkable things happening in kansas state. this is a real pleasure to welcome our good friend mike rogers to this discussion. mike was the representative of the eighth district from michigan from 2001-2005. i think most of you know is the chairman of house select committee on intelligence. mike has been the leading voice on this issue for a number of years. he's worked hard to create bio medical into congress. he has also the closest thing to a tv celebrity here at the bipartisan policy center, we look forward to hearing in a moment, but, general. >> jason, thank you. and senator good to be with you again. i think the last time was in the middle of the night in the plane somewhere, you had been speaking

somewhere, i was begging a ride and you were kind enough to help me out. it's good to be with you and we've been together on a couple -- at least one other panel. and your insights are always much appreciated. i think back to 9/11. i was getting ready for confirmation hearing. and i got there a little before 9:00 but before the first power was struck in new york city and senator of cleveland and then georgia and he's bringing up some tea. tea drinker and wanted me to share some of this great tea and we called it off because we knew something was up and i think about how we had -- how we thought about threats to the united states prior to 9/11 and there might have been somebody

somewhere that it said, well, you know, the way these nonnations state actors terrorists in other parts of the world could impact, they could run them into buildings. nobody really thought of that there might be somebody somewhere that thought about it. it certainly has risen -- threat. and as we look back determined, but the time people were concerned about that, but that's kind of one scenario. and we had to deal with the aftermath and still dealing with the aftermath. but in 1999, actually, kansas state put out a report, a study on homeland defense, food safety security and emergency preparedness program. it talks about the threat to our food animal, food plants and even threats from terror, if it doesn't occur naturally. and so maybe they were ahead of

themselves. i never -- once i was made aware of this report when i was chairman, i thought it was really, really good work. but since then, frankly, not much has happened to change the landscape. the recommendations in the commissions report the recommendations here and the thoughts here not many, if any that makes us any safer from these kind of threats. so 9/11, we couldn't anticipate or we didn't anticipate. here we've had plenty of warning. we know what the possibilities are. and we know people around the globe are interested, particularly people who would wish us, you know, discover pretty quickly and the sights that al qaeda were occupying and they're working to develop, excuse me, by weapons targeting people and food in america. the list included six human pathogens, six livestock and

poultry pathogens, and four crop pathogens, by the way, i'll talk a little bit more about crops in just a minute. but crops are often left out of this equation, they tier the last thing people think about. but the bottom line to all of that, the planning for some sort of man made event, terror event in the united states has been around for a long time. the good news is, when you put in a system to deal with naturally occurring pathogens, you also help with the terror piece of it. so it's something we ought to be doing in any case. i think we have a heightened state of urgency here about deterring the terror piece of it. >> sa osama bin laden had said any time, the economic goal was pleading america to the point of bankruptcy. it was said a lot, that was their goal. and just recently, one of the

operational leaders of isis recently killed by u.s. air strike declared -- this was from daniel -- from -- one of his blogs. he said here is what this isis leader said, the smallest action you do and the harder their -- in the heart of their land is dear to us than the largest action by us and more effective and more damaging to them. so, the beat goes on. we've been warned. and as you know anything about the current threat from al qaeda, isis, is when they say things they're thinking about them, they're planning them and it's as the senator said, it's just -- it's not an if, it's when it's going to happen and will we be prepared. other countries are working on this. russia continues to work on these kind of weapons, certainly

north korea, other countries as well. with recent technology to manipulate so forth has become lot easier to develop these weapons. there's some off the shelf technology that makes it a lot easier in today's world than it has in the last decade. i would just agree with the senator, we're not ready in this country. livestock examples will be handle primarily, i think, and we have doctor beckham, that medicine college out at kansas state and she's -- she has personal experience with animal pathogens that do not -- the transfer and she'll probably cover that when she talks. but i would like to talk about just two examples to crops and not because kansas is a weak state or south dakota is a weak state. this is because we, along with

rice, make up 3% of the coloric intake. probably didn't go notice by many that we blast, which is a fungle disease in bangladesh and 100% of the crops. bangladesh is we're busy trying they'll get there intentionally and it came across the sea and across borders, probably in a container of food stuff made it. and we work on it and there are some solutions being tested but it was probably not going to be one solution that fits all ca s cases.

and then in afghanistan, usda found these mixed in with wheat flower samples. they had over 150, and what they do is effect us as humans and low doses they can cause hallucinations and large doses they can cause neurological disease and amputation. so -- and we know these go way back to the middle ages. we see paintings that show that. a couple of examples of pathogens that are can effect our crops and that can effect, as somebody mentioned, i don't know, jason who was this $1 trillion ag economy that we have in this country, 50% of our gdp. i think when we think about threats to food animals, food crops. you think about the ranchers and farmer's problems. they're a very small part of. in terms of numbers, they're a

very small part of the numbers involved in the food chain. when you get to 15% of gdp or thereabouts this becomes for our country. finally, i'll just say kansas state, one of the funnest things to see in manhattan kansas four very large construction cranes you don't often see them and there's these huge construction cranes that are helping build the national mile agri security facility there in manhattan and they're going to be pouring concrete for almost two years and it was the -- probably the deepest hole i've seen in manhattan and now it's being filled with concrete. that's where the capability is moving and we're going to hopefully see that come to fruition and they'll help study these diseases, continue studying these diseases and coming up with ways to protect ourselves. the diseases will work in the in bath. they can transfer from animals

to humans. so some really bad stuff. in the end, what a nation -- what an adversary, to create in the populace, distrust of the government the one way you do that is rate fear. food crop diseases in the united states it can be an economic impact as well. it can be real impact in our diets. it can create an element of fear

no matter really how small and i think it's something we need to be thinking about and preparing for. these are almost a perfect weapons because all of the condoms are relatively soft targets. there's no danger to the perpetrator. they're not going to, in most cases, be injured by what they do. i mean, in many ways they're the perfect weapon. and i'll save the rest of my time for questions, thank you. >> how do you see this issue and where do you see opportunities to improve our situation. >> good to see you again, mr.

chairman. this is a good time to bring in the drink carts. i don't know if it's going to get much better. and public reports t information on that computer was a bit concerning. it talked about a strategy for using biological warfare to further their aims and gains. the recurring theme was that it's much easier to obtain a biological weapon than it is a nuclear weapon. so all the conversations a we had and the frustration i sensed from senator who was at the front end of this, receiving end of this and where we are today and the lack of progress, really, we've made some -- i think some good efforts, the

legislation, we now have 160 different therapeutics or vaccines that were developed through barta trying to make sure we can get rid some of the valley of death in the development of vaccines and therapeutics and other things. the pandemic preparedness bill which -- both of these are bipartisan efforts. the only problem is people vlakked interest in funding the full application of what it means. . we have huge institutions across the government that deals with this of nuclear -- it's well coordinated. we have intelligence community, every aspect of scientific community. everybody is integrated understanding the real threat of that weapon system in any form, either a small radiological

dirty bomb up to a full blown nuclear explosion. and so we've spent a lot of time effort and energy getting that command in control, putting the intellectual capability. i think what we're going to argue today is we need to do that now. the enemy is much more sofisticated than they use to be. if you think about even the recent out breaks that both of you have talked about, ebola was actually studied by soviet scientists way back in the '70s as a weapon of opportunity. we saw it naturally in africa. so the only thing left was to send in the military for mobile hospital units and that created a whole bunch of problems in and of itself. thankfully, there were other things that kind of happened that naturally took care of this problem. if that were to happen again

today, i would venture to guess we're no better prepared than we were at the out break of ebola. and we know for a fact that intelligent services and adversary scientists has worked on that as a system. we know for a fact that rice blast was the other one that we knew kansas works on wheat blast, there's some similaritities. that was a weaponized system designed to deny their enemies you want to go after logistics that was exactly what could you deny your adversary access to food products, militarily. so what we talked about into the economics of a food chain, houston, we have a problem all of that is real.

the sophistication of our adversary in isis, the days of the monkey in small camps scattered across the middle east are gone -- they had the right capability and the right understanding of how to process, develop and deliver biological weapon. i agree with both the general and senator, it will happen, it's a matter of how we're prepared to respond to it and have we set ourselves up in being successful, beating it, disrupting it and reacting to it. i think today, probably not.

we know there are four things cared deeply about. i think it was flattering me a little bit to be included in that list he wrote a lovely letter that was and encouraged us to take a look at that. clearly it's motivating a lot of resources -- my first question is why is bio security been on that priority list. like you indicated that we had a tremendous amount of -- is this just longevity.

-- or is there some reluctance. a little bit of both, i think. and they're exceptionally good and over a period of years, decades, really, they've developed this expertise and that's integrated back in the military community and there were real things that they could see to work on. we knew at one time that north korea was trying to export components of nuclear components to iran. we watched that happen. same with countries like bangladesh and other places you could see these materials moving around. it was a very real threat and it plugged into a real architecture. that's an easy thing to do.

and it's important work. you don't want that material going anywhere. we just haven't had that. and so we have some really bright folks in the u.s. government who understand this threat very well. but they can't go back and plug in to this kind of an operation, this kind of an integrated established operation. and it's pretty hard to go to congress these days, i mean, if we can't get the pandemic readiness bill funded and we know we have these problems, the bird flu, i think, took 25% of the birds in iowa, one event, 25%, imagine if this was a targeted event. we would be in some trouble with our food system. we. i think we can. it is going to take a little bit of investment and it is going to take a little bit of rethinking of how we structure bio defense that broader intelligence and

military. >> so, tell us in terms of -- oh, please. >> and i think mike pretty much covered it. just to emphasize, you know, when you research the literature, currently, if they did, it's a long time ago. like other threats that are maybe more tangible and strike the imagination in different ways. when you look through the intelligence, it's not one of the priorities and that -- so we have some people that are looking at that very closely, we have a fusion center that actually does pretty good work here, but they're not many other folks helping in that regard. we're just not gather the

intelligence. and we know it's coming, right. we know this is a possibility. one of the ways you protect yourselves you start gathering intelligence we don't have that. if we stumble across it, that's fine. it's not deliberate. >> start to think a little bit about the prioritization of the initial steps and serve on the blue ribbon commission we think other panelists are aware of and the most prominent effort to call these issues together. can you talk a little bit about the framework and what the feeling was about the top priorities. >> you asked the question why is there a difference between nuclear and biological and i think there's two parts to the answer, first is awareness. people don't need to be -- people can see a mushroom cloud

and know exactly the ramifications of a much room cloud. how do you see what we're talking about no food or the threat to food and the aspects around the biological threats to agriculture. it's harder to visualize, but when you think about the fact that and the next 40 years we have to produce more food than we did in the last 4,000. we'll have almost 10 billion people and it took us to about 1850 to get the first billion. so four years producing more food in the last 4,000. $1 trillion of our economy as the general just noted is agri churl so the awareness is there, we just -- and that leads me to the second part of the answer, we need leadership. we need somebody who can take this and make it the kind of priority it deserves to be.

but one of the problems we have in any governmental infrastructure and when you think about this challenge you've got an agriculture component. you've got an nfc component. you've got a defense component. and all of these entities are not coordinated like they need to be. it's easy to talk about it and it's easy to put more papers out there. it's harder to take that very eclectic array of bureaucracies and say we're going to integrate this in a way that produces an action plan that really provides some direction and i believe if it ain't in the oval office. it's got to be west wing driven. to elevate above all these agencies just as judge biden is

doing so admirable. it's going to take a moon shot like approach led by the vice president or somebody of that stature to make this happen. >> when the white house tries to coordinate around one person who is not subject congressional oversight. we've seen their tension there just on the basis separation of powers and institutional ego. obviously there's a desperate need on coordination, how could that happen between executive and legislative branch. >> my mom use to say invitation

to the party solves all your grass issues. you invite your neighbor and you can part on your lawn. work with me, people, work with me. on this. my mom was a brilliant woman. i think you have to include congress in the conversation. so i think if the executive branch goes off and tries to do this on their own, i don't think it will work. i think you need some representation from, a, members who are keenly interested the right committees an get them participating in that conversation. if you had that -- the vice president on the council for bio defense, then i would recommend you bring some folks from the house and senate who are interested in the issue and are committed to being a part of it. i think if you do that, you'll get much more buy in. congressional reform on oversig oversight, we could have four panels lasting six days. >> is there still oversight. >> yeah, exactly. >> maybe not these days. but the problem is you have, the dni told me at one time, if there's an event he has to

appear before something like 159 committees. i forget the numbers. it's outrageous. he's going to spend all of his time running around who have a little slice of jurisdiction on this. i think it's horrific waste of time and i don't think it's good oversight. i would like to see realignment with oversight issues with big issues like this so you get a better product. >> i will note that we have the pleasure of working with hamilton. if there are about 103 committees that dhs has to report to and it's just --

>> one of the advantages to have the responsibility at least it would get the executive branch organized because they have to get their act together, as well. so, i mean, there will be a lot of benefits to doing this and -- we just can't assume the executive branch is well organized for this particular effort. i mean, different departments have different views and what their responsibilities are and somebody has to lead that. it only happens, i agreed totally, having seen been to a couple of wars now and seen how you try to harness all instruments of national power to bring that on afghanistan or iraq. the only way it really works is if somebody is in charge. you have somebody that has to be in charge on the executive charge, for sure. >> we're focusing on the federal questions. if this is going to be a whole of government response, there's obviously important roles that the state and local level and i wonder if any of you are aware

of those efforts and to what extent is this more of a focus, you know, closer to the problem. >> first of all, i think kansas and consist kst state deserve real accommodation for the leadership. they have a unique program and really begin to put the action plan together with research and coordination unlike anything we've witnessed before. i think some states have begun to put plans together. there's a requirement that each state have a plan, but it isn't coordinated. it isn't really understood from one state to the next. there's very little interactive experience from one state to the next. again, it begs for a federal framework even though there is, as you say, a critical role to play as you saw with new york and pennsylvania after 9/11 and

virginia and washington. but that coordinated effort really has to emanate from someplace, right now it doesn't exist. i give great credit to some of the governor who is have elevated it within their states but a lot more needs to be done to make it kind of the national framework that is going to be required for a national response. >> the one place -- in the state of kansas and i already referred to our intelligence center, which, i think, using the word unique applies here because according to the folks in homeland security it is unique. but they're the ones -- there's one group that are looking through all of the intelligence trying to connect the dots about what might be coming our way in a nefarious sense. there are a lot of research, we're one university. i know and dr. beckham knows more about this than i do, we were talking beforehand about an effort between texas a&m and

kansas state senators to work when an out break occurs it gets reported quickly and we can start to come up with protocols to deal with it. that is in jeopardy. it's the only program, i think, of its kind out there. it's been pretty successful. but it's only going to live so long. so the premise is exactly right. i think a lot of this has to happen at the state level. it can happen. there are a lot of people that are ready for action, but better coordination, appropriate funding, whatever that means, to make these things come to life is what's needed. >> any final thoughts before we open it up to questions. >> and we saw this right after 9/11 and we were trying to put together pandemic issue. what do we stock pie. how do we get it there. and the states have to be a part

of that solution on two phases, one, i use to get people coming into my office, god love them. as my mother would say, who wanted the big command centers and, you know, had population four, but they had to have everything that the major urban areas had and it really made no sense whatsoever and the political pressure put on the state emergency responders was pretty significant and that pressure came to congress and everybody wanted what everybody had. we don't have that much money. i would love to send the most sophisticated technology to the lowest population county, candidly, it doesn't make sense to do that we have to get the resources part right. b, i think it was last year, 2015, the homeland security committee did some work and found that people didn't even know where to go to access the materials that -- of which they might need to be prepared. the process, they didn't know

who to call. they didn't know how to go through the process. i don't care if it's radiological their -- what we found was, lots of materials that we had purchased along the way is now expired the shelf life is over and we still have it and it hasn't been deployed and now what do you do, do you have to go back and repurchase all of this new stuff to sit on the shelf for five years. it was pretty expensive to go through this operation. we've got to get that piece figured out soon. not every state is going to need exactly the same thing. we ought to be okay with that. and we ought to be able to work with the states, to direct those dollars from the central -- central location to get the right thing at the right place at the right price. we just don't have the money to spend in every -- you know,

every city and every corner of the country. it's not going to happen. >> that replaces plum island. that deals with the diseases, both that occur around the world, actually. to helm work on these diseases is, i think, still a little bit of a question mark, or a big question mark, frankly. that's just another example. that's got to be part of the solution. that's not the only solution, it's part of the solution for some of the worst that we can come across. and we're still not clear what the direction is going to be after its built. now, we've got a couple of years to figure that out, but they'll pass quickly and things have to

be laid in place while we're doing work at another level three lab on campus to prepare for people for working in the in bath. >> not just at this moment. >> they have microphone holders and they had about 15 minutes for thoughts, particularly questions and if you identify who you are, that would be appreciated. >> good morning. excuse me, my name is andy mccabe. i'm the ceo of the association of veteran medical american

colleges. in recent years we've seen the emergents of microbial resistance is capturing great attention at the national and international level. and i wonder if you can comment on the ways that you see that as an opportunity to synergyize effort es here. in other words how many cry sees or emerging threats can we focus on at a time and what does it mean to improve on these efforts or to say, well, that kind of distinguishes these things here in bio defense, if you can comment on that, that would be great. >> and maybe can you keep the mike up here. if you unpack the question a little bit. i think we understand there's a big tension between antibiotics and the potential for pathogen resistance, if you can say a little more for the audience. >> what i'm thinking about is the recent efforts over the last

couple of years at the national and international level to focus on antimicrobial resistance, anything from the president's commission and recently the united nations efforts on this. so there's a growing effort and mobilization to attack this issue. we've talked about how bio defense has been an issue that is below the radar. it's not capturing the attention that it needs despite a lot of people talking about it for many years. i know you've worked on this a lot in your career. so is there value in attaching this to antimicrobial resistance. or does it dilute this effort and dilute attention and focus. >> actually, i don't think there's a clear answer to that question. i think it has to be explored. there's little doubt that technology is continued to

advance in, you know, moore's law is still in effect. i think as it unfolds and as we understand the amazing technological advances, the real question we're going to have is, can policy stay abreast? and in this context, can we come up with a mechanism that accounts for this amazing technological advance. i oftentimes say that i -- the american people speak to their government in the 21st century. the government listens in the 20th century and responds in the 19th century. and what we have to do is figure out a way for the government to stay, at least, within reach of the technological advancements we're making and i don't know. i don't have an answer to your question today. but it definitely requires us to analyze just whether or not it would make sense for us to do it and if we did do it, how would we do it effectively and take advantage of what technological

advancements we're making. >> i expect we can. >> are there questions. >> i appreciate the panels work to highlight the issue in the plan that vbc has done or the research at kansas state that's been highlighted. context in what's needed. strategic partnership agreements that have flown out of hspd 7 and 9 that have been congressional actions to get the executive to take action.

and sort of saying, what is the coordination that's lacking that has tried to be set up in national infrastructure protection plan, what is the intelligence, sort of, coordination that's lacking in partnership agreements, you know, with private entities and the states? just kind of -- you know, asking where are those next steps? because there are these plans that have been developed in the past ten years. >> any of you have a -- >> i'll take a stab at it. i came skeptical to this idea that the vice president should have this biodefense committee or council. i was a little skeptical of it at first and the more i get into it, the more i think senator daschle is right. you have to have somebody that can peer over all of the tubes and there are some great activity in one place that doesn't -- no one's aware of in the other place, and there is really no opportunity to have that discussion in a real and

meaningful way. it's all personality based now. if somebody knows somebody, they can pick up the phone and have a conversation and get something done. that happens. the problem is there is no one entity that, as i said, draw all of those people to the same place to force that kind of a conversation. and if you look at the dni model, that was exactly the same problem we were having up to 9/11, great work was happening all over the intelligence community, but not one person could pull them together in a place and say we've got to kind of do a joint effort here and if you're spending $10 on that and i've got $3 over here, wouldn't it be better to spend $12 on the same problem? and so -- and save a buck. and so that, i think, has to happen here if we're going to get any of that, and, again, some of that congressional action is based on the silo effect as well. right, this is my little lane and i'm going to take care, make sure my lane is doing it exactly right. you need that, i think, that command and control structure that forces collaboration, not

because people don't want to do it, but the system is not built to allow them to do it in a way that i think is productive. >> so let me just add to that from sort of an airman's perspective. when i was commander of u.s. space command, i went to a meeting of all the combatant commanders, the pentagon and deputy secretary of defense then dr. john hemry, asked people in the room who thinks they're responsible for we called it computer network defense back in the 9 0s iss, but cyber defense. who thinks they're responsible for cyber defense? everybody raised their hands. he says, well, we got a problem. if everybody thinks they're in charge, nobody's in charge. so i think what we're -- kind of the crux of your question, there's been a lot of things that will enable right things to happen, but somebody has to think it's important. somebody thinks this has to be a national security issue and then it might flow from there, but i

think the priority is not there. my research says that some people are just kind of pushing it -- they don't want to think about it. it's really hard, right? it's really hard. it's -- i don't know if it's any harder than nuclear or nonproliferation, but people -- it's just hard to get your arms around. it will involve lots of entities that will be doing lots of research and has to come together in some ways sharing research. not one of the strong suits of researchers to share what they're doing. so -- in general. and so i think it's more that. it's just priority issue. not necessarily a -- inside the executive branch, probably inside of the legislative branch, a lot of people think this is theirs. and that's good, but we need more cohesiveness, more -- it we're going to get focused on the problem, somebody's got to be in charge. somebody in the executive branch, whatever committees, primary committees, on the hill. somebody's got to be in charge

of this. >> time for a couple more questions. >> good morning. thank you for speaking today. my name is caroline kennedy. i'm an operations coordinator with the international biosecurity and prevention forum. so this is u.s. government initiative, we do a lot of outreach to make sure people are sharing best practices internationally and domestically. as we do do so much outreach, i find that many of the scientists or public health officials have a pretty good understanding of biosecurity and some of the threats that we face. someone mentioned that we need to work on making sure that everyone is understanding and visualizing what the biological threat is and i think that's a major issue that that's lacking in the general public, and in fact, lacking in the general public then we're not going to get that impetus to further legislation on that. so essentially my question is, what do we do to better enable visualization of the biological and agricultural threat?

>> that's a great question. a good documentary. >> i'm for that. >> that gets people's attention. a good documentary. i mean, what was the one on nuclear war -- >> "day after." >> yeah, "day after." gets people's attention. all of a sudden you say, this isn't good, what can we do to stop this? i think a good documentary on this would be very helpful to -- one that captured people's imaginations that was, you know, factual as you can make it. not hyperbole. not too much drama, but just kind of explain how this -- how things could go wrong, and i don't know if that's right -- >> i agree with general myers. i also think if i could go back to the comment, we ought to take the lessons we've acquired from the experiences we've had in the last 15 years, whether it's avian influenza or ebola or h1n1. i mean, there are lessons there

and we haven't, you know, again, because i don't think we've had the leadership, and this isn't meant to be a partisan issue at all, it just -- because we've not had the prioritization, maybe that's a better word, people haven't made the connection between natural and deliberate. and we've got to do a better job of making the connection. whether it's a documentary or leadership that can speak to the issue around the country or this coordinated effort that we've all talked about between congress and the administration. somebody has to make the link, the segue, between natural and deliberate and say, look, this situation, as bad as it is, could be 100 times worse if it were deliberate set of circumstances that doesn't take much imagination but that connection i think could be very he help. >> i would only add if you watch all eight episodes of "the classified" on cnn -- >> there you go. >> -- it will give you a great

idea of how you could do it and i'll take any ideas you have, watching all eight episodes of "declassified." >> the eight cd/disc isa wonderful stocking stuffer if anybody is thinking of the holidays. i think we have time for one last question. >> good morning. >> you're good. >> my name is chris lewis. i'm a proud kansas state grad. you talked a lot today about the national response, with ebola -- excuse me, with ebola, avian influenza, obviously it is a worldwide potential problem. how much is the international response and international relationship development being addressed at this point? thank you. >> maybe i'll start just by saying i think it's sort of the -- the same set of problems

we have domestically, we face internationally. ironically, with all the challenges we face in many parts of the world as a result of these pandemics, we don't see much more leadership internationally than we do midwest ical domestically. in part, it's a requirement that the united states step up to the plate and provide that elevated leadership and prioritization, but we have to do the same thing internationally we've done domestically and take those lessons learned and apply them to deliberate circumstances that could occur and will occur at some point in the future. >> i think if you look at the international position and all the things we just talked about, how do you muster resources, how do you have a central organization that helps get the resources where they have to go? if you see the problems we're having, magnify them by ten overseas. i've been in some of these international forums and you can

see in some cases they're five and ten years behind, again, not because they don't have the interest or the effort, they just can't muster the same kind of resources and their systems are almost more defuse than ours are. internationally, in the united states, wrestling with the same problem. theirs just seem a little worse. that's where i think we can provide some leadership and some help on an international basis to get all of our resources mustered up. maybe not everybody has to show up in liberia when ebola breaks out. maybe that's not the right decision. you know, now everybody wants to show up at the same place and commit some kind of a resource. maybe that's not the right answer. maybe we break this up a lot like nate toe dnato did. some people can do airplanes. some people can do signals. we ought to start looking at that around the globe and say

we'll create our deployment opportunities based on what cape abouts y capabilities you bring to the table. what happens overtime, everybody's capabilities go up over time. we have to start somewhere. that's what i'd start to do. that's why we're behind the international effort for pandemic response. >> we're not prepared internationally and the case study i would use is ebola. i was aware of some of the things going on in the department of defense to help and actually on a board of a non-profit research institute has well that was contributing to that. but there was a lot of confusion, a lot of false starts. that's probably indicative of how well prepared we are internationally for ebola and probably most food/animal, food/plant kind of problems. i wonder with wheat grass in

bangladesh, with we sure it came in the way they think it came in? are we susceptible in the united states? what steps are we taking to make sure that doesn't happen in our wheat crop, for instance? i don't know the answer, i'm sorry, i don't know the answer to that question, but i think these are international problems. they don't know borders. we've got most of the bad stuff is either in this country or on the borders. lot of it is, anyway. this is -- this is dangerous stuff. and we ought to approach it the same way we approach some of the human diseases that we worry so much an, in bout, in my opinion >> i want to ask you all to thank our first panel. we're going to now transition to some of the details with our expert panel. i will just note that bill hoagland, senior vice president, is going to be moderating this panel. as many of you know, bill is one of the most credible people in this town when it comes to anything to do with economics,

budget and finance. he may tell you he started his career at usda. he may not tell you that he leaves once a year to go home and help harvest the wheat. when it comes to some ag creds, bill's a real deal. thank you, bill. >> good morning, everyone. jason took away what i wanted to say at the -- i'm the only agricultural economist here at bpc from what i know, and so first of all, welcome, everybody, but welcome particularly to my aggie colleagues out there. also, jason mentioned there's a kansas influence here at bpc in the form of one of our founders being, of course, bob dold buti would also point out we're

influenced daily by another major kansan, that's secretary dan glikman who works with us on a lot of issues here and we really appreciate the influence of kansas. let me say this second panel here is very distinguished. you have their bios so i'm not going to go into all that. we're going to focus on animal health a little bit here and i think probably build upon a number of the issues that came up in the previous panel. first of all, just let me introduce them as we go down the line here. to my immediate left here is tammy beckham, she's been mentioned already by the acting president. she's the dean of the kansas state university college of veterinary medicine. bob kadlec, deputy director with u.s. senate select committee on intelligence, and last but certainly not least, asha george, co-director of the panel that you heard about in the blue ribbon study panel. before we get into some questions that i have, would

each of you take just a couple of minutes and tell the audience about your perspectives on the bioagra defense landscape and on a -- i don't know if we can up the optimism from the first panel but on a scale from one to ten, ten being the best, where would you rate the security of our food system today from potentially deadly pathogens coming into it? tammy, i'll start with you. >> sure, first of all, it's an honor to be here today, so thank you very much. it's an honor to be here with my panelists. this is a particular passion of mine as it's been a large part of my career and protecting the food system is just incredibly important. i mean, as we sit here today, the agricultural industry gives us one of the safest, most affordable and abundant food supplies in the world, so on average, i'll just give you some

statistics. consumers only spend 6 .4% of their annual expenditures on food and if you compare that globally, it's anywhere between 11% to 47%. so we know we have a very robust agricultural system and we're very thankful for that. the very things that make it so robust also make it so very susceptible to disease introduction. so we know, too, and we talked about it previously that there's probably a little bit of complacency. we haven't seen foot and mouth disease in the u.s. since 1929. we don't have african swine fever. we don't have other diseases that are nationally occurring abroad. we ask ourselves this morning how come it's so difficult to get our arms around what's happening in the biological arena. these pathogens are found naturally around the globe. it's very difficult to get your arms around where they are and how they move because they're naturally occurring organisms. we see them every day globally and we can talk little bit about

the global perspective here in a few minutes. but we also know going back to the comments that were made earlier about what was said with naturally occurring issues that we've seen a lot of those, too, over the last several years and the last decades. so we've had p.e.d. and we've had a.i., avian influenza incursions and we can use those and have used those, i believe, to help us prepare for that intentional or next natural introduction of a transboundary disease. i think there has been lessons learned and i think there have been things accomplished since 2001 and a great deal. we can go over some of those. i do think there are critical gaps that still exist. i'll tell you that it wasn't until 2014 when ebola happened that the true meaning of one health i think came to light, and that we saw some of the critical gaps that we face in bio and agro defense. as many of you might remember, there was a nurse who was

infected with ebola and she had a dog so that brought to light the issue around one health and just how close our companion animals are to people on a daily basis and just what that risk can be from interacting on a day-to-day basis whether with our livestock or food system or whether that's with our companion animals. we know we also didn't have the countermeasures available to deal with that particular outbreak. we didn't have diagnostic tests that were validated for animals that we could use to test the dog at that time and we didn't have policies if place to show how we would handle it, quarantine, those types of things. i'll call out to usda, dod, those people came together and quickly put together policies and procedures and value dated the diagnostic test so we had those. in that event, we were very much left on how we were going to handle that particular case. had there been other animals and other companion animals, where

would they have gone, where would they be put in quarantine? those kind of things came to light. so we do have critical gaps that exist in our preparedness. there's been a lot done since 200 2001. we have surveillance plans. we got the prep plans from usda. we got business continuity plans that have been developed with our industry and sectors. all of those things have been done since 2001 and they've been coordinated with our federal government to our states with our industry partners. and so i want to give to a shout-out to those agencies that helped coordinate that and private industry that helped coordinate that as well and academia's role in all of that, too. however, as i said, i think we do still have a lot of gaps. we don't have a comprehensive b biodefense program. we talked a lot this morning about barta, that's a production of countermeasures for humans. we don't have anything on the animal side that is analogous to what barta is. the strategic national stockpile is funded to a much greater

extent than the national veterinary stockpile and so we have to give some light to, and we have to shed some light on, the agricultural and companion animal side of the house when it comes to bio and agro defense. i think that's kind of what we're here today. success in addressing these gaps obviously are going to be really dependent on one health concept and taking an all of agency, all of state, all of industry approach to addressing these things. and as i mentioned, i think we have to have some capability to incentivize this activity. through funding, through real leadership at the top that's going to encourage people to work together. there are people working together today through one health initiatives within the agencies, through the states, through the industries. we have to bring this more into focus on a very much higher level. and then we have to incentivize people to work in this area and then the other thing that i'll say is on a global level. these diseases occur naturally.

we are doing a lot on the global level through the global health security agenda. we work with our partners at oie, to help build capacity in the international arena and we do so through incentivizing them, these developing countries, to work in a one health context. we do that much less in the u.s. because of the way we're funded. the medical side does one thing, the animal side does the other thing. we have to through the leadership, the industries, usda, tdod, we have to bring ths together so we're using our resources better, coordinating better and leveraging resources. when we talk about barta, there's an animal side of it. we have funding for the national veterinary stockpile. we have to bring these things together and have a higher level conversation on how we koo coordinate these events. so that's all i have. >> from one to ten? >> oh, i knew you were going to make me put a number on it. >> yes, i am. >> i'm going to give this a six today. >> good. bob? >> thank you.

first of all, first of all, thank you for the invitation to be here and to be part of this panel. certainly this is an area of great interest to me. i would take a similar approach to tammy's in terms of cataloging a variety of different elements of what we have here. i'm going to start with a number because, quite frankly, you can't give a single number. as tammy appropriately put out or identified is that there's a federal component to the state and local and clearly a commercial industry component. so first of all, i'll start with the commercial industry. i give them an eight or a nine because why? why, because their brand and profit share depends on ability to provide safe food to us. and so you can imagine if there is a circumstance where something is deliberately introduced into the food chain, something naturally occurred in the food chain is really theirs that has to be protected in terms of how they're going to respond to that. in some ways the incentives are implicitly there for the industry to do these things and they do it. i think from the state and local

activities, i'll just use iowa as an example, and i'll kind of embellish a little bit of what chairman rogers taked about in terms of the avian influenzaout break that occurred in iowa in 2015, that single outbreak not only killed 25% or had to kill 25% of their bird flock but cost $1.2 billion and significantly 8,500 jobs. and decreased both federal and state tax revenues. the effects of these events even when they're fairly localized are pretty enormous. state and local authorities that have significant agro business in their area, whether it with california, iowa, north carolina, arkansas, whatever, they essential lcertainly take seriously because it's their home turf, if you will, and jobs and state economies that are dependent on it. i'll give them a seven or eight on it. when i look to the federal government, for the reasons i

think the previous panel said with great, i think, detail and authority, more than i can offer, is simply is probably about a three or four. why? because it's not an obvious visible priority. if you looked at the latest farm bill and asked yourself what provision was in there for food defense or agricultural security, i think you'd be hard pressed to find anything of that nature in that bill. and is that an issue of congress? is tit an issue of the congress or executive branch? the answer is as we've heard the many silos of excellence that exist across the domain and quite frankly the preponderance in the biodefense area, i can speak authoritytively on this have been focused on the human health issues. during my tenure in the white house when i served originally back in 2002 to 2005 then again in 2007 to 2009, the issue of one health was just emerging as a concept. the idea that this has not been, if you will, embraced entirely

through the entirety of government i think is really a function i think as senator daschle spoke eloquently on about leadership, focusing on these areas. the gentleman asked the question about anti-microbial resistance, where does that fit into the priority? i say it fits squarely into the food ag defense business because as we have found out through that experience that the preponderance of antibiotic use has been in the food agricultural business where that has put great pressure on the creation of arguably resistance strains so as companies now are voluntarily withdrawing the use of these antibiotics on wide scale, that's putting an onus on those companies to basically use other kinds of methods to limit the growth of pathogenic bacteria that could get into the food system so it kind of focuses on our ability to have good surveillance and how do we monitor those stock herds or

those herds, whatever the animal species is, to ensure that they are not necessarily posing a risk to the consumers of those products? so i would say that's one area. the last thing i'll say is, again, to give you the low marks for the federal government, somebody mentioned hspd9. it's one of the few hspds you don't hear very much about in the biodefense world. i will say the author of this was a fellow ksu grad, kurt mann, a veterinarian of some distinction, who went on to be a deputy secretary at usda. here's the challenge with that is, that does not figure prominently in some of the conversations they're having in the halls of congress or in the halls of the executive office buildings around town. and it's because, primarily, again, one issue of leadership. if you look at the number of things that are contained in that particular document, which is awareness and warning, great

vulnerability assessments, mitigation strategies, response planning, research and development, outreach and professional development, you heard that some of these things have been set into motion and quite frankly people take them seriously. obviously the people at the ground level with the muddy boots who are growing the crops or managing those herds have been focused entirely on those issues day-to-d to day because s there are livelihood, that's their careers. in the washington sphere, inside the beltway, that's certainly had not the same sway. i think that really does get to the point of senior leadership and focus and priority on these issues. i'm hardened to hear the obama administration recreated the senior position in the white house for biodefense security. where is that veterinarian who's managing these issues in i don't know if that person exists yet. the transition now to a new administration. the idea this can be a central part of that.

whether it's the vice president or someone else who manages that port po portfolio. it's critical it does get managed. just to highlight one thing, again, we talked a lot about terrorism and i don't doubt that terrorists are out there planning bad things against good people like us. we live in a very different world. i'm going to give you little bit of a reference to something that's worth a read which is talk about the gray zone. the idea that competition amongst great powers or countries in the world today will exist the level of overconflict. if you google gray zone, you'll find scholarly military papers on the subject. it's called hybrid warfare. this idea, talk warfare as we've seen with cyber in a way that's nonattributable, very difficult to attribute to basically take its toll on a society or country. it certainly has economic -- it has economic input. arguably you could look at these

same set of issues as it would relate to someone who would deliberately try to attack one of our gemstones of our society and that is our food and agricultural production. critical infrastructure around that. so i just offer that as an issue that as we go forward that has to be central to whoever takes over the reins of government both in congress and in the white house. obviously in congress, it's a little harder. you have a number of committees of jurisdiction. we talked about department of agriculture. the agricultural committee. interior department has a role in this. epa has a role in this. hhs has a role in this. so you can imagine the difficulty that will happen, but a lot of these difficulties can be managed with good leadership and a prioritized focus on these set of issues. >> thank you. asha? >> i, too, am going to join bob in issuing multiple numbers for multiple things. the reason for that is that, you know, we're talking about

agriculture like it's the singular -- like it a singular thing. one word for one thing. and the truth of the matter is, the sector is composed of all different kinds of things. the supply chain and food and crops and farmers and industry and people involved in pharmaceuticals and all of it. all of it is so -- it's so much. and so you would have to assign -- i think you'd have to assign a number for each and every one of those elements. and how they average out, i don't actually know, but i would also say that the number we might assign today is going to change tomorrow, is different last week, last year, a few years ago, back when bob was in the white house and so forth. and i think that that's okay. i just wish that somebody was continuing to ask that question, where are we? how do we feel about it? i think that in addition to just

an enormous and extremely complex sector that we're worried about being attacked, naturally or intentionally, this issue of economic impact is a huge driver. and as a driver for everybody all the way down to the lowest level person, boots on the ground, different types of boots on the ground, down with the farms. people are, you know, concerned about it but they're concerned about it in terms of their liveliho livelihood. can't get everybody to be all excited about it because, oh, somebody is working on an agent, weaponizing it, moving it, whatever. you can get people interested in this issue just from the economic standpoint. you know, the case in point for that would be white house studies that were done shortly after the foot and mouth disease outbreak in europe. a number of years ago. we don't see a whole lot of

national economic council study on disease events but we did back then. it's an important driver but again now we're talking about the economy and talking about inputs into the economy, how we optimize various elements of the economy. even so, going back to what was said earlier by chairman rogers, we have statements from terrorists and nation-state actors saying they want to attack the economy. this is one way and we can't afford to just disregard it. i think another point i would like to make is that in our attempt to address complicated problems, we take a tangle of what they are composed of and we separate those pieces out. and we say there's human disease over here, there's the cyber thing happening here, has an interface with some things. well, we have a livestock issue, we have a crop issue, we have

potential for attacking supply chain vulnerabilities and so forth and we separate them and then we say, well, department of commerce, you're in charge of this and that sounds like a department of ag thing. oh, we'll accept that, and that is now in dhs, so there's a dhs thing. but we separate them out and we try and address those individual strands individually not that we're doing such a great job of that but that's what we try and do. i think, then, that leaves us separated and we unnaturally leave them separated and in terms of policy, in terms of activity, what's happening over here isn't happening over there and maybe it should because these -- it's actually a tangle where everything is touching everything else. i think we have to be more realistic about that. i don't think it's just a matter of putting somebody in charge, although we did, of course, put out that recommendation, number one recommendation was that the vice president be put in charge of all of biodefense including

agra defense. but i think it's also a question of right leadership, right-minded, right-educated folks. we have a political system which is wonderful, but if we want somebody to address agra defense issues, biodefense issues and so forth, we need people who actually know about those issues sitting in those political appointments. we have to have people taking positions, high level in the government and throughout the government, who have a clue as to what they're doing and what they're talking about. you know, one of our big examples of this is what happened with fema and hurricane katrina and, you know, we -- everybody ragged on the add straiter of the time and i to this day do not rag on the administrator because he only did what he was supposed to do from a political perspective. he went for a political appointment and got it.

he was not the right person to be in that position at the time. what did we do after that? if we're going to have somebody be in charge of fema, we have to have somebody who has a significant and deep emergency management background. that is also political and we went in that direction. we have to do the same thing in this arena. i think lastly, bill, and i know we need to move on, i think we mentioned what we want to do from a state and local perspective. agriculture is a state and local issue as much as it is anything else. we talk about fusion centers and role of law enforcement and so forth. i think more than anything else, with the sole exception of human medicine, agriculture affects every state in the country. somebody's got something going on with absolutely everything. not everybody's got a nuclear weapon sitting in their state. some have some nuclear material in their hospitals that they have to get ahold of.

engaging everybody requires actually understanding that and then turning everybody on whether it's a primary activity in their state and locality or not. so while i'm heartened to hear that the kansas fusion center -- i'm not so heartened to think the other fusion centers are not and they should be. we're talking about protecting the nation from something that could affect the entire nation and any state in the nation. so as we think about this, we have to have people who think in that manner as well. and aren't so tempted to constrain it to a few states or constrain it to a few diseases or to a few departments and agencies. >> we're going to leave time for questions from the audience here and i had a number of questions,

but let me -- one thing i'm going to take away from this conversation real quickly is building upon senator daschle's comments earlier is this agency, the coordination of a number of agencies and the alphabet soups of agencies out there involved. bob, you mentioned a number of agencies. i also would like to shout out as the general did, department of defense is involved in this in a big way and probably one of the successes that they helped with was ebola last year. coordination is a big issue going forward. we'll jump over -- i think we touched upon it in the previous panel and you've all touched upon it in terms of -- let me go to something down into the weeds a little bit here and that is in 20 2014-2015, department of agriculture had to transfer, i thinks about $1 billion from the commodity credit corporation over to afis to take care of

bobine influenza, tuberculosis at that time. that agency's budget doubled just because of that one issue in usda. maybe -- tammy, maybe you were more involved. how do you rate our dealing at that time, the federal government? we got pretty low grades here for the federal government. how did they do in that particular crisis situation? >> so i don't think i'm in a position to rate how they did. i just want to comment on something that you said. you said that their budget doubled. so my point -- my point i want to make is that too often we're reactionary. >> yes. >> and we're not proactive. so the fact that we're having to transmission money to an agency that has this responsibility to take care of these things is reactive and not proactive. that's what we're here to talk about need. during the outbreak, i do think

they handled it well. a number of things they had to step up to the plate and do. these are routine things they do on a daily basis, afis does. they help the industry by understanding the disease ecology. we have the national animal health laboratory network, we have 57 labs testing for avian influenza. >> it took a crisis. >> we're too reactionary, we're not proactive. and i will say that i do believe these agencies obviously have taken all these after-action plans. they put steps in place. there's a nice after-action plans that talks an the things they learned during that outbreak. again, preparing is always better. we're often too reactionary. i think that's why we're here today, draw more attention to it, talk about how we prepare on the front end so we're better engaged in the event there's an outbreak.

you can never fully prepare for what's going to happen, correct? there can be more variations, if it was a deliberate introduction, you could have three types of foot and mouth disease introduced across the u.s. which would be obviously an issue, so we need to be prepared on our surveillance side. we need to be prepared to detect and respond and i think there has been a lot of progress. i'm going to go back to the laboratories, to the testing, to the surveillance programs. too often we think disease by disease. we don't think emerging diseases or all of, you know, the one health approach toward disease preparedness. we talked about amr. you asked that question. what are the things we can leverage? we should be leveraging our surveillance systems that are already out there for thirks rig this, right? for instance, at texas a&m, we were engaging veterinarians to provide information through electronic means. why couldn't we use the same system to collect data on amr, instead of different agencies funding different people, which

they are, to collect that data? that doesn't make any sense, right? so we have to look at this as more of an all of agency, state and federal partner, industry approach. don't want to leave academia out. that's where i'm out. dealing with tenured professors. if we come together through academia, if we come together, we can address these issues. >> i'd like you to stay, just on a different note, and i think the zika event, the recent zika event highlights the challenge of responding, our form of government responding to these kinds of events. and that is that you have to have congress appropriate money to do this. the fact they were able to do an internal shift, a budget, basically move money across is something that quite honestly is no doubt traumatic as well as disruptive to the agency that's involved. it certainly was the case with hhs, with zika, they had to

shuffle money around. we have the disaster relief fund which funds fema. every year we put money into a fund that based on a presidential declaration, that money can be then used. it's already preappropriated. everybody knows that all disasters are local so i think politicians generally understand that the flood in north carolina today could be a tornado in kansas tomorrow, that that money is set aside for those kind of legitimate emergencies and they don't require congressional action to do. it would only make sense, actually, you know, to kind of highlight just something that came up in the recent campaign that was proposed to have a public health emergency response fund as a means to basically have a pot of money so that in the case of the next zika, you don't have to do that. well, it'd only make more sense to have a similar fund or same fund used for these kind of veterinarian or agricultural emergencies that are significant. maybe not as costly in some ways

but certainly significant. fact is these are the kinds of things, arguably, that the leader can say we need, in the next presidential budget that money is allocated to do those kinds of things so that we shouldn't be surprised. we may be surprised that, yes, it's two strains of fmd or not, maybe it's another form of avian influen influenza, but the point here is that these are the kinds of anticipated emergencies that can be prepared for in a way that accommodates our, don't want to say ponderous form of government, our democracy in way that lives by the constitution that we can have these funds set aside to deal with legitimate emergencies in a time-sensitive fashion that minimize the impact, economic and personal impact, that these things have. >> thank you. i'm the moderator, i'm not supposed to take positions but i concur with your position on

this one in particular. there are those things we know we're going to have to fund. maybe in the short amount of time we have here, i want to give a shout-out to the kansas state university's project you have on your biosafety level 4. i heard in the previous panel that the money's been funded for the building and construction and the ongoing. we've got authorizing appropriation staff out here. tell me, once this is built, how are we going to keep it operational given budgetary constraints? i guess i'll make some of my ag friends out here mad. shouldn't the ag sector, itself, through the user fees or mechanisms, should they be contributing since the impact this would have on the ag seconder is big, don't they have a role also to play in helping to fund these kind of activities? >> so, in b.a.t.h., it will open in 2022-2023. it's a facility. it will be the gold standard

state of the art facility for studying diseases. having said that, it's a $1.25 billion facility that's been funded to open in 2022-2023. at this moment, we need to start looking at programmatic funding for the usda and department of homeland security programs that will house in this facility. right now, if you look at the funding for palm island, we're talking about $3 million or $4 million budgets within the respective usda programs and dhs budget somewhere around $15 million in programmatic, not looking to expand as i understand it over the next several years in ag. that's a problem when you're building a $1.25 billion facility. to be real fair and to be able to execute the program that they

need to execute within a one health environment. and to be able to be a true partner with the cdcs of the world, fdas, hhs, again, within that one health context. right now not sure of a lot of activity going on to build the budget over the next several years that's going to include everything from workforce education and training. as we know that a lot of the palm island staff will not be transferring to manhattan. there's going to need to be a concerted effort to do that so as we talk today, we need to be anticipating that and starting to put dollars in educating the workforce from both the afis areas, dhs side of the house, includes epidemiologists, scienti scientists, biological technicians at the bench, laboratory technicians, we need to be educating and training this workforce that's going to go in this facility. and we need to be increasing the budgets and getting that money appropriated so we can build the right sized scientific programs that can be collaborative with

our human health counterparts. >> thank you. real quick, bob, asha, if you were elected to congress or president next year, what's the one or two things you would say needs to be done quickly in this area? >> i would say that we do need that leader, biodefense council that we recommended. >> okay. >> but as part of that, pulling the usda, department of interior, department of commerce, some of these departments that we're not used to thinking about when it comes to defense-related issues, and homeland security issue, pulling them in and making them true -- making them true partners in this endeavor is critical. >> you've been elected. what do you want to do? >> i don't know if i want that

or not, but the short story is, basically convene your cabinet. basically this is a priority. this is a priority, mr. dni or ms. dni, secretary of agriculture, secretary of defense, secretary of homeland security, this is a priority, you all have something to contribute, you all have something to do here. what you need to do is build a plan for me that will basically make our agricultural and food industry resilient. this is a partnership not with the federal government but with our state and local partners and with the commercial industry and i would look for you to convene with your respective partners to basically come up with a plan and report back in 90 days what are the 3 or 4 things we need to do that i can take to congress to make sure that it's part of my new budget, consistent, sustainable budget over time, to drive this as a priority for the country? >> would you like to take a shot at -- would you like to be elected? >> no, but i would agree with

that exactly. i think you need to take a look at what would be the -- i don't want to see the veterinary side of the house left out. i would concur you need the subject matter expertise there on the agricultural side. i would convene a group to reach out to the stakeholders and to the industry and to academia and to the states to decide what those top two or three priorities are, to shore up the agricultural defense system in the country. >> good. we have time here for about 15, maybe 15, 20 minutes of questions and as in the previous panel, please identify yourself and ask a question and direct it to any of the panelists up here. there was a question right up here on front. >> hi, kevin cane with the association of veterinary medical colleges. last week i was involved in kind of a day-long process of figuring out what's going to go

into the next farm bill, the five-year authorization, still a little ways off but if you could have your dream authorization in that bill to kind of address some of the things you talked about today, what would that be? what would that look like? >> when it comes to the farm bill and the other authorizing vehicles, it's important to ask the question that you vust ajusd and make sure people are clear. part of this has to do with setting expectations. it's never been an expectation of the farm bill to include something to do with any national security issue. so somebody has to set that expectation and then the congressional staff and the congressional members will respond to that. but i think specifically, there are very, very specific activities that are already ongoing that need to be authorized. so if they haven't been authorized already. waiting around for the national animal health laboratory network, for example, to get

authorized until just so recently is a little ridiculous and it could very well have gotten into the farm bill. i wouldn't want to see thousands of pages of that sort of thing but somebody needs to make sure that what's already happening is authorized and will allow congress to conduct the oversight it needs to. i would put that in there and i would make sure that a national strategy, similar to what we're requiring or recommending for biodefense in general, that a national strategy activity be put into the farm bill as well. particularly addressing and agriculture, obviously, but giving the department of agriculture a leadership role in that arm with the other major players. i think that that's really important. as with the human biodefense, there are a million little strategies and plans and policies all over the place that have to be brought together and form a really good strategy. the rest of it, you start

getting into pieces and parts, right, which happens with congressional legislation, you know, i understand, but i think without the strategy, we're continuously disorganized and we need it. >> questions out here? question over here. >> hi, my name is dennis with a small company called metabioda. so pulling on some of the things that have been said here then on the last panel, so i know dr. beckham had talked about being, we're too reactive, not proactive enough w the former panels talking about different disfrat agencies and unified command and control. i think one of the questions is how do you then incentivize all these agencies, commercial actors or whatever, to be start -- start being proactive instead of being proactive? is there a way to do this?

do you guys have suggestions for how this could happen? >> if i could take an initial stab at thirks first of all you don't have to make the case to the commercial industries to be proactive. they're on top of these things because it does reflect their brand and profit share. the question is, from the federal government, particularly, what are the things that they can do to set in motion, if you will, to be prepared for the next event? you know, part of these things are very, i don't want to say not sexy, they're not, i mean, it's making sure you have a professional cadre of people out there that are trained out there that can do this. conversation before this panel started, started with tammy, and identified that the number of applicants to veterinarian schools are going down. at a time when we probably need more veterinarians for a variety of reasons. small and large. and so that's one thing that we can incentivize right there. it gets the idea of training,

ensuring that we have a robust career field that allows you to draw upon people because you can't predict the next disaster. and the idea of having money set aside for those things is significant. >> i would just comment by saying, incentvization. tie money to incentivizing the outputs and holding people accountable. think as far as the industries, he's right. the industries do have that sense because of their brand and the commercialization, obviously. the biopharmaceutical industry, though, how do we incentivize them to develop vaccines and diagnostics for basically a market that doesn't exist in the u.s. today? how do we look at that, how do we incentivize them to do that? working with departments to incentivize them to develop that type of countermeasure that we need. the other thing i would say just going back to the comment about veterinary colleges, obviously we have to continue to grow the

workforce that's interested in this area. we have about 1.6 applicants to those -- the admission ratio there. i think we have to continue to get folks that are in veterinary colleges interested in those areas to work in whether that's the federal government, public health. we have a lot of our graduates that go out and practice companion animal med sicine. that's wonderful. colleges, we educate for all spectrums of the profession but also need to open their eyes to the other opportunities out there. global veterinarian medicine, the global health security agenda relies on the one health concept, getting out, doing capacity building abroad. those are really rewarding careers and educating the veterinary profession and those kids that are in veterinary colleges now to those opportunities is is going to be absolutely critical. i think elevating the value of that veterinary degree, i mean, take a look at the roles veterinarians play in the world today.

the role we play in the food supply, protecting the food supply, protecting your pets, keeping them healthy. we play sum an incredible role in society. getting that message out there and elevating the value of the veterinary degree is so important as we move forward in this area. >> questions out here? >> there's one back here. >> good morning. i'd like to thank both of our sets of panelists. my name is kathleen giles, supervisesupe supervisor -- i thought rather than the acronyms i would spell it out. i'd like to comment basically on one of the previous questions then comments from the last panel as far as what the federal government is doing. right now i'll say my unit is working closely with afis. we're about to launch a class that we've written called animal plant health. so basically a joint criminal epidemiological investigation course. that's training, boots on the ground industry. local veterinarian, state

veterinarians. local, state, law enforcement, as well as federal, how to work together. that means information sharing from when it happens. because if the fbi or law enforcement finds out three years later we're not going to be able to find that path to be able to solve that if it was intentional. i know in the past our animal and plant experts don't think anything beyond accidental or natural. let the expert, let the fbi, let the local law enforcement think about intentional. working together is a great relationship. what we're doing in december at new mexico state university for the very first class is we're actually teaching this to our local wmd coordinators, local law enforcement, border patrol, anyone that has a stake in this. so my question to this panel and to the previous panel would be, when you recognize the vulnerability, we're trying to come up a way to bridge that gap. we don't have money to actually do this.

we're working on -- we've been promised 2% of what we've asked for and that's across the unit. and we're launching all these new initiatives and we try to put congressional notes out to speak to the experts in congress and lawmakers. we want to be partners with you on this, how can we fund this, like tammy, you shouldn't have to have a huge investment there and not have anyone staffing it. >> i think this is a challenge for every single topic we could possibly come up with. everybody asks the same question. and, you know, i would tell you about ten years ago, members of congress would sit in local field hearings and say united states government is broke. so you cannot come here today and say what we need is more money. now, that said, we obviously have a budget and we have

mechanisms going on. in order to increase the amount of money put in a budget item, there are a number of things that have to happen. one is the president has to put it in the president's budget. if it doesn't make it over there, that is coming over to congress for congress to respond to. the other element is what's happening with appropriations and authorization. if nobody on that side is asking for it, either, then now you have a huge gap. so, as far as the role of the fbi is concerned, the bureau's got to get out and say this is what we need, this is why we need it, of course, and they are. then it becomes a complicated thing and we have to look at those various elements. the reason i bring it up is that it's not enough, it's simply not enough to say we need more money. we have to take it down levels lower and lower to where we are identifying exactly how much money we need. we're communicating up on the

legislative branch and the executive branch and all the different branches and getting to stakeholders who actually ask the same thing of the folks that are putting money in and then the other issue has to do with public/private partnerships and industry putting in money as well. it's not -- as much as we would like to, because we love the fbi, it is not the fbi's entire responsibility to execute some of these activities. i think we have to be smarter and get industry funding as well. >> can i first of all thank you for making that contribution, but could i ask, have you heard about this project before? >> the farm bill may be an opportunity to raise this issue as a legitimate, educating, if you will, the first responder community, educating the commercial industry. it would seem to me that that

would be a functional area that could be part of a farm bill provision. >> seem to get the judiciary committees to actually weigh in on the farm bill. i'm not sure that they ever have in the past. >> mr. grassley should have some interest in that. any other questions out here? i see no other questions and i know our cameras going to shut down here in a couple of minutes, so let me first of all thank all of you. thank the panelists. just a little closer here from my perspective, first of all, as mentioned, i grew up on a farm so i saw veterinarians long before i ever saw a medical doctor, i can tell you that for sure. in fact, my brother saw what the veterinarian was making and he became a veterinarian. so, but a small animal veterinarian. not the direction you wanted to go. and in doing a little prep for

this event, i reread sections of jarrett diamond's wonderful boo book. as some of you may remember. "guns, germs, and steel." in that book he relived the events surrounding the mandam indians tribe from the great plains which i think covered part of kansas and the great plains out there. and how in 1837, the tribe contracted smallpox from a steam boat that was traveling up the missouri river from st. louis. and i don't think it was intentional, per se, i think we have some bad history that there was some use of smallpox as a weapon, but in a couple of weeks, that tribe went from 40,000 down to something like 40. it was a tremendous drop. so, terrible diseases from

animal-related pathogens, clearly has a long and, quite frankly, very scary history. we only hope here at the bipartisan policy center that this discussion today elevates this a little bit. i would love to see this more discussed in presidential campaign than it's been discussed, and i hope that we can continue to press on. so, thank you very much. thank you, all, for joining us this morning and have a good day. our live coverage from the road to the white house continues in the morning. first radio talk show hosts from around the nation talk about the candidates and issues in the 2016 presidential campaign. that's at 1 1:00 a.m. eastern on

c-span2. then president barack obama travels to cleveland, ohio, to campaign for hillary clinton. we'll have that live at 11:15 a.m. eastern live on c-span. later donald trump speaks to supporters at a campaign rally in charlotte, north carolina, that's at 7:00 p.m. eastern live on c-span2. watch c-span's live coverage of the third debate between hillary clinton and donald trump on wednesday night. live debate preview starts at 7:30 p.m. eastern. the briefing for the debate studio audience is at 8:30 p.m. eastern and the 90-minute debate is at 9:00 p.m. eastern. stay with us following the debate for viewer reaction including your calls, tweets and facebook postings. and watch the debate live or on demand using your desktop, phone or tablet at c-span.org. listen to live coverage of the debate on your phone with a free c-span radio app. download it from the app store or google play.

a new survey from the university of virginia's institute for advanced studies and culture. the survey of american political culture 2016 illuminates a crisis in making. it looks at dissatisfaction with the economy, elections and politics as a whole. a group of professors and a journalist discussed the study for about an hour and a half. >> good afternoon. my name is jay tolson. i am the editor of the "hedgehog review" at the institute for advanced studies and culture at the university of virginia. thank you all for being here. welcome to the vanishing center of american democracy.

i think in normal election years, that might sound overly dramatic. it might sound like an understatement this year. that is, of course, the title of the report that is an analysis of a recent survey, or 2016 survey of american political culture. inducted for the institute by the gallup group. if there was an overarching theme to this report, i think you could probably fall back on the old marxist adage that quantitative change ultimately bring s qualitative change. i think what you'll hear today is a lot of trends in our political culture that have been under way, and not just political culture, our broader culture, that have been under way for the last 40 years, are

reaching a kind of culmination, possibly pressing a tipping point and that will be obviously the subject of the various panelists' discussion today. we are delighted to have as well as two speakers to our own institute two outstanding outside panelists. from the institute, we have presenting first, james davidson hunter who is the executive director of the institute and he is the lebross levinson distinguished professor of religion, culture and social theory at the university of virginia. he is the author of most pertinently, "culture wars: the struggle to define america," as well as many other books, studies and articles.

our second speaker who will be talking more specifically about the survey is our director of survey research, carl deport oman. in addition toleading many surveys at the institute, he is the author of "brethren society: the cultural transformation of a peculiar people." our guest speakers, we have two today. the first will be nancy eisenburg, the t. harry williams professor of history at louisiana state university. the author most recently of the acclaimed "white trash: the 400 year untold history of class in america." she's also the author of "sex and citizenship in antebellum

america" and "fallen founder clfounder: the life of aaron burr," a particular villain in this season of "hamilton," i think. we're delighted to have her here and she heroically took the train all the way from baton rouge to washington. our other guest speaker is tom edsel who many of you know most recently from his very sharp columns in "the new york times," his weekly column in "the new york times." he has -- he was until recently the public affairs -- the professor of public affairs journalism at columbia university. he wrote for many years at the "washington post," the political correspondent for the "washington post." before that, "the baltimore sun" in its glorious days before its demise. and many other publications,

print and digital. we're glad to have him here. he's also the author most recently of "the age of austerity: how scarcity will remake american politics." and he's also written i think three or four other distinguished books. so let's move along with the show. first, james davidson hummer. thank you. >> so thanks, jay. thank you, tom and nancy, for being here. carl. thanks to the gallup organization for hosting this event today. very much appreciate all the work you've done not only in fielding this work but for being such great partners. in this effort. thanks to all of you for carving out time in your busy days to come and be here.

i'm just going to dig right no. tell you first of all a little bit about the work we've done. everyone can agree there's something unprecedented about the presidential election this year. captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008 captioning performed by vitac