and it's important that they have the ability to choose among the variety. host: is one more popular or less expensive or more time-consuming than the other? guest: number one, the data seems to indicate that the best strategy is both psychotherapy, that's a relearning of how you respond to things that happen to you in your life, or to memories you have that happened earlier in your life. . . often the most effective strategy. the classification of the drugs refers to the fact that these drugs help with seratonin, which is the key brain function

involved it makes it less expensive. host: in florida on the line. good morning. guest: good morning. guest: good morning. when these medical insurance companies write up their little contracts. they always put larger discount. you got to pay more, if you feel you are being discriminated against because of a mental illness, who do you complain to? my second comment is we shift the attack. i am tired of paying for these countries that hate us.

that should all be eliminated with this new bill. there is going to be a start up period >> what i would ask that you do, if you are having any problems like the renewal of your health plan, go to our website let us know about it. we are starting to document any problems with this law. we'll be able to help get these channels in the government to make sure these practices stop.

the bill actually includes serious penalties for insurers who fail to enact this legislation properly. >> we have been talking and hearing about the broader administration. are people aware of this law? this new bill? >> we have done everything that we can. the various organizations that represent principally people that have addictive disorders. we are going to continue getting the word out. from california, on the

independent line. caller: good morning. i'm a crisis line worker. i have a couple of questions for you and the comment. the comment is that i have some real concern over family practice people being skilled enough one question. i understand medicare is restrict frd this new law. is that true? if an employer chooses not to cover mental health at all, there is nothing the employer can do.

>> like i mentioned, there's no mandate how this be covered. if the employer chooses not to cover it. this law will not be helped. it is in everyone's interest that these services be covered if primary care physicians are

the most likely people to treat depression it would require insurance companies medicare has historically discriminated against mental health services we managed to get the co-pay requirement services removed.

it was difficult to have any changes to the law we conditioned to work on getting things like the lifetime limit for medicare. the family physician medication is the bet one. they should inform the person that they take a while to work. someone gets discouraged in two

weeks. the medication will not have taken affect yet. we should try to have as many portals into treatment as possible. she got a lot of questions in that one call. hi, sue. >> i have a question, a little bit different. i want to know how to get something corrected. >> i was in a serious accident in 1985. i damaged my ankle and optic

nerve. the doctor wrote me up as being skits friend yick. for years, i had to go through torture of mental health therapy. how do i get that changed. i think family doctors jump too quickly into thinking that people have serious problems when they don't. the patient really has no say so. >> i'm sorry to hear about your accident and the ongoing problem. >> i have a good friend that has a problem with the inner ear. you own your medical report. you have every right and full access to it.

if you disagree with a diagnosis, i recommend you change physicians if you don't feel you are getting the care that you need i would ask that you try to switch physicians to get someone who better understands and responds to your situation. twitter question for you. will this, this will cause insurance rates to rise. has your group estimated how much.

>> this was a major concern in terms of getting this legislation passed. one of the owners of houston texas ans who himself has severe depression. had he wanted to do an addition to the policy, they said that's going to cost a 25% increase. the actual increase was zero.

it didn't cost them anymore. that has been removed from the table. about 40 states have bills that they enact. the one we passed in 2008. the federal government was inactive in this area. states took the lead. they varried a lot. about 40en ended up having the legislation. let's talk about california. the keast associated and they point out that most health plans responded by lifting the limits and annual number of

days allowed for out patient treatment. >> california is an extraordinary place in many ways. california's experience there should parallel what we should see in other states california passed a few years ago something called proposition 63, which established an identified trust fund for mental health services in the state.

if the right kind of technology are implemented. california is leading the nation in terms of trying to get some of those technologies into play. host: kansas, mississippi. good morning to you. caller: i'm a mental health professional. i work in the department of corrections we have traumatic we have traumatic brain injured.

it gives people their lives back. and all of these people who are mentally ill and nobody caught it. the question i have this, people are mentally ill in prison. it is costly to treat. thank you. guest: what we have done in this country is we have largely closed our state hospital system. in the 50's, we had about half a

million. now we're probably under 40,000. we estimate about 320,000 people in the united states incarcerated in prisons to have severe mental illnesses. we incarcerate at higher rates than any other nation in the world and have criminalize in many ways the severe mental illnesses. it is even clearer if you look at addiction disorders. it is not all on likely that people have both. will be the institutions. to not reply cailt the problems , it's really important that we do this job right. the caller turns on an important point about our ability to get people back into their life.

we will implement the science based therapy that's we have. a great call. important issue. >> this has no direct appropriations associated with it at all. this is really to correct and shore up the discrimination in terms of these services. it doesn't have additional resources. put this in the broader healthcare debate that we have been having in this country. is there a connection between the two? >> we are so fortunate to have gotten the bill passed before we enter this discussion to work on healthcare reform. a couple facts, the major driver of healthcare expenditures areon yick

illnesses. 75% are caused by the treatment of chronic illnesses. mental health and substances occur. the average age at which that occurs 14. these are really disorders had adolescence. they are under recognized. in part because of insurance discrimination. they result in long term disability. in the united states, world health organization estimate that's all disability related to illness is associated to mental health illness. it gives you a sense. if we are going to control healthcare cost and improve the status in the country, which is some of the major goals, we cannot do it unless we

effectively identify, treat and prevent mental health and substance abuse conditions. we are lucky. i recall reaching on c-span, the senate finance committee was debating. the vote wrs almost all strictly down party lines. very partisan votes until the senator from michigan introduced the amendment to include mental edge with other conditions. even won that highly partisan debate, this was adopted by the committee and characterized as a no brainer in terms of what we needed to do. so they are central, we have to treat these conditions. there's clear support for it.

our hope and desire is that we start to do the job of healthcare right. we have to treat mental health and substance abuse effectively. host: tyler, texas. on the ind end line. as i understand it, psychology and psychiatry is a relatively new science. i think a lot of the uses like he had before. a lot of the side effects. every time you turn on a

commercial, you talk about how medicines can cause heart problems and other things and then our health insurance won't cover those other things. it's like a vicious cycle. it seems like a lot could be used to help people through their problems. another thing is hypnosis and the working of the subconscious mind. a lot of uses could be other things even chemical imbalances. a lot of things could be better addressed through hypnosis there is almost no way to

insure tutionalize. you go to school and giveous medications. i have some mental illness in my family. my aunt, she has as a result tremors from her medication. host: let's get a response from our guest. caller: there's a number of really important issues the caller brings up. it is important to note that there are a wide range of effective treatments for many of the mental disorders. something our organization is committed to is general public education so that people can avail themselves of the variety of the sources that are available. as i said irlier, medications have been god sent to many people but not everyone.

the caller is right in that any medication can benefit. they have side effects for every individual, it is a matter of balancinging the side effects associated with it. one works with a care giver in a way to maximize that cost benefit at a personal level. this should be a decision made by an individual with their physician. i'm sorry that your aunt has had problems. like in any disease group. there are people that have a lot of difficulty responding. we need better treatments. we need to access the care that we know works today. >> you mentioned medicine. is it prescribed largely by general practitioners. psychology, sikery is generally

a new field. guest: progressively, they are getting better support to do that. we rely on primary care physicians to do a lot of work and manage a broud range of illnesses >> it had access to and a treatment in full range. the caller brought up several important points. we could certainlyly do a

better job. i'm also not sure that psychology and psychiatry are any newer in a sense than other areas of medicine. this is our 100 anniversary. i have been looking into our history. interestingly, the same year of the naacp getting back to the civil rights thing. we have been working on these issues for some time and made some dramatic progress. historically, we considered these conditions different. we are passed that now. this law takes an important step. >> let's hear from delaware. good morning. caller: i'm a first time caller and i'm a little nervous.

host: take your time. caller: dr. doctor, thank you for the work you are doing. i became a mental health patient since 1996. i was on a drawing that doubled my weight in one year. i was wandering what your opinion is of people like tom cruise that go on national tv and warn against damages that can be done with psychiatric medicine? host: guest: i'm sorry you had that experience. one of the issues with a class of drugs is that many of them

affect your system and metabolism. weight gain has to be aggressively managed.

we know lot more about rates in which middle illnesses occur across the world. a systematic survey of the population has been conducted, and many of us are very surprised to learn that the results of the survey showed the united states, of the 14 countries surveyed, have the highest rates of mental illness of any of those 14 countries. and in fact, there has been a study done looking at people who immigrate from mexico to the united states, and it seems to indicate that if you look at people who immigrant to the country, their rate is the same as mexico, which is about half of ours. mexico has about half the rate

of mental illness. over a 13-year time span, it can mean lifetime prevalence. said there is something going on we need to be very concerned about in terms of the health and well-being of our population, and the mental health findings are important. but the treatment issues around the world are very interesting with conditions. one of the most interesting comes from the world health organization study, that people diagnosed with schizophrenia actually do better in recovery rates than people diagnosed with schizophrenia in developed nations. this is quite surprising, and no

one knows exactly why that is the case, but one of the suspicions is that in developing nations, it is much more difficult to marginalize labor. everyone needs to contribute to the community for the community to succeed. if someone becomes ill, they are still expected to be part of their community. in the developed nations, we have disability systems of lock people into a disabled status of they can continue to receive modest income support and health insurance. so we have systems in the united states which keep people in disabilities to have some sort of income maintenance. than those. host: minneapolis, thank you for waiting.

good morning. could you speak to what the implications are to folk that's are uninsured. this should i am pact this in some way. it is core to the issue. we are hoping that as we move to universal coverage, people will have access early on

before they become disabled. another problem with homelessness is poverty. i don't know how the current economic session affected this. people that become bank rup and loose their home can ultimately remain homeless. if we can make some major repairs to health insurance system in this country. mental health services are identified explicitly in the health insurance program.

adopting the law. how this plays out in terms of the insurance exchanges which is where many people like the homeless persons you are working with might receive their care is yet to be determined. we are watching that very carefully. it gets into technical aspects that we want to get into or speculate here. clearly the spirit of this law is that people have access to mental health and substance abuse or services. we are going to work as hard as we can. caller: i could spend a day talking to you about these issues. i came out of six months of

treatment facility. what i've seen is a lot of people pushing and not identifying ordealing with a lot of the mental health issues. i have been going to substance abuse counselors that are really one step above an aa counselor. to me, having a healthy alliance with a therapist is incredibly important. i don't see it happening enough. >> have a good day.

our overall status turning our page now to get the whole >> tomorrow, penn state international prof. on the obama administration's next steps with iran. then, charlie cook and stu rothenberg look ahead to 2010 politics and what is next for the democrats and republicans. after that, daniel erickson discusses u.s.-cuba relations. we'll take your e-mail and phone calls. live on sunday at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span.

in a moment, the senate hearings about the needs of children before, during, and after a disaster. then, developments in the financial markets. then, remarks from susan rice from the ongoing turmoil in the dark for region of sudan. -- darfur region. today, william sitter on his role in the court and how they decide to take cases. that will be followed by at the history of the building of the supreme court in the 1930's 3 today at 7:00 p.m. eastern, if you're on c-span. -- here on c-span. the blogger, calmest, an offer

of three books on the culture of corruption take your emails. live at noon eastern on booktv. >> you are lost. you did not own it anymore. and that hurts. my possessions are now in a storage bin. >> the award winning documentary about the impact of subprime mortgages on minorities, sunday night at 8. >> last year, a homeland security subcommittee held a hearing on the needs of children before, during, and after. we heard testimony from fema director craig fugate for an hour and a half.

the committee's objective today is to resolve with the very special needs of children during the prepared this, response, and recovery phase of disaster, and the extent to which current planning and programs either meat or fails the special needs. we're focusing on children for several reasons. children in most families are the focal point, and parents who cannot find an available school or day care center or access health care for children baby forced to relocate after a

disaster -- may be forced to relocate after disaster or stay out of work force when they are badly needed to rebuild communities, starting with their own homes, churches, and places of worship. about half of the families include children, and 90% include a parent that is a member of the workforce. getting your work force back to work after a disaster is one of our primary goals. it seems to me to be very difficult if we are not doing our best to provide help and support during daylight hours and provide mental health counseling children need and families need to sustain themselves. we must be mindful of the fact that people cannot return to work until they sit and productive environment.

they remind everyone, the line repairman, the citizens to play important roles in the community's returne. that means the provision of child care and reopening schools must be a top priority. i want to show a chart of the number of day care centers that were operating. i want to show this chart, and you have it in your documents that in august of 2005, the purple line shows how many day care centers are open, and you can see the dramatic fall-off overtime. the second thing we are focusing on our that children have unique needs that require special planning to address, in my view,

they have not received the same attention that other populations, weathered the adult homeless or the disabled or the elderly generally. a broader goal is to encourage the nation to consider the mental well-being of the country as a key indicator of recovery, every bit as important as the restoration of infrastructure, housing, and the economic tax base. i would like to take a moment to commend the "washington times" for their particularly insightful articles over the last couple of days. it was a coincidence that they were running d's along with our hearing. ed wood " says almost 40 years after the map -- and one says that almost 40 years after the massive hurricane killed hundreds of people, many words have been written about devastating physical damage to the city, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been

spent on fiscal reconstruction. but nothing has been said, and local has been spent on the silent wreckage, residents pushed over the head by terrible reform who have not been able to recover, emotionally or physically. local response plans must be provided for evacuation, shelter, and facilities where they are likely to be clustered by the time of the disaster, or call for evacuation at day care centers, schools, hospitals, including maternity wards. katrina showed up the impact of failing to include nursery homes in evacuation plans, and we must insure in the future that facilities are included fully in

these planning processes. the children issued a report last month called the disaster decade indicating shockingly that only seven states currently require schools and day care centers to develop a comprehensive evacuation and -- a vacation -- reunification plan. paul wylie, new hampshire, maryland, massachusetts, and vermont. the other states have virtually no plan. local merchants the managers -- emergency managers can do more for states with planning caps, and consider requiring these facilities to develop plans. obviously, the federal government has a role to play. of would like to plant ask our director, chris fugate, a who is here to address us in this

testimony. in addition, we will also considered newborn infants. according to hhs, an average of 36 babies are going every day in los angeles. the averages for under 16. it is evacuation. you can understand the difficulties of moving that kind of population if necessary. the senate version of homeland security bills for 2010 include an amendment encouraging dhs to conduct an evacuation that includes monitoring, tracking, and continued care. the hospital will be testifying in the second panel. they excluded executing this

function for the state during the response to hurricane katrina, and they have a great deal to share. i'm going to summarize the rest of my statement, because i am anxious to get to the panel. but let me say a few more things. after the hurricane, demand for mental illness services spiked. that was combined with the laws of work force capability creating a severe gap, straining medical workers and facilities. it is startling to know the department of psychiatry screen 12,000 schools in the 2005 and 2006 year, and 18% of them had a family member killed in a hurricane. 49% of them had met the threshold for mental health peripheral. one year later, the rate was lower, but still 30% 320% of

displaced children in louisiana still suffer from depression or anxiety. the suicide and attempted suicide for adults, the rates are startling. some are reporting three times higher than the national average, but what struck me was not just the height of the suicide rate, but the number of people who had attempted suicide but failed was startling. 116 had committed suicide, but 750 had attempted. the crisis was jointly administered by it theme of, -- by fema to teach coping skills. we obviously need to do a lot more. you can see an overlap. the number of federal programs

available, but they are stovepipe. there's the other one. the number of programs available, this graph shows it a little better, the number of programs, some have eligibility requirements, some do not. this is small, but it is basically a list of the different programs offered through grant programs, etc.. but there is no comprehensive community delivery system in place right now to cover the extraordinary needs after a catastrophic disaster that affects the community the way it did to the greater new orleans area and a large swath of the gulf coast. in conclusion, i would like say there are 21 different federal

programs, and three of the 22, medicaid, head start, and s- chip have eligibility requirements limiting their ability to provide services after a disaster. the consolidated preparations act of 2008 established the national commission on children and disasters. they're talking about their recommendations and testimony later. finally, i conclude with a quotation from chris rose, a call mr. probably read more about this than any person in the country. he gave a commencement address to my all modern high school in new orleans, 275 years in new orleans. he spoke the year of the storm

and said there is a hurricane. my daughter was asked to write about her experiences over the past year when she came back, and this is what she wrote. there was a hurricane. some people died. some of them were killed. >> my daughter, he said, was 6 when she wrote that. it does not strike me as what you want your child to write in her journal, but there is. all of us are marked for life by what happened. that was part of chris rose's comments to the graduating class from may. these are the freshman in high school and in college when the storm hit, and these kids who are in kindergarten and fourth great know themselves as the katrina class, and i think this

is a good place to start this hearing, because it is real results from a terrible catastrophe that happen, we're struggling with how to respond better, how to plan, how to recover. the needs of children are of a primary interest to me, particularly the mental and emotional needs of the community at large as we seek to build a better one. so with that, let me submit the rest of my statement to the record, and i would like to introduce the first panel. we have crag fugate, administrator of cmo -- fema, who has been on the job for two month and is making positive changes. we have the department of health

and human services, happy to have you, admiral. and a director of health care u.s. government accountability office, which issued a recent report, and we're interested in hearing about that report relative to the subject. i will then introduce the second panel at the appointed time. but mr. fugate, let's begin with you, and thank you for being here this morning. >> welcome. i have submitted my testimony and ask that that has been entered into the record. i have some remarks, if that is ok with you. as a paramedic, one thing i was taught early on in dealing with medical emergencies was that children are not small adults. that may seem obvious, but it points out that not only are the formal all ecological needs different, how you treat certain conditions, it goes to the fact

you do not just size down. your treatment a protest to be geared towards -- approach has to be geared toward a child. that is one of the challenges when we look at planning. historically, my observation is that they speak english or have more education, they have a call to try and resources -- a quality set of resources. they can take care of their needs. now they have different priorities. so we come up with a second plan and a third plan and a fourth plant, and that has been our approach. we are going to try something different. based on the concerns of the

commission and the reports and issues you have raised, we have decided to take a different approach. instead of writing our plan for the adults and trying to figure out how to deal with everything else, we should feel like making plans to reflect the conservative communities we are in. let's place these parties in a special box, and do that from the beginning. so we are going to start with children. as you point out, there are crosscutting issues come up in the daily delivery of service programs, which often we do not take it and a tub when disaster strikes. there are many things that if we looked out, children up front at the beginning, across all of the areas, starting internally, but we also want to look at and work with our partners because as we continue this journey, as i complete my second month and look forward to my third, is we

are not 18. we are part of 18. partnership with federal partners were they have the expertise in how these programs need to be delivered, the needs we are going to face, dealing with physical and emotional and mental support to reduce the trauma. we know his starkly in disasters, with the events children face, the quicker we are able to get to a sense of providing routine to intervene early, the better the long-term outcome is for children. that means you cannot just look at what fema will bring it, but how we can leverage it. we look at federal partners, their expertise, and helping design programs achieve a change in outcome, not just looking at the grant program and hoping we get where we need to go, but

helping our drive for the process to effect real change. so we put together and have worked with secretary of napolitano to form a working group that focuses to make sure that we are addressing children's issues from prepared is that -- preparedness grants, all the way through response activities. and we continue to work on everything from on a company children, working with the center for missing and exploited children, establishing child care centers, working with citizens' programs where we have emergency responses that can get teenagers involved. also looking at how we incorporate this across state partners. the day care centers are a challenge because in a hurricane, they will be part of

the overall that is close down as children reunite with parents before evacuation orders are issued. we have seen other incidents occur when children are at school, and we note that if people do not have a good family communications plans, it can cause a lot of trauma and stress to families as they try to reunite after disaster. so with that, i look forward to your questions. >> thank you. admiral? >> good morning, and thank you first for your continued interest in and support of issues that we're here to talk about. as we come up on the anniversary of hurricane katrina, it has been a good time for us again to reflect on both of the strength and the gaps that remain in our initial emergency repair --

prepared this and response efforts. as you pointed out, children and their families are the most impact it and bear the most long lasting trouble, and my heart goes out to those who continue to suffer. we have to address particular the needs of children. we all know that preparedness is a part of what we do. we are completely in synch with mr. fugate about the need to plan for the entire community. communities are different, and we need to plan to their needs. my office now has more than 30 reasonable -- regional

coordinators on the ground in communities, and we know how to plan for those needs. we can enable communities to cope with emergencies that come upon them. so this is a really important part of what we do. by way of example, one of the important programs that we have gotten under way over the past couple years are partnerships to really move across the population spectrum and integrate at the front and all of the things that might be considered in that category. they can offer a lot of depopulatiothe population that s vulnerable. other programs that we have developed in response to this include training curricula for school crisis teams, disaster communication methods, and a lot of work to develop programs in

emotional first-aid too early on address those emotional and mental health needs of children. and it is important, as we heard, to do that at a developmentally appropriate level, and that means across all age range of kids as well as adults. the traumatic stress network has been instrumental and launched the psychological first aid field operations died immediately after the hurricane. we are really proud of the fact those materials have now been picked up and adapted trout country. obviously during an emergency it is critical to support the state efforts to provide quick and confident assistance to everybody, children being no exception. the national disaster medical system is a primary federal program that supports a sufficient care and transfer during this evacuation of

patients. it had both pediatric and obstetric capacity, and i think since the storm, has worked very hard to upgrade training, material, and transportation capacity. .

>> and has crisis counselors working routinely at the places where children congregate. we also have a cadre that can been activated. recovery is complex. it has been really under attended to. for this reason, we are very excited about the new direction that the mud is taking and are looking forward to working on the children's discovery effort. hhs also started its own

recovery coordinators who are identified in each district. we have a concept of operations that integrate many of these programs, particularly within the hhs family. we continue to work on building that out. i think we have made a great deal of progress in addressing the needs of children in disasters in the last four years. we have a long way to go. i think we are the first to tell you that, as we look forward to the future, we have a lot of prepared this -- prepare dness efforts in the works. we are working to find best practices that are going to help communities all over this country and on the ground. we are committed to the highest level of planning a response and

assistance recovery for children in emergency events. we are most appreciative of the important work at the national committee on children in disasters has done. to highlight these efforts, i also want to call out the work of the force which has made it as it recommendations for us on the important needs and mental health needs of children and their families going forward. we are now moving forward to integrate a number of those efforts. i think during that question and answer will be able to tell you more about those things. thank you very much. >> thank you. ms. bascetta. >> madam chairman, i think you for inviting me to testify today. --thank you for inviting me to

testify today. we're talking about the mental health consequences of national disasters. my remarks will be a reminder of why our commitment to children is so important. as you know, psychological trauma experienced by so many children in the aftermath of hurricane katrina increased the incidence of depression, ptsd, risk-taking behavior, and other potentially -- lasting emotional effects. it is well known that children have possibly a greater risk of developing mental health disorders. in new orleans, a slow pace of recovery and recurring threat of hurricanes make further exacerbate their trauma. against this backdrop, we found persistent barrier to providing mental health services. several grants are helping to address this. lack of mental health providers was identified as the number one

barrier to providing services. the designation of parishes in new orleans as mental health professional shortage barriers -- shortage areas showed the large number group received medicaid and chip reimbursement. they provided incentives to almost 90 mental health brussels who either relocated or decided to stay in new orleans. the second most frequently identified barrier was the sustainability of funding. we found that almost grants existed before hurricane katrina, the hurricane-related programs have been a key source of support for mental health services for children. much of this funding is temporary and it is too early to know whether sustainability can be achieved by this program. we also reported on barriers to

obtaining services for children and the top three were a lack of transportation, competing family priorities, and concerned about the stigma. officials told us that funding from several programs had been used to provide children with transportation to mental health services. although none of the programs were designed solely for that purpose. examples include medicaid, the community mental health services, and the social services grants as well as samhsa funding. similarly, funds were used to help families struggling with housing, employment, and other expenses. there was also a federal support for case management and referral services, designed to help families locate and attain mental health services for their children. we found a lack of continuous and reliable funding for case management. the stigma as well as transportation and competing family priorities was addressed

by the use of federal funds to support services delivered in schools. during the 2007, 2008 school years, nine school-based health centers were operating at least four more were in the planning sessions. the advantages are that it is not obvious that students are receiving mental health services. the up transportation problems as all three transportation on the family is stalled because families do not have to take time off work. there is a media campaign operated by fema and samhsa. we made recommendations to improve this program by revising its reimbursement policy to pay for indirect costs as of those of other post- disaster response programs and by determining what kind of expanded counseling services should be incorporated into ccp.

expanded services would provide more intensive services, especially in the aftermath of a disaster when provider availability can be limited. fema and samhsa have allowed the states to develop pride -- develop pilot programs. they have not yet implemented them. they also recently -- it also recently returned with additional recommendations to improve case management. taking these actions expeditiously, before the next disaster would improve services for children and their families as well as for all adults. that concludes my remarks. >> thank you very much. i would like to call attention -- before i get into the questions -- to two charts i think are very telling. the first is to my left. your right. you will see the green lines are

mental health resources in new orleans in august, 2005. starting from the left, and emergency and psychiatric beds numbered 350. psychiatric beds #668. physicians were at 617. psychiatrist is the next bar at 196. the number of doctors participating in medicaid is 400. when you go to the orange, which is two years after the storm -- two years. you think you would be well under way to recovery, two years after the storm uproot. instead of having 350, we had 77.

instead of 617 positions in new orleans, we had 140. instead of 196 psychiatrists, we had 22. instead of 400 doctors participating in medicaid, we add 100. -- hwe had 100. just this chart shows that there is something terribly wrong with a system of support at either the state -- the state and averell level. -- federal level. it is one thing to talk about -- you do not have access to mental health because of lack of funding. if you do not have the professionals to deliver the services -- you can start from this chart and work backwards

from there. you did not have enough physical beds, enough professionals, etcetera. this is to two years after the storm. you would think that people would be really trying to return after the catastrophe. this is not for years. this is two years. the trauma and struggling with limited services -- i want to call your attention to this next chart. this one here. this is the child-care center situation as of august, 2007. there are a couple of pretty startling and graphs. -- startling graphs here. this is two years after the storm. hundred and thousands of people have fled and are trying to get back. the years have passed. the neighborhoods have been cleared from environmental

concerns. they are trying to rebuild their life and this is what they find two years after the storm. the bluegrass is the number of child care centers in the greater new orleans -- the blue graph is the number of child care centers in the greater new orleans area in 2005. the green in august, 2007. in jefferson parish, it was down to 170. this is interesting to me. in st. bernard, a small little bars on the side -- it was a parish of 57,000 people that was virtually completely destroyed. only five homes survived in the entire parish. before the storm, there were 26 doctors centers. it was a working-class community

-- 26 child care centers. it was a working-class community. there were only too good day care centers open. -- only two day care centers open. if we are asking parents to return and rebuild, how is it possible for them to do that if there are only tw all day care centers in the parish. should they stop their children on their backs? should they bring their children in and let them set in the gutted home and they can play in the dirt? i am not understanding how we think the system we have is in any way shape or form appropriate. i can show you the statistics. but this really grabs me -- when

i saw that after two years, there were only to take care centers open in saint bernard parish. my first question is to you, mr. pugh date -- mr. tfugate, what is fema focused on providing. ? what would some of your comments be about what you have heard this morning? >> madam chairwoman, mark shriver who chaired the commission on children in disasters -- i think he was probably one of my first meetings after i was sworn in. he laid out the concerns and issues -- many of which you have laid out -- and asked the same questions about what we're going to do about it. the easy answer would have been to say we will write a plan for children and that will satisfy everybody.

however, i did not think that was going to be a real change. we talked with mark and members of the commission. i kept asking -- you know, we have looked at special populations as an afterthought. i said, let us try something different. why do we not right plans for the community? we will quit writing plans for just one part. the people who can take care of themselves -- we will look at the needs of the community. my experiences in hurricanes -- one thing we first pushed hard to do was to get things like that prekindergarten and schools open. there were several reasons. we recognized the stress that children were going unde.r r. did not -- or going under. we did not have the resiliency. we knew we needed to bring

counselors to children. we wanted to get schools open and children back into an environment that would get them into a routine that would give them a chance to start dealing with this, but also give their parents at chance to deal with what had happened. the challenge has always been, when you get into day care, it depends on states and localities. that can be a state, local, private function. his portly -- historically, it has been about funding. we do not have time for the report, as soon as you identify this -- how do we go back and look at the acts and grants and training to start encouraging and recognizing that children from in the home -- again, it is not -- you have to look at and

developmentally from infants up to a certain age and degrades -- how do we change what we have been doing? >> and i appreciate that, friends of look. i think it is important. -- that comprehensive look. i'd think it is important. i do believe that fema is a partner. i believe they should be the leader an expert on disaster. fema should be the driver, motivator, communicator. i look at the mutt and homeland security as not being the only entity that response but being the lead entity that helps to coordinate and manage your other federal partners, and give guidance to state and local partners, provide tactical assistance and support to the private sector. i would not just say that fema

is any old partner. pima -- fema is the lead. we talk about a year, part of this is -- you are right, some of them are non-profit and at some of them are government-run. some of them are for-profit. a good plan that would make sure headstart teachers and early chou good education teachers and counselors are part of that first responder team, coming back for rebuilding. the small business administration needs to make sure these day care centers get the loan they need. think about how difficult it is. day care center operators -- under our current laws and requirements -- it is difficult to get at $250,000 loan to

reopen at the care center. -- a day care center. any bank officer would say, why are you opening a daycare center? she would say, we will never have children if we cannot provide a day care center for them. there is no wonder worthiness or their business plan is not viable. that is workable government has to say, under normal circumstances, you would not lend as person the money -- but under this plan -- under disaster funds plan, we require you to lend the money at a lower interest rate and extend out the repayment period. you're not going to have a parish back because there have to be safe places for children to returned. i would submit that it is interconnected.

mr. fugate, you hit the nail on the head. when we try to encourage doctors to come back -- we do not think of them as doctors, we think of them as parents. most of them are parents with children who cannot come back if there is not a day care center or school or their children. all of our efforts to rebuild the community are spinning our wheels if that plan, as you said, does not have the essence -- rebuilding it safe places for children which represent -- if not only a special population, but a central population it to the families we need to rebuild. that is my point. i think that has really been overlooked. they said there has been a vote called. because i am here by myself, i'm going to need to call a 2- minute recess.

i am going to go vote. i have a few questions and then we will move right into our second panel. thank you. the committee will be in recess for five minutes. >> thank you all for our patients. the meeting will resume. i have just a couple of questions. i am going to submit most of them in writing. let me just ask again, mr.

fugate, you heard the gao recommendations for fema to modify rules to allow reimbursement of indirect costs when it comes to mental health counseling. how did you received this recommendation and what are your plans to implement it, and if not, what will you do as an alternative? >> senator, we have received them favorably and this is part of my arrival. we have been working with hhs on implementation. we are getting to the point of finalizing those and sending them back out for finalization so we can go forward received these recommendations favorably and are working to achieve that. those are things that are still in process. it goes back to come earlier when i said we are part of a team, on behalf of the secretary and president, my job is to coordinate the federal family

when it comes to the disaster system. part of that is recognizing that subject matter experts have to be part of the response. that is what i was referring to. i do not think fema has done a good job of working with our partner agencies to leverage all of their programs. it does not build upon existing expertise in programs already in the community. that is why we use of the children's working groups to step back from the peanut- centered approach that is always focused on the staffers. -- from the fema-centered approach. we need to know where or competencies' exist. -- work for -- where core competencies exist.

we do not want the state and locals to have to go through and the rat who has what. we can focus on outcomes. we can focus on the children. as of the federal family, we can support of the governor and local jurisdictions. >> i think you are right that it needs to change from the pima -- a fema-centered approach to a fema-led approach. to have them delivered through a partnership. one more question and then i have a few others grid in november, 2005, we lead the effort in support of senators -- without the support of these senators, it would not have happened. they led a one-time

unprecedented effort to establish a plan for the 300,000 children that had been displaced from the storm. in the week of august 29, which is approaching soon, we tried to find a school somewhere in america where they could start school on a monday, the following monday. children that are out of school for two or three weeks sometimes have to skip a whole year. under their extraordinary leadership, this plan was implemented and basically provided vouchers for up to 300,000 children to attend school for that year. as a result, the hurricane katrina class graduated. this was one time, though. my question is if you recommend a continuation of this plan and if so, how? and it not, what plan is going to be put in place the next time

a catastrophic disaster happens? them up again, those are issues we want to raise. -- >> again, those are issues we want to raise. we have about 25,000 families that have come to florida. there were not part of a direct evacuation. we were able to make decisions in the state of florida pretty matter of factly that any of these folks who had children of the school-age that wanted to enroll -- we did this across the board. we realized that it was something we would have to look at how we would come back to our federal partner agencies that provided funding and get funding. we did not want to take money away from the state of louisiana. but we recognize that it would be additional programs for our tax authorities. we want to go back and say, what is the best mechanism so the state has children coming into their state? or jurisdiction has children coming in -- how we provide that

assistance? >> i would respectfully suggest that you look at this program that seemed to work amazingly well. again, it was a very simple about your program, a 2 $7,500 as i recall -- up to $7,500 as i recall -- children could go from private school to public or private to catholic. you have to have a program that snaps into place within the first week of the disaster that is as -- it is obvious after a few days of analysis that there are no school to come back to. you have to have a button to press. all those senators put this in place with hurricane katrina and hurricane rita, it is not in place today. if another catastrophic disaster

happens this summer, in either texas, mississippi, alabama -- affecting hundreds of thousands of children -- we have to start all over again in getting actives we act of congress to give people confidence that there is a backup plan. i only raise this to say that, while we have done a lot of talk, there is all lot of other steps that need to be taken. one more question, the gao recently released another report on disaster case management programs. case managers are meant to help clients find jobs, permanent housing, access to critical services -- particularly after as a disaster. they can be extremely helpful in trying to make sense of things

and trying to identify the programs that are still operating out there and making them real for clients. what, in your study, could you share with us about the need for case managers? how did the case management program work generally? i think you testified to this. could you elaborate? >> overall, because of the chart you showed here with the multiplicity of funding streams. case -- case management is very important. it is important for low income families or families under stress to find out how they can put together a package of services they need to stabilize and regain their self- sufficiency. we have had to go major findings. one was -- as we found in the mental health area, and there was a significant lack of

case management providers and limited were for all services. this goes back to the fact that if there are not enough providers, there is no want to refer people to. the other major concern was sustainability of funding and gaps in funding. there was a situation in which a federal program was about to make a handoff to the state. this the program was not up and running. there was a two-month gap in case management services where families were unable to access anything whatsoever. >> i also understand that catholic charities step forward. this step forward to provide case management, but under the current law, they were not allowed to be directly helping. there were basically losing money as a nonprofit trying to deliver services for the federal and state government.

is that your understanding? >> i am not sure i have the details of the situation you're describing. i know that catholic charities had dropped out as a provider of counseling services because they could not recoup their indirect costs. this is part of the basis for our recommendation to expedite that reimbursement under fema's rules. >> thank you very much. i am going to ask the second panel to come forward. i really appreciate your participation this morning and i look forward to continuing to work with you. as the second panel comes forward, just to save time, let me begin to introduce them. our first witness will be mr. mark pryor, -- mr. mark shriver -- the commission authorized under the consolidated appropriations act has a

comprehensive study that examines children's needs as they relate to all hazards and evaluate existing laws relevant to the needs of children during and after a disaster. he has also -- he is also the vice president and managing director for the u.s. programs to save the children. he served as a member of the maryland house of delegates. he is not new to this subject. we are pleased and honored to have him with us today. dr. redlener also serves on the national commission on children in disasters. he is president and co-founder of the children's health fund, which works to educate the general public about barriers to help corporate he really stepped up after hurricane katrina. he did tremendous support and encouragement to us along the gulf coast. we are grateful for your help and support. finally, teri fontenot,

president and chief executive officer of women's hospital in boston ridge. -- in baton rouge. she chaired the louisiana hospital association professional and general liability trust. she is leading one of the finest hospitals, in my view, in the hospitalouisiana area. it serves 8500 children. they are a leader in disaster preparedness and response. it is a special group of infants that we need to keep our attention to during a disaster. let us start, mr. shriver. >> thank you very much, madam chair, for hosting this hearing and for your interest in this

issue. i have submitted a longer report. you said most of the things i was interested in st. and points i was trying to get across. for the record, i am mark shriver. i just want to summarize, madam chair, and say a couple of quick facts. children are 25% of the population, yet this the federal government and state government and all across the board, we have spent more time in energy and money focused on the needs of pets in disaster planning a response than would have on children. that is 25% of the population that has received less time, focus, and resources than pets. i think for this country in this situation, that is absolutely outrageous. children, as we know, they are

at risk and vulnerable. as mr. fugate just said, i think what he is proposing to do at fema --through the efforts over there are an exciting first step in the direction to try to address children's needs in a conference of an effective manner. -- in a comprehensive and effective manner. our interim report is due in october of this year. our final report is due to the president and congress in 2010. we have engaged a large community of entities. it is not just state and federal government, but nonprofits as well. i want to comment again -- what mr. fugate has started at fema

is very exciting. i want to say a couple of words on child care. you have said -- you have put the children's report up there. the issue is critically important, not just from a child's perspective, which is paramount, but the fact is that following a disaster, if you do not have todd tiahrt, you have all lost -- if you do not have a child care program, you have lost opportunities. evacuation, reunification, and accommodating children with special needs -- only seven states in the country have the basic minimum in place. that, too, i think is absolutely outrageous and should be addressed through legislation. i will highlight a couple of of things i'm pointing out in my

written legislatiosubmission. clearly, we are supportive of the concept that funding is necessary for the establishment of temporary emergency dr. and recovery of todd tiahrt infrastructure. -- recovery of child care infrastructure. we propose that during of the reauthorization the state child care be made a requirement and that they be required to have -- child care providers have to have comprehensive plans that incorporate shelter, evacuation, relocation, staff training, continuity of service to children ands with special needs. we ought to encourage you to

look into that, madam chair. i know time is of the happens. i will end by saying that a lot of the ideas you and your staff have been working on are critically important. i would only encourage you as a member of the nonprofit community to follow up again and again. you do not hold everyone's feet to the fire -- kids, because they do not vote and a particularly poor children are not actively engaged in the political process. you are their voice. if you do not stand up and follow up diligently -- they will unfortunately suffer from benign neglect. that benign neglect, i do not think is the way this country should be acting, for the vulnerable and poor children across the country. thank you, madam chair. >> i want to note for the record

that administered a -- who has stayed for the second panel -- mr. fugate has stayed for the second panel and i thank you. we have great -- >> we have a great appreciation for you and this commission. i am a pediatrician. i'm the president of children's health fund and director for the national center of disaster preparedness at columbia university. i chaired a subcommittee on human services recovery. shortly after hurricane katrina and working with local officials, we did this past several teams to the gulf to provide acute mental health care for evacuees and survivors. those became permanent services

affiliated with universities. tuesday, the record, we of seen over 60,000 -- to state, for the record, we have seen over 60,000 people. we have conducted long-term interviews with thousands of families. i want to summarize a couple of key points out of many that are important to our discussion. this comes from our clinical information and our study. more than three in five parents have felt that their general situation is currently either uncertain or significantly worse than it was before katrina. secondly, approximately one- third of the displaced children are least one year older than of corporate for their grade level in school. third, according to interviewed parents, more than two-thirds of children displaced by the hurricane are experiencing emotional or behavioral problems as we speak. in a steady last autumn of our program in louisiana, 41% of children were found to have an

efficiency, anemia, a third had impaired vision 55% had been earning or behavioral difficulties. to get a sense of scale, i believe the number of disaster- related, excessively vulnerable children right now is an excessively high. there are over 30,000 children still in limbo and at substantial risk. many children who are now developing chronic emotional programs or failing schools will not easily recover. we are undermining, not just the correct, but they're neutral -- not just the current state, but their future potential as well. the images of people waiting on rooftops for rescue has been extraordinary as up failure.

-- as a failure. the damage to children has been in cities. but the lawyers in the recovery have locked the attention -- but the failures in the the recovery have locked the attention on the government. the long-term recovery is lacking leadership and clarity about what we even mean by recovery. we're talking about rebuilding the physical environment or rebuilding the family life. natural disaster -- natural disaster strategy was mandated after hurricane katrina. that strategy has yet to appear. dhs and hhs as new leadership and we're hopeful that we may see the emergence of this critical new road map. it is not -- the needs of

children must be understood and is not -- disaster response planning. we think this is changing. perhaps, most egregious of all, there is a growing sense -- a monumental misunderstanding -- that recovery from large-scale disaster is a local problem to be solved and managed by states and local jurisdictions. the destruction at a level we saw a post hurricane katrina and hurricane rita, and the flooding of new orleans will remain a national problem. it is highly material to the well-being of the economy and the security of the united states. i want to make a couple of points about what mark was saying about children. in general -- let me just get three of them. the national recovery program must be completed as rapidly as

possible. i would ask for that by the end of this calendar year. there is no reason that needs to be delayed. if we do not have that, we will be flailing and trying to understand who is doing what for whom in the issue of long-term recovery. a high-level directorate needs to be established to work may all relevant federal aspects with respect to long-term recovery. they need to protect the needs of children and families during this transition. we would like to see how this national recovery strategy actually addresses that. some of the other issues around children which are -- which represent to me the most

dangerous problem we are facing right now -- as i said before, the problems will not be sometimes at all reversible. children that lose a one year or two in school cannot be recaptured. emotional problems rooted in four years of trauma -- we think it will take another two years to get everybody house, in fact we have housing available. those children -- we ignore at their peril and ours. i have been thrilled to be on the national commission. the national recovery strategy, when it develops, should have an explicit emphasis on mental health and academic success of this bill -- of displaced children. it cannot be ad hoc. it may be a star in the gulf, terrorists, in new york.

we do not want to redo this. we need a road map. there must be more credible case management programs. i had to medicate myself just to absorb the complexity and its functionality of what our country called the case management after the aftermath of katrina. mental health services for every displaced job should be assured and funded. this is because -- somebody has to take responsibility for not committing children to all -- for not permitting children to fall through the cracks. i am happy to answer any questions. our profound gratitude to you for taking the leadership on this issue.

>> thank you, doctor. teri fontenot? >> we are here to talk about our response and evacuation of critically ill patients. the important lessons learned and our recommendations will also be mentioned. our hospital is 70 miles northeast of new orleans and two hours from the gulf coast. hospitals are usually a place of refuge not a complex evacuation site. the need to evacuee a whole hospital had not been considered. we did just that by evacuating 122 infants from new orleans in four days. working with our heroic colleagues in new orleans under an animal conditions, not one transferred baby or mother died. there was hard work by thousands of people. the chaos was overwhelming.

they brought men, women, and children, left and right, to our hospital. the most critically ill infants and women remained. for one month after katrina, we cared for twice the number of critically ill infants and delivered 150 bbaies. -- babies. we also received an provided care for over 1100 other patients and work with area of churches to provide shelter for 110 newly delivered mothers and families because they were rejected at government-run and no-cost shelters. what began as a rescue became our response to overwhelming need be on medical care. i am incredibly -- are incredibly dedicated staff and our unit that was completed just weeks before katrina and drills that were held that held the label and permission about

needed -- valuable information. hurricane rita teams weeks after hurricane katrina. patients were evacuated to our hospital before the storm, a key lesson learned. we also contacted the neighboring states to discuss evacuation, especially if baton rouge became a disaster site. we took part in research with tulane university to study the effects of breast turn out an income -- the effects of stress on infant outcome. hospitals have strengthened their infrastructure.

hospitals depend on us to transport and care for their patients. our performance demonstrates that an expert organization -- with adequate capacity is critical of the emergency management of certain populations with fragile patients. it is the coordinator of care and has the capacity to care for displaced infants. named operation smart move -- it is meant to ensure that infants and mothers have a place to go. a remarkable opportunity exists to further implement these concepts as we rebuild the replacement hospital. surge the ability was implemented in the original design, but removed. building stand by and surge capacity is now unaffordable for us and most hospitals, even though the hospitals count on us for their needs.

the cost is critical for proper disaster urbanist -- disaster preparedness. hospitals like ours will participate in a real-time evacuation drill. another recommendation is the stafford act so that private organizations will be reimbursed. many times, organizations as this before, during, and after a disaster, yet are directly prohibited from receiving funds. this is important and important. we are honored to share our knowledge and experience for the care of our most vulnerable citizens. i will close with a special thank you for your ongoing support. i look forward to answering any

questions. thank you. >> thank you very much. we appreciate your leadership. you continue to make this senator very proud of the work that we are doing. i have one question for each of you because of time limitations. let me start with you. if you could just restate two points but the record. despite the fact that your hospital did such extraordinary work, produce day again what the current law allows you to get in terms -- could the u.s. state again what the current law allows you to get in terms of reimbursement? you are not in line for any reimbursement. could you explain that? >> my understanding is that because we're not a governmental agency, we are not able to respond -- we're not able to receive funds directly from

fema. we have to have a contract. >> could you talk a minute about the surge capacity issue? as we debate the health care bill and how we make reshape the system, i think this is important. if you could just comment about a lack of surge capacity. >> thank you. most hospitals are faced with cuts because of an adequate reimbursement, particularly medicaid, that is the primary care for children and particularly infants. 60% of the infants in i see you are covered by medicaid. half of the cover -- in icu are covered by medicaid. whenever there are medicaid cuts, as there have been all around the country, hospitals are not able to provide the financial support for additional beds to be on standby or equipment or supplies or any of

those things. you need reimbursement -- any reimbursement they receive has to go for the core medical services. it is very expensive to have planning and drills and that sort of thing. >> thank you very much. mr. schreiber, could you sum up, besides your excellent recommendations and this strategy you would like to see implemented by the end of the year -- without the requirement that states step up and at least have evacuation, reunification, and written procedures for disaster planning. are there one or two other specific suggestions you would like to mention? things that you think from your study and review should be really at the top of our list to

address in the next few weeks and months? >> i think dr. rob leonard mentioned coming up with the national framework is critically important. i think, as you look at todd tiahrt development and put those requirements -- and look at the child care development and put those requirements in there and you have all child-care facilities in this country looking at the issue of reunification in evacuation planning for the children with special needs -- that their needs are incorporated into their planning and that is tied in with the local emergency management communities. i would consider that a hugely successful five and a half months. i think that would be fantastic. i think the issue of -- that mr. fugate talked about re garding the stafford act and

having those facilities be reimbursed -- i know there are intricacies involved, but if you can address that issue and come up with recommendations and funding for that, i think that would be hugely successful. frankly, if you could have another hearing to make sure we are doing what we're supposed to be doing, that would make the next five and a half months be very successful. the first meeting we had, at about half way through, we rattled off a couple of recommendations and he and the secretary of are working aggressively on that. he has set up meetings every 30 days to engage progress -- to gauge projects or the lack of progress. hold our feet to the fire and the executive branch's speak to the fire predomina. >> cross is very much. you said that its management

was -- thank you very much. you said that its management -- you could not recall a case management. -- really call it case management. when we think about creating a new system --part of the delivery system might be done through schools as they start up, and the terms of school based counseling services. do you want to comment about the preference for that court should there be opportunities community wide? what is it about school based counseling that you think is particularly desirable? >> first of all, we have to have a system that make sure that every child is in school and in a proper day care facilities and after-school programs. it could become the basis of

stability for families and children. from that point of view, if you can have a service is emanating out of that model -- every child is in school. it is possible to think about a system that would mandate -- not only the kids been in school, but the appropriate safety net programs and the systems for the families be generated by that relationship as well. i would say -- i want to say one other word about his management. there were lots of very good people doing case management in the gulf. there still are. the catholic charities and other organizations that are down there that are governmental and non-governmental. the problem is that it is so fragmented and disorganized that many families are slipping through the cracks. i want to clarify that lots of good work was done. it is just that -- we do not know how many children -- getting the numbers -- 17,000

or 30,000 was one of the more difficult challenges i have had in the research in 20 years. there is not a single agency that deals solely with tracking these displaced families. if you start with that -- you have an inability to even figure out how many or were they are. we begged fema and the state to make sure that nobody was discharged so that we grew bright services first. there were bureaucratic snafus. one of the largest case management programs never got implemented. not 1 cent was spent until very recently. secondly, we could not track families and have no idea where they are. i do not know where children are.

i would challenge the federal government to try to figure out where they are. how many are in, alabama? how many are still struggling, in this place conditions? >> thank you so much. i would like to close with a couple of commons. -- a couple of comments. .

getting schools open, getting children back in touch with their teachers, a familiar face at that moment that is very significant to children with such trauma. i cannot overestimate and overstate how important this is, and the federal government that does not recognize the importance of schools is a public, private, catholic, or independent, and the ability of schools to step into the gap before the rest of the community comes back is the model that i see. the celebration of joy when a school would open in a neighborhood, what it meant to that community could not be overestimated. i would like to end with that. a great deal of challenges. this record will stay open for two -- for 15 days.

anyone can submit to the record, and we will take you up on your strong recommendation to hold people accountable for the outcomes that we have indicated today. thank you so much, and the meeting is adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

still to come, journalists who have covered the recent economic downturn talk about developments in the financial markets. later, the president of the agency that manages the internet names and addresses. today, william suter on his role in the court and how the supreme court decides to take cases. that will be followed with a discussion on the building of the supreme court in the 1930's. today at 7:00 p.m. eastern, here on c-span.

>> it is gone. you have lost it, you do not own it anymore. and that hurts. my possessions are now in a storage bin. i was able to get out before the house was locked up. >> this week, lesley and andrew cockburn on american casino, there were winning documentary on the impact of subprime mortgages on minority career sunday at 8. now available, a great read for any history buff. it is a unique contemporary perspective on lincoln from 56 scholars, the journalists, and rikers, from lincoln school year is -- lincoln's school years through his life. now in digital audio, available where digital audio download are

sold. learn more at c-span.org /lincolnbook. >> this is a conference from the university of virginia. >> the subject of debt and deficits, that is the conference.

i wonder what some of the founders of the republic might have thought about the subject of our discussion today and tomorrow. how do we govern through those deficits? in fact, most of them had some acquaintance with the subject. alexander hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, is said to have said, "a national debt, if not excessive, will lead to a national budget." mr. jefferson, who did not always follow his advice to others, said "never spend your money before you have it." i have often thought that we have here tonight is a discussion about how people's thoughts, ideas, opinions,

reactions, to the news and events of the day are affected by the 24 hour, seven-day week coverage by the media. tonight we're here to find out. we have a panel moderated by bob franken. he is an emmy award winning journalist, syndicated columnist he served as a correspondent for cnn and msn bc. our second panelist is margaret brennan.

she is also a graduate of mr. jefferson's university of virginia. alan murray is deputy assistant managing editor of of the "wall street journal's out of -- "wall street journal's out -- wall street journal." next, we have robert simons, a contributing editor at "newsweek" where he has written about business and economic issues since 1977.

past and future of american affluence. we have a pbs correspondent for the news hour. recently, he has become a fellow at yale's center. he was a lively moderator at the panel that followed at the dinner. and without, and going to turn to bob and asked him to conduct the discussion on the question, has the financial crisis changed the nature of economic news.

>> people are almost desperate to want to pay attention to the type of thing, the selahi thing. and they are encouraged to do so by my medium, television. but there is a much greater consequent these days, and what we have in terms of financial burden is the best of times and worst of times. we have the best of times, people admired because of their ability to explain arcane concept to which people can understand. unfortunately, people often tends to not take the time to understand them, and we have the self-feeding media frenzy. i guess i could ask you whether

you feel like you're sometimes singing to the deaf. [laughter] >> there is a vote in my house as to whether i should get a hearing aid. no, i do not. i think that there's a hunger for information and journalism. i think people feel overwhelmed by the amount of information, and they have a hard time sifting through all of the raw data and the rush of events, what it means. and i think many readers or viewers think someone, somewhere knows what it means.

and this sensation of feeling -- of feeling not understanding what is going on is, in fact, one of the events we are portraying. part of this crisis was that the events on the ground moved faster in a way that was not anticipated by people who were supposed to be in charge and understand what was going on. but i do not sense that there is at the out there or in different. but there is a confusion reflecting the reality that there is confusion and the fact that there are so many different sources of information, even somebody serious and ernest will be bombarded by lots of stuff they can not make sense of.

>> by the way, this will be less a panel discussion than a conversation. and i want to ask you to participate in the conversation. if you have a question you want to ask, feel free to walk over to the mike but at interject. >> i think that is exactly right. when you look up along historical view over the past years, there are more talented journalists today than ever in my career. i graduated from school in 1977. i did go to the university of north carolina. when i got out of school,

financial journals were kind of the place you put somebody who did not do very well, maybe he had an alcohol problem. you would say go over here, you can write the financial column. and the first thing i did when i graduated was to find one of the few people out there writing intelligence stuff. and the world has changed a great deal. you and many of your colleagues to wonderful stuff. what you have done at the news hour, there just has been an explosion of really good, smart financial journalist puts it. and this whole concept of the mainstream media, which may have had meaning 25 years ago, with networks and papers that

matter, you have had some of different sources of information, and the problem is not that there is not good information out there. the problem is what people are choosing to consume. it is a matter of consumer choice. there are people who for whatever reason seem to prefer to consume new information that supports their on predilections and baez's, creating bubbles around themselves. technology makes it an easy thing to do. if you are in line with moveon .org and only want information that supports your personal biases, you can do that. >> and there are media now who are exploiting that. >> yes, and doing very well. you can find as much stuff to

read off of the web. a few lean the other direction, it is very easy, you can go to a dozen blogs and never read anything that challenges your view of the world. i think that is a problem for society. i do not really see it as the media's fault. the media is putting a lot of stuff out there. if you want quality information, you can get it. but you have to do it. >> there was an old joke on television that news people were told to get up there and scratched the surface. you probably have to deal with this dilemma every day.

>> anyone can really sort of expect their own view, whatever form. twitter, whatever. 140 characters. you can get a fought out there, and people are following it and investing it. but there is the spot collection process, which, you are right, it is allowing people to hone in on the information they want. there is a bit of reaction to just the opinion that we have seen saturate cable news in particular. anecdotally, i have had a lot of people said that they were really tired of that. there were tired of noise, looking for the nuggets.

how do you get an organization that can even afford to put reporters in the field, get those things out there, and get them right now? there? >> you get the sense you should call the nielsen organization and get a box in their house because that's not what the nielsen numbers are showing. >> well, there's a bet on this. the paper content thing. that's a whole other topic. but you were talking about this idea of scratchinging the surface and it's something i have struggled with because now i'm at bloomberg news which is wonderful because you can really go in depth and i've been given the platform and leeway to do so. i can go beyond a minute and 30 on something, which is unbelievable. your vfering -- average television report is one minute

seven or something. unless you're the president you're not getting that. but i had a wonderful experience being with the msnbc family so long, so not only was i take -- talking to people who were choosing to seek out financial content, it was going and talking to people at home who were forced to understand financial news all of a sudden and that is scratching the surface but it raises the question of how much onus should be put on the journalists themselves to be disstill sg down to the point that people do need to know and not just reflecting what people want to hear. >> not just the journalists but the people who tell the journalists what they should be covering the >> right. >> which is not a problem at pbs. >> no, no. that's why i stayed there all those years. i've been at the newshour or one of its incarnations or another since 1985 and literally it's true that within a couple of years of being

there i thought i will never take another job anywhere else in television because it would be so confining and it would not allow me to do what i do. even so, the length of a typical newshour piece is shrinking. >> down to seven minutes now? >> no, we still go longer than that. [laughter] i think the piece you had on tonight was about seven. and that was all right for me. i felt as if i had a member lopped off, you know, to -- >> that's like my dream to -- >> you see why then i would continue to do this job forever. it's not singing to the deaf, it's singing to the attention deficit disordered that's the issue. i had a piece a few years ago, well, quite a few years ago, that ran 18 minutes.

>> i'm weeping. >> you remember george burns once said he loved the newshour, he went to sleep to it every night. he may have been watching that piece. i don't really know. but no, it's -- in the culture in general there is a shrinking of the sound bite. . it affects us all. that obviously was tremendously problematic, because if you're talking about explaining something in 1 minute 20 seconds, people here today, we

had moments in the panel where as an aside, i would ask somebody a question, and it would take one minute and 20 seconds to have the exchange. that is obviously a problem. >> people are presented with the idea that they did not have to take the argument at 15 or something like that. add to that the willingness of politicians to exploit that, and you end up with situations like we have the summer with health care. people do not seem that willing to read, for instance.

we had a lot of people pay attention to who should, but frankly do not. >> some people that you're talking by read a great deal. it is not their unwillingness to read, it is what they are reading. >> it is the idea that every voice should be heard. people get even stronger convictions when they can just collect confirmation. >> i was hired in the 1960's as

a city reporter, and i came down in two weeks. we had an opening on the business page. i was 23, and i thought was not a good idea to tell the editor what to do. he took it. the last time i checked, it was 80 people. it might be lower now. i remember giving and lectured newsweek a few weeks ago on depreciation.

and we have to reach conclusions, to distill things into understandable sound bites and what every want to call them, because there is a competition to get the illusion of as much information in a short time as you can.

you have to take stuff out when you're writing 700 or 900 or thousand. >> he did not know that anybody has got to the end. [laughter] but you speak about the mark of pressure, and it is a circumstance now where various market pressures affect the internet as much as anything else, and all the technologies. but the availability of traditional media to afford the expertise they need and the investment they need to properly preserve the subject as complex as the economy and health care.

>> is a irrelevant one. -- it is a fair point, and a relevant one. there are a lot of market pressures in the past 2.5 years, all of the sudden shove from the back to the next two years to come. but we also have to think about in the generation. i was training him to she yet.

-- see it. you see what people are looking for, what they are seeking out, and how much do you report on what they need to know. do you give them ice cream, or do you give them properly with ice cream to make them eat it. -- do you give them broccoli with ice cream to make them needed? >> there are to dubuque inflated issues. -- there are two conflated issues. one is that the information concerning more tauruses than they have ever had, if they want to watch videos, it is easier. if they want to say what they have been doing, but it is easier to do that and it has ever been before. i would like to think we have 20

million visitors a month. consumer choice is a great thing, even if you do not like the way some consumers are exercising their choices. >> there are a couple of things to talk about. isn't there a mistake made sometimes that people have a chance to look at media? >> for businesses to keep your attention.

that is where we get revenge. for them to buffer it, things like that. is there. granting arguments, how much is out there to read. it is fair. but they do not read books as much. >> they reach shorter things. -- shorter things. if you are going to tv, and tv is what you're dealing with, had you get somebody's attention when you are trying to keep them watching when you have hundreds of different options and they

can go get a beer? people have learned the techniques of work on the brain, and one of them is when something moves in the frame, we are program from the evolution to think maybe it as a creditor. i hate to be overly simplistic, but there's plenty of hypothesizing that is what is going on. that is why we think this stuff keeps moving. it is all happening, and there are other techniques. when you talk about making ice cream into broccoli, yes kerrigan anybody working in the news hour should constantly be thinking about how do you keep it interesting. now that as with any communicator does. in some form, they always have. >> it is the same thing as

selling a new product common and and what happened was for the longest time there was no real competition for that product. five we were like auto companies. there is a tremendous benefit to keeping people's attention, and you can keep their attention with techniques that have nothing to do with teaching them about the world. that is a classic, age-old struggle, but it is one that might be increased by the nature of our ability to manipulate mines for regan >> i did not think anyone would take -- to manipulate mines. >> i did not think anyone would take you seriously. >> i have a question. in the old days there were guys to produce information and consumers and the gatekeepers. i am exaggerating a bit, but what is happening now, for

example, for you -- you have competition, not just with lots of people producing it, but you also have things in your sphere. what does that do to you if for example, simon johnson were to start hosting a show? what would you do? what does the do to you? do you feel threatened? is it good for you or bad for you? how do you respond? >> you are absolutely right. for years and years i have written about the glories of markets and the benefits of competition, but i always assumed i would be exempted from the benefits of market, and all of a sudden, they have come

flooding through, and i have to say, i do not like it. i wish all the economists would unplug their computers, but unfortunately, this is not going to happen, and there are two defects, i think. -- two effects, i say. one is that rewards to journalists are going to go down, because there are a lot of people reaching the stars and people who can say, i draw this kind of audience will be well rewarded, perhaps better than they used to be, but the run-of- the-mill people are basically competing with lots of folks who are offering their opinions, either for free or at a reduced rate, and a reduced rate meaning somebody else is going to be paying their mortgages send food

bills or whatever, and the economic award they are getting -- most is psychological. that is one of fact. the second effect is -- and i agree with alan. it is unfortunate in some ways for people like me, but with all the competition, i would say it improves probably the average product and put pressure on people like me to make our stuff relative region relevant -- hours of relevance so we can survive in this competitive marketplace, but it is also going to produce an awful lot more diversity, and that is to say you are going to have a lot more in junk, and you have more high quality stuff, and in general, it is a good result, but i would prefer to go back to the bad old days.

>> this gets to your second point, which we have not talked about, which is what this is doing to the economic market. it had to do with what technology is doing to the economic model. as a consumer, being able to read paul krugman or simon johnson or having those voices of people who want to analyze things or study what they are thinking or willing to do it free on the side to keep auriana huffington happy is a good thing, but a lot of us really think it is important for society that there be people out there who are paid to find out the facts, who are not doing this on the side, who are not being paid to do something else than to do this to build their names, but are paid to go out and do the hard reporting it takes to find out what is really going on, and that is going to

be the challenge for the next 10 years, coming up with business models that enable organizations to support a large group of reporters. >> isn't part of the problem that most people do not understand or certainly do not celebrate journalism. now they are one. just about everyone decides he can become a journalist, and journalism itself is dying. i mean the person -- your mother says she loves you. check it out. that seems to be dying. >> there are lots of good journalists out there eager to work if somebody can. >> as opposed to somebody who presents himself as a journalist who is really an advocate. >> that is the question about simon johnson. how many people know who simon

johnson is? simon johnson is the former chief economist for the imf. in all the years i have interviewed economists, and that is 32 now -- these things are quickest, with most insightful i have ever interviewed, so to answer the question, how would i feel about simon having his own show -- i would be jealous. i would figure i would be on the show, so i would not worry that much, but what you were saying, i would be concerned that simon, who has a point of view, a point i often agree with, but if simon has a show, financial daytime

tv, let's say, which is the kind he can absolutely do, it would take viewers away from me if he was doing some of his explanations, and i am forced to work in an organization where it is real on the one hand -- on the other hand, check out your mother's claims. i would feel the world might well be a better place for having simon in it as well, to the extent i thought even-handed journalism -- viewers were being taken away from that to him. i might have misgivings. >> the news has become, the thais, and what you're buying -- not modified, and what you're buying into is an individual brand more and more these years, so that is what my impression is

of the network's decision to bring in a name like two of them that have been bandied around here is because people have an idea of what they are going to get when they tune in, and i think there's a premium put on quality of that information being delivered, but that is different. people do want to hear opinions, a few points, and what's not, but the journalism we're talking about being in danger does require a tremendous amount of investment, and that is what is in danger. i do not mean to say there is not true value o, because they'e giving you an interesting viewpoint, and those are the same people a journalist can call and say, what do you think about this? >> now they get their own shows, and it is cheaper in the long

run than investing in reporters. >> i want to follow up on some of the report -- some of the points being made about the language having to do with fact. we have talked about consuming ice cream rather than broccoli. my question has to do with the difference between fact and opinion. one of the things we know when we go to the grocery store is witkin with a label and see how much protein and calories -- we can look at the label and see how much protein and calories are in it. no longer is there is clear a separation between fact and opinion -- i can look at how the stocks did or how a team did, and that is not very arbitrary, but if i picked up "the new york times" or "the wall street journal," i know there is a selection because there's too much to cover, but at what point in time is the responsibility on the part of media to explicitly

acknowledge or try to keep editorials on the editorial page of separate editorializing from the reporting of the news? i wonder whether you think these things have been increasingly merged or have increasingly come together as a result of competition for viewers and advertising. >> isn't part of the problem that reporters should not be a, size. -- there is also context, which is part of our job. it is the selection of what goes into that that is going to offend somebody who would like to see a different conclusion. >> what you're talking about is a curious byproduct of 20th- century america. i happen to believe in it. i happen to think it was a good buy products of 20th-century america, but it was pretty much you need to us, and things do

now seem to be heading in the other direction. i just came back from today's london, and it is a different kind of journalism. no effort to make -- two days in london, and its different kind of journalism. i think it is something that should been maintained, but there is the problem margaret was talking about, and that this technology does make facts duplicable, so yes, somebody had to spend the shoe leather to go find the facts, but once they do, it is pretty easy for everyone else to get onto it, so personality, voice, you need analysis, being carl krugman, tends to be an important way you get your readers to identify, because they can get the basic facts from 1000 different places. >> you get more of a reaction.

if you looked comments on blogs, not necessarily the blogs themselves, but thern#@ @ @ @ @ our comments. i have been linked in by meghan. then i got 50 comments on the block on this one post. they were the rudest bunch of -- some more intelligent than

others, i am not making an issue of agreeing or disagreeing, but it was a different purpose. and i think it just shows that, of course it is easier to cut an attitude and get a response to that attitude. , and that tends to be self- fulfilling to the extent that you go to consumers highways. -- consumer's choice. >> i now work for rupert murdoch, and a lot of people think rupert murdoch is the guy -- he created fox news, and it had a media logical attack on cnn, and there was a great deal of fear at the time he took over "the wall street journal" that he might use it to compete with "the new york times" the same way he used fox to compete with cnn. you could not do anything to

drag the editorial page further to the right than it already is. a lot of us were worried about that, and it has not happened. why hasn't it happened? it has not happened because rupert is a smart business person, and our audience appreciates the fact that in the news pages -- sure, we provide analysis and try to put things in perspective, but we know -- they know we'll police attempt -- it is not that we do not have biases and that they did not creep into the reporting, but they know we are trying to go out and find out what really happened and tell them what happened, and our audience appreciates that, in part because they are in business, and when you're putting money down on the line, you cannot afford a vice when you want good information. what does that tell you? that tells me at the end of today the kind of journalism you

are talking about will survive if people wanted to survive. if there is an audience for that kind of journalism, that will survive. >> that is the big if. will people wanted to survive if they can get their newset ainment if it seems to contribute to a national hysteria that makes honest consideration of issues more difficult. >> look to you are talking about. when you talk about the pbs news hour -- bloomberg is certainly. i go to bloomberg regularly for my news. that is the first place. >all i am saying is this is appealing to -- we should just the knowledge it is appealing to very narrow stratum of the american public, and when you

keep talking about is the general level of discourse as opposed to the discourse taking place here tonight, for example. but the general level of discourse is what matters here. every individual has a vote, and most individuals do not pay the kind of attention they should. >> my theory is in terms of what we're talking about with frustration and mixture of opinion, we are always getting some sort of opinion. how many times have you heard walter cronkite cited for saying how wonderful it is to take a stand. you are always giving something. you always know where to stand and what to get your information. now it is hard to decide who is credible and who is not. people are responding to personal brands if not network once, because they want to know what they are going to get. maybe it is picking their same

opinion and someone who thinks like them, or maybe it is, but i think it is going to lead to a multimedia model where it is may be scratching the surface to complement where you get more of the information flowing through more or more. i think there is going to have to be that kind of consolidation if there is going to be a media -- a viable media model, because we're all fighting for a slice of the media prior -- media pie. >> it has been very interesting to listen to the panel discussed increase in media outlets over time. the expansion of financial reporting, depending on your medium, the number of reporters themselves who are engaged in

analyzing and reporting on financial issues. my question -- but you have also mentioned the amount of coverage given to a television financial story may be no more than one minute and 15 or 20 seconds. my question is this. what is your perception, given this expansion of media outlets, the increase in reporting -- what is your perception of public comprehension of the financial system in the country? did they simply read your headlines, watch your lead story, and then turn somewhere else? is that the basis of your understanding, or is it your perception that they do not understand because it has not been explained to the media to which they turn for news to distinguish between debt and deficit or how budgets are adopted at the federal level.

i would be interested in your perception of however you would put the news, how you think the public except sit and comprehend it. >> my view is -- i do not mean this as disrespectful. most civil do not know much about anything, and there is a good reason for that. it is because there is too much to know, and i am always surprised but should not be any more, when i got and talk to people who are very bright, who are very engaged, and who are very interested and knowing what's significant is going on, how little they know about the subjects i would talk about every day, and i think the reason for that is that unless you are personally engaged in many of these issues or subjects, it is almost impossible to know what you might want to know, and the kind

of people i am talking about our doctors, lawyers, government officials, and faith -- in state and local governments. people have their lives to leave. they cannot pretend they are in graduate school and every day they are going to spend three or four hours going through the stuff they ought to go through so they can remain informed about the major issues of our time, so i do not blame people. i agree with i think everyone here that there is more information available, and easily accessible than ever before, that people who want this information can, but it is very difficult to assemble -- assemble the stuff, and i will give you an example now with this health care bill. my brother, who is not a journalist and who does not live in washington, is much more perceptive of these things than i am. he said, it is your impression

no one understands what is in this bill, and i said, that is basically the truth. i am learning new things about what is in these bills every day, and i am certain even the people who are dealing with it seven days a week, 24 hours a day, do not know everything that is in these bills, and this is just the kind of microcosm of the difficulty of staying up with stings. it is we do with things. it is not what i cover, but i am reading most of what i can find about afghanistan, and i am completely confused about what we should do in afghanistan. i think the case on both sides is compelling, and i am sure also that there really do not have the foggiest notion of what is going on in afghanistan. there's a limit for what people can know, and i see -- i think we have only 365 days in the

year, and the internet has not changed that. >> the world has become much more complex. it is a much more complicated place. we are talking about the financial crisis, so at this conference we did, alistair darling said during the interview that after lehman brothers and the crisis in september, he was talking to a very senior, well-respected london banker, and he said, have things changed at your institution? oh, yes, things have changed a lot. one thing we have made a firm policy that we are not going to buy any security we do not understand. wait a minute. what did you do before? these are very complicated. it is a much more complicated world, and even people that are in the middle of it do not understand. >> i have a really tough

question about journalism. what is the use? you talk about the futility of journalism, but we cannot really explain what is going on. is that what you're saying? >> in my side of the business back in the late 1960's, i have a model in my mind that if we bring the right facts to bear that the system is ultimately rational. it may not be rational day-to- day and week to week, but if you bring the right facts to a situation, a policy will go in the right direction. if you persuade people this is an educational process, i did not believe this anymore. what i believe is when people have made up their minds about something, it is almost impossible to change their minds. it is not that their minds cannot be changed, but they cannot be changed by facts and evidence. they have to be changed by

experience. before world war ii americans were avid isolationists, so we fought the second world war, and in half a century, people thought what we had done between the wars was not a good idea. that was not because franklin roosevelt convince them isolationism was bad. it was because they could see the policy was an abject failure. i think people who have not made up their minds about something, the debate can change, so what is the virtue of a free press. the virtue is that democracy is a very messy system, and the free press is a part of that system, and the system would be worse off if we did not contribute to it, but it is very difficult to say that we have made things better in a very

specific way, and to the question about bias earlier, the problem with bias in my view is not that there is more of it, because there obviously is in the blogs and whatever, but most of that is harmless in the following sense. people know this is bias. nobody pretends that they are moderates, so most of the biases of front. it is like going to the grocery store and buying something with sugar or not. you can read it. there -- when people read it, it is the unconscious bias in what we decide.

those are the most dangerous, and i think my view of of the danger of forth we used to call the mainstream media with this process -- is that this process is driving some major news organizations to the left or right, and there is a kind of self selection process that goes on here. what academic research and common sense suggests is that when audiences become a typical political tide, you start aiming news of the audience. it is commercial survival. it is the kind of feedback you get, so that is the danger for what we used to be the mainstream media. i think the journal has resisted that very well. that very well. i am not sure some of the other

the people reading it here, your audience, but they are political in some sense, but before being political, they are engaged in business every day, and they want information they can trust. . . if he quits, sarah palancin has a whole editorial page. if we quit, we leave the field to lou dobbs and jim cramer, so it would seem in the sense of posture you would want to surround and not ask questions surround and not ask questions like that, -- want us not ask questions like that. and i think of the point as

being a point of trying to educate and not just educate people who happen to watch the show. i never thought i would be talking to more people than would be talking to me, so it seems like an incredible privilege to have the small an audience, but beyond that, i think seriously my main issue is to get the pieces and excerpts from the pieces we do into the hands of high school teachers who have to teach all of americans and who have been facing a tremendous problem, which is economic, a topic most people shrink from because of the numbers. i know it is happening. >> the scary thing about your audience and my audience -- 1.2

million is a good audience. i was doing washington week in review when they canceled the sponsorship because they said this audience was too old. when you're too old for then arp you know you have a problem. >> i do know what is happening. we do not have an account, but i've spoken to groups, and teachers are desperate because students are not reading the books anymore or not as much, so there is lots of video in the classroom, and if you have video, a little bit of broccoli, a little bit of ice cream, a little bit of stuff moving on the screen and try to explain it, i think that is the point. >> when somebody was making the point this was too big to comprehend, it is our job to try to take out the points that are most important and make them comprehensible, something people

can understand. >> i should add, i think there is a good chance to pursue the truth. that by itself is an important value, and i am sure i am not getting at it, but i am working for it, and that is what i try to do, and make it accessible to people in a format which is digestible. what i was trying to suggest is that by itself is not necessarily going to lead into the garden of eden. >> that is the important point, the people do not always make rational use of this information. i was talking about the credit defaults swaps and stuff like that, but even the people buying it did not understand, but there was a lot going over the last three years that was easy to understand and i think a lot of people did understand. how many people did not

scratched their head a little bit when they heard mortgage companies were making loans -- 100% loans, no money down, and you do not have to prove you have a job or an income, and we will qualify you based on the first year's payment, even though in two years the payment is going to double. everyone knew that was going on, and they chose not to react to it, not because they did not know it, but because it was in their interests. when you have moments of national mania like the one we went through for a couple of years, and we did it again during the internet -- a think it is too simplistic to say it is because people do not know what is going on. i think people knew what was going on in many cases and found it in their interest to keep it going. >> i think financial journalism has shown its relevance in the last year-and-a-half, because

all of a sudden there's a tremendous hunger for it. i think there are questions to be raised for how the coverage was, the quality of it, was the work done -- there is a fair amount of criticism that has already been leveled, but that is why -- i struggled with this question myself. did financial journalism, did everyone really do their job? then you go back and read the journal and elsewhere, and you find a fair amount of people who did great pieces that did not draw in any kind of attention at the time, because people do not want to hear a negative story. they just want to hear, there is an amazing merger in china. although growth is great, but people do not want to hear warnings. >> we were hearing this

question, is a doll becoming opinion? people who criticize this -- is it all becoming opinion? people who criticize the stories did not say, this is an outrage. that is not our job. it is your job to figure out if it is susceptible. >> i did a story in 2006 were two people are talking about whether there is going to be housing crisis or not. the guy has now become famous as the great doomsayer. i was denounced in one place for having tried to cause housing prices. it was clear that the presenter favor the opposition of

>> lighting people know what needs to be done, what regulations need to be put in place, all of these kinds of things that perhaps will prevent -- we went from one bubble to the next one very quickly. nobody is being worn away from whenever the next bubble is going to be. >> this is a systemic bias. we went through this 30 year. -- 30-year period of market's self correcting. most journalists were brought up -- is their entire professional life became sort of the accepted wisdom that markets may go a little bit astray now and then,

but generally, the correct themselves. we had this event there really cause, i believe, some fundamental ways that call that and the question. we rethink the conventional wisdom of three decades. i don't think any of us have really fully come to grips with that. >> beyond even that, there is the concept of regulation, issues that might be raised about taxation, about stagnation in the economy. all these different things that i don't get the impression that the media is really addressed the -- addressing. >> you have to remember that at the end of the day, people that

really have the podium are the people we elect into office. setting an agenda. creating a framework in which issues are discussed are not discussed. i would say that there is more agenda setting outside of the political fast that then there was 30 or 40 years ago, precisely in -- because of the rise of ideological cable channels and political partisan websites, whatever. to some extent, the language and conversation is not completely set by our political class. when i came into the business, when alan came into the business, we did not think it was, as you said, what we were supposed to do. we were supposed to provide

information to help people understand what is going on, but we were not supposed to pretend that anybody had elected us or set the agenda. we would sometimes drift as we think we are crusaders and we are going to make the world better. there is a certain constraint, some people thought it was too much self restraint. when that restraint has dissolved, the people that set the tone for political conversation and subject matter are the people we elect to office. we rise and fall on their wisdom and courage. >> is there something that the media should be providing, a sense of -- >> palin probably has a better sense of this that i do. they used to have plenty --

these are long stories. my guess is that we are not all that well read. people make -- this is outside of journalism. my own view of politics is that there are some people that are server -- that are conservatives, some that are liberal, and they know how they're going to go before the candidates show up. there is probably 50% or 70% that are not terribly political and to make a lot of decisions based on that feeling. on whether they can trust the person or whether that person shares the values or whatever. and, you know, we would like to think that we live in this national world where people are

-- herbert simon that won a nobel prize some years back came up with this wonderful term that he describes most of the time, and we are not rational. we take all of the information that is dumped on us and try to make an educated guess, balance things out in a very crude way. hopefully, we add for the better. i don't think we can think that politics is ever going to be a completely rational, logical process. >> particularly in an area where media manipulation is easy to do. the negative ads, the campaign ads. they work.

>> policy is so quickly changing in this environment, it is unfair to suppose that there are resources except in very special places to do the kind of reporting about policy -- the recovery and the -- arra. that thing was more the 1000 pages long. nobody is going to pay me, even minimum-wage, to work as long as it is going to take to completely digest that. that is the final form of the bill. we have the service regulation bill that is going through and i have to make a decision all the

time. have you read the bill yet? bonnie's bill? >> i plead the fifth. >> if he has not read it, who the hell in america has read it? >> there are going to be a group of people out there who really want impartial, good, reported, a fact check information. to get it, they may have to pay for it and support it in some way. that is what we're doing. that is certainly what bloomberg does. people tried to do it in a kind of nonprofit way, raise money for people to support investigative journalism. that is the big question that is going to be solved. how do we find the people that care enough to pay for it. how do we get them to pay for it? how do we have a hybrid model

that allows the benefits of that also spread out to a broader public? that is what we are wrestling with right now. >> iw orkd f -- i work for this incorrect -- in direct public. it is more and more little ads. there is the real encroachment going on at the pbs newshour with regard to this. can it be independently in doubt, for example, so it does not have to count -- kowtow to said the ads or savvy advertisers -- smi-ads o -- semi-ads or semi-advertisers. >> for getting the editorial pressure, they certainly have questions of ratings and circulation. the best way to do that is to

have bill o'reilly on the air, as opposed to substantive journalism. now we can come up with something like the economy that does affect everybody. we will find out why it is that people have lost their savings. >> the question is, how broad is the appetite? how do we turn broccoli into -- i happen to love broccoli. turn ice-cream in the broccoli, how is that? do things to appeal to a broader audience, get it in the schools so that people actually become consumers of their own -- of this information. >> "the economist" is doing quite well, completely devoted information and substance. >> doing quite well for whom?

>> in a way, the problem is that the whole model of mass advertising as a way to support the media is, in retrospect, kind of crazy. that is what drives you to do tiger woods and bring the spears. it is not the value of information, is how to get the most eyeballs. what kind of information cannot produce that someone is willing to pay for it? that is what we do in a different sort of way. that is what the news hour does. that is what it is about. it gets away from the tyranny of the mass advertising model. >> the pay for content audience, and the last 16 hours, the top

three stories have been about tiger woods. that is the consumer, that is the behavior. i can assure you the metric. -- i can show you the metric. that is not dominating coverage. that is not what i am saying. i am saying that the information that people are seeking out. >> is that a measurement of people that subscribe the boxes? >> i am not people -- not people that watch tv. >> people on the internet? >> people on the terminal. >> they are not paying the $20,000 to get the tiger woods information.

>> know, their employer is. >> they just want to see what blumberg has to say about tiger woods. >> we have to know how tiger woods created the derivatives. >> i hope to guide your being facetious, but in fact, the techniques of trying to figure out how to get people interested in something that they would not otherwise be interested in is what your talking 30 or 40 minutes ago. always to try to figure out how to do, there will be different techniques on how to try to do it. that is the nature of communication. >> in television, someone would say one minute 30. i got the nod from the governor, what our 30. we will have a wrap this up. and thank you all very much. [applause]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> coming up next on c-span, remarks from u.s. ambassador susan rice on the ongoing turmoil of sedan -- sudan. in the agency that manages the internet names and addresses. then, supreme court clerk william suter and on how the court decides to take cases. tomorrow on "washington journal," obama administration's next steps with iran. and they look ahead to 2010 politics, and what is next for the democratic incumbent parties. and after that, daniel erikson.

>> fox news contributor michele malkin is our guest this weekend, the columnist and author of best-selling books. 3 hours with michelle malkin on "book tv." >> after a while, it sinks in. you lost it, you don't own it anymore. you are trespassing. my possessions are in a storage bin, what i was able to get out before the house was locked. >> "american casino." the award winning documentary on the sub prime mortgages and minorities. >> all this week, a rare glimpse into america's highest court

threw unprecedented on the record conversations with 10 supreme court justices. >> the most symbolically meaningful moment for me during my public investiture. it was sitting in justice marshall's chair and taking the oath with my hand on justice harlan's bible. it was like history coursing through me. >> the interviews conclude tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern with associate justice sonia sotomayor and retire justice sandra day o'connor. you can get a documentary on dvd, part of the "american icons" collection. one of many items available at c-span.org/store. >> remarks now from the u.s. ambassador to the united

nations, susan rice. on preventing and genocide in the darfur region of sudan. she spoke of the holocaust memorial for about an hour. >> welcome to the museum. i am director iblumfield. -- sara blumfield. we have people here from the advocacy committee and members of the museum board of directors. tonight's program is sponsored by the museum's committee on conscience. this is our effort to deal with present day genocide,

particularly the areas of response and prevention. the committee on conscience has two major goals. first, public education, working to sensitize the general public at large to the problem of genocide, the general problem of genocide. we do it through programs like tonight. we just took ambassador rise through the exhibit ourselves. the second part is out reach to policymakers. it was a blueprint on the government, to be better positioned on genocide in the future. to get on to tonight's program, is my pleasure to introduce to you ambassador susan rice, our permanent representative to the

united nations and a member of president obama's cabinet. you have some biographical information on her, but i wanted her -- wanted you to know that she has had a very distinguished career as a scholar and a government official. she has experience as a management consultant. she has served on numerous boards, including the national democratic institute, the partnership for public service, and unicef. she received her master's from oxford university where she was a scholar. -- a rhodes scholar. she won the prize for the most distinguished doctoral dissertation in the united kingdom in the field of international relations. she received her b.a. in history with honors from stanford university. president obama said that susan has been a close and trusted adviser.

her background as a scholar of the national security council and assistant secretary of state will serve our nation well at the un. susan knows that the challenges we face demand global institutions that work. we need the un to be an effective tool as a collective action against terror, climate change, genocide, poverty, and disease. i am pleased to say that the issue of genocide is one that is very close to embassador rice's heart. ever since the holocaust, the world has said, never again. in our hearts, i believe we need it. the effect is that we have much more to do to give these words meeting in strength, the -- meaning and strength. we could not agree more,

ambassador rise. i will turn over to our director on the committee on conscience. he worked as a reporter and editor @ "washington post" since 1985, including serving as white house correspondent and national editor. he graduated from harvard university with a degree in government. he was a marshal memorial fellow of the german marshall fund and a media fellow at the hoover institution in stanford. >> thank you, sarah, very much. when you came in, you were handed pieces of paper. we will have a short period where we will enter as many questions as we can. i would very much like to thank ambassador rise for being here and sharing thoughts on this

important subject. it is at your here tonight, is u.n. human rights day. -- apt that you're here tonight. it is the one-year anniversary of the report of the genocide prevention task force. and to top it all off, president obama has delivered a very thoughtful nobel prize acceptance speech which touches on some of the issues we will talk about tonight. i would like to start by giving you a little bit of a chance to talk about the united nations and what you have been up to over the last year. one of your major goals at the un has reinvigorated u.s. leadership. i was hoping you could tell us a little bit about what you think happened during the last periodo f tie- -- period of time.

>> before i answer your question, i want to thank you for your invitation to be here. thank you for that very kind introduction. it is a real privilege to be able to be here at the holocaust memorial museum. both in bearing witness to atrocities and the history. and also motivating people in the present day to action. i was really pleased to have a chance, even briefly, to go through the exhibit. i look forward to having more time to go through it in greater depth. i also want to commend the authors and sponsors of the prevention of genocide task force. it was really a powerful and thoughtful and comprehensive treatment of a very important

issue. i found it valuable, turning to these issues again. speaking about the united nations, in all honesty, is a great time to be the u.s. ambassador. the world has responded to the change in approach in the change in leadership, both in tone and substance, that president obama has presented. i have the privilege of working with that context to advance u.s > inter -- u.s. interest and values. from our point of view, it is a vital one that we held a very

incrementally to create. -- helped very incrementally to create. it is sort of the pointy end of the spear, the change that the president is bringing. to ensure that this institution can be much more effective than the ways that we needed to be. we're looking to the institution to help us advance our national security interests, whether it is dealing with these situations in afghanistan, iraq, where the u.n. has important field presence is that are promoting the elections, providing humanitarian assistance is. they're dealing with the disputed internal boundaries. we are looking to the united nations security council to stand up, as the president said, against those that violate international law. in june, we passeed the toughest

sanctions -- passed the toughest sanctions should iran failed to meet its international obligations. we are engaging in a different way. we're dealing with all countries, large and small. we're rolling up our sleeves, trying to make the institution better rather than criticize it from the sidelines. that included the decision to run for a seat and to join me evidently flawed human rights council in geneva. we took the judgment that because we are deeply committed to the protection and promotion of human rights, because we of pour -- abhorr it's focus on one country, isreal, instead of

staying on the outside, we will work on the inside to try to make a difference. we have had some successes, some frustrations. that is the nature of the beast. but you don't get anywhere without real elbow grease and action. we are meeting our obligations, paying our bills on time. congress has been instrumental in being able to have us do that on a bipartisan basis. we push for real reforms of the institution can perform better and be more accountable, more transparent. and worthy of trust and investments that not only the american taxpayers make, but taxpayers around the world. we're approaching things differently, and while it is not uniform across every metric, it

is palpable change. we sent a greater willingness to cooperate. we are finding -- finding compromise and common ground on areas that we have stood on in the past. we found ourselves fighting petty battles when that opposition was inherent or necessary. as i mentioned earlier, we have been able to forge consensus on difficult issues like north korea, the congo, potential sanctions as it continues to fail to meet its obligations with respect to djibuti, and

supporting terrorism in somalia. we are funding a greater willingness or openness to come together and meet responsibilities. >> he touched on the flaws of the un. many of our countrymen have become cynical of the united nations because of the issue that we face tonight, the failure to prevent the atrocities in rwanda and the perceived anti-americanism. your where the litany of complaints from the united nations over the years. now you are in the hot seat, what can you say to assure those americans that are really considering the united nations

for the reasons i have outlined. >> let me say a few things. there are many americans that share the views that you articulated. but what i think gets lost in understanding and appreciating that is the fact that survey after survey, including relatively recent ones, indicate that support is typically in the range of 65%-75%. higher than most people would anticipate. you can have the approval of the institution and still have disappointment about its achievements. we need to look at this in various ways. first of all, when the united nations fails to act, for example, you pointed to rwanda

or darfure. -- darfur. that is the failure of its member states to take decisions or failed to take decisions. that is the failure of each of us that have a voice on the security council, applicable in the general assembly. we have to be honest about that. i can't just blame some amorphous concrete structure for those failures. secondly, it was justified by the fax like the oil for food scandal -- by the facts like the oil for food scandal. or even collected malfeasance. it is by no means satisfactory.

real efforts have been made in the wake of the greatest battles to have real, incredible oversight and hold people accountable. to publish and make transparent to the facts n-- transparent the facts. there has been real progress in that respect. there's been a much greater scope for continued improvement. and as extremely influential as we were, we're working every day raise standards. >> i think we can unpack some of the issues that you talked about. i would like to talk generally of genocide and a mass atrocities -- and mass

atrocities. this trip they took to rwanda post-genocide, you swore that if you ever faced such a genocide again, you would take swift action -- coming down on the side of dramatic even if it means going down in flames. what does that mean you? >> one of my dear friends, richard clarke, who has now become well-known for his writings and service in government used to use the phrase that resonates for me -- i had it in the back of my mind when i said that. he refers to the phenomenon of having to run naked through the west wing of the white house to raise attention and get action on something that one is

believed to be urgent. obviously, that is figurative. i hope. [applause] -- [laughter] certainly in this white house, i hope it is a figurative concept. there are times, in my opinion, one needs to speak the truth. that is what i wrote on my card that i deposited at the exhibit when asked, what will you do, what do you commit to do? i commit to speaking the truth whether as a private citizen or a public servant. in doing so loudly and emphatically. that doesn't mean i will win. it doesn't mean, necessarily, that every issue that i think -- that running naked will result in the desired outcome. >> have you had to?

>> not yet. the older i get, the more reluctant i am. [laughter] >> as you reflect on that experience, what you think went wrong in rwanda? what was necessary to fix in both the u.s. and the international capacity to respond. >> many american officials, including president clinton have spoken on this. i was a director on the staff at the time, the most junior position. that was before i took on responsibilities. and i've often reflectedt hat

our -- reflected that our greatest failure in the u.s. government was not that we ever took a decision not to act, it was that we ever confronted the question. we never actually had, until it was too late, a policy discussion at the deputies level, the principles level, about whether or not the u.s. or the international community should intervene as the genocide unfolded. if you look at the record as i have, one of the remarkable things is that they were not editorial pages screaming for american intervention. there were not large nor the people standing up in the floor

of the house of representatives insisting on american intervention. it was unique to the moment in time, 1994. a week after congress ordered the last american servicemen at of somalia -- out of somalia six months after black hawk down. it was, as i remember it, kind of a harrowing exit. it was one where i think many people felt the brunt, -- felt burnt, and many americans were questioning what we were doing there in the first place. that was the context. as soon as the genocide began,

and the killing intensified, the u.s. government did what we often do in the circumstances, which is everything we can to extricate safely the americans on the ground. we shut our embassy. we pulled out, and also at a very dangerous overland evacuation. all american diplomatic personnel, and the american citizens that wanted to leave that we were able to assist. we effectively lost our on the ground eyes and ears, except for what became a significant press presence, and what later became a vocal n.g.o. presence. that came days if not weeks down the road. in this is a very personal view, the failure to ever really

ask at the highest levels, should we, should others in this context, do something by way of direct intervention? i will also say that i am not convinced that had we asked that question answered in the affirmative, that we would be able to get there and act sufficiently, swift, and overwhelming to deal with what is literally hand-to-hand, house-to-house genocide. it is hard argue that that debate should not have occurred. -- it is hard to argue that that debate should not have occurred. the belgian contingent decided to withdraw after 10 of its peacekeepers were killed. it was followed by the bangladeshi contingent .

we faced a policy dilemma of what to ask. there were some that criticized the united states for suggesting that 250 person would do less " than 1000 person force. personally, for the future, it really goes back to what i said earlier about speaking the truth. at that principle's table, as opposed to a junior staffer, i think it is my responsibility and that of my colleagues, congress, the public, the media, to not allow them to be on asked and answered. -- unasked and unanswerd.

-- unanswered. >> president obama has talked about a desire, a drive to put an end to atrocities taking place in rwanda, in darfur. that is what he said in the rotunda in april. what steps is the administration taking to realize that commitment? >> with respect to a particular country? >> with respect to genocide. taking those lessons, saying we're going to, operation wise, travel philippe -- try to fulfill it. >> it is not only about warning and anticipating the potential for genocide and a mass atrocities -- and basmass

atrocities. it is also about aggressive and early diplomacy. this administration has stepped up its efforts diplomatically to address ongoing and potential conflicts. the president, as you know, has appointed a senior at special envoy for sudan, whose rolei s not on -- role is not only to deal with darfur, but to work with the peace agreement in sudan with respect to the north and the south. we have to be mindful of that risk. he has appointed a former congressman and former special envoy howard obey for the congo,

burundi. that has been a bed of mass genocide and atrocity over the last decades. even places like guinea, we had recent horrific atrocities, we have been involved not only in new york, but in the region through our embassy. and various behind the scenes diplomatic efforts. i have been involved in the last week to try to deal with that volatile situation that has the potential to spend even further out of control. >> ec it in terms of individual complex as opposed to overarching institutional changes. >> i just answered your

question. i am not speaking to the merits or demerits of overall institutional changes. we have also been very active, as was the previous administration going back to the clinton administration, in trying to build the capacity of state and regional institutions to engage and deploy for peacekeeping purposes. the african contingency training effort, which is a successful initiative that i was involved in in the clinton administration, and trained over 70,000 peacekeepers. their places like door for -- darfur, chad, so it remains an

important piece of this. they can prevent and respond, provide the opportunity for warning of genocide and a mass atrocities -- and mass atrocities. >> as you reflect on this issue of preventing genocide, what can we do to strengthen the institutions of the united nations? whether it is peacekeeping operations, human rights commissions, and adviser's office on genocide? i am curious, as you have reflected on this, are there specific reforms that you think will be valuable? >> there is growing recognition , a continuum of complex that begins at prevention and ends at peace consolidation.

there is a need to strengthen the institutional capacity across the entirety of that spectrum. on the prevention side, they have set up mediation teams. they have better warning that they used to have. this is an area where the wind is weak -- the u.n. is weak. it has gotten very active in diplomacy and prevention. the department of political affairs is doing much of the difficult leg work in places that don't get a lot of visibility. places like madagascar are, guinea, nepal, wehre -- where the risks of conflict and violence are real. and there is the 800 pound gorilla when it comes to peacekeeping, over 100,000 u.n.

peacekeepers now deployed, more than ever before. they have substantially improve the quality and its capacity to deploy -- the complexity in the missions that have taken on are far greater. the big missions are almost 20,000 people, the civilian protection mandates by the democratic republic of congo, the size of western europe or the united states east of the mississippi. it is now so stretched that it is arguably falling short. it doesn't have helicopters it needs for mobility. it hasn't reached its full mandated strength in because there are almost no more

peacekeepers to be tapped to join. there is much more that needs to be done. i remain, as ambassador, strengthening the u.n.'s peacekeeping and that -- capacity. on the peace building site where the u.n. has evolved new mechanisms and structures like the peace building commission that will come up for its five- year review in 2010, there are new mechanisms to try to consolidate peace through diplomacy, through security sector reform, promoting and enhancing the rule of law. having accountability for atrocities. these things are nascent, but they are very important. they are manifest from burundi, it to getty -- to guinea.

it is particularly important to provide information and indeed even warning. the capacities to be built along this entire spectrum of conflict. while we can certainly point to real progress, there are enormous gaps that obviously remained. >> let's go from general to specific. i want to talk a little bit about sudan, an issue yo've -- you've been working on. >> and before. >> i was struck by the president's speech, the nobel acceptance speech. that there must be consequences. and the closer we stand to gather, the less likely we will be faced with the choice of armed intervention into complicity under pressure. have there been any consequences

for the perpetrators in darfur? >> not enough. there is an arrest warrant for the president of sudan, bashir, who we and others believe to be complicit in genocide. he continues to govern. he travels relatively freely. the only indicted war criminal to submit to justice in the context of darfur has been one of the rebel leaders have voluntarily shut up -- that were voluntarily showed up. will there be consequences? the united states has imposed in the past, sanctions on saddam for not only what has transpired -- sudan for what has transpired

in darfur, but the longstanding context of the north-south conflict. the president goes a new policy for sudan highlights the importance he attaches to effective action. it balances three very important and a simultaneous properties. one, ending mass atrocities. two, effectively implementing the north-south peace agreement so taht the f -- that the final stage of the just and fair referendum can take place, preventing sudan from serving as a safe haven for al qaeda. those are 3 goals that are

essential to regional peace and security. we have clearly defined, in each of those three areas, specific benchmarks against which the behavior of the parties will be measured. we will review progress in achieving those benchmarks at a high level of the interagency on a quarterly basis. we will assess -- >> there are benchmarks. >> absolutely. >> that have been agreed to by senior officials and the government? >> the highest officials, including the president of the united states. the benchmarks relate to very specific -- >> can you those -- have you communicated those benchmarks to the government? >> to all the parties involved, including the government of sudan. if i might continue for a

second. we have also, very specifically, outlined both the incentives we have prepared to deploy for positive behavior and positive progress, measurable, tangible, not rhetorical, but practical progress for steps along those benchmarks. as well as sanctions, punitive measures that we would be prepared to take for the status quo persisting, because the status quo is unacceptable. we will have this quarterly review, and we will take decisions in light of the facts on the ground as to how to proceed. if you look at the president's speech in oslo, he spoke about

this not only in the context of human rights abuses or the cases of darfur and zimbabwe, but he spoke of engagement and pressure for which there is no magic formula, no cookie cutter model. it is the basis of our approach in many complex situations from iran to zimbabwe or burma. >> i would like to tell you guys that if you have questions, write them down now. we'll come to the conclusion of my questioning and give you the opportunity to ask questions. . .

>> i would like to understand how you might square the new policy with those expectations. >> first of all, we have to a knowledge the circumstances of today with respect to the north- sell agreement and the circumstances on the ground in the south. the circumstances on the ground in darfur have evolved in some cases for the worse in some cases for the better. my own personal view as a scholar at the brookings

institution, in september of 2006, if the government of sudan continues to refuse to allow the deployment of the united nations aid force, it ought to face immediate consequences, and causing -- including the use of force. it is a bold but were repositioned. our aim is to build a force to full strength and able us to do what it is mandated to do. as we work with others diplomatically to resolve the underlying conflict. the challenge and are further -- the challenge in darfur, to

begin to do that without a star of forcible intervention, we have a diplomatic challenge of working with others to unite the rebels, to broker a more stable situation between chad and sudan, and to have the basis for the negotiated resolution to the underlying conflict. my view remains that the way to accomplish this, as well as the way to accomplish effective and full implementation of a comprehensive peace agreement is to be very plain. if the parties take positive steps, i have no problem with reinforcing that for positive actions. if they fail to act or that backtrack, my view and the president's policy is clear,

there must be consequences. having been part of crafting this policy, i think it is the right approach, the right balance, and i will be in their speaking the truth as i understand it as we work to assess very objectively whether has been progress, where there has been backsliding, and how that affects the benchmark. >> another area of concern is the terrific situation where according to the national rescue committee, more than 5 billion people have died over the last 10 years, one of the greatest areas of mass violence in the world. rape has become a routine to love for -- a routine tool of

war. what do you think is the answer to the problem in the condo? -- in the congo? the international community has been unable to deal with it adequately. what are your thoughts about what the international community ought to do about it? >> let's unpacked the problem. you will not get the answer in 3 minutes. there are multiple things going on in condgo.

there are the remnants of what was an interstate war. there are the remnants and the ongoing manifestations of a killing war among congolese parties. there is the fact that the perpetrators of the rwandan genocide remain in the form of the fdlr, operating with impunity in eastern congo and killing large numbers of people. these are actors that have committed mass of atrocities and continue to foment in security. then you have a congolese army, and i am looking for the polite

term, which is actively unable to perform as a responsible military. it consists of an amalgam of former rebels and insurgents and poorly trained national forces. and yet, it is the only governments present to deal with the security situation. then you have congo, a massive state. you could argue that it is a tremendously weak state or a substantially failed state, but the institution of state authorities are largely not present outside of the key cities in eastern cong go. what can the international community do?

first, it can try to disentangle, go from the neighbors that have engaged in interstate conflict. it has largely succeeded in doing that. it can help provide greater legitimacy to congolese institutions. it was essential in orchestrating the only democratic elections in 40 years in congo. it can do more and it must do more to protect civilians, which is the core mandate now. i was out there in may. i met with victims of atrocities and rate and sole firsthand both the horror of what is happening there but the contribution that the un is making it through innovative means that are not well known, rapid response

teams, cell phone networks that allow ordinary citizens to fall into a hot line -- phone into a hot line when they see forces threatening them or on the rampage. the un has developed the capacity to be able to respond in some instances within seven minutes. that is their standard. that is not uniform. its mobility is limited. it has been involved in an operation where they are providing food and provisions and logistical support to elements of the government forces that are trying to tackle the problem of the insurgents and the rebels.

the problem is that the fardc commit horrible atrocities, too. not on the scale of the fdlr, but still intolerable atrocities. we support the decision to support -- to suspend support with units of the fardc that has engaged in atrocities. we are in the process of reviewing the mandate and we are working with others to identify very specific conditionality for win support to the fardc and be allowed and what it cannot. people need to understand that this is a very difficult issue, not black and white. if the u.n. were to say we are not providing anything else to the fardc and having nothing to

do with it, no support, no food, no assistance, that is not want to solve the problem. the fardc will do what it is inclined to do it on a much greater scale, which is to rate and destroy the people. it is a huge dilemma of dealing with those who have committed genocide and are continuing to kill and having and disciplined if not worse armed forces to go after them. >> we will have a few questions from the audience. but will try to get seven as i have not asked about.

the is the language used by president ahmadinejad to be homicidal? -- to be genocidal? >> i do not feel equipped to make a legal judgment. it is obvious that it is absolutely hateful and intolerable. whenever you suggest or call for the elimination of a stake are people, -- a state or people, that is the worst kind of hate speech, and that is one of the many reasons why our concern about iran's acquiring nuclear weapons capability that are not manifestly for peaceful purposes is so strong.

it is violent, vicious hatred. >> what can the women of darfur expect to see the reinstatement of gender based services following the reinstatement of humanitarian groups? >> i cannot answer that with specificity. the humanitarian groups played a crucial role. its police and rule of law components are trying to step up protection to women in camps, to provide training for local protection forces within the camps and to address the issues on a real-time basis.

we are working to increase the capacity in the camps to protect women from rape and violence and give them the ability to tackle it themselves and recover from it. >> i will depart from the hard news. one final question. can you describe the daily activities of an ambassador? >> it really depends on the day. a typical day often begins with a morning wholhuddle. i then get my daily intelligence briefing. more likely than not, i am going to the security council