i am pleased to be here today on behalf of the office of foreign assets control that the treasury department. i will try to compress the statement as we go through it. we control. our mission is to enforce economic sanctions in support of u.s. foreign policy and national security. in the particular instance in mexico, we are talking but using the tool of the four narcotics designation acts which we passed in 1999. this act has been used in responding to the threats in mexico since the year 2000. the warning that time by president bush. we have continued to use them

since that time. . . access to the u.s. financial commercial system and demobilizing their resources. they are administrative in nature. the person subject to u.s.

jurisdiction violating the censures -- sanctions calls for criminal penalties. every year, the president of the united states has added more things to the list. it is all mexico although they are roughly the% of those who have been named. -- roughly 50% of those who have been named. president obama moved from the june 1 date and acted early on april 15. he named three of the mexican cartels that are currently at the center of much of the violence that is going on. in june, we named others that were not involved in mexico.

these are referred as tier one and traffickers. we have been designated the authority to designate for sanctions controlled by or assisting tier one traffickers. tier 2 or derivative designations included the money launderers, the family members complacent with the trafficking activities, the criminal members of the organization, the transportation cells, the existence of communication cells that make up the financial network of drug trafficking organizations. since 1999, the president has identified 82 tier 1 traffickers. in that same time, we have identified 251 tier 2

designations in mexico. in addition to that, under the program on which the acts were based, which is up or sanctions against colombian traffickers under another authority, we have also under the colombian program. in recent times named 30 mexican entities or individuals who are also involved in colombia to mexico market to market drug trade. the total over these last several years is 288 persons and entities that have been named for the blocking of their assets -- assets and the prohibition of their activities. i am going to skip through parts of this and just get down to some of the nitty gritty here.

i said at the beginning our objective is to identify and expose and isolate and delegitimize, and mobilize, disrupt, dismantle however we can do it the drug-trafficking organizations. we do this by going after the heads of the organization, keep players in the organization, and perhaps most important, the networks, the whole support structure that makes up a cartel, not just the people who are moving the drugs. the front companies that give them their backbone. our objective is to go after that backbone. we hope to be able to expose and reverse the penetration that has been done in the economy through

our actions. we are working with all of our colleagues. all of the agencies at this table of working with us. we have relied on and are heavily integrated with the d e a. i cannot say enough about the work they have done in helping us carry out our program in mexico. at the same time we are doing administration has come into power. we are working with the administration. we continue to do that. i would like to conclude with noting of the act which provides a powerful mechanism for acting against the threats on the u.s. by foreign cartels.

in the case of our southern neighbor. there is a growing opportunity for a partnership to combat these organizations. >> i am going to have to ask you to summarize. >> yes. that is what i am doing right now. we are supporting mexican authorities. >> your five minutes is up. that is what i am really saying. >> i appreciate that can't, and i thank you for the opportunity to be here today. -- i appreciate that hint. and i thank you for the opportunity to be here today. >> thank you so much for that testimony.

i would like to finish the panel. we do not know if there are willing to be some procedural votes. i would like to yield myself two minutes. then i will give you 10 minutes. we will finish up. let me begin by asking -- the average person has difficulty relating to the fact that we have problems in mexico. what do we say to the average person considering what is happening there? had we explain to them our interests and our concerns that

>? >> mexico is important to us. we share a common border and immigration issues, trade, economy, the water we use for irrigation and agriculture. we are closely intertwined. the violence that threatens us greatly because of our integrated economy and the integrated nature of our society. it is not only a source of much of the drugs that are consumed in the united states. instability and south of our border creates problems on a much broader scale. >> let me ask you this -- from

the homeland security standpoint, it represents a vulnerability in terms of our borders. we have to be concerned about any smuggling network that introduces contraband on our borders, we have to be concerned about them. from those reasons, we need to leverage all of our efforts to shut down these networks collectively. >> i appreciate the comments. >> the laundering of the profits. that is something we do not talk about. the requiring identification

open at the time of opening a bank account -- they have been opened with less than secure identification. are we doing anything to shut down that opportunity to have thousands of bank account opened up to where we really do not know who open to those accounts? are we going back and addressing these issues where we are requiring a viable identification to open an account? anyone want to comment on that? >> i am from treasury. i have to admit that i am not in a position to comment on that because we do not deal with that. you can go to any consulates in getting consulate card and get an identification improve to

beat you say you are be. they were condoned about -- condoned by the bush should ministration. why have a law if we're not going to apply it to everybody? i am very concerned about anyone who participates in mexico in our process, and they and their families are going to be suspect. can we talk about this openly? can we talk about how we are training and supply in mexico to win the war on their side before it gets started? >> excellent question. there was concern for having a plan failed. the mexican partners are very vulnerable. they had taken bold action

against the cartels. there is a great deal of work going on. there are plans and training for senior level officials. there is institution building. that is a long-term peace of this, to build and develop so that they take on this problem internally in their own country and break the impunity of these criminal organizations. >> i know my time has expired. you have to hold the identity of the judge, because they not only assassinate judges, the assassinate families. i think we should bring young people in from the central america into the united states,

train them here. we keep them here. as soon as you identify them in mexico, they and their family are at risk. as soon as you leave them for long times in that environment, they are susceptible to influence on the cartels. i think we need to be serious about bringing them into the united states, training them, keeping them here, and allow them to be in mexico when they need to be there doing their jobs. thank you very much. >> we are running out of time here. what do we do to assist you in making certain that you are very successful in your endeavors? what can congress do?

>> i appreciate the question. we support the president's budget. resource constraints are an issue. there has been little spent on the domestic side of this equation to help the u.s. agencies that must work with them. we are doing the best we can to prioritize our resources and work within the existing budget constraints. >> do you want to comment on the lack of jail space? anybody want to comment on that? we are very deficient.

>> the dea and ice are getting along now. we purposely put it together. >> you are not deporting his mother? that is nice. >> that completes the questioning of this panel. i would like to give the members the opportunity to put their opening statements in the record without objection so ordered. let me thank all of the witnesses and members who attended this hearing today. i enter this binder into the

record without objection. thank you. this concludes the hearing. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> on tomorrow morning "washington journal" there will be a discussion on the recent health care debate in congress. after that, a person from the epa people talk about their new clean-air regulation. later, one person will talk about their annual conference with speaker nancy pelosi. washington journal begins each morning at 7 eastern with the day's news and your calls.

senate hearings begin on monday for supreme court nominee judge sonia sotomayor. you can watch live coverage on c-span starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern. it will be live on c-span radio and at c-span.org. coming up, a hearing from a federal reserve. and then after that the discussion about swine float prepared as. then they will talk about the supreme court nominee judge sonia sotomayor. >> republican leader. over the past several weeks, my

colleagues and i have raised a number of serious questions about the judicial record and public statements of sonia sotomayor. these questions are driven by a growing sense based strictly on the record that judge sotomayor has allowed her personal and political views to cloud her judgment in the courtroom leading her to favor some groups over others. all of us are impressed by her remarkable life story it reaffirms not only to americans, but people around the world that ours is a country in which one's willingness to dream and work hard remain the only requirements for success. and, yet, it's precisely the truth about america that makes it so important that our judges apply the law the same way to one individual or group as to every other. this is why we've raised the questions we have and this is why we will continue to raise

them as the confirmation hearings for judge sotomayor proceed. this morning i'd like to discuss an area of judge sotomayor's record that hasn't been touched upon yet and that's her record on the fundamental right of free speech. this right to free speech was considered so important by our founders, that they included it as the first amendment in the bill of rights. along with the freedom of press and religion and the right to assemble and petition the government. it is one of the bedrocks of our government and of our culture. and it is one of the primary defenses the founders established against the perennial threat of government intrusion. so it's essential that we know what someone who's been nominated for a life tenure on the nation's highest court thinks about this issue. when it comes to judge sotomayor, her record raises serious questions about her views on free speech. let's start with a law review

article that judge sotomayor co-wrote in 1996 on one particular kind of speech, political speech. in the article judge sotomayor makes a number of truly startling allegations or assertions which offer us a glimpse of her thoughts on this issue. first, and perhaps more concerning, she equates campaign contributions to bribery. going so far as to assume that a quid pro quo relationship is in play any time anyone makes a contribution to a political campaign. she goes ton say -- quote -- "we would never condone private gifts to judges about to decide a case indicating the gift giver's interest. yet our financing permits extensive private including corporate financing of candidate's campaigns. raising again and again what the difference is between contributions an bribes and -- and bribes and how legislators

and other officials can operate objectively on behalf of the electorate." in the same law review article the judge calls into question the integrity of every elected official, democrat and republican alike, based solely on the fact that they collect contributions to run their political campaigns. she writes -- can elected officials say with credibility that they're carrying out the mandate of a democratic society representing only the general public good when private money place such a large role in campaigns? in my view the suggestion that such contributions are and it mount to -- and it mount to bribery. including the millions of americans who donated money in small and large amounts to the presidential campaign of the man

who nominated judge sotomayor to the supreme court. her views on free speech would be important in any case. they're particularly important at the moment, however, since several related cases are now working their way through the judicial system. case that's could ultimately end up in front of the supreme court. one particularly important case on this issue citizens united versus f.e.c. will be argued before the supreme court at the end of september. coincidentally the most recent supreme court decision on the topic passed through the court on which judge sotomayor currently sits, presenting us with another avenue of evaluating her approach to the question of free speech. with one important difference, in the law review article i already discussed we've got judge sotomayor's opinion about campaign contributions. in the court case in question,

randall versus sorrow, we get a glimpse of her actual application of the law. here's the background of the case: in 1997 the state of vermont enacted a law which brought into -- which brought about stringent restrictions on the amount of money candidates could raise and spend. the law also limited party expenditures. doing these limits is violating their first amendment rights, a group of candidates, voters and political action committees brought suit. the district court agreed with the plaintiffs in the case on two of the here it points finding -- two of the three points. the case was then appealed to the second circuit where a three-judge panel reversed the lower court and reinstated all limits in direct -- direct contradiction of nearly 20 years of precedence dating all the way

back to the case of buckley versus valao. it was in buckley that the supreme court held that congress overstepped its bounds in trying to restrict the amount of money that could be spent, so-called expenditure limits, but upheld the amount that could be raised, so-called contribution limits. at that point the petitioners in the vermont case sought a rehearing by the entire second circuit arguing that the -- was ground for review. oddly enough the judges on the second circuit including judge sotomayor took a patches they decided to let the supreme court clean up the confusion created when the three-judge panel decided to ignore buckley. traditionally errors like these are precisely the reasons that motions for a rehearing of an entire circuit are designed. according to the federal rules of appellate procedure, a review

by the full court of what is damonly referred to as an rehearing is specifically called for where the proceedings call into question questionable importance. what could be more important than following supreme court precedent and protecting and preserving the first amendment, but the second circuit declined. in the end the supreme court corrected the errors of the second circuit in a 6-3 opinion drafted by none other than justice breyer. here's what breyer wrote: we hold that both sets of limitations on contributions and expenditures are inconsistent with the first amendment. well established precedent and here justice breyer was citing buckley, makes clear that expenditure limits violate the first amendment. one of the principal requirements for a nominee to the court is a respect for the rule of law. in this instance, according to

justice breyer, that respect for theaw was lacking. more than two centuries ago the states ratified the first amendment to the u.s. constitution to protect the right of every american for that moment and for all time to express themselves freely. congress shall make no law, it said, respecting an establishment rf religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or of the right of people to peaceably peaceablyassemble. you could say that the first amendment our forefathers -- that with the first amendment our forefathers adopted, the ultimate campaign finance regulation. and, yet, this issue continues to come up before the courts and will continue to come up before the courts. it's an issue of fundamental importance touching on one of our most basic rights an based on the writings and decisions of judge sotomayor i have strong

reservations about whether this nominee will choose to follow the first amendment or steer the court to a result grounded in the kind of personal ideology that she so clearly and troublely expressed in the law review article i described. it is not just this issue. over the past several weeks we've heard about instances in which judge sotomayor's personal views seem to question her even handed application of the law. just last week the supreme court reversed her decision to throw out a discrimination suit filed by a group of mostly white firefighters who had clearly earned a promotion. notably this was the ninth time out of ten that the high court has rejected her handling of a case. we've heard her call into question repeatedly over the years whether judges could be impartial in most cases and she has even said her experiences will affect the facts -- the facts -- that she chooses to see

as a judge. now, madam president, americans have a right to expect that judges will apply the law even handedly and that everyone in the country will get a fair shake, whether they're in small claims court or the u.s. supreme court. and whether the matter at hand is the right -- has the right to be treated equally or the right to speak freely, americans have a right to expect that the men and women who sit on our courts will respect the rule of law above their own personal or political views. and nowhere more so confirmation hearings will occur monday starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern for supreme court nominee judge sonia sotomayor. nak you will hear the obama

administration proposal. under the plan, the federal reserve would become systemic risk regulator in charge of monitoring large financial companies. this subcommittee is on domestic monetary policy. this is over two hours. >> maybe we can get the opening statements in before we get the call to the floor.

this hearing is untitled regulatory restructuring balancing the independence of the federal reserve and monetary policy with a systemic risk regulation. our current regulatory system created largely in response to the great depression in the 1930 you see was proven ineffective and outdated at preventing and addressing the financial crisis we are currently experiencing. recognizing this, the president briefly put forth a proposal for comprehensive financial regulatory reform. this hearing will examine one aspect of that proposal. it proposes to delegate to the federal reserve board new powers including the powers to serve as the systemic risk regulator for all interconnected financial firms. as the systemic risk regulator,

the federal reserve would be empowered to structure and implement a more robust supervisory regime with a combination of size and leverage and interconnectedness of that pose a threat to the financial stability. this hearing will examine whether and how the fed should perform and balance the proposed new authority as systemic risk regulator with this current critical role as the independent authority on monetary policy. while recent events have caused many to reevaluate in question the role and the extent of independence accorded to the federal reserve, the independence of the fed and from political influence by the legislative and executive branches of government has long been viewed as necessary to allow the fed to meet the long-

term monetary policy goals of low inflation, price stability, maximum sustainable employment and economic growth. most central banks around the world including the federal reserve, bank of england, bank of japan, and the european central bank had had a strong tradition of independence in executing monetary policy. many scholars and commentators agree that an independent central bank that is free from short-term political influence and exhibit such terms and exemption from the appropriations process and no requirement to directly underwrite government debt can better execute the long-term goals of monetary policy. the important question is whether the fed can maintain its current role as the independent authority on monetary policy and

take on a new role, eight significantly new role as the systemic risk regulator. some scholars and commentators argue that the fed is uniquely positioned to become the systemic risk regulator because it already supervises bank holding companies and helps manage microeconomic policy. others argue that the fed is already stretched too thin and has strayed from its monetary policy functions, particularly by using its powers under section 133 of the federal reserve act to purchase securities in distressed industries under existing emergency circumstances. as congress and the president worked to enact financial regulatory reform, it is critical for us to examine carefully the extent to which a proposed new rules may conflict

with existing rules and whether the fed can effectively juggle all of those -- these roles while performing its vital function as the nation's independent authority on monetary policy. for our economy to function effectively, the fed's monetary activities such as open market operations, discount window lending, and federal bank reserve requirements must be independent and free from political influence. we need to get a clearer handle on the extent to which the administration's proposal could compromise or interfere with what the fed already is charged to do. and a forward to learning more about how and whether the fed can effectively carry out additional regulatory responsibilities while maintaining its current role as the independent authority on monetary policy. i now recognize the ranking

member of the subcommittee for four minutes. >> i will be helping eat -- happy to recognize the ranking member of the committee first for four minutes. mr. backus from alabama. >> thank you. i do not think there is anything that is in such stark -- sharp contrast as the administration's proposal, for the fed's role and that of the republicans of the house. we object to what we see as allowing the fed to become a prominent bailout agency. we believe that is most troubling. it that is allowed to happen, they will sacrifice their independence. it is impossible to make them an independent agency and allow them to function as they are and

give them the opportunity to guarantee or loaned billions of dollars without substantially increasing their accountability and transparency. i do thank you for holding this hearing. whether regulatory power for sweeping new powers should be centralized or given the federal reserve at a time when our country is facing unprecedented physical and economic monetary policy challenges, we believe is very problematic. we look forward to the testimony of some experts. we have watched the federal reserve respond to dislocations in the financial markets with far reaching effects in our economy. they have confronted the crisis

by using their emergency authority to bail out ailing institutions particularly with aig and others. this was unwise. to provide loans and loan guarantees, to revive the credit markets, which i think has had some success. lowering the target fed funds rate to almost zero and more than doubling its balance sheet. regardless of how one views these extraordinary fed actions, i think we all agree that as we go forward, we need a more transparent institution with a more clearly defined role. the core mission is to conduct monetary policy. that will be seriously undermined if its supervisory

responsibilities are dramatically expanded as proposed in the obama administration's white paper. the proper role of the fed represents the critical difference between the administration's proposal which is an unwise cycle of bailouts picking winners and losers and obligating the taxpayer from our plan which does none of those things. the administration would reward past regulatory and policy mistakes by giving the fed the preeminent role in regulating the financial system and determining which financial institutions are too big to fail. it is stretching the resources of the fed. it complicates its ability to carry out monetary policy functions. at a time when our country faces -- let me say this, if we

continue to do the things, continue to have stimulus packages and deficits, we are going to have crippling inflation. i think the fed will have its hands full dealing with inflationary pressures without being distracted and over extended by these new powers. the republican plan would therefore relieve the fed of some of its current regulatory responsibilities and allow it to focus on monetary policy. thank you very much. let me close by saying that we need to end the bailout that the fed has been instrumental in carrying out over the last 18 months. thank you. >> the gentleman from texas will be recognized for four minute.

>> thank you. i am delighted you are holding these hearings today. this is a subject we have talked about for many years. we had earlier discussions. the position of the fed is that they reveal a lot of affirmation. they still argue the case for exception. the argument being they do not want the independence of the fed threatened. they do not want it to be politicized. a lot of us think of independence -- we think of a word being secret and serving special interests. it is a nice word. there is no goal. i do not have a goal of making it a political other than the fact that the whole system needs political attention. it's so little attention. it has not had much attention over these many years.

there is good evidence that it has been politicized already. there have been journal articles written in books written about how the fed has been improved by the president over time. when a reappointment time was coming up, policies were designed to serve certain administrations. i would say to argue the case, it should never be politicized. it is an argument against what we have because it has been known to be politicized. the bill that i have offered has been challenged at times. i think it is justified to question which is how much is my bill. to affect monetary policy? it does not. we are not looking for the congress to run monetary policy. we just want to know what is

going on and why. why wait five years to hear the debate? there is a strong argument that is as soon as the market knows which you are thinking, the better off. when i first came to congress, we were not allowed to know what the charges were going to be. the market's -- they triggered it out. they started announcing. it was not the end of the world. there is a strong argument now that the more we know about what has been going on this last year, the more it would have helped the market. that is why we need a much more open set the people are demanding it. they want transparency. it is a good word. to say that a little bit of transparency is good, but we cannot have a lot of it, there are certain things we do not much you to know when we are talking to foreign governments and banks what kind of

agreements we have with the imf? we have a moral obligation so that congress should know exactly what the agreement are. this is the reason wind support for this bill is across the board, liberals, conservatives, progressives -- they are supporting this because -- and there is no agreement among these groups of what monetary policy ought to be. they do not want to make a political football. they are not asking for congress to a participate in these meetings. to know what the strategy is and what the plans are, that is legitimate information. we should not be afraid of it. we should not be afraid of the truth. there have been arguments over the years made about transparency. i can get quotes and later get

quotes from alan greenspan about how important they are. when looked at those " generically, the a very good. but the bottom line is, we want you to know what is going on on the an important things. on the important things, we want secrecy. they keep. >> i thank the gentleman for making a statement. the gentleman from delaware is recognized for a few minutes. >> thank you. i have enjoyed these opening statements. i agree with you. i think you are asking some basic questions. can the federal reserve maintain its role in maintaining monetary policy at the same time -- i think that is a very serious question that needs to be answered. i could not answer it now. we need to continue to work on that.

all of the bailout that have been going on just as the monetary policy issue -- there is a lot of money -- the fed has been putting forth these monies to help these various entities. i am concerned about the role that this has expanded. i agree with the legislation and the idea that we need more transparency from the fed. i think that would help a lot of this in terms of understanding some of this. i think is very positive legislation. i think a lot of other people feel that the time has come for the federal reserve to be more transparent. i think we need a clear, coherent vision of what the

federal reserve would be the right choice if we are going to have a systemic risk regulator, which i happen to believe in the conception of. i am not sure if they are targeting the right source to do this. hopefully we can start to work that out today. thank you. >> i thank the gentleman for his open statement. the republican side has one more minute. i'm going to yield to mr. paul. >> thank you. this gives me an opportunity to quote alan greenspan. he was addressing this subject. is that if we are to maintain the confidence of the american people, it is important that the fed must be as transparent as any agency of government. it cannot be acceptable in a democratic society that a group of unelected officials are

vested with the important responsibilities without being open to full public scrutiny and accountability. i know the terms are general. you may disagree with a little bit of it, but there is a good word. i think it is very important for the american people to know. the value of our concerns -- of our currency is very powerful. we need to know how the policy is designed. we want to know how it has been done in whose interests are being served. >> i thank the gentleman for his opening statement in all parties for their opening statement. we have a member -- we have someone here who was not a member of the subcommittee. we are going to proceed without recognizing him. we are delighted today to have on the first panel our witness,

the vice-chairman of the board of governors of the federal reserve. without objection, vice- chairman, your written statement will be made part of the record , and you will be recognized for five minutes to summarize your testimony. i now recognize you for your statement. i thank you. i appreciate this opportunity to discuss with you the important public policy issues associated with the congress's and grant to the federal reserve. a well-designed framework for

monetary policy includes a careful balance between independence and accountability. in 1977, congress amended the federal reserve act. at the same time, the congress has correctly in my view given the federal reserve considerable ability to design and implement the best approaches of achieving the objectives subject to a well celebrated a system of checks and balances in the form of transparency and accountability to the public and the congress. considerable experience shows that this approach tends to yield a monetary policy that the best promotes economic growth and price stability, operational independence -- in the venice to pursue legislative goals reduces

the odds of two types of policy errors that results in inflation and economic instability. it prevent governments from succumbing to the temptation to use the central bank to fund deficit. it enables policymakers to look beyond the short term as they weigh the effect of their monetary policy actions on price stability and employment. the current financial crisis has clearly demonstrated the need for the united states to have a comprehensive and multifaceted approach to containing systemic risk. the administration recently released a proposal for strengthening the financial system that would provide new or enhanced responsibilities to a number of federal agencies assigned to the federal reserve new responsibilities for overseeing financial institutions.

these new responsibilities are a natural outpouring of the federal reserve's regulatory responsibilities. the federal reserve already regulates bank holding companies which now includes large investment banks. we have been moving to incorporate as a -- a approach -- an approach that will be more effective. the federal reserve has also long been a leader in the development of strong, international risk management standards for payment clearing and settlement systems. we have implemented these standards for the systems be supervised. in our supervision of bank holding companies, we are ready work closely with other federal and state agencies. these responsibilities and close working relationships have not

infringed on a monetary policy independence, and we do not believe that the enhancements to our existing supervisory regulatory authority would undermine our ability to pursue our monetary policy objectives effectively. our independence is accompanied by substantial accountability and transparency. the federal reserve reports on its efforts to achieve its executives and in the monetary reports. the open market committee releases a statement immediately after each meeting and a detailed minutes on a timely basis. we published summaries of the economic forecasts four times a year and federal reserve officials frequently testify before the congress. the federal reserve provides the public and the congress with a

detailed annual reports bob bauman consolidated financial activities. these reports or audited by an independent accounting firm. we publish a detailed balance sheet on a weekly basis. this year we expanded our website to include considerable background information on our financial condition. we recently initiated a monthly report to congress that provides even more information on our lending and other facets of the programs established to address the financial crisis. a joint treasury federal reserve initiative is considered.

as this committee is aware, the federal reserve is already subjected to frequent audits on a broader range of ever functions. congress has purposely excluded monetary policy deliberations on operations for the scope of potential gao audits. by removing the statutory limits on the audits would be contrary to the public interest. financial markets would likely see the grant of such authority as tending to undermine monetary independence. this would that adverse consequences for interest rates and economic stability. permitting these audits of brought facilities the federal reserve uses to me that credit conditions could reduce the

effectiveness of these facilities and help promote financial stability, maximum employment, and price stability. thank you for inviting me to talk to you, and i look forward to answering your questions. >> i thank the general and for his testimony. the bad news is that we just got called for it least five votes on the floor of the house. the good news is that once we get through this series of votes we will probably be able to proceed uninterrupted through this witness and the next panel, we hope. it is a little dicey on the floor today. at this time, i would declare the committee -- the subcommittee in recess subject to the call of the chair and

encourage the members to please return promptly after the last vote on the floor in this series of votes. i hate to inconvenience all of the witnesses, but i guess you have all been through this before. the committee stands in recess. >> if i could get someone to pull the door shut, then we will reconvene here.

i will recognize myself or five minutes. -- for five minutes. i am interested in getting a better understanding of what your view is of what specific things a systemic risk regulator does. let me start there. or would do, to make it a theoretical question as opposed to -- >> chairman bernanke has made a useful distinction between micro and macro credential regulation. in my record and a regulation is looking at each individual institution and making sure they

are robust and resilience and safe. in a macro credential context, you want to look at the individual but how they relate to each other and how they relate to the system as a whole. it is not so much the size of the institution, but is interconnectedness. whether it is at the center of a web of relationships -- i think the job of the systemic risk regulator would be to take account of those interrelationships. the market, and how they are developing, the institutions and how they fit into the market and look at the overall risk to the system as well as the risk of the in this -- individual institution. i think the federal reserve is well-positioned to play a role in that.

we not only have our supervisory authority of our bank holding companies which now include all the major investment banks, but we have people who are familiar with the economy, and we have acted -- we have responsibility for financial and responsibility through our system. i think it requires a little different perspective than we are used to exercising. i think the fed is in a good position to do that. >> you focus on the synergy that exists between the two responsibilities. let me ask you if you could candidly focus on the prospect or possibility of conflicts. what are the areas in which those possibilities of conflict might arise?

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>> welcome back. we are now going to have to back to back panels that are very important for preparedness at the state and local levels and the first one has to do with school preparedness and we are very pleased to have as moderator the associate deputy secretary of the office safe and drug-free schools and the office of the department of education. bill has 25 years of education as well as in the criminal and juvenile justice system said he is telenational leader in the design and development of school safety health programs. then we have three wonderful panelists who have a lot to share with us about what school prepared this is like in the

trenches. first today, who is the educational specialists for the wisconsin department of public instruction. she has been working on pandemic influenza plants with school teams in her state for quite a teams in her state for quite a while and expertise as a teacher, counselor, administrator and president of verse school board. melinda as superintendent of the university independent school district in taxes, and she has tremendous experience as a classroom teacher, a building principle and now currently is the superintendent overseeing a fast-growing suburban and san antonio school district with close to 12,000 students, and then last but not least mary pappas, who is nurse that the st. francis preparatory school in new york city. she is had experience as a nurse for 27 years and is the school nurse for six years at st. francis which has a population of about 3,000

students and staff and a place that was very much in the news this past spring. this panel loans coal preparedness will go until 11: 11:15, so please welcome our panelist. [applause] >> good morning. i wanted thank everybody for coming this morning and also thank you to the previous panelists. that was a tough act to follow, a lot of great questions there. i want to start where secretary duncan sort of laughed often thinking a lot of people and i know it is a little bit redundant but i think there is one lesson we have learned in the recent outbreak of h1n1 is it is all about partnerships. speaking from the education perspective as there is absolutely no way, no way in the world we can be successful if we don't form those partnerships so here is say thank you to the wonderful people, staff,

leadership nctc, health and human services department, agriculture labor and the white house. all of the steps of done a phenomenal job. i also want to thank all those of the state local level both in the public health perspective as well asification perspective. this is all about working together in both the view that the state and local level for all 15,000 districts have done a phenomenal job so thank you. there are two groups which we tend to ignore. i want to say thank you to them. first of all parents and thank you for putting up with us. we are opened, we are closed, were open, it will be for a day, it will be for two days, it will be for three days and one thing i can say to all those parents out there is the promise to do better next time around. we will do better next time around. lastly to a group we often overlooked during these closings is students. thank you for the students for not knowing whether we are going to come back to school, whether

it's going to be safe for knots k@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this is a panel that is designed to share a lot of information and ideas and hopefully to address some key issues, more specifically over the course of the next 50 minutes we hope to provide an overview of what has transpired, in these areas. as we come to this with some lessons learned about what did not work. to identify some obstacles to implementing a community litigation policy with the closing and reopening of schools. this will be opening as well as closing the schools. this will happen as we examine the way forward. i do want to say that finding a

way to effectively mitigate the consequences of the flu as we make certain that the learning continues is one of the most difficult tasks facing the community. small. during the recent outbreak we found a community mitigation actions had a tremendous impact on schools and students. school started to close in late april and continue to close until the end of the school year in june. at the height of the break, which we can this make it, over 700 schools were closed. these closures affected 400, approximately 460,000 students and because schools are also at work places approximately 30,000 teachers were also impacted by these closures. we also found that if you took the daily count of students who were not in school because of the flu, you'll find that cumulatively there were over 2 million students days that were missed so this comes

together to show us that even closing schools for a short period of time has a tremendous impact on the ability to teach and the ability to learn. we are cognizant that if there is a recurrence of the flu in the fall we may have to take measures to again close schools. we are also fully aware of the difficulties in complexities and hardships of students, faculty parents and employers of closing schools even if it is for a short period of time. here today to provide insight in their experiences during the break and helpless think through how we may be able to overcome some of the obstacles faced when schools are closed are three experts. they were already introduced but let me say that as susan today is here because one of the issues or i should say one of the things she brings to the table is a phenomenal state plan to deal with the flu. belinda is here from texas, and one of the wonderful things they have done and i hope you have a lot of questions for her about

this is the communication strategy they have applied to get information out to parents and community groups about what they are doing. lastly mary pappas, she is here because of her standing in the community, one because it is a non-public school. we often don't talk about non-public schools but she is one of the school nurse's that the leadership of identifying and dealing with the flu outbreak. i am going to start each of the panelists to begin by briefly telling everyone a little bit about their recent experience with the flu and to provide some uniqueness of their experiences. after that we have a few questions for each of them had thinned if we have time we will open up questions from the audience. sill let me start with suzanne today. >> thank you very much and thank you to all of you for being here today. well-being a panel member today i also and learning a great deal from the wonderful resources in

this room. i would like to briefly talk about the wisconsin department public instruction role in the pandemic flu preparedness and our response. we were in a position to move forward with this situation because we had a long history of collaboration with our state health agency on public health issues. we actually have a formal memo of understanding to collaborate on school health related issues, which dates back to 1993. our agency, the department of public instruction, also head in place crisis procedures for the continuity of our own operations as the department. we have been actively involved in our state pandemic flu cross agencies work group since 2006.

we have assisted in the development and the updating of our state pandemic flu plan, which bill referred to, which has been reviewed and highly praised at a federal level. we have played an active role in tabletop exercise simulations of school closures, and we have used the results of these to prepare our communications, regarding k-12 school closures. with financial support, from our state health agency, we have established and delivered technical assistance programs to our school community teams. we have this year been conducting a daylong workshops for teams who representing schools and communities to come

together to prepare pandemic flu plans. win the situation hit in april, we had a great increase the interest in those plans. schools that have the plants down they worked very well. schools that didn't found they really needed to get moving and develop those plans. we have done a number of webcast. we have publications. we have several web sites. we are updating the web site right now. we have sample crisis plans on the web site for schools to use. we have electronic tool kits. we have training, we have consultation, technical assistance, periodic communications from our state superintendent to all schools, collaboration with their state educational organizations, have and our area educational agencies. all of these situations were in place to help us deal with the

h1n1 in april. we have also collaborated with the state public television network to identify educational programming that students and families can access during a school closure. we have also established communications with our private schools through a network that we have established. during the april situation, starting in april, we were actively involved with their state agency through the incident command center, through briefings, teleconferences, with the field and with the agency. we monitored the outbreak in school closures daily. we used our state plan to assist us with all of the happenings in april and may with the flexibility needed to meet this particular situation. we collaborated with state health organizations and at the

local level with local health organizations to communicate regarding school closures and school health services. we maintain regular communications with their k-12 the administrators and our school nurses via e-mail list serves. we also found we needed to develop some new web-based resources to assist our schools as they were dealing with what do we do with field trips? what do we do with coe curricular activities when their school closures? we needed to provide constant updating, parent notification letters and we also developed a unit of instruction at the elementary, middle and high school levels regarding communicable diseases. we are now and the process of the action just as we are doing here, looking at the briefing with schools that were closed, looking at lessons learned and

preparing for the next wave. we are presently responding to the current increased interest in school pandemic planning and preparation and provide technical assistance. >> thank you very much. one thing i should ask you before we go is, there's a lot of great information ham before we leave some were i would like to get the web page where that information can be found so everybody can access all of that information. belinda. >> i am belinda sub-- pustka at the suburban san antonio school district. weiss serve not only universal city but we also serve converse in portions of those but they did not get their name in the title. i have been a superintendent there for eight years, and it's a great community. it is a growing community. we grow by eight to 12% per year so it is phenomenal growth.

weiss serve a very large military population, about 30% of our students are military dependents and steel high-school which was the first school where h1n1 was identified, they serve about probably close to 40% military dependents. this has been an interesting time for us as the district. we have a very good community, a very supportive community and this is what i found there our experiences. durao this time, the community chose to support in ways not only where the schools were closed, which placed an incredible hardship on parents, the city's cooperated, they closed parks, they limited some of their activities. the churches agreed to close. they were closed for eglise to sundays, which presented a

financial hardship on their behalf. but, overall it has been a great community effort. i will tell you that i have met with parents, gatherings as large as this and they are usually angry over either tax increases or rezoning or something like that, but i had an outpouring of support from parents i had never received on any issue during my eight years within the community. .. they want to know what the impact is on their family and their community. we made that a regular part of what we did on a daily basis, and this was communicating with parents and letting them know what we found out, letting the media in on a daily basis and f

and we would show the interviews with the media live, and we had a twitter account. the most asked question was about the prom. i want to tell you that this was a very positive experience but a very hard experience for the community and almost every e- mail that i got from a parent said, thank you for taking the health of my child into consideration. this was a difficult decision to make, but when it comes to the life of the child nobody is wanting to do anything to put them in harm's way. >> a quick question, what was the answer? question, what was the

answer to the problem? [laughter] >> both high schools had their prom. >> mary? >> my name is mary pappas, the school nurse from san francis prep high school. i appreciate very much the invitation to be here by the government. i appreciate the invitation to be here by the government and the nursing association. i am a private school nurse brought about 2700 students and 250 staff. i am the only nurse. i have to assistance. because i'm a private school, i work very closely with the department of health and new york city. for any questions that i have. sorry, is that better? okay. so, thursday in myffice began like any other day. i never know what's going to happen and an unusual trend started it very quickly with

many fevers and coughs. i alerted my principal and then in turn told him shortly after winep was painfully obvious it was getting worse the health department. i did have the health department's cell phone because i do, like i said, keep very close contact with them, and they alerted the cdc. i had many, many children come in my office, which is a very small office, with fevers, coughs, and such looks of despair because that morning they left their homes feeling well. usually the children i didn't feel good in the morning but my mom made me come. [laughter] i had many children just looking like pick me, pick me, because they didn't feel that this morning and they were genuinely scared, and i also got that impression from some of the

staff. so if i remained column even though i was@@@@@ @ @ @ @ @ n#@h is-experience at of all the years that i have been gathering my skills and my instincts for my medical profession, and this has been helping me to put into work a plan, an emergency plan at the drop of a hat, and this seems to have been working. the parents and the staff and the department of health and everyone seemed to be happy with the way that this went, and this could have been a much worse disaster. i sent home 102 children on the first day. home 102 children the first day and 80 the second day, and that doesn't mention all the other children that i've seen

for just the regular accidents, bumps, bruises, so it was very stressful. >> let me start and come back this way. this is not a question but if you could provide a bit more information to the audience. mary, you talk about sending 102 students home the first day and 80 the second day, but you also closed the school. so can you talk about the impact, the community mitigation of closing the school, the impact, how many students, how many families and a little bit about the impact that had on the community? >> well, the first day the way i did it was because i only had one phone line, is a recent 102 kids home by having every child pullout their cell phone. [laughter] because what child doesn't know where their mother is and i also asked the security guard to help me and said can you go down the

line, take the temperature and i gave them a posted and said through the temperature on their chest. so after i ascertained every parent was who they were i asked them to pick up the child, explain quickly what happened, give the temperature and low on. because of their cooperation and the parents were very appreciative i was able to send everybody home in a timely and orderly manner. that was very greatly appreciated by the parents, and the teachers, the staff, the administration because in a school that large, you could have four assistant principals but every single one looks at you. you're in it in an medical emergency and that's your responsibility, you have to keep your cool. you almost have to represent the school to the parents come and it's my nursing and the fact

that i was prepared for my experience, and also because you're an advocate i was very helpful to the parents, i tried to give them as much information as i could and the staff and i sent them home. we closed, that was thursday and friday, i sent another eda home and by friday we were closed for the week. i got a lot of e-mails from parents and the community that were very thankful. they had questions. they felt that i handled it well. i also got e-mails from the nurses around the country who recognize me, and because they all understand that they might have 750 kids, they might have to 75, but i had 2700 which is a very large amount of kids, and on fortunately i think there is more in fact in some state's

students don't have a nurse and i feel sorry for them because kids have to be ready to learn and there's no one else other than a nurse who can really prevent things, assess things and to the intervention to keep them there and that helps keep the teachers in the classroom teaching because they are not doing the medical things. >> thank you very much. i think not only you at the level with the nurses through the country did a phenomenal job in identifying this as well as helping us work our way through and helping with parents. thank you. linda, how about in your school district? how did things unfold? >> this is what life out. we work very closely with our health department but we are very new to a pandemic. this is the first time for us. we worked with the health department, sometimes with staff infections or something like that, so we have had dealings before. i received a phone call from the

health department saying that we have students that had been identified as having h1n1, and we were told that we would need to close. now what i have found in the state of texas is that within the health code there is the -- there is a method for closing schools that the health department is very familiar with. on a more familiar with the education department. and so, finding a message for these overlying authorities -- i found out very quickly that the county government has some say in this. i found out there are many different entities that would have a say and whether a school is opened or closed. but what i discovered a few days in 28 is one of the things that would help school districts the most is determining right now

what would be the method for closing the school. and something bill mentioned earlier is not only a method for closing the school, but once a school or school district is closed what are the signposts, what would be the protocol for opening the school back up? and i think that would be very helpful. >> thank you very much. sue, how about in wisconsin? how did things start to unfold there? >> i think there was a great deal of concern in the beginning on the part of parents, and some of that had to do with communication. the communication was coming so fast and so furiously and changing so fast from the national to the state to the local level that it became confusing for parents. they might check one source and get one message and then check another source and get a little different message, and that of

course was frustrating. what we have talked about now is the need to communicate to parents and families and to the community that this is probably going to be the case. there is probably going to be rapid communication and changing communication. and we need to be prepared for that. the message isn't going to come down on monday that will necessarily be the same on friday. so we have to get the word out to the families now so that they can anticipate those kind of things. we also found it was helpful to have at the state level in nursing consultant who could provide invaluable technical assistance to our schools. the schools were interested in the question that one of the governors had this morning at about the state aid and we did

get on to the web site in a very prominent place the situation in wisconsin is that the days that schools are closed under a health department order count toward our 180 day requirement, and this was very important with very tight budgets. we needed superintendents and school boards to have that kind of information. if the clothes on their own without the health department order then they could apply to our state department of education for waiver consideration. these were all some of the issues that we thought were in need of being addressed at the state level. also resources. we needed to provide even more resources than what we had provided to our schools already. and we are making plans now to assure those up even further. and also to stress to our local school districts that they must

work with their local health departments. this is a team approach, and we have to have everyone on board before we get into a crisis situation. we are also stressing to our superintendents and school boards they need to be part of the team. we can't simply delegate these tasks to school nurses, because as mary has pointed out, not every school district has a school nurse, and even if they do, this has to be a team approach, not simply a school nurse shouldering all the burden. >> thank you very much. and mary raises a very interesting point. what i think a lot of us would call a conundrum, which i don't know whether she realizes one of not, but this gets into communication of the individuals and students pullout their cell phone and called home but the was a few educators in the audience know there's a lot of school systems that prohibit

self phones from coming into school and this offers i think an opportunity to begin to think that issue through from a different perspective, entirely different perspective if we want to communicate with parents especially in large numbers in your case 2700 we have to look at these little issues because the cou have a significant impact when it comes time to mitigate these issues. thank you. again i'm going to start over to my right. one of the questions we have is we look back at this experience and we know that there are lessons to be learned from this, some good lessons and some not so good lessons. things that work and things that didn't work and if each of you could briefly talk about one thing you think it worked well and one thing which didn't work well and maybe the reason why they either work well or didn't work well. and mary, i'm going to start with you. >> okay, the thing that worked

well for me was communication with the parents and the cellphone enabled -- the kids actually helped me with that finding their parents because to use one phone in a school office with that volume it wouldn't have worked so that worked well and the parents were appreciative. the thing that didn't work well as i have a very small office and once autrey ghosh them the kind of just hung around and more came in. so, one of the things that we looked at, and we called it like a ready room if you will, to have these children who are definitely sick, definitely infectious but they all have the same thing but their parents are coming to move to another area and designate as a ready room and that is what we decided to do in my school that we are going to change. and also just want to stress universal precautions with the

kids on every level, which is a fetus that and it's not yours, don't touch it. [laughter] the more teaching we do to the kids the better. [laughter] >> you know, i guess going back to what we did well i think that we did a very good job of communicating. i think we used as many methods of communication as we had. we are -- we pride ourselves on being a technology rich school district. we invest in technology. however i don't think you have to be a technology rich district to communicate well with parents and the modes they are used to. they are very familiar with the use of technology. i also knew that we had both ap

tests and ib test saloom and whenever the students returned as well as the state accountability measures and so, there was still instruction that needed to happen, and so once the schools were closed and the first day students were home i knew the first they would be a holiday and the day after that they would be bored and i started hearing from parents singing please give activities we can have our students do at home and so we had small groups like two or three teachers meeting developing activities and we posted all of those things on line but i guess on the flip side it was on opening because we use technology in the school district to support the classroom instruction. we also look at online instruction and the value but for the first time i saw a truly what instruction needed to be is seem less so that you can have classroom instruction supported by technology and from those

times students aren't in the classroom the need to have -- needs to be coordinated and it needs to be so that students can flow from a regular classroom instruction to online and back again and we are not there yet but if we are looking to the future that is one thing we have to consider so that it's not a separate but it is all the work made. >> belinda, before i get to you, sue, before you post the district to get support closing the district from the superintendents in the surrounding area from the state? was their support from that? >> initially. [laughter] it's easy at first, but it is more difficult the more days that you are into it. the first day everybody is supportive. the second day is tougher, the third day -- and i think that also looking at it, because the

symptoms were mild, people discounted it over a period@@@@ having a coordinated effort all the way through will be the most challenging part of the process. >> i think that what worked well for us as having a solid state plan, and using this over the past several years to assist the school districts across the state, to provide them with training, and to provide all of the technical assistance that they may need, encouraging cooperation at the state level, and encouraging collaboration at the local level. as far as what we have done so well, we did not have too much

opportunity to get into continuing education because of the short closured time, but this is an area that needs some work. rea tha definitely needs work. we have talked about it in all of our trainings. we have encouraged local school districts to get involved in putting together a plan for continuing education but that isn't easy to do. yes, online works in some cases. i represent a state that has a lot of rural areas students do not because of poverty reasons or geography reasons have access to high-speed internet so we cannot jeopardize the learning of those students during a prolonged closure. we have to look at things other than online learning. we have to look at educational television which does hit every single corner of our state.

we have to look at learning packets. yes, that may sound old-fashioned but in some cases that is the way students are going to learn. we have to look at getting the word out to parents and families, how they can be involved in learning of our students. some of our area educational agencies and our state are looking at how they can help local districts to provide this continuing education during a prolonged closure but this is definitely a challenge that we need to address. >> thank you. one of the questions we were constantly asked as we were going through this epidemic is when do schools closed in this country? i think we were trying to figure out the quicker we could close the quicker we could get ourselves out of litigation and what we discovered as there are some schools that close and may and some clothes in june and

some schools never close, they go year are now and then we have the question on the other and what are we going to do when school is open and went to schools open? the fact is as we begin to look at this some open in august, some on in september. and again, some go year round, but in your individual districts, you're individual schools and sue, forour state, we look schools are going to be opening but changes are you going to bring about in your emergency management plans or crisis plants? what changes are you going to institute for the new school year? >> one of the things we are going to be doing is conducting several after action groups now and interviews with superintendents to gather that information and put that together very, very shortly to be able to communicate with districts throughout the state.

we are looking at more training to stress to districts every one of them the need to have a plan. we are looking at enhancing our website and our electronic tool kit, which is very valuable to local districts. we are looking at a state letter similar to the duncan sebelius letter that went out to schools. we are looking at helping parents to better prepare for this, to deal with child care issues ahead of time, nutrition issues ahead of time and looking at various local agencies that might assist in meeting the nutrition needs of the students would depend upon breakfast and lunch programs at our school. as i mentioned we need to address the continuing education plans that we at this point have not lost out to the point they should be. and we need to let our parents

and families and communities know that this will be an evolving situation, and what we know now is not the same as what we may know in the very future. and things will change very rapidly. and we need to help our communities better prepare for what may occur in the fall. >> i guess this is a bit of a true confession time for me. we have to have a pandemic plan and the school board had approved the memorandum of understanding with the county group, and i will tell you the county director did a great job of trying to put everything together. but i didn't really pay attention to it that much. it's one of those things i assigned someone else and went about educating students on to all this came about. but the good thing was the was a

plan in place. it wasn't necessarily the parts we practiced, but there was a connection that had been established and so that's good. so going forward and i will pay closer attention to what that plan means and i rely very much on the people within the guadalupe county association. it was and valuable as far as helping us communicate, getting information. it was a good association, very worthwhile. also going forward, and you might ask me how i'm going to address this and i don't have an answer i'm concerned about to student groups in my school. i'm concerned about the teenagers. they are a social group and i can understand why they would be the most at risk. i am also concerned about the campuses where we have the highest number of students

offering reduced lunch. i know they don't have access to the same health care other students have. and so going forward watching those groups will be something we have to pay very close attention to. >> one of the things that changed and is going to change is my position in the school i think is much more respected. [laughter] because of what i did and what i do. the administration almost bowel's to me as they pass me in the hallway, which is very nice. so that's a good change. like i said again, the plans we have had, plans in place, the ready room which is just a moratorium, and teachers, staff and parents know where it is, that is a good change. we always communicate to parents about important things,

activities on the web which we will do. we keep in contact with the principle administration with the department of health and cdc. sue anything new they want to change or add or do for september it will be on the web. one of the things we want to do though is maybe reintroduce the phone notification system if a crisis does happen. also now they would like to get cell phones of parents to register the number so maybe we can send a quick text which seems to be the state of the art thing to do. we have ordered the monitors that are non-invasive, they can just put up to the child's forehead so you don't have to worry about disposable covers. it's good infection control and because of the volume of kids i have that's a big help. and again, just to say like belinda said i have teenagers, it's education, education,

education and all kind of talks or seminars, whatever they have they are going to talk about universal precautions like i said before hand washing, sneezing into your sleeve was mentioned before and if it is wet don't touch it. and just hope for a good year. >> thank you. one final question for the panel and we will start with sue and that is you have an audience here filled with leaders of the federal and state level, persons from health and human services, homeland security, the cdc, agriculture, labor, all of the key agencies involved in mitigating the consequences of h1n1. if he had one thing you want to say to them what would it be? >> communicate, communicate, communicate. we need that communication at the state level so that we can

get it out to our constituents out there in the local districts and the local teams. and we need the communication frequently. we needed to be accurate. we needed to be meaningful. and we need communication that we can get out to families and parents of these young people. we also need to support our schools. we need to have the dollars to be able to provide the education, the nutrition and health services to them. thank you. >> we are in the education business and we are pretty -- we do a good job of educating students. what i need from all of you is an idea of when it is best to

close and when it is necessary to close and when it's not. when is it the student's health isn't jeopardized by being in school and telling us what is most critical and we do a good job adapting to what we hear but we need a good strong clear message and it needs to be consistent. >> my most important point is every school needs a nurse. every child deserves to be safe and healthy and an opportunity to learn. >> thank you, mary. just one of nurse? [laughter] if you're going to ask, ask big. [laughter] you know, as i listen to the panel it's interesting because a lot of things that the three of

them at the state, local level have to say or parallel a lot of with the secretaries were saying that the federal level. and if there's any take away -- i wrote down about five takeaways. these are sort of messages that come over and over again. one is planning is essential. the time of the crisis is not the time to call up your health worker, mental health worker. i think secretary don king talked about our efforts at the department of education and secretary sebelius talked about her efforts, secretary napolitano and this is about planning and we encourage every school in the country if they don't have a plan to get a plan and tested with the plan together to make sure they partner it with folks from homeland security, folks from the public health, folks from the mental health site. this is a community effort, it isn't just a school eckert. number two as i think mary talked about this and belinda talked about this somewhat, and

sue talked about this and this is the uniqueness to schools. we come from urban areas, suburban areas, rural areas and there isn't one-size-fits-all and when we began to do the planning we need to take into consideration the uniqueness and the resources available and build a plan are not that. number three is it's all about the old song you've got to have friends, while you've got to have partnerships and this is about partnerships. this is like facebook and the more friends you have -- this is about how many partnerships can we build. this is about good, strong, effective partnerships. and if there's one thing we preach at education to the staff it's that we've got to reach out to people who we don't even normally deal with and forge those partnerships and alliances because we know as educators we cannot do it ourselves. fourth, it's about communicate, communicate, communicate. one of the things, and i think

belinda, you mentioned it, which i found very interesting, is it's not only communicate, communicate, communicate, but also communicate at the local level. your parents are also much interested in what we have to say from washington, they were interested in what you had to say about the district, right? did you find the same thing, mary? >> [inaudible] >> okay. and last week, and i hope that all of us never forget this, is that schools are about teaching and learning. and that we need to find ways to basically continue that process if we have to close schools. and last, i want to give a pitch for my colleagues at the centers for disease control and prevention and the department of education who are working on a system to help monitor school closings. i think it's absolutely essential and vital as we close schools if we have to close schools in the fall is we have

information that -- timely inform what is happening in new york city and all of that. hopefully you work with your groups and associations to help to develop an effective monitoring system. let's give the panel around of applause. -- a round of applause. [applause] all three of the panelists will be here throughout the day. please go up, introduce yourself, ask questions and trust me, they have a lot of questions for you. again, thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. i would like to ask the next panel to come forward. they do you are welcome to stand up and stretch in your seats for about 30 seconds. that's learned from

states and localities. and first i'm very pleased to introduce the moderator dr. steve the director of the influence coordination unit at centers for disease control and prevention. he has many years of experience at the cdc in areas of international health, malaria, immunization program and national center for environmental health. he's joined by three very distinguished panelists. first dr. arnold director of public health for the illinois department of health. he's been in that position since october, 2007 and previously served as medical director for bioterrorism and preparedness for the chicago department of public health. dr. arnold also served the national guard for 24 years and currently is also the state surgeon for the illinois army national guard. dr. marcy late and his assistant commissioner for the new york city department of health and mental hygiene.

she has played a leadership role in many new york city public health responses for example west mile five is in 1999 and to the world trade center attacks and anthrax in 2001. she's frequently lecture on a national and international circuits on preparedness and infectious diseases. and last but not least, we have expected of director of the navajo nation division of health. he has held this position since june, 2003 and he has over 30 years of experience and social services, child welfare and health care including 12 years with the navajo area indian health service. dr. read will start as moderator. >> thank you. it is a great pleasure for me to be here today moderating this session reviewing what we've learned and what we need to plan for in the future. we have got a great plan panel as you heard and what's great about this panelist the spectrum

of experience and situations that represents that we have got new york city arguably the brunt of the h1n1 epidemic focused in urban areas. we've got got trouble perspective in indian country, rural situation and then from illinois both geographically and epidemiological in between the two extremes. but before we turn to the panel on want to reflect just for a moment as a person at this point in the program is actually a reassuring to me that what i am going to say you have already heard before service will be echoing the remarks made up to this point. the first -- the first point i want to touch on is the importance of planning and exercising. and this pandemic we prepared for wasn't the one we actually experienced, but the plans that we developed and exercised were critical in the first few

months. mosul much for what we actually did or executed but for the process of knowing what questions we needed to address and process for answering those questions. and so, at this point we have new factors and assumptions, so as you heard already there is a new planning process that needs. what's different about this planning process is that it is an open ended that we have to have new plans in place for what may occur in the coming months and we may see an upsurge in cases. ving said all of that we need to maintain the flexibility that we used in the first few cases that we are going to be confronted by new facts. the second thing i want to point out is the importance of partnership in responding and i might even use a different word than partnership. what we have executed is the ability to work as a team and it

goes beyond partnership. everybody has their role but we know what they are and we work together. this is especially relevant for our state and local partners since the national response in a lot of ways is the sum of those state and local responses. and at the federal level, what we need to do is to create an environment where those local decisions and planning process these can be most effective. so, i just want to reiterate in the spirit of teamwork that now is the time to be planning, and this needs to occur at all levels of the partnership. and just as a closing point, i want to reiterate how important communications have been in this whole response and that it will be very important when forward. i think we have done a -- we've recognized the need to tell people what we need to know, what we don't know, what we are

doing and again create the environment with the right kind of decisions made at individual and at institutional levels. so we have a lot of work ahead. this is different from most emergency responses. it this is not bring to the short-term response. we don't know how many months we are going to be responding, but we do know it will be all weigel and we should expect new facts, we will be confronted with new facts and have to make decisions that can't be completely anticipated at this point. but in working together, we can plan working in partnership and we will work to protect public health. so with those introductory remarks let me turn first to dr. arnold to tell about the situation in the illinois.

>> okay, first of all don't worry about the slides. i'm gwen to go through those very quickly. my wife also installed a pop-up blocker so i will be stopping at some point very shortly. [laughter] so, the first slide i naturally going to go to the first slide there are about 19 key resource sectors. as i start this i want to acknowledge the president, secretary sebelius, secretary napolitano, also secretary duncan. very essentials people to have coordinated effort. other messages were incredible. i also want to recognize the doctor from the cdc. he saved my blood pressure and my life many times by his announcements on the tube. also to nih and doctor now assistant secretary with hhs,

they have a good person as we have multiple people in the room i want to thank the military for its continued service and that includes the public health service, the cdc did a phenomenal job in the spring. that really brought this to a good point in time. the association of territorial officials worked with them and actually did an incredible job bringing the right messages and the american public health laboratories. you can name the association of the epidemiologist, there are multiple agencies that came together to make this a success including dhs and all of its branches. one of the things i wanted to point to is this one area for the public health and health care sector back in the early 1900's we had separation between sanitation and public health for some reason. many of the public health sanitation avenues have been

separated in the state much of the sanitation infrastructure is independent and operates independently from us. they are private sector entities many of them. those sanitation services if they were to fail would give the onset of a potential of a secondary epidemic in the middle of a crisis. we must pay attention to the sanitation sector. this is one slide i always liked how and why. how is the science question valid or invalid whereas why is one in theology, philosophy, mental health and legal and it's really fallacies of logic and explanations ideological opinions. those things are two separate questions when we are answering a question of science we still have to keep in mind that a community operates in both sectors and it works with the why question. very few people during katrina

asked me why did my house get blown down. they know a geological phenomena came through and asked me why did it happen to me so we must always have a human dimension and compassion that our associations have for reaching the people. here are models i liked some are wrong summer useful. in god we trust, all other spurring data. that's actually the cry of the monotheists scientist. also fear is that counsel and this is a public state paradigm. the department was many times right in the middle of the hourglass. the point where the sand passes through, and what i heard from above was follow me but lead yourselves from the federal level and from the locals, give resources that we can handle alone and lead ourselves. [laughter] so that left us in a very

peculiar situation. so things like the associations actually help us work through that. these are very essentials to get through this old paradigm. we also worked with that esf a function and esf-6 function of the we are relatively confined into the esf-8, essentials support functions. okay what we did and away the first state to conduct the exercise in may 2006 called flu ex. he is working in l.i. stage right now and funds legislation, passed some on-the-spot legislation that actually allowed us to distribute the stockpile. he took a very serious consideration of all of the exercise is we had done in the past.

this year i actually had my entire senior staff, 42 idp h staff go through nims training, 100, 200, 700 come 800 then 300, 400 level. they also -- that was to be worried also the cdc training which they have brochures outside on the table in march actually they put the cap on this so that when in april that can flow came along with the cdc guidance and the other organizations we were able to put people into the public health emergency operations center and an operational mode. rubber on the ground. they fell into position, set up their command structure and were operational from day one. they know exactly where they were. they walked in amazement up to me and said i know where i am and they knew what their functions were. very important to this kind of

training in the background. interagency collaboration. the illinois emergency management agency, my counterpart and my state is director andrew velázquez. it was critical to have his coordination and collaboration. it brought us a very long way. this is different from that old bottleneck i was talking about with the hourglass model. this requires people to knock down the walls and start working together to find solutions to problems. also the illinois national guard was essential. the illinois department of human services and the illinois department of transportation worked together to make sure this worked. the multiple community-based faith based and guarantee based organizations as well as volunteer organizations were essential, those are our emergency response volunteers, nurses and medical personnel.

very essential. i also want to come end of the cdc and nih. all of the institutions putting information out because he saved this country during an economic downturn billions and billions of dollars. that isn't being said yet. but billions and billions of dollars. you stop the crisis from happening by controlling the messaging and making sure people remained calm. i talk about public health many times as being very close to being analogous to a car you drive to work every day and never think about the break. but let the break fail at an intersection and you have morbidity and mortality. so i'm going to go very quickly for the rest of the slides. this one is the guidance focus establishment of the authorities through nims, operational planning objectives, clear-cut strategic