>> tonight on the communicators -- >> it's a great measure of how fast things change that the law is just figuring out those examples. and maybe figuring out just about the time they are not going to be as important in our daily lives. . so there's just this built in delay that it the lu suffers from and it's hard to keep up with the latest shifts. >> georgetown university law center professor on how prosecutors, lawyers and judges lack understanding of technology and work to help resolve that problem. he's interviewed by dustin volt, policy reporter at reuters. >> i wonder if that's something

we can appeal to people to do their duties and help the government out. >> watch tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span 2. house armed services committee chair matt thornberry spoke at the forum and touched on the defense programs bill, system the pentagon uses to buy supplies and other topics. this is about 40 minutes. >> thank you, chris. it's great for me to be with you and especially to be here with chairman thornberry and we're going to have a conversation that's going to touch on a number of topics and then take some questions. i want to say before i ask you the first question. we're going to talk about current readiness and we can safely say the report is not very good at all. and a lot of things you can say in the last few years are responsible for that.

but a lot of agencies but not the house armed services committee. we're grateful for your leadership and the consistent way you have stood up for american security and the men and women of the armed forces. so i thought we would get at this by giving you an opportunity to talk about the personal tour that you have engaged in recently in the number of american military installations. i think you followed some of those abroad and learned a lot of things. but really talked about readiness issues. so maybe you can talk about what you found and what the implications of it. >> thank you. and i appreciate your kind words, but i have to say i did not fully appreciate the state of our readiness and the damage that has been done by sequestration, by the high pace of operations, a combination of

factors and at least until i started talking with the people who are trying to live with it every day. as you mentioned earlier in the year, started traveling to various installations here at home. one of the pilots said ronald reagan sent this plane to bomb gadhafi in 1986. it's my plane. something when i was in flight hit part of the plane. i had had damage but we couldn't get the part to fix it. this is the pilot talking. i'm taking my family through a military museum and sigh an f-18 on static display there in the

museum and get the bright idea that maybe i could borrow a part of the museum aircraft. so we had to work his way through the museum bureaucracy and then through the d.o.d. to make all this happen. took apart of the aircraft. it turned out to the holes were drilled in inappropriate places so back in the early '80s, it didn't exactly fit. he had to come up with a plan b. as i continued to talk with others getting planes out of the bone yard and extends beyond the flying. it was tied up to take 13 parts off of it to put on other ships that had to deploy right away. so what we're doing is cannibalizing and then what goes with that is we don't have

enough aircraft available for train iing and they are not getting what they are supposed to get. you get this cycle that is headed downward. until you talk with -- and one other thing. so you have these old aircraft to stay it with airplanes for a second. what you do is you're really stressing your maintainers to keep from flying. so i have talked to maintainers that said, you know, i'm not seeing my family anymore at home than when i was deploy ued because we are literally working seven days a week off 12 hours a day. you get the dedepots backed up and this cycle that gets worse and worse. so you're right, i follow ed on squaun dodron to the middle eas. i saw the problems getting ready to deploy. they took a plane just to borrow stuff off of.

they have not enough experienced pilots so they have to manage the experienced pilots and less experience and their missions and so forth. maintainers working around the clock. are they pulling off or bombing isis in this case yes. is it an uncredible stress on the force, yes. and it takes its toll over time. so i think what we are seeing and it's not just anecdotes. you're seeing in accident rates for all the services going up. you're seeing consequences build of these readiness shortfalls and we've got to turn it around. last thing i will say is i think it's morally wrong to send people out on missions for which they are not fully supported and fully prepared. we're kind of doing that. we're not fully supporting them now. that's wrong. we have to turn it around no matter what. >> that's a powerful statement.

as you know, if those problems are existing and they are across all the services, we know that day-to-day readiness is one of the last things this system wants to sacrifice because it's embarrassing to everybody. if they are sacrificing that it, what does it say about the long-term readiness issues that you've also talked about so well? >> and i do think we make a mistake both the military and those who are around it a lot by e seeing readiness as some sort of a code for just a unit. it is broader. and so the only way you're going to make some of these squadrons ready is to get into airplanes. you can only do so much with the 1980s that are way beyond their flying hours. you can say the same with ships

and all sorts of things. i do think it's important to look at readiness more broadly. not just units, but individuals and also our capability to deal with the variety of threats, high end to others that we face. >> the irony is that this is happening because of the desire to save money and yet it will cost so much more, as you know, and you warned the colleagues, you tell the colleagues, it's cutting off your nose to spite your face. but getting a concentration of energy and will to do something about it is a lot harder. >> it's like not patching your roof and letting it go. one of these days you're going to have water in your house. think about the cost of that. just that small example we can all relate to large across the u.s. military is what we're facing. >> i love your museum example.

when we do finally take some of these platforms off the line, somebody is going to show up at the antique road show with of them and say what can i sell this for. you have to laugh or cry. so we have a new president coming in who gave, what i thought, was an outstanding defense speech with a very good defense plan over the summer. . love for you to comment on that it if you want to. one of the things i liked about his plan is the l emphasis in it not just on capabilities, on technological edge that we're losing and that we need to maintain, but also he did focus on numbers, on capacity. there's been a tendency in these defense panel and others for people to get so in love with capability that they forget

numbers matter too. you want to comment on his speech or on that issue or how you see that going forward? >> i agree. i think his focus on rebuilding the military is exactly right, as was the piece that it you wrote that chris mention ed. and numbers do matter. i mean, part of the reason we're challenged right now is we don't have enough aircraft, i'll just continue with that example, so the ones we have, we are flying more and more hours and that's part of the cycle of how hard it is to get things ready if you don't have enough and what you've got you're just flying the wings off of. but what else is true, recently i was in the asian-pacific region that you can have more capable ships. we have this debate all the time with the obama administration. you can have a more capable ship but still only be in one place at one time. you have to have numbers to cover geography u and these days

when you have such a huge array of threats from russia and china's aggressive action, iran, north korea, terrorists that not only have not gone away but are spreading o out in more places, there's no substitute for numbers. and final point is like with aircraft, we can wear out our people as well. and so day after tomorrow in the house, we will pass this year's conference report for defense authorization bill. one of the primary features is we stop the draw down on end strength and all the services, especially acute for the army. so part of what has happened is we have drawn down the numbers so much we have worned people

out. we are more than 4,000 maintainers short, partly because the airlines are hiring, partly because we're wearing our people out and they can only do so much. >> i'm co-chairing at the bipartisan policy center, a task force on personnel with secretary panetta and jim jones. and when you really get into subjects, it's interest iing wh you find. one of the things we're seeing is all throughout the force, one of the reasons moral is suffering so badly is that people feel like they are having to do two or three jobs instead of one. and they will do that in a wartime, but you mentioned stress. over time these are volunteers. they don't have to stay. it's amazing the force is held up as well as it has. >> it is a credit to them. and one last point. when you do the drawdowns like they are in the process of doing, who are you losing? you're losing the people with

some experience and so forth, so you lose that capability. even if you try to turn it around tomorrow, you're not replacing the experience. you're bringing in a new recruit. got to go through the training and so forth. so the best thing is don't lose them to begin with. >> because building up will cost more and take time. you also tend to lose war fighters because to some extent this is the tooth to tail ratio. . you have worked on getting that reduced. part of 9 the problem is they have to sustain. you have to sustain the institutional army in order to be able to continue as an organization. which means that your end strength cuts are going to it fall in the brigades and war fighters, which is exactly what we want to see out there in the fields. so capacity is important going forward and i'm sure you'll be working on this figuring out what is the right capacity, but at minimum, we don't keep drawing down. i want to talk because we have

been talking about the decline in our strength as a result of all these factors. but the decline, when you talk about the strength of the military, it's relative to the missions that they have to reform and the threats they are confronting. so part of the danger is we're not only gradual ly getting weaker, maybe not so gradually, but many of the potential adversaries we're facing are getting stronger. do you agree with that? >> no question. two years ago when i first became chairman, we had a number of hearings in the senate just state of the world. and among others, henry kiz kissinger said have we never faced so many complex threats at the same time. in addition to that over the past 18 months or so, our

committee has had a number of classified, unclassified sessions where we look at our eroding technological advantage over others. and this is another area that may have crept can up on us, but if you look at it objectively, we are clearly less superior than we have been in the past. so you look at what russia and china are doing where they are making their investments. it is directly focused on the way that we conduct warfare. and poses a a real danger whether it's nuclear detier rans, all the cyber or counterspace activities in a variety of other capabilities that the defense has. so you look at that on the russia side. you look at some of the missile

work that china is doing. and they are not the only ones. you see iran and north korea accelerating their missile testing among other things. isis is getting more sophisticated. the point is we have this huge array of threats more than we have ever faced and their sophistication is growing and we have to deal with it all. and i think that's the key factor. we spend so much more money. we also have responsibilities more than anybody else combine ed. . and without us, others step into the vacuum. i think we're starting to see some of that. and more aggressive activity in the world. >> i, too, deal with that. we spend more than other countries combined.

i have thought about how best to capture the right response. because it's a fair question. we want people to ask questions like that. but you have to have apples to apples. so what are we spending potential adversaries in their regions of the world. it's probably half again that much. virtually all of the power they are getting is concentrated in east asia and in their near seas. so the question is are we spending the e equivalent of several hundred billion dollars a year in order to maintain presence in that part of the world. the answer is no. we're like a company that's trying to market in all 50 states and one of its regional competitors is spending three times as much in five states as you're spending. you're going to lose market share in those states. so you're really correct. we're going to go to questions in it a minute. so be thinking about it.

but i want to have -- time goes by so quickly. i do want to make certain that we touch on industrial base issued because when you look at the build up, and this is a difference between now and 30 years ago when reagan did this. we have an incoming president-elect who i believe is committed to a major rebuild of measuring's armed forces, but. he doesn't have, in my opinion, anywhere robust a defense industrial basis as president reagan did. maybe that's overstating it, but would you talk a little bit about that. >> i think it's self-evident. we are down to one or maybe two suppliers in many instances. if you talk to the major defense contractors, they are very dependent, many times, on a single sub contractor for various components. and much of the reason for that has been the erratic budgeting that has come from our political

system or not come from our political system. so all of that has taken a toll on our center base. one of the things as you know one of the areas i have focused on has been acquisition reform. and part of the reason is i have grown increasinge inine iningly that innovative companies that do commercial work and do work with the government are going to make the decision it's not worth messing with the government. i have had executives with some of them tell me that has been their calllation. it's just not worth it. and you think about the way the world is moving, the investments that our adversaries are putting in. if we lose the innovation that

comes from a whole series of companies in our economy, we are going to have a very difficult time defending the country. . and so when you think of the industrial base as the prime defense contractors, which is absolutely true, they are essential, but really it's a much larger group and we have made it very hard to do business with the department of defense and we have made it very slow to take advantage of their innovations. so while it is really important to get more value for the money we spend, what is even more of a driver for me is we have to be faster. we have to be more agile in fielding the best technology that will protect our people better, but also meet the adversary and to do that we have to have a better acquisition system and the industrial base improving those relationships. it's been a very hostile one.

there has to be transactions and all that, but we need to get back to everybody being on the same team for the same purpose in order to harness that tremendous innovation that's in the american country. >> we'll go to the questions because i could month normopoli kma chairman for the whole hour. a lot of that is creating a a deeper understanding and mind set among the colleagues and even within the defense or the press that's covering these things, and obviously a lot of the trade press understand it, of how this system works and what kind of oversight and what kind of standards o hold them to are appropriate. when they are prmperforming pre

when something shows it's really wrong, that's hard to create that. i know a big part, we'll close with this. one of the big things that the chairman of the house of armed services committee has to do is to help colleagues in the house understand how this hugely u important but very different part of the government works. most of them will come into office having looked at health care and look ed a at education looked these issue others but they don't understand this. so how do you see your role in that and how do you think that's going? that's a question you don't get every day u. >> there's always more work to do. and for me it starts with members of my committee. and we have had a lot of informal conversations with people that help get a better feel for that. but for example, a a couple months ago, i took 20 or 30 folks over to the pentagon and

walked around a little bit. got to hear firsthand from many of the service chiefs. i do think for all the reasons we have been talking about, nearly all members of congress feel a responsibility when it comes to national security. >> i agree with that. >> but as you're right, it is in many ways, not something that many of them are used to dealing with. except we do have some e key t veterans who have been elected and they bring their perspective. >> i don't want to overstate. >> but i think you're right. i think there is a hunger for members to understand better what's happening in the world about our military capability and so part of our job is to help provide the information, but also just the understanding. >> the framework of how that works. >> the rest of the story is i

don't want to just explain to them how this very kpli u indicated system works. part of our job is to reform this system and streamline it and so the bill we're going to vote on reduces some of the bureaucracy and reorganizes some of the functions at the pentagon. my friend senator mccain says the reorganization since goldwater in '86. >> which he remembers. >> but we're not done. >> i am going to be a little more disciplined than you probably expected and i'm going to stop and take questions. do i just call on people? is that what you want me to do? >> i think this hand went up first.

>> hi i'm with defense daily. i understand that you take the position and it's basically split is up into two. you have a chief technology officer and undersecretary for engineering. how is that going to improve the speed of which you get new technologies into the field if you take one decision maker's skpogs make it into two decision maker's positions? >> the concern is that we have put too much under and whatever i say is no criticism of frank kendall who are has done a very good job. but i'm persuaded by those people who say that it is essentially impossible to make the person who is responsible for buying things efficiently as well as many of his other duties.

the senate bill had a very significant reorganization. what we have agreed upon for this year is to separate out some of these functions, but delay implementation to allow the new administration to look at it. but also to allow us to study more carefully what the right way is and what the complications are. the challenge with all these reform efforts is you can't take a break and rearrange things and start again in two weeks. you have to do the job every single day. so you still have to make sure the rifle gets to the guy in afghanistan tomorrow while you are trying to improve innovation and reform acquisition and so forth. so this is a first step in recognition that we have lost something on innovation.

it's probably not the final answer. >> you're satisfied so far with the compromise? >> i think it's the right thing for now. but it will continue to be -- woor not done on organizational reform, acquisition reform, on some of the personnel reform issues. so i think this is a good step for now. there's more work to be done. >> this gentleman here. >> chairman, you spoke about the need for new aircraft. which the program has been delayed for a long period of time and gone over budget. can you speak about how the u.s. government could akwar new assets without that happening

again, without going over budget or without being delayed by that significant period of time. >> part of what we have tried to think about over the last really we started this is to understand the problems for the aircraft carrier, for future combat system. we have had some problems in the past. and one of the things i u think we can learn is that when you define requirements at the beginning, it's a very important thing and you really need to make it difficult to change those requirements. you try to put too much innovation s innovation into a new platform

it will delay its fielding and increase the cost. and i just had a member last night on the floor talk about visiting some of last night on the floor talked to me about visiting some of the bases. problems are being worked through. computer issues they have had, helmet issues, they are working through them. you're right. it's over budget, too long. if it takes 20 years to field the next aircraft, we're going to be in real trouble. that's the reason this bill we focus on incremental improvement and not committing to buy 1,000 of something until we know it works and a separate funding stream for experimentation. we need to experiment. but you can't experiment as

you're building a program of record. so trying to lesh the lessons of the problems we've had in the past is important. the answer is not to not build another airplane. the answer is to make these gradual. >> ki add one thing. i'll stick up a little for the department. i say this as a person who has been writing about acquisition reform when i was there. part of this is the result of when you know you're not going to have the money to buy all the platforms you're going to need, so you're going to get one plane, so the pressure to put as much as you can in that plane becomes very strong. yes, i think i'm not trying to say that's the only reason, i think that hurts future combat systems.

>> you're right. >> we have this one thing, so we have to do everything we want to do. >> and i was there, you were there. when we started f-35 the idea of having a common platform that then would be adapted for different services, that could work. it was much more complicated than anybody realized. >> we can do a whole hour on that idea and how that's affected. i'm going back to that gentleman waving his hand. i think we're going to get a real good question here. >> tony, inside defense representing the noble defense trade press. hello. for chairman thornberry, in the compromised version of the authorization bill, you ended up halting the strength decreases but billions got stripped out and planned weapons increases for f-35s, lcs, everything else. my question is do you plan to come back for those in the next legislative cycle. do you think those remain high priorities and do you want to

try to get them authorized next year. senator, praised incoming administration, having any discussions playing a role in that administration, maybe a building with -- >> you want to go first. >> i'm just happy you get a question like that. my hope is that the new administration will come to us with the supplemental request as soon as they get their feet on the ground. it was disappointing that in it was disappointing that in order to get this bill done now and to stop the in-strength hemorrhaging that we were not able to have as much funding as the house had originally had. as i mentioned before, the only way you are going to fix some of these old airplanes is to build a new airplane. that's part of what we had. my hope is, and i think across the aisle, recognition of the

fact that sequestration, 21% cut over four years in the defense budget, as well as the pace of operations has taken its toll. so there is, i think, interest to try to make up some of that ground and what i hope is the new administration will come with a supplemental and that we can put back, and for me, the top of the list would be the things that had to drop out now and then, of course, go to next year's budget as well. >> i would love to see a supplemental too. i really love the president-elect's defense speech when i read it. i love the tone. i love the issues he took on and the way he took on. i'm going to support that, whether inside or outside of government. i would be very interested in doing something inside of government. we have had some discussions with the transition. i also know enough about cabinet building, having watched it in a

number of instances that he has to pick the people that fit, that he feels the most comfortable with and also fit the overall pattern. they are working their way through that and making a lot of progress. i've been watching and pleased with the appointments i've seen so far. so they are going to work it out. i am going to support that plan inside or outside of government. there isn't anything more important to america's national security or i would also argue to donald trump's domestic agenda of regrowing the manufacturing base in this country. i think it's been an untold story. he is starting to tell it. one of the reasons we have lost a lot of manufacturing capacities is because we have underfunded these procurement programs over time. >> yes, sir. >> i'll go back over here.

>> peter humphrey, an intel analyst and former diplomate. wondering about two things. in what fantasy world did preparation for two major regional conflicts disappear? secondarily, the future is made of swarms of small things. how do we get the pentagon to realize you want to buy 1,000 toyotas instead of one lexus? they keep missing the boat on that and creating giant aircraft carriers, one torpedoed takes out a huge amount of our capability. that's crazy. >> well, both good questions. i've already forgot the first one. i'm sorry. this year's defense bill will abolish the qdrs. too much time, effort for nothing. part of our frustration is, it became a budget justification

document, not really a strategy document. that gets to what you are talking about. we have adjusted the two mc kind of approach just based on the budgets, rather than the other way around, rather than looking at the world trying to see what sizing construct makes sense for the world we're facing and then develop the budgets to support them. so we have provided a different system of kind of thinking about the world with an outside group at the beginning and, you know, not trying to recreate the qdr but trying to do this differently. that has definitely not been successful. i think there are people in the pentagon who are very interested in this swarming idea. i certainly am. i have had a number of folks that have provided me with some

material to read and help think about this, whether we are talking satellites or whether we are talking other sorts of capability. but you get to the heart of an issue, you can think about and say, okay, that makes sense but still you have cultural bias in a certain direction within the institution. i think part of our job in congress is to breakthrough some of this cultural bias that prevents us from looking at these different options. i don't mean mini, small is always the answer to everything. but we have to look in that direction, just cost benefit ratio for a host of reasons. so i think that concept as well as others is maturing. it is involved in some of the third offset stuff.

again, part of our job is to nurture that, even when the institutional interests are to squish it. >> that's a great answer. if i can just add one thing on that. i think you are so correct. it is a balance that you need. we were talking before about the perceptions of congress as an institution, the larger body of people outside of the committees who have a role to play in this decision-making. this is what i think the building needs to understand, is that those people like to see tangible things for the dollars that they spend. right? they are not all that up necessarily on all the gradations and differences. when you spend a lot of money on planes, you like to see planes. if the pentagon understood that that's the way to make everybody feel as if we are getting value for dollars, there is going to be a little less pressure on some of the bigger programs to

produce quickly. there is a perception issue involved here, too, as well as with forestructures. let's take one more, which i'll let the chairman answer rather than sticking my nose in. i said i'll come back over here. we'll get this gentlemen right here. thank you. i have a question about technological superiority. specifically with regards to russia. when it comes to russian's capabilities, we haven't seen it in a scenario in quite a while. given the dubious nature of the t-14 tank and the new fighter jet it wants to field and with regards to the industrial base of russia, is it possible we're overestimating russian capabilities with regard to a military scenario with a usa. if we reorient ourselves, will we lose out on the capability to wage the wars we usually do with technologically inferior

enemies. >> i think the point is we have to be prepared for the range of contingencies. so there are folks who say okay, counter terrorism and counter insurgency is behind us. we need to focus on the high-end threats. we don't have that luxury. we have this huge array from sophisticated to less sophisticated threats around the world and we have to be ready for them all and maintain competency for them all. but it is true that the 15 years of where we have focused on counter terrorism have meant that we have neglected training and other things for the high-end sorts of threats. i think we're pretty clear-eyed about the threat that russia presents. i don't think anybody says their

military has as much capability as ours. we have to be realistic about where they are putting their time, effort, and money. so, for example, they continue to crank out new nuclear weapons every year. we don't. we haven't built a new nuclear weapon since about 1990. we are trying to keep these old machines safe and reliable. russia is putting a fair amount of effort into that. you have read what they say about the tactical use of nukes to make up for conventional inferiority. we know what they are capable or at least their level of sophistication in cyber. they have had some demonstrations, i believe, for our benefit, in syria. so they can't match us but they

don't have to. if you see some of the recent press reporting about deployments they have made in kaliningrad, it is concerning. part of it is to effect a political purpose, especially in eastern europe. we have to deal with that. >> i want to be sensitive to your time, chairman. and keep the day on schedule. thank you, chairman thornberry, you have been a fine fellow today and i am sure you are ready for the new congress. >> live now to a conversation on media coverage on incoming trump presidency and trump administration. we'll hear from reporters from "politico," "wall street journal," "washington post," "usa today" and a number of news organizations. this is just getting under way. >> the third panel will deal

with the relationship between the administration and the press and what legal precedents might be being set. for each of these panels, there will be discussion from the moderator. we want to set aside time for questions for the audience. when it comes time to q&a, i believe we'll have a microphone going around. we want to make sure you talk into the microphone. moderators will be standing here with the microphone because we are recording everything. everything is on the record on c-span and streaming live on facebook. the other thing i want to keep in mind half are career fellows, d.c. journalists. the other half of the room and many other people will be coming in aren't fellows so i want to give recognition to paul miller fellows and also to the fact that at least two of our panelists today, and on the

first panel is full paul miller. we always like to see them do well and they have. first leading it, the panelist will give you more info on that. so jason. >> thank you very much, chris. thank you for university of maryland hosting this foundation. just a quick little psa, we are talking into microphones, but you won't necessarily hear amplification. don't worry, we will project and it's primarily for cameras and transcription and recording. it's been a whirlwind month since the election for those of us covering it. it was a whirlwind in cases where people spending a lot of time in iowa corn fields and

nevada and prepping for the election. politics never sleeps, though. we're already seeing contours of future races. it's easy to get distracted with that. what we want to talk about is congress one thing that we've noticed as journalists and scholars who are covering congress is that congress, it is always a sort of omnipresent in our lives, but necessarily not in the public's eyes. so we want to talk about how -- it's always relevant but how do we make it resonant for people watching our stuff and watching our news reports. so i want to first just start with christina and everybody is going to introduce themselves, talk a teeny bit about themselves for a few minutes and get into questions before handing it over to q&a. christina pearson. >> i've covered congress for about four years with the "wall street journal." previously i covered the fed for a little bit and tax policy and the stock market and i'm from

maryland. >> professor bender. >> sarah bender, scientist, half of me lives at brookings think tank, the other half of me, usually left-right, sometimes top-bottom, professor at gw in the science department. i study congress. i have to say i've been in washington 20 years. every year congress gets slightly worse, so i'll just leave it right there. >> i'm a congressional reporter at "politico" focusing on the senate and immigration policy. i've been at "politico" since 2009 and covering congress since the summer of 2011. my first foray covering congress was during debt limit fight which was a nice introduction to congress. and i'm from iowa. >> let's start off with paul miller alumni.

what happens under unified control, not terribly -- we haven't seen that since the first couple of years of obama administration, 2009-2010. before that bush administration 2003-2007 and a short time in 2001. the tendency is for people to make more in politics. it makes sense, you exaggerate what you have or don't have on the agenda. let's talk about what sort of burden that can be also. >> i think if you remember at the beginning of the obama administration the democrats -- once al franken sworn in, 60 votes in the senate, control of the house and also president obama in the white house. they got very ambitious with their legislative agenda, passed health care law, dodd/frank. at least the house at the time pushed through an energy bill.

it will be interesting to see how republicans on capitol hill and also the president-elect handle what they do with -- first of all, do they see a mandate that was handed to them and also what they do with that. what's going to guide that, two republican leaders in the house. christina and i were talking about this, it's actually interesting how speaker ryan and majority leader mitch mcconnell had differing views on what they see as the quote, unquote, mandate of the election. paul ryan immediately after the election talked about kind of like this big mandate he felt republicans had because voters for the first time in many years handed republicans full control of washington. but mitch mcconnell in his own press conference two days after the election said, look, i've seen from kind of histories and elections past, there is a tendency to overreach. he's going to be very careful not to do that. how do those two differing

philosophies kind of collide with each other as they try to set a broader republican agenda, what does that mean for desire to repeal health care law, restructure laws, handle immigration and how the president-elect sees this. i think that's going to be really interesting to see how that guides the thinking in terms of how ambitious they can be with their own agenda. >> the health care law is a really great example, because in the house they have had 50 some votes to repeal the affordable care act. now that they are playing with real bullets, it's a much dicier proposition. they have to think about not just repealing it but what kind of transition have you and what to replace it with. the ordering of that is something of a land mine. will people feel comfortable repealing health care law before they know what they are going to replace it with. you don't need democratic votes to repeal it but you will probably need democratic votes in the senate to replace it.

so those are two very different procedures they have to go through. you can just see them grappling now with how tricky that's going to be. it's a lot easier to say we want to repeal obama care than figure out a working way to do that. >> professor bender, this is actually a nice segue right to you and expertise and what we're talking about with procedure. within newsrooms, people who have a lot of experience, you start talking about procedure, floor procedure, structured rules in the house versus open rules and reconciliation instructions. everybody is going to be -- this is starting as soon as we get back, as soon as new congress sworn in, we'll be faced with some of these questions. what are some of the ways you would advise or we need to look at procedure and be able to explain it in a way that gets beyond a bunch of geeks like us who know these sort of things?

>> perhaps it would be helpful today and thinking how to cover procedural or institutional questions. i think briefly, let me say one thing about why we should care about the rules and, second, think about why the house and senate looks so different and maybe that will get us up to speed. keep in mind, this seems obvious, it's important to realize majorities and coalitions don't just materialize. they don't say tax reform and suddenly there's a tax reform coalition. those coalitions have to be built from the bottom up. the ways in which they get built depend on the rules of the game. the rules of the game are going to dictate who has agenda setting power, who puts proposals on the table. the rules of the game will basically tell us which party has easier time with their policy proposals in committee and on the floor. the rules of the game will tell us how many lawmakers are

required, majority, two-thirds, three-fifths. the rules of the game matter. this isn't political scientists playing egg head geeks here about the rules of the game. so just to be clear, it is important to kind of familiarize your self, perhaps not so much why they are different but certainly how they differ. just i guess the briefest of sketches here, for the house, it's evolved into an institution that is largely driven by the majority party, assuming the majority party is cohesive. the one instrument to keep in mind for your reporting is to keep your eyes on the house rules committee, which really we think of it as an arm of the majority party leadership because the speaker appoints the nine in this case republican members. the democratic leader will appoint the four democratic members. you might think, wow, hmm, nine republicans and four democrats. we know that the house senate majority is 52, 53% of the

chamber. i don't have an exact number. so that rules committee is stacked in the favor of the majority party and stacked in the favor of the leadership. rules committee decides what's the structure of bills going to the floor. will they be open? that is can anybody essentially get a vote, offer an amendment on the floor or will they be closed? will there be no amendments? a tax reform package if it were to come to the floor, no amendments. it's closed. you don't want to start unraveling the carefully together package versus somewhere in between. somewhere in between is where most bills are. somewhere in between tends to treat minority party from their perspective somewhat unfairly and tends to advantage majority party assuming they are unified and assumes it usually knocks out any ability for bipartisan coalition to come to the floor or to allow a minority member to offer to split majority party. if we look at the house, wow, majority rule really works

there. majority party rule. but that's dependent on the rules and dependent on the majority party sticking together to protect those rules. >> doesn't always happen. >> as you guys watching. >> when they can't get their rules, ruling on the floor, more than likely gets yanked from the floor. majorities don't like to air their dirty laundry. none of us do on the house floor. turning to the senate, i think the thing to keep in mind here, there's one rule in the house that is the critical thing for understanding the senate. the house, previous question motion, all have you to know is when a majority is ready to take a vote in the house, move a motion, ready to vote, all you need is simple majority and you take a vote. in the senate if you open up senate rule book, no previous question, there is no ability except in some circumstances reconciliation, no for majority to decide, hey, let's vote except for nominations that we

can come back to. you have to get a bill on the floor. mitch mcconnell for unanimous consent, senators, all democrats as well as all his republicans or he needs 60 votes through cloture process. 60, 52 republicans. that means he needs all 52, rand paul, john mccain, susan collins. >> ted cruz. >> ted cruz. >> so they have to stick together and they need eight democrats to come over. eight democrats, we're a very partisan politics these days, to get eight you probably need to get 20 or 30. you don't usually get eight to peel off. joe manchin, a hand full of moderates, but there aren't eight that will cross over. why is it important? you need 60 votes to get stuff done. that means to replace obama

care, to do immigration reform, defense spending, all sorts of big ticket items on the republican agenda are going to need 60 votes. finally where you started off reconciliation, there's a bunch of procedure. we don't need to get too far into it. there is a bunch of procedure, does allow majorities to work with 351 votes in the senate because you can't filibuster these that come out. there's strict rules about how you can get to reconciliation and what can go in it. it's much easier. tax reform will probably be done that way. it's not clear. rules matter especially in the senate where otherwise you get crickets. >> moving on to some of the personalities we run into on a daily basis in the house and senate. congress can be a very intimidating place. it's not just more than 500 members of congress, it's their staff, a big place. it's like a small city. there are 27,000 people who work for the legislative branch in

the united states. it's a big apparatus. how do you start just developing sources there? >> i think you just kind of start with a different -- start with a focus, start small. if you cover -- you work for a publication, washington correspondent for a state newspaper, obviously start with your local representatives and local -- and the two senators. if you cover a policy, members of the committee that has jurisdiction over that policy, not just committee members, in terms of the lawmakers themselves but staff members on the committee and staff members for members who sit on the committee. i think i kind of came in to congress as a general assignment reporter. i was kind of a newbie, so i was being tossed everywhere, kind of whatever -- whichever breaking news story was going on at the time. but when i transferred to covering immigration kind of exclusively late 2012 and really

focused on members of leadership, members of the gang of eight, members of the judiciary committees on both sides of the chambers, that's when i became sourced up in the capital, which not only helped me with immigration reporting but also how to help me kind of broaden that expertise to other policies and kind of helped me to where i got today. i think if you look at congress as like oh, my gosh, i have to get to know all these 535 people, get to know their staffs, agendas, you are going to be overwhelmed. it still overwhelms every day. if you start with a small focus, develop a niche, home state or specific policy beat, interesting coalitions if you want to cover progressives in the house and senate, a great one for the next few years, i think if you tackle it like that, it will be -- that's the way to kind of dip your foot in the water and get going. >> i think that makes a lot of sense. since it is a new session of congress that's about to start,

there are new lawmakers and they want to get to know people. so that can be a good toe hold into this. since we do have one party controlling both chambers of commerce and the white house, there are more issues moving, so i do think there are more industries and fields with advocates like immigration or health care policy or tax reform where they know a lot and are happy to talk on background with reporters. so that's a good opportunity to start chatting with people from different angles. i think what's nice about the hill is there are so many different ways to get into every story and every beat. so you can be a white house reporter and covering the administration from the hillside, because, you know, we just have so much access and ability to bump into people and talk to different people and lawmakers and aides. you could do the same on a foreign policy beat. so it's just a great place to be able to have so many

interactions on a daily basis. >> i think, you know, you can't emphasize enough the fact that there are no small beats. >> yeah. >> your background covering the fed will probably come in very handy when they start talking about a new federal reserve chair, chairwoman. >> immigration, which covered a lot, senator jeff sessions was a key person in that because he was a very vocal critic of legal immigration at the time when it wasn't being voiced very much in congress. now he looks likely to be the next attorney general. so really interesting how people you talk to years ago end up in a different role. >> professor bender, how important is it to know just how the -- this sounds like a squishy term but the culture of congress and of washington. washington has been disparaged like no other place in the universe the last couple of

years in this campaign, so it may be difficult to think, oh, i'm going to spend time getting to know the people or the city. how important is that forming the basis of the context for developing an expertise and covering congress and a new administration. >> so, since i'm wearing the science hat i'll give you two contradictory answers. i think i believe the second one more than the first one. most scientists tend not to study culture of interactions, personality, all that you described as the ways in which life gets done and happen on the hill. >> probably what we do more of, better at it than what we would be. but the reality is, though, particularly in a period of polarization where you can't just count on some broad political center to come together to mold political coalitions, the only way for congress to do big stuff is for

people on opposite sides who don't typically interact with each other get to know the other side, right? just think about this. if politics were just a single pie, and we're going to divide it up, you get two pieces, three pieces, 0 sum, you wouldn't have to know anybody. democrats wouldn't talk to republicans, send somebody over, divide up the pie and you're done. big deals don't look like that. immigration reform, even if it didn't make it to the house, i think of it as enlarge the pie. you carry about path to citizenship, great. you really care about border security, fine, we're going to knit them together. as barney frank told me, he said, you know, in congress the ankle bone is connected to shoulder bone. i'm not a doctor -- i guess i am a doctor but not a medical doctor. can you put things together. the only way they put things together is if they know what the other side wants. so your ability to try to figure out what those relationships look like i think is pretty

important. education, alexander, patty murray, budget deals patty murray in the past, paul ryan, right, some of these folks are getting to know each other. some of them have dealt with each other repeatedly over the years, but you don't get big stuff in unified party control. you don't get big stuff unless you bring along the minority. >> before we get into questions from the audience and conversations there, i do want to go over to the flip side of it, which is polling, data, following money trails and so forth. polling took a real like sort of beating in this particular campaign. how important is it, how much is part of your repertoire as reporters, to look at polling numbers and data trends and so forth. >> yeah, you know, that is a really good question. i don't know how things shake out with polling. it is something during the

campaign year we've relied on a lot. from covering senate races, we looked at real clear politics average of polls. i will say broadly, i do think data is important. on the hill, things that have been very helpful are congressional research service reports, cbo reports, congressional budget office that gives dollar figures on legislation. gao reports. these are sort of very well respected, independent agencies that i think -- i hope still buttress our stories by giving us facts and analysis that both sides tend to agree upon, at least in the past. so i think will trump -- will president-elect trump say gao said that so i'll back down or cbo scored the bill this way, i don't know. in the past those have been very helpful resources for hill reporting. >> i think i agree with everything she just said. also on point, i'm not a polling expert either.

i rely on the numbers the same way christina does when we're covering senate races, especially the battleground states. my one personal lesson from this is that i in terms of pitching story ideas, i was polling based on story ideas. actually in the last week of the race, we were pondering kind of a bigger story on the wick senate race. but i think i thought that, ru may be losing his lead over ron johnson but look at the polling. we assumed he was going to be one of the republicans gone. the polling -- the closing as an outlier. we should have done more on that race. i think we were probably -- i was probably too reliant on polling for the entire time. now i know for the entire cycle where to go with more than just where the numbers are. as we can see there's much more to that -- much more to

reporting on these races than getting a sense of wherehe numbers are. so it's going to take away from the cycle. >> did we overuse polling, professor bender. >> christina very kindly reminded me today we talked on the phone at 4:30 on election day and by 9:00, 9:30 when she wasn't going to be saved by alaska, probably -- >> that story got written through several times on the course of election night. >> so i would just offer one way to think about polls in terms of legislative contest or legislative politics. maybe the example of the 2013 government shutdown would be helpful. so october 2013, the government was shut down for two and a half weeks. it was all over the spending bills which you will eventually come to terms with why it's so important. but ted cruz, senator, had basically taken the spending bills hostage for an obama care

repeal. in terms of partisan battle, keep in mind democratic senate and republican house. who was going to get the blame, right? were republicans going to be blamed for trying to take the government hostage by going after obama care or would democrats be blamed for their inability to govern? it takes a little while for that but i think it was a messaging battle to play out. if you looked at the polling results, not just your approval of congress but what do people think of democratic leaders, what do people think of republican leaders, you kind of see even amongst republicans this dive that happens by the second, third week in october in the public and republican perceptions of republican leadership. i think members -- i think mcconnell and i think boehner, i think they under stood it all along but clearly understood once numbers tank they can go to their members and say, look, we're being blamed here. we're losing the messaging battle. we've got to go to the table.

because they lost the messaging battle, they didn't get anything. there was no obama care repeal, raised debt limit. i actually think the spite the fact my whole discipline is having a little issue about polling, i think leaders will still be relying on them and it may help determine the direction these battles go to some degree. >> that's a really good point. candidates still use polling a lot. even if journalists reduce our reliance to some extent, they are still really important behind the scenes shaping legislative battles, campaigns. we're not done with polls for sure. >> we'll probably have more of them. it was a staggering amount of information to sift through. also a caveat, a lot of the polling at the national level, you know, predicted the margin on the popular vote. where they missed it was with the turnout in the battleground

states. >> in some cases the margin of error was large enough that what occurred was still technically accurate. the poll was still technically accurate. >> that does tend to get lost a little bit. it's no fun to state margin of error and how much you can discount the polls. >> right. >> with that i'd like to get into some of the questions with the audience because i know there are probably a lot of questions. at least we hope. who wants to go first? >> i can restate the question. >> that will be good. >> ma'am? >> i had a question -- couple questions for dr. bender. first you talked about how what was going on in the senate with the majority and that 52

republicans, they need at least eight democrats. you said you'd really have to peel off 20. i was a little confused how that would work. >> the question is just getting into explanations of the majority, there are likely going to be 52 republican senators, but you need 60 to cut off debate on any kind of legislation. and professor bender's statement if you need eight, you really need to aim a lot higher than that, 20 to 30. >> so to clarify, yes, technically on a rule you need 60 as jason just said. the thing is, let's say everybody was lined up left to right, liberals to conservatives. some of these issues will not be left to right so my line is not going to be helpful. your left to my right. mine because i'm spatially challenged especially when we're talking different directions. the problem is here -- not the problem but the challenge is here that democrats and republicans are reasonably

cohesive. so republicans are probably over here on the right. democrats are scattered over here. there isn't anybody in the middle. to have to go all the way over to attract your 60 votes, you go manchin west virginia, heidi heitkamp, if she doesn't go with the administration, mccaskill, donnelly. the further and further you go, you're going to hit some liberals, right. to get to eight you're going to hit liberals. in other words, the eight probably agrees with the person lined up at 80. that's when in essence it's not that you're aiming to pick up -- you may be. it's not that you need 80 votes but the fact is the moderation of your bill, changes of your bill you need to get to 60, those changes are probably going to be amenable to other democratic senators near them. so you're not just peeling off -- you're not just buying individual votes, you're probably making concessions to bring everybody over.

>> i think also there's a tactical element to this. with schumer, who is going to be the next senate democratic leader, he may let four or five of his most vulnerable democrats vote with republicans on certain issues, those are the people in the middle that professor bender was talking about but democrats may not want to let eight or nine go and give republicans a legislative win unless it's a big bipartisan topic for which you get 20 democrats on board. so you could see six democrats vote with republicans when it helps them but you don't get that whole -- you won't get to the number eight to pass legislation unless it's good for a lot of democrats. >> so i think the last major legislation in the senate at least, where they got right around 60 was a trade promotion authority in june 2015. it was like we were just kind of up there counting. who is going to be the democrat. who will be the 60th vote.

i think those situations because of the political dynamics tend to be a bit more rare than you would think. >> that was a democratic white house lobbying democrats hard to get those votes. >> for sort of a precursor to battles next year, this week in the senate on the 21st century kir zach othere's a little division among democrats. you may see this play out on the floor where liberals like elizabeth warren are not super happy about it. the white house wants this bill. they have sent out a statement of administration policy stating they want this signed into law, wanted senate to pass it, already passed the house. seeing those divisions and how you get past.

the white house feels so strongly about it they said vice president will preside over the vote tomorrow. >> since the election everyone in the republican party has been more or less on the same page, at least a lot more than they were during the campaign. what do you think it would take for house republicans or senate republicans to start picking fights with trump again? >> the question is we're seeing a cohesion among republicans during house and senate we didn't see during the campaign and how long can we expect to see this peace until someone tries to pick a fight in the republican party with the president-elect. >> it's a really good question. we're talking about it this morning on the hill because the house majority leader kevin mccarthy held a pen and pad and talked with reporters. we were asking him about president-elect trump's tweets over the weekend about imposing tariffs on u.s. companies that ship production offshore.

and you know, this is a difficult question for free market republicans who they say, well, our answer is overhauling the tax code. but they didn't want to directly answer the question of would you pass legislation imposing tariffs because republicans don't traditionally believe in interfering with the free market and have been reluctant to impose tariffs. it was this real moment of discomfort with what trump was tweeting, but we did see a reluctance on the part of mccarthy to say directly he disagreed with trump. i don't know how long it's going to take until people do voice their concerns more candidly. so that's a point i'm going to be watching for. what do you guys think? >> i do think we're at a point right now, in a honeymoon of sorts, republicans are ecstatic

they control all levers of government, or they will early next year. i think they are -- i think that's natural to have a rece t reticent to criticizes or tweets things you don't agree w i think when you start digging into policy fights, he does send infrastructure plan to the hill or immigration plan. i bet whatever immigration plan he sends, if he sends one, you will have people like jeff flake, dean heller, lindsey graham voice their objections. if it looks like we imagined an immigration plan from trump would look like. >> they have. >> they have already but that's going to be amplified more once it's knee-deep, a reality of what these policies fights are. i think the infrastructure plan -- this i have less knowledge of but if infrastructure plan has more

spending than they would like you'll hear more from the freedom caucus than perhaps right now. >> yeah. i do think, and maybe this is true in sort of every administration, but it's very clear people who were early supporters of trump are being rewarded. they are on the transition team. they are able to talk to his staff much more closely. >> attorney general nominee. >> they are being discussed for cabinet official posts. there is a price to pay for criticizing mr. trump. you can be in a twitter storm. i don't know how much that will factor into people's -- >> let me factor in lawmakers vote for things they don't agree with logically because it's good for their own electoral back home. vice versa, sometimes lawmakers will vote for things they oppose or vote for things they prefer

enacted into law. again, their recognition back home or what the party is trying to put together for the brand. as swab said, look, it's really early here. but i think one of the most valuable lessons i took, after being wrong so much about the election is not to forget that pattern. this remarkable glue across the branches and within a chamber. there will be a lot more sacrifice than we might expect. we'll be demanded of some of these republicans on crony capitalism issue and many issues. as christina said, we don't know what it will take to crack. my guess it cracks first in the senate because, a, keep in mind two-thirds of them did run on the same ticket with trump. a third of them will never be on the ballot because of presidential term limits. they don't owe him anything, they weren't elected on the same issues. house is much harder, i think, to get that disabs from trump.

>> their terms are shorter. >> they are facing voters. >> in six months. >> yeah. it rachets up pretty quickly. >> one thing i think to note, too, there has been a lot of emphasis on the challenging political environment for democrats in 2018 in the senate. there are 25 democrats up to eight republicans. some of those democrats are running in very republican states like west virginia or indiana or north dakota. what we sometimes neglect to mexico, too, two of the people who were just mentioned, dean heller in nevada is up also and jeff flake is up in arizona. they have both been a little more moderate on immigration, to say the least. donald trump has threatened to campaign against jeff flake. they are cognizant of the fact their states are heavily hispanic and that's where the demographics are heading.

so it's not to always divert toward the political situation but it is helpful to know the context of what people are making decisions in like this. next question. yes. >> a narrative come out that senate democrats are going to really try to hold back on trump's nominees because of what's been going on. how successful can they conceivably be with that. >> the question is how successful can democrats be if they want to halt or delay the nominations of donald trump's cabinet officials or judges and so forth because of the way the republicans refer to hold a hearing for merrick garland, president obama's nominee for the supreme court. >> there's very little they can do to stop it. senate democrats triggered so-called nuclear option in 2013

and helped change the level. as we noted earlier, republicans will likely have 52 seats next year pending outcome of louisiana senate election for saturday. so what's more important to stop -- what would be more powerful to stop a trump nominee if you have someone like rand paul or susan collins or jeff flake or a small coalition of those republicans standing against nominees. democrats can make it definitely painful, insist on roll calls for nominees. if you recall there were half a dozen obama nominees that were confirmed right on january 20th, 2009, to make sure he had at least parts of his cabinet installed immediately. i don't see that happening with this -- next january except elaine cho, who happens to be majority leader and also very noncontroversial when she was

announced. you already have some senate democrats in the judiciary committee demanding long hearings for jeff sessions and demanding a drawn out process that way. in terms of staffing there's very little they can do because of the lower threshold. but in terms of just making it painful and making it kind of annoying for republicans, "eating up floor time and committee time they would rather be using to enact their legislative agenda, democrats can certainly do that. >> i think the one exception is general mattis will need a waiver, which will be legislation and senator gillibrand said she would require procedure which will call for 60 votes. he's the one with the most support. he's the one democrats actually want so that's sort of the pro and con for them.

i think we could also talk a little about the supreme court nominees, which is the one category that has the potential to get really interesting this year. whether if democrats do object to trump's supreme court picks, whether republicans will change the rules again so that it only requires a simple majority to confirm the supreme court nominee. i think it's hard to tell in his press dmpbs the day after the election, leader mcconnell seemed to dwell on the peril of overreaching when you're in the majority. he is an institutionalist. that seemed to suggest he and other veterans might be reluctant to do that. if democrats don't go along i can see a lot of pressure to confirm supreme court nominee and maybe they would. >> we're talking about a fairly

small universe of supreme court nominees who have faced that kind of scrutiny going back 100 years. some of the examples, abe fortis, lyndon johnson's pick on the supreme court faced a filibuster. i mean, there were procedural votes on samuel alito but this is relatively unprecedented for supreme court to filibuster a nominee for the supreme court. >> yeah, except there have been -- there were cloture votes on the most recent ones. i'm sure alito got less than 60 -- 58. i think the others got -- some of them were unified. yeah, i don't know that the fact it's not precedented -- there's less precedent for it is as consequential this is kind of the reality of contemporary

american politics, pretty tough, polarized parties and they disagree on quite a lot. certainly supreme court lifetime appointment, particularly in a world where congress hasn't been legislating very much and see the courts weigh in on health care, weigh in on immigration reform, overtime pay. there are all sorts of ways in which the court is immensely important and increasingly important. so it makes sense to me that the parties would fight over it and makes sense that majority members might be a little circumspect about going nuclear, thinking that the shoe could eventually be on the other foot in having republicans facing a democrat in the white house making appointments. having said that, can solve that problem last. >> one thing i feel compelled to mention, we're focusing on covering congress and the new administration but we've got that other branch of government across the street symbolized by the supreme court. but there are other -- the ways

that the judicial branch influences the decision making in congress and pressures on the white house and so forth, i mean, this seems to me -- i don't know if you feel the same way as an academic, fellow reporters, the judicial branch may be the most undercovered part of government that we have. do you think that there's any merit to that, you know? >> i would just -- i guess i'd answer yes. for many of the reasons you talk about in terms of the ease with which one might cover congress, which access is very, very tough to come by for the court, unless you're in there or listening to tapes later, it's hard to know. you don't ever see negotiations in conference or exchange, if they do exchange. there's black box for reporters and academics. i think the thing to keep in

mind here, we do have example during unified republican control where the courts put a wrench into the republican administrations by dint of court cases that came through them. particularly the war on terror and use of all the of the detainees in guantanamo bay, habeas corpus questions, there was a serious of supreme court cases starting 2004, '6, '8, put screws on administration and forced congress to come to the table, what are we going to do about treatment of detainees. will there be trials, commissions, military commissions. like how are we going to deal with this. what are we going to do about torture. really forced congress to the table. john mccain is still there and he's not forgotten. so the court can kind of shake things up for the administration in ways they probably aren't anticipating. >> the courts really an interesting venue for democrats

to push back on the administration. i'm kind of thinking democrats wiped out in congress and obviously white house but you're going to have high profile, influential state attorneys general i can guarantee a venue to push back against trump policies. i think the one person first and foremost is congressman, outgoing member of house leadership just announced last week he's going to take over camila harris, attorney general. i have a personal focus on immigration. but you're already seeing a lot of what the california legislature, are doing to push back against trump immigration policies. he will be a key person in kind of pushing that and being that antagonist to trump on the federal or state level. so the legal field will be a very interesting venue and interesting story line that way as well. >> also if you see medicaid

changes coming out of an overhaul of obama care, that will be interesting to see democratic governors push back. although there are also fewer states now where democrats have control at the state also sayin some republican governors say hey wait a second, before you just get rid of the medicaid grant to my state, my own state of arizona, the governor there, doug, who was right out of the gate after the election saying before anything takes hold, we need to figure out how to keep people covered. >> good point. >> coming from a very, republican, like pedigree. questions? >> yes. >> the stories about whether it can be used opposed to appeal obamacare. >> the question is that reports

on republicans using the reconciliation process which requires fewer votes and the senate to get through how much of obamacare could be repeal and medicare. how many changes could you make to that using budget reconciliation process? >> the one principle to keep in mind. the principle is that the reconciliation is unused for measures or provisions that cut the deficit. i mean, and so the overall package can't be increing the deficit. and so provisions are reviewed and judged by whether or not they can be go on to the package. >> opposed to just dealing. >> reporter: cutting the deficit. there has to be a budgetary implication of the provision too to make it into reconciliation.

if the purpose is incidental to the budget, so then it can't go in. so in a world where they they wanted to repeal the requirement that's you're allowed the requirement to cover preexisting conditions, i think that would be judged to be incidental to the challenge of it has to budgetary, direct budgetary implications. just examples of this is the easiest -- i don't know if there's a parallel to health care reform. the package because of tax cuts actually cost money, but the way they got around it was to sunset so in ten years where you have to score all those provisions that went into the bill, they just reinstated all the taxes. so it looked neutral. the whole thing looked neutral. so there are some smoke and mirrors here. there are ways in which to get

things into a package to make a budget mutual. and just to keep in mind if things go into reconciliation and to challenge budgetary issue because it's violating the rules. do a point of order and that's 60 votes. yes, 51 is the final threshold for passage of reconciliation. it would have to pass all these 60-vote thresholds that might be lobbed against the reconciliation, provisions of the bills. >> i think -- oh, go ahead. >> i was just going to say in 2015 they did pass a repeal of aca through a congressional resolution -- >> reconciliation program. >> yeah, but it was vetoed by obama. but it did actually go to the parliamentarian a couple times and they had to rework how some of it was restructured in order to sort of make it to protect it

from these points of order. i would go back to what senate republicans laid out in 2015. what that was back 911, it repealed the employer mandate, it repealed two taxes in the health care law, also i believe it ended rolling back the medicaid expansion. and that kind of package -- that's not the entire health care law, obviously. but enough republicans felt that it gutted enough of the health care law to be sufficient to them and it has to be in the parliamentarian. and also defunded planned parenthood. that's kind of like how -- what we're going to start with in terms of how we guess they're going to repeal are those kind of core tenants of that. >> i remember one tiny detail from that was that in getting

rid of the mandate, they left it in, but says at zero. that was how it made it through -- >> they got rid of the penalties. the taxes. they went along for violating. >> but in order to get it through the hoops, i think that was what they did. at least at one point. >> that's why the senate parliamentarian is one of the most powerful people. it's important to point how that the parliamentarian is a portfolio component. and so, they're usually not going to put them in such a dire situation that they have a face-off with the parliamentarian and the majority that sits in there. will it work, will this work?

>> worrying about policy and governing. members of congress are single minded seekers of reelection. it is -- we never really separate them. right? the politics and the policy. they're just like they're intertwined. and so yes, govern and think about reelection. reelection it's the first thing you bump into every single morning, everything is seen through a prism of how is going going affect me and the ability to get reelected? and keep in mind, they make up policy goals. i want to work on health care. i want to work on immigration reform, but you have to get reelected in order to do that.

so in the house, particularly prierms within six months they're worried about filing and whether people will run against them. there's no more honeymoon. even in the senate. little more luxurious time, but even though, they're raising money from scaring off people from running against them. >> it's interesting, congressman rick noland was reelected and his previous stint in congress had been 30 years ago i think. and so it was a really interesting talking to him when he came back to political after three decades and what he said the biggest doimpbs him was that people just had to spend so much more time fundraising now and less time legislating. and i will say that they have put out the house calendar for next year and they are supposed to be in d.c. for more days. so maybe on the margins that affects something, but i think you're right that politics and reelection fights are just a constant. the one thing in the context of

this year, this year congress was in session for the fewest numbers of days in my memory and part of that was they stacked the political conventions before their august break which was -- which sort of departing from the last few cycles. so you have the seven-week long break in the summer. and then, you know, just the political calendar itself has been extended. people are always running for reelection, but i think we saw an extreme version of politics just completely subsuming the policy agenda and policy world last year. and these odd-numbered years are a little bit better for policy reporters. you do get a chance to get to know people a little better and get to know the issues a little better before the next political cycle starts to take over. >> and maybe the fact that we have single control which makes these policy fights richer. because something could potentially happen, increases the potential, at least. >> well, and one other thing to

keep in mind, one thing that does threaten to shorten the policy calendar a little bit is right now, you know, it looks like from all accounts, you know, congress is going to drive to lee this week and wraup the lame duck. it'll be one of the -- it'll be -- in terms of previous lame ducks, a little less productive. they're going to probably, you know, in the next day or two, three, pass a continuing resolution to fund the government just into probably late march or may. that may seem like oh just give the administration a chance to get they're seeing things, that tends to push everything else that you might have had an on agenda starting to january to the side. we'd also have all the nominees for the cabinet. supreme court nomination. the debt limit has to be addressed in march. so it should be in more policy-oriented year, but at the same time it's all the sudden we're talking about may as the time when this slate will be clear. so keep that in mind in terms of

booking say vacations or something like that. yes. >> i have a question i think primarily for them about immigration. and it seems like the administration was going to come in and focus primarily on register, growth and they won't get to the security or convert it until later on in the year. is that an assessment you would agree were or to -- [ inaudible ] >> question is how deeply, how politically and how deeply will they get into immigration coming in? >> it's hard to dell right now, and i do think just having talked to a couple of people right now the transition is so focussed on getting the personnel appointments and kind of getting the cabinet nominees vetted announced or chosen announced that they haven't thought through the policy part of things. but i don't know what plan trump

will send to the hill if you could sense just the border law plan or a broader plan that that? i think it'll be interesting to happen -- because of what -- a border only will not pass congress. democrats won't allow it. i mean, there'll be republicans who to put other things on there. other issues that have to be addressed including what happens with the obama's 2012 executive action. so there's just -- it's never going to be like a singular kind of piece that comes out. >> i think -- just to add on to that. i think we covered immigration earlier, there was always this traditional calculous that republicans got the border and democrats got path to kroips and h 1 b's and now the question is, does that calculous still hold? i mean, i agree that i don't think a border doesn't pass the senate. doesn't mean they won't try. and could that put pressure on

democrats, i guess just do the rules that have traditionally bound what makes on to an immigration package have they changed. >> and i think the problem with kind of gauging trump's plan is that beyond just wanting to build some sort of barrier, he's so inconsistent on so many other parts. i cannot tell you -- and i follow this stuff, i cannot tell you what his latest stance is. i just utterly perplexed because it's all the things he's said during the campaign, during the debates, what it says on his campaign website. who his advisors are own what they believe on visas. so, you know, and you've seen how trump has also backed off from saying, you know, everyone must go versus the 60 minutes interview after elected saying two to three, we'll focus on the criminal aliens first. so that's the other difficult part.

like i'm not -- just because trump has been such an unorthodoxed nominee, it'd be very hard to see -- it's hard for know kind of look at the crystal ball right now and see what kind of a plan he'll push and that's why his cabinet nominee will be so critical. but that's why we're also going to be watch iing and that's ver clear where he stands or if he's going to be mike mccall who is not as hard lined. where it eventually goes. >> i think we have time for one more question.

[ inaudible question ] >> question is for specific tips. what do you do? >> well, i do this and i know she does this. we both go to votes often because it's a great place to catch lawmakers and chitchat with aids and one good piece of advice that someone gave me when i was starting on the hill was not to stand in one spot too long. and i think about this all the time, and i'll have been in one spot, and say, oh, i should walk around and turn a corner and there's a skrum of reporters talking to a lawmaker on something that i hadn't even

thought about. that's what's nice. you have your ideas and you're also in a place with other reporters and lawmakers and always asking the better question. and then i'm like oh, i should write about that. so i would just say -- i would say just keep on walking and the capitol is a really beautiful place to walk around. so it could be worse. >> especially those of you who to want conversation. i'm obviously biassed. skong by far the best feet in washington. the white house is not the best feed. the covering the courts is the not the best feed or covering the agencies. it's covering congress and it's primarily because -- i mean obviously you have 535, you know, animated crazy characters with all their own agendas and their stories and kind of their

own ambitions, also it's just the access that you get to principles is just unparalleled. i can be managing around on the ohio clock corridor which is the second, the second floor of the senate, second floor of the capital on the senate side right outside the senate chamber. and i could just be hang tlougt because i have nothing else to do. i turned the corner and catch harry reid going into his office. i was like oh, leader reid, i have a question on x topic and he'll make news that way. i mean very other, you know -- very few other beats in washington, maybe no other do you get access to principles like that. yeah. >> who is that for other -- >> yeah, definitely. >> i'm always encouraging our beat reporters to come out and talk to lawmakers. covering health care, it's a great place to come up and spaend tuesday. >> you know, they don't call it article one for nothing. >> thank you so much. kristina, preervet it. appreciate your time.

and thank you again at national press foundation for hosting us.

okay, we're going to get going for our next panel here. so now we're transitioning to the other end of pennsylvania avenue to talk about the executive authority that's vested in the oval office and the white house. and what president-elect trump, then president trump will be able to do with the power of the

presidency with regulatory power with executive authority power, with memorandum power, which is something gregory will talk about. we have four experts and reporters here, susan dudley is director of the regulatory study center at george washington university. tom hamburger is national correspondent for the national hoegs, gregory corte is a white house correspondent and tim mack is a senior correspondent for the daily beast. i'm going to each one of them will give a -- kind of a five minute or less kind of big picture overview of kind of one of the key issues that they see around this issue when the new president comes into power. then i'll have a handful of questions, but i'm hoping we'll have a lot of questions from the audience. so this will -- this session goes until 3:20, the overview -- the overview comments will be going on for a little bit. i'll ask him questions and plenty of time for the audience.

so susan, susan dudley, if you could maybe get started for us. i mean, big picture, what do you expect to happen come swearing in day? >> thanks for inviting me. i'm going to start by taking issue with what she said at the end of the last one which is that the congress is the most exciting, the best beat in town. it is not, it is the executive branch. and that's because a lot of policy really does take place, a lot of action is in the executive branch. and that's partly because congress passes sweeping laws that delegate authority to agencies. so that means, so agencies like the department of labor or the environmental agency. even without the support of congress presidents can achieve their policy goals through regulation. so for example, president obama far reaching regulations related to climate change, energy,

workplace, president bush before him did related to homeland security. and other areas. and president-elect trump has said he's coming to washington with a plan to make big cuts in regulation. so, they can do a lot through this regulatory authority. in fact, president-elect trump has said that every one new regulation, two old regulations are going to have to be eliminated. and tom was just saying to me that i'm talking to the media a lot lately, and that's because i keep getting this question. can he do that? that's what i thought i'd talk to you about in my five minutes, what are the ways that the president-elect trump can remove regulations? so, unlike executive orders which presidents can eliminate with a stroke of a pen, a new president can write one and also repeal regulations. there is more of a process. and i'm going to lay out five different ways, depending on the

circumstances. so, we'll start with midnight regulations. so you may not know it, but we are in what is known as the midnight period. and beginning back to the 40s and probably earlier, we see a big uptick in regulatory activity at the end of an administration. so this administration is working hard to issue regulations before january 20th. midnight. meanwhile, on january 20th, the new team will come in and they will immediately try to start pulling those regulations back. there will be some regulations that don't quite make it to the finish line. in part because of the federal register where they have to be published tends to get backed up at the end. for those regulations i'm going to make a prediction. the only prediction. president trump's chief of staff, one of the very first things he will do in the afternoon of january 20th send memo to all the executive branch

agencies saying, stop the presses, don't send any new regulations to federal register and some there but haven't been published yet, pull them back. and i can make that prediction because each of the last chiefs of staffs have done that on inauguration day. so that's the first one. the second one is for regulations that have been issued over the last seven or eight months. so since about the end of may, using simple majorities in both houses of congress, congress can pass a resolution disapproving those regulations. so we heard sooir ra binder say on the last panel say that they need 60 votes. they talked about the 60 votes. this they don't, they only need a simple majority in the senate. now, if that resolution of disapproval were to land on president obama's desk, he would veto it because it's his own regulations, in fact, he did veto five such resolutions over

the last few years. but, when that lands on president trump's desk, he will sign it and that resolution will repeal that regulation. so that's -- that's the second way using the congressional review act. but i think christina mentioned in passing on the last panel. then the third way is that there are several -- for a controversial regulations, there is litigation ongoing. and how the new justice department handles that litigation, how it defends that litigation will definitely affect the outcome. especially since -- there are several courts lately, including the supreme court have shown some sympathy to the argument that the executive branch has been overreaching it's authority -- it's constitutional authority. and not just in this administration, but in previous administrations as well. so for example, there was a department of labor overtime rule that was stayed, put on

hold, just before thanksgiving. epa's clean power plan and the epa and the corps of engineers waters of the united states rule are all rules that are on hold. while they work their way through the courts. and that's something that the next administration will have to deal with. now, related to that, is that one of the reasons, in fact, for all of those that i just mentioned. one of the grounds for challenging them is that they are far reaching exercise -- they're exercising control over matters that constitutionally are the per view of the states. so that brings the states into the equation. so i think they might -- we might see them playing an important role in the trump administration with respect to regulation, especially because the republican platform said that it proposed a shift responsibility for environmental regulation from the federal bureaucracy to the states. so now we'll come to my final

way that you can remove regulation. and that is the standard way. to modify or overturn a regulation that didn't fit into any of those other categories, the agencies would have to go through the same notice and comment rule making process that they go through to put it put a regulation in place in the first place. and that means doing a regulatory impact analysis, the legal justification, the economic, the scientific. so do that analysis, then put out for public comment a regulation with that background when you get that comment, respond to the comment. so you might need change the regulation as a result. there's also interagency review that's involved in that. and this process takes at least a year. so, and then at the end of that process. you have a new regulation that either modifies or eliminates the old one. but you've got two dockets now. you have the old docket, saying this is why this regulation was important, and the new docket that says we should overturn it

and the courts are bound. that is bound to be litigated. so the final resolution of those removal of those rules, i think could take years. and i'll stop there. >> okay. so i think i'll go to gregory next and just a bit of information. gregory is the second of our two former paul miller's on the panels today. gregly is white house correspondent at usa today washington pure row and he's written quite a bit about executive authority as practiced by president obama and including some kind of twists on how you practice that. i was hopefully you could give me an overview of the way we see things going. >> subject for panel. and it's timely. and i think it's also extraordinary usually at this point in transition we'd be talking about the president's legislative agenda more than anything else. the traditional first hundred days is a first hundred legislative days, and afterall trump does have also a mandate from the senate and the