some people have. some say it was created four different time in america when we were divided about equality for one another. it is a debate that will continue to transpire and that debate that will happen inside immigration as well. >> d c that to be the key to any comprehensive legislation or immigration reform that would come about, and is it something that you feel like you could stand behind? >> i think it is something that we would have to address. . >> dec that is being key to any kind of comprehensive legislation or immigration reform that would come about? is it something that you feel like you could stand behind? >> it is something we will have to address. uerstand why it people desire to come. now you create a larger problem, that if the child is born is a citizen and the other person is not, think of all the confli that is created. is it an incentive for someone

to break the law just to get here? what ratr costs and effects of that? it goes back to can you create a process that is honest and open if someone can get through. i believe at the end of the day, it will be addressed. >> we get some of the charge you are talking about, a lot of the expenditures are a social welfare programs and things like that that have just grown exponentially. we are no longer in a position where we can just do everything for everybody. mitt>> border states get affected differently than other states in the country. they are not reimbursed as far as the federal government's responsibility. >> >> would you getting your degree in?

>> spanish. >> you have a lot of good professors out there. >> i have a binder here with some information and some contact information from a group. halli don't know if i can give it to one of your aides and give it to you. its just for you, with some contacinformation i want to give you. i want to ask you a question garding immigration also. i am glad to hear that you officeobviously it is a very long process. even if you wanted to come here legally, it takes forever. if your passport expires, i ought takes a long time to get things done.

i am glad to hear that you like to reform that process. but to touch on the dream act, of blue and will open a which for people that do not understand what it is, it goes into helping students. as a student myself, iave seen of waws tons of students come to this moves will both moves are country. their parents brought them when they were two years old. they had no choice in it. they did not try to break any laws or do anything. they came to this country and became just as american as anne else, learned english, studiethe constitution, done everytng it needed to do. many of them went to college. one of my best friends is undocumented. when he gets done with his degree, there is absolutely nothing out there for him because he has no u.s. citizenship, even though he has been here since he was very young. he has no opportunity. he wants to be a u.s. citizen, but there is nothing he can do about it. can the dream act be one of the solutions you are talking about, to help some of these students that don't want to do anything

wrong, make the country better, and have a college education? they are very skilled in their trade. can we not put that in as a part of the solution in the emigration problem? >> i have a couple of different opinions on this. as an individual that is here illegally, are they getting benefits that taxpayers are paying where citizens are not? >> n he pays for his own education and is paying out of state tuition. >> we want to encourage the best and brightest to compete inside our college system. i think it'something we can debate and talk about. do i have the perfect solution for it? off the top of my head, i don't think i do. we can address it, but it goes back to a system. if you teach a generation that we are a nation of laws, but it is ok if you break it because we are going to allow it, you cannot sustain that. so there ii a way to do it

properly. if we had a process system that allowed it to process, i think we could probably get ere. until then, is something we will have to debate. i don't have the direct answer. maybe you have some ideas for me. >> i graduate next saturday. >> congratulations. [applause] >> thank you, mr. mccarthy. i believe that the beginning of your presentation is the most important. if this country does not get their budget squared away, we are going to crumble. all of these other issues we are discussing will be moot. i believe we need to get back to basics. the budget should be what the

dollars available are. we should arrange our budget according to that. also, anyone who is raised in a household knows that if you have credit, the interest ll kill you. we need to pay down our deficit. also, it has only been touched on once tonight. one of the ways to do that is to create and maintain jobs. if we don't have the jobs, we don't have the taxes to pay the deficit or the budget. also, that being said, in regard to jobs, i would like to know what your position is in regard to hr-173, which maintains six-state meal delivery. if you suprt hr-173, you will go a long way in preserving over 50,000 jobs across the nation. there is a bill before the congress from the postal commtee reducing mail delivery to five days a week.

there is also the bill 173 which supports maintaining six- day delivery. the have a pition on this issue? >> the bill has not been before my committee, but i like the idea of the male being there six days a week. i think the postal department needs to be more modernized. they have come along way, but there is a fundamental difference that there is a way we can change something. how my wife and i pay our bills are different today. we pay a lot of them on line. how we buy our movie tickets. things may change as we go forward. i have not gone through it enough to steady the

ramificatis on both sides. a more efficient way to do it -- this is another pressure of the government. when you listen to people, they said the only way to do it is to raise more money. could we make the system more efficient and actually lower the cost of that? what we first have to say the stamp has to go up in price? is there a way to do it differently? there is a different way to communicate with congress and hold them accountable. itas not been before my committee yet, but i am glad to look at it. i agree wholeheartedly with you. job creati should be number one, and deficit reduction. >> congress is the one who decides whether or not to increase [unintelligible] >> i am one of the three registered democrats in kirk county.

[laughter] there were four up, until my husband died, and it gets lonely up there. many of the issues that are being discussed here, immigratioand so forth, were issues that came up over the past 10 years in congress. over the past 30 years, they would get started, the plot would get boyle, and then they would drop it because it was in their political interest to it. there are thinking of theext election. i have hea here tonight people asking about the welfare

department, and after being a retired social worker 40 years, i can say at i never drove that expensive a car. i would say that the staff or under some big difficulties right now. but i have heard people express concern about our veterans. i have heard people express concern about many different issues. you y are becoming a welfare state. i want to know from you, what are going to eliminate? we are going to have more and more veterans coming as the afghan war goes on and on and on. iraq is still not settled. their constant boiling points coming up all over the world, so there'll be more people to treat and more people need help. our unemployment rate is astronomical, if there was some center that blocked unemployment benefits for a while for people who are struggling.

so i want to see what you would eliminate, and i want to know that there is some hope that the animosity, the rancor, the petty bickering that is going on because they are so worried about the 2012 election, there is some hope for ending at. americans are suffering. they are sfering. many of us pay our taxes, and we want to do all we can. what would you eliminate? would you do away with ssi? we eliminate social security or veterans' benefits? >> no, i would not eliminate any of those. in the last two years, discretionary spending in the federal government has grown by 82%. how many small businesses grew by 82% in the last two years? i promise i would find one penny out of every dollar the government has and find savings.

i would fundamentally redirec how you create a budget. i am a firm believer in structure dictates behavior. he the create a structure where you give all the committees in congress to go out and create a wish list, i will give you every difference study and every revision, every different funding mechanism for every single district to somehow get reelected, and then you go and say yohave to get this much money and borrowed is much more. what i would fundamentally change would be to say this is all the dollars we have. now you go back to committee and prioritize. so it would knock out and eliminate some of the waste. then i read start a national dialogue, much as how we started the debate today. this is the deficit, this is how much we are borrowing, and how to be changed? i would tell line by line. we could probably do it in this room.

we are fairly respectful of one another. the one thing that unites us all, we are all americans and we all want this country to do best. i would make the investment. when you put priorities down, i think we make a commitment when it came to social curity. we made a commitment long term, too. there may be some changes in the system we have to provide. we also made a commitment in the system as well. i would not expand government into all these private sector jobs, because i do not believe that is getting a return on investment are making the united states as competitive. i would not expand the federal government the way it is. i would simplify the private sector to grow. >> the issue is that right now, there are so many americans that are hurting. you are talking about a plan that is going to take a long time. i don't know exactly what your

budget is, but i do know there are a lot of families in this country right now that are worried about next week's groceries. thank you for your time. >> thank you for coming, and thank you for your question. i do understand america is hurting. do we ignore the long term in the short term? the greatest thing someone can do in america is be able to create a job. if they have a job, ey can be able to prosper with the next generation. if you bird and that next generation with debt, they will not have the opportunities that we have 3 gb burton that next generation. -- if we burden the next generation with debt, they will not ha the opportunities that we have. we are well past 7:30, so i will take this question and then come and answer everybody's question individual.

i will stick around as long as you want, if you are shy about asking questions. >> thank you for having this forum. we really appreciate being able to voice our opinions and get feedback from you. one of the first things i want to bring up that has come up a couple of times this as a citizen, it is our duty to read the laws and understand them and not take someone else's work for what they say. i think that is the main problem with this arizona law. everybody is hearing what the other side is saying, this is what it means. if you read the bill, there are so many checks and balances in it, there is no way could happen that way. i am not saying human beings are not going to miss manage it.

that could happen, but we have laws to manage it. first and foremost, before you make an opinion, make sure it is your opinion and not somebody else's. it is the government's duty to protect our borders. one thing i wanted to bring up, i am a veteran of the united states army. one of the problems we have with our soldiers and why these wars take so long is because rules of engagement have changed. they have tied their hands. some people are waing into hot areas without ammunition in their guns. that is just ridiculous. you wonder why this goes on and on and on. in world war ii, we had a war where there is a beginning and end. ever since then, it is police actions and no one ever wins, and no one really knows why we are there. one of the main things we need to do is address the rules of engagement. we have untie our soldiers' hands, and a lot more of them will come back home. [applause]

another thing, high school amican history. the first two years of school, what did they deal with world history? this is america. not to mention, when they do hit junior and senior year, the books that are put out there have been gone through, so much history of our founding fathers has been taken out, that they are not even getting the full measure of what this country is all about. they need to know who we are. that is another thing we need to address. [applause] the other thing is tax breaks for small businesses. that is what will bring jobs back to the country. there are more and more taxes being raised. every time you turn around, they need more money, so they raise more taxes, which puts more businesses out of existence, which lays more

people off. and we have more people going on help. how many times are going to extend benefits? it is getting ridiculous. we are in 99 weeks, and is growing. that is the main thing. we have to get back to creating jobs, and not temporary jobs. they are going to come up with these 500,000 jobs, which are census workers that are going to die off in a few months. we need real jobs. those are just my opinions and things i wanted to bring up. >> thank you for that. one thing i would tell you, the military -- as i said earlier, they have made the ultimate sacrifice, more so than ever before. we are just coming of memorial day. this commuty is very patriotic. one thing i am working on, there are a lot of men and women that a not coming back, and some are coming ck not hold. we cannot ignore that fact. we have to be able to give them

the treatment, from a lot of different aspects. i am afraid that when people areeaving, they are not being reened properly. they are young, strong, an they do not want to admit they have a problem. later down the road when they realize they do, we have to be there for them, but actually screened them earlier. it will cost less, and we will bring them back sooner. that is something i am fully engaged in. small-business -- many of the know the story, i started when i was 19 in my first business. i applied for a summer internship program with matt local congressman, and he turned down. today i have a job i could not get an intern for. 70% of all jobs are created for small business. that is what we have to focus on. that will bring people back. we have to knock away this regulation. you brought of taxes.

just think in your own life. just think for a moment what we pay. when we get up in the morning i take a shower. i pay tax on the water. you stop to buy water or coffee, you pay tax. op to get gas in your car, you pay state and federal highway tax. the first two hours to work, you pay a tax. you pick up the phone to call your family, you pay tax on that too. i've paid in airplane tax, will car tax, hotel occupancy tax. i pay cable tax. we put enough money away to leave for our children, and the govement comes back with inheritance tax. we are taxed from the moment we wake up until the end of the night. he should be able to keep more of what you make, and more people have the dream. they have turned off the air to try to get us out of this place. thank you for coming. thank you for your opinions. i appreciate it.

we may disagree, but i want to continue the dialogue. i think in this room, we could come together and actually find solutions. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] in

>> bill halter is challenging plans lincoln in a senate democratic primary runoff election this tuesday. this weekend mr. halter began an rv tor in little rock. he also sspoke with the dean of the university of arkansas. this tour is scheduled to include 32 events. in a moment we will show you

some of his campaign events yesterday after a look of some of the latest campaign television and five bill halter and blanche lincoln. -- 5 bill calder and land lincoln. >> we have tried to tell them washington is still out of touch with our lives. the bailout have to stop f reuter from credit cards to ceo pay, someone made to stand up do -- have to stop. from credit cards to ceo pay, someone has to stand up. >> the only way to change washington is to change who we send their. >> the only choice for change. >> here is an article from "the washington post." if says they made a decision they wanted to make senator blanche lincoln the poster child for what happens when a democrat crosses them.

this is about using new and manipulating your votes. if you want to beat arkansas's advocate, a vote for somebody who will fight for you. vote for blanche lincoln. ou're getting all kinds of c-span press here. they are following me. you will want to leave this out. hey, how aer you? >> we have a vote coming up? >> yeah. >> we have about 17 different locations. not going to interrupt these folks. >> we have c-span here. >> andrea.

>> we have a vote coming up. i appreciate your support. how is business today? >> good. have a good day. >> hey. how are you? >> good to see you. >> the vote is coming up. >> 'll be there. >> good. i appreate it. >> thank you or coming down. we have a good bluegrass band here today. >> all right. >> right up there. >> the guy picking the banjo. >> family band. >> when do they kick off?

>> 8:00. >> we are moving fast. we have 15 stops today. >> on the road again. >> we will be at cornerstone late tonight. then a party in littlerock. >> we have a g and a gal doing a documentary on the local farmers and he community. >> have you seen the film? >> they are getting footage now. >> that's terrific. >> it is only going to get better. we talked about that last time. >> she has really enjoyed that.

the ingredients are coming in. >> that should be helping some of those folks out. >> we have about 40 vendors who are registered, certified arkansas farmers. we are bringing along some local and international media so ian get some more attention. good to see you. how long are you calling us? >> here and o more. >> very good. >> let's say hello. >> good morning. how is it going? we have met. >> i'm here to remind you to vote again. >> we appreciate that. >> i think that is a common theme. you can go to t courthouse on

monday if you want to vote early. tuesday is the big day. >> i am registered out there. i am registered here. >> how is the farm going? >> it is going good. >> we can direct market our food. it can be a real challenge. we're being pushed farther to the south. >> besides this location, where else do you set up? >> we do four farmers markets each week. we have growth restores, and we are all over the state. -- with a grocery -- we have a grocery stores -- have grocery stores and we are all over the state. >> thank you. >> over here. >> you directed me just the wrong way.

♪ >> good morning, folks. >> what's goingn? >> how you doing? business good? i'm bill halter. we have a vote coming up on tuesday. >> tuesday. >> please vote. where do you live? you did not have to come far. i hope you can vote on tuesday.

thank you, all of you. >> hi. how are you? that's my son. >> good. how's it coming? >> great. [banjo music playing] >> we have a vote coming up. >> we live in augusta. we are voting for you. 's my son. >> these guys are doing great. i just wanted to come down and talk to people.

>> thanks for coming. >> i am glad it's working out. >> we have two other sons and a daughter. one in indiana, one in ford, one in augusta. >> grandkids? >> three. >> my dad has [unintelligible] them. --keep up wiith with them. there you go. >> i will limit that. >> one more. >> enjoy yourselves. >> good to talk to you. thank you.

the bus.et them on ♪ home, sweet home to me good ♪ , tennessee [fiddles playing] very good.

always be, you'll home to me

[applause] >> i'm bill halter. oh, is that right? nice to see you. >> your dad was like mine. >> ed halter. >> this is a great surprise. you all just made c-span. you guys are great. how old are you? >> 11. >> that is great.

[laughter] that is great. you all did fantastic. >> thank you. >> tell all of our cousins. >> thank you. [laughter] >> it is going pretty well. >> it is a little bit slow. it is all good. it is a nice day. >> it feels pretty good. how are you all doing? we have a vote coming up on

tuesday. >> thank you. >> where do you all live? i was just there. just yesterday. >> did you visit the [unintelligible] >> no, we just said hello to folks. make sure you vote on tuesday. >> i am happy you are running. i sned a petition to get you to do it. i'm a from the northern part of the county. keep up the good work. it is going very well. good. i really appreciate it. thank you. thank you some months. good morning, ladies. >> a good morning. >> are you doing all right? i am running for united states senate and there is a vote on tuesday.

good luck, you guys. >> thank you. >> that is an eggplant. >> we have a big vote coming up. very good to see you. good luck today. all right, you said we are late? >> we are late. >> how are you doing? it is good to see you. with a vote on tuesday. should we take off? are you calling? >> yes. where do you think things stand

with the runoff campaign? >> which will do a runoff for the next three days, campaigning at least 16 hours a day and possibly a couple of hours longer. it feels pretty good. we are traveling today to multiple locations. tomorrow, again, will be out at other parts of the state. on monday, we will travel all over this day. we will touch all four corners of the state. we really want to retrace the route we took before. how -- >> how are you feeling in terms of the race? >> we are focused on getting every vote bang out. it wasight in the primary. --very vote out. it was tight in the primary. our great hope is for a big turnout. we believe that a large turno will hope us -- help us.

that would be goodor our side. >> she will be making the closing arguments, painting it as running against unions and that this race is not about yoo- hoo. what do you think? >> i think the voters in arkansas will go to the polls and show that they are voting for change. i think they're going to vote for a choice between senator lincoln and myself -- we have a wide range of differencesn policy. we have differences in leadership styles. i can tell you i have heard repeatedly folks around arkansas who understand that this is about their future. this is our race about who will be on the side of the middle- class arkansas families.

whether you talk about the wall street, the meltdown, the bailout -- hundreds of thousands of americans have had their homes foreclosed on. millions have lost their jobs -- tens of millions ofmericans. it is about tax policy ando can affect those -- and who will affect those for the better. she has given tax breaks for those two are wealthy. at that time of this deficit, that is the wrong policy. people know about fiscal policy. we have a huge national debt. the national debt is over $13 trillion total. that is $7 trillion in th last 10 years. it has more than doubled our

national debt. that is almost $100,000 for every arkansas family of four. the federal gernment needs to deal with these problems. there are a big number of differences between us in this race. this is a choice betwe more of the same or change. >> she has also made the argument that she would rather lose than turn back on arkansas. what do you think? >> there are a large number of voters whose most likely lost hers and she has party turned her back onrkansas. >> -- she has already turned her back on arkansas. >> what about that ad? >> that was very political. if you a a 16-year incumbent, you should have had 16 years to

hear about people being angry. going out and saying it i heard your anger on may 18, after you failed to clear 45% of the votes, like a plea to keep your job and a real understanding of the real problems of our concerns. >> thank you. >> thank you. we're going to head over to the next location. all right. [inaudible] >> i think we will say hello. we will go in and say hello. hello. >> go ahead. right on to this tae back here.

>> oh, no. good to see you. >> it is good to see you. >> governor, you need to know that the mayor got his watch stolen last time. >> i would love a cup of coffee. [inaudible] what happened? >> the mayor was down here. he has a tendency to put his keys and a very open position. i suspect someone else saba. tell us about you and how you are doing? >> do you money sitting down? -- minus sitting down? sitting down?

[inaudible] >> come down. have coffee. >> how often does this group get together? them at every saturday. >> every saturday. >> [inaudible] >> channel 7 -- they are out-of- ers.er' >> he has a 10-year reunion. he is out of town. brad walker comes. the mayor tries not to go, but he comes.

>> the girls left this morning. at about 2:30 she wakes up to bring the cat downstairs. she comes to climb in bed with me and my wife. she is there until 7:00. but then the other daughter wakes up and she wants to be with her sister. so the next thing you know, we're all four in bed. th kids loved it, but the parents are not getting much sleep. we have not decided yet -- we will have to figure out what is best for the girls. no matter what, we will have to be in both locations. he did, he moved up maybe two

years ago. he told me about it -- i think his son juan up out there. -- wound up out there. he was from my district. [inaudible] >> i think that is right. the house schedule, because of the rules commiee and that ability to get the boats, you have little bit more ability around it -- get the votes, you have all little bit more ability arou it. you could be their past midnight. -- there past midnight. most of them have tried to cut down on what they do on monday.

>> how are we going to keep this seat democratic? >> you know what the polls are showing? i run better than senator lincoln does. it is anywhere from 5% -- by points 29 points better. -- from 5 points to 9 points better. just like all of you sitting around this table, we can solve the world's problems. [laughter] . . most of them were headed in our

direction. there was one guy who said, the congressman was in here last week, and he convinced me. she said, this conversation, but we asked him, who would you prefer to run against? senator lincoln for senator halter? he said, i would rather run against senator lincoln. that shows up. >> the runoff turnout was low. >> yesterday, 52,000 have already voted. boded. -- yester dday, 52,000 had

early voted. you know how hard it is. my team has done this and literally less than 14 weeks. most people to run against the incumbent start years ahead. we started literally on july 1. >> you run a very strong campaign. >> i am proud of my campaign. we of done a lot of miles on that truck. we've discovered that an

rv. my suggestion is to buy one and then rented out to other ones. >> one of the negative parts about this was that there was no rv park. [inaudible] >> that was a silence there. >> i go in and check the restaurants -- the restaurants. you never lose it, it is terrible. >> at the general lection, we willring new land.

-- we will bring you end. >> i am the one that told bill clinton not to rufor president. >> i would do more listening than talking. what are you hearing? you listen to a lot of people. >> people are still concerned about the economy and tir jobs. i think the president has done a good job of puing together a package of things that will eventually turn the economy around. i think the stimulus was good for jobs. and i think that we can do something with immigrati, it will be a very successful first two years. i know a lot of those issues are hurting,ut i think he has done well to support a broapackage.

>> what are you hearing? [inaudible] deficits as far as the eye can see. what of the long-term consequences of that and what is going to turn things around for some marc -- turned things around? where would have a serious problem. [inaudible] >> on debt and deficits it is

extraordinary to make that and the last 10 years, w've added seven trillion dollars to our national deficit. one is certainly don't want to a contraction marry in your fiscal picy y you are in a recession, the early part of that when we should havbeen running much more responsible spending to be in a position to deal with this. a staggering number of people cannot understand what a trillion dollars is. it's just short of $200,000 of indebdness for every arkansas family. it's a mortgage on a second home.

but you not own a home. you got the interest payments but you do not have the home. [inaudible] >> come on in here. >> am not dressed for the camera. >> we aren't, either. >> i've got a question. our average student loan debt $25,000 to $30,000 range. it is really tough.

one of the few educators that have not won the lottery, it's good thatids can go to college. no. 2, pell grants are important. and number three, obama's health care thing allowing people to stay on until 25 is huge. many in our schools have gone without health insurance. it's an area that so many have got to look into. the large number of polls, the benefits are not there. people being end up to age 26, i find it 30% of my class is

there, which is huge. you get these little bitty things of health care. ike scramble to make sure that our students can get health care. and for a lot people, they blew it off, but for us it was huge. >> i will respond to those three points that you made for all of them are i want to thank you for helping me with a scholarship problem. there were a number of educators that for whatever reason, they need to stay the sidelines. and you went out there and said that you thought was the right thing. when i put that proposal for for the second thing is on pell grants.

the programs and even before that the g.i. bill are probably the most successful ways of expanding educational opportunities, and i will be as a passionate -- a passionate contributor on that. a one extended a little bit, because one of the things that talked about in the campaign is building on scholarships from the lottery, so that with the federal programs, we considered every one of these arkansas students right out of high school, if you achieve a 2.5 grade point average, we're going toake it -- so that you can go to any public universitin arkansas. but a lot of these families, they hear these big numbers, the sticker shock, they don't know how they're going to get the.

the real monetaryonsequences. i tell you a true story. we're doing the same for all of these places. we're just outside sheridan, passing up the truck, and a guide their, he is probably 36, head a 5-year-old son with him. i pass out campaign stickers, and 5-year-old set, they love stickers. and i asked the data about a college scholarship. that's $20,000 to your family. he looked me dead in the eye, w will you? i've got six kids. it's a hundred and $20,000. -- $120,000.

and that is what makes it worth it. [inaudible] >> he would of gone with the without a scholarship. -- he would have gone with or without a scholarship. >> that is going to make a difference. when you're going to graduate school, in this day and time, many people need to have a graduate degree. you carry that on with you to graduate school, if you come out of the undergraduate school without a debt, or small debt, you got a much better chance to go to graduate school, where you and get scholarships to do that. there is a secondary benefit, not just to get the first degree, but did give you a platform for the second degree.

and i had a bunch of kids to. but along the borde states, the number one lottery states, ccme on. shame on you. [laughter] that is a good fiscal conservative. that is the conservative way of governing. kind of like the smulus. >> skipper is right out front on the scholarships, but the week after eroding, one of the first meetings i had with one of the presidents of one of the private universities who had not been supportive and he wanted to make sure that his students got scholarships.

it was not about that, it was about the students. >> goodness gracious, to say our money pouring out of the state. we're going to do it anyway. it's good for your breakneck you. -- for your great nephew. >> could see you guys. >> know, we've got it. >> we don't want to violate any thing. >> i am here to telyou. how're you doing? >> easy now. how are things going? [unintelligible] >> we are trying to get the message out for sure.

thank you for all your hard work. guys, we're leaving those brochures. i know you know some undecided voters. >> we are worried about the turnout for robotic. -- for everybody. >> yes, sir, good to see you. >> i heard you say on tv esterday, you think that she

has not been as fiscally conservative as she is preparing yourself the bait. >> that is absolutely the case. she has voted for the major bills that have resulted in the big debt. she voted for the 2001 tax cut and the bridge to nowhere. [inaudible] you look at the record for votes. she voted for most of the money. >> you're the candidate on the left.

>> the media is saying that. >> are you saying that you are the fiscal conservative? [inaudible] >> absolutely. the fact is that not onlym i part of the team that worked on [inaudible] but in 2001 [inaudible] shias voted for most of the major pieces of legislation that have led to the deficit and the dead. over that 10-year period, $70

billion as more than double, and she voted for most of it. >> thank you very much. >> we will see you again. all right, guys. where would you like to meet up? >> [inaudible] i would just drive down there. guys, are you going to any other spots? ok, good to see. >> live coverage of the election

results tuesday night on the c- span network.

working group. we will take a couple months off for the summer and reconvene in the fall. it's a very fitting that topic

of today's discussion is a look ahead at haiti's future over the coming months. certainly we hope after the traumatic event of the recent past that haiti could look forward to a bright future but unfortunately that isn't completely clear. as "the new york times" reported on sunday, graffiti and street protests are beginning as haitians express frustration with the pace ofreconstruction and job creation. according to the time of the slogan has appeared on the walls of port-au-prince as a kind of shorthand for the general sense of frustration felt by many haians. at the same time, the rain and hurricane seasons have arrived with hundreds of thousands of haitians still living in makeshift camps without proper shelter, food, sanitation or prospect for moving to improved conditions. despite the billions of dollars pledged and the good work of many in the international community and the haitian government, much remains to be

accomplished. looking ahead, but is haiti's future in the short and in the long-term? we have a particularly distinguished group of experts to help answer that question is morning. my role was to introduce the future speaker, general ken keen, deputy commander of u.s. southern command. after general keen speaks, we will take a few questions and then we wi turn the meeting over to the chairman of the haiti working group, professor robert maguire, who will introduce the rest of the panel. you have general keen's by yo, so i will just know he was an haiti of the day of the earthquake on a prearranged visit and immediately began to organize the response. he stayed on to command the rest of the three joint task force that provided security and humanitarian assistance in the aftermath of the disaster. at its height, the operation united response had more than 22,000 american military personnel, including a combat

brigade team in the 82nd airborne and two marine battalions from an aircraft carrier, the uss cool and the hospital ship. this week, the last 300 troops of the operation left haiti, leaving behind the record of accomplishment. among its achievements was the u.s. military role in a rapidly recovering the port-au-prince airport and getting it up and running and operating it throughout the etire emergency ase without a major accident or incident. quite an accomplishment. carried out his duties, general keen worked with the brazillian commander of the u.n. military. the world is probably facilitated by the fact that he's a graduate fomer student of the brazilian stuff college and has a long career working in south america. so, i would like to introde general keen and we will get started. general? >> thank you, sir. i did what we will try to do first is show a short video, which is looking to the past,

and then i will address a few remarks and follow on that. so if we could show the video. >> i am lieutenant general ken keen and was the commander of joint task force haiti. of generate wealth, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook the tiny island nation of haiti. the result of that earthquake was over 230,000 killed. over 1 million have been displaced and many more have been inured. the results of the earthquake have brought together a partnership from around the world of international organizations and non-governmental organizations to include forces from th united nations. the edges of which you are about to see tell the story. it tells the story of heartbreak but it also tells a story of hope and a story of power and it

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>> well, i will certainly be prepared when we do the questions and answers to talk about our military response and joint taskforce haiti. as mentioned, we disestablished joint task force haiti on tuesday as major general took command, commander of u.s. army's of command to the task force haiti as i left on the 18th of april departed to go back to san antonio. and as i am told, joint task force haiti represented the largest and the longest u.s. military response to a foreign disaster that we have embarked upon in our history. appropriately so given the magnitude and the scope of the devastation of the earthquake that struck haiti. i would like to just make some remarks about while we have this

established joint task force haiti it does not represent the end of our u.s. military involvement in haiti. in fact, as mentioned, at the 12th of january i was in haiti to talk with the to listen to -- the u.s. embassy as well as the haitian ministries about projects in the u.s. southern command was embarking upon this year in haiti and also had just sat down for an hour or so with representativeof usaid to talk about hurricane preparedness for the hurricane season and what we could learn from 2008 and how we should be prepared this year. and of course we were reminded as tropical storm agatha hit this weekend u.s. southern command once again was asked to respond by the government of guatemala, and in fact we have a military personnel for helicopters in guatemala.

since i arrived at the u.s. southern command in a tender this is the fourth incident or disaster that struck countries in latin america that our military has been asked to respond to. so i think it's appropriate we look at he the to deterne how we can best be postred to support usaid and the office of foreign disaster assistance as needed based upon the needs of a particular nation has we are not even a week into the hurricane season and we have already had our first tropical storm. as i left haiti yesterday, and of the last two days, i had the opportunity after having been gone for six weeks to look to see where we have progress. sometimes it is hard to find that progress, but it happens little by little but it's

probably much too slow for many of us who would like to see progress much quicker, but this is a tremendous challenge. i had an opportunity to speak briefly with the prime minister ambassador martin, chris mcginn who leads ourusaid efforts to visit three idp campus. the old airport that is the second largest one of the new settlement sites that we work with the government of haiti and united nations to open to move some of the most at risk displaced persons. as i did every day from the time the earthquake struck to the time i left i walked through the displaced persons camp because found it was in those camps that i could get the best feel for what was the needs of the

people, what the work of what i call the soldiers and skills of humanitarian assistance, the ngos or do we get the challenges they ere facing day today to meet the needs of the people it to move it forward and haiti still is in a very risky position. the estimates now when we shot this video we were using 1 million displaced peple. now it is somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million depending upon which organization has made the latest estimates. so we have a lot of people still veryuch at sk as we enter into the hurricane season at risk from floods and the elements of the weatherbut also the challenges of housing. our military remains engaged through the presence of new

horizons exerse which is led by the louisianan national guard and appropriately so since i doubt there are many national guard in the military more experienced at doing this type of work and helping people prepare for hurricanes but the work they're doing in haiti now has a part of the new horizons exercise revolves around several types of projects that we have worked over starting back in february looking to the future saying what shld we do in our engagement in haiti as they recover from the earthquake and as the organization's move to the recovery and reconstruction and what we determined that we coulbest contributed a small way was to work in some parts of the country that outside port-au-prince that had received

a great number of displaced persons that have moved out of port-au-prince and these were [inaudible] d the projects that we are doinover the next three of this through september are increasing capacities for education schools. we are building some schools and we are building rooms on two schools because the increased number of children have lived in these areas. we are digging wells and building medical clinics. we are doing a number of medical readiness exercises where we brin in about 40 health care providers and they treat about 500 people a day in these local communities and remote areas that otherwise would not have access to medical care. looking to obviously address the population that harecently moved into these communities with the objective that hopefully they will feel compelled to move back to port-au-prince because the last thing port-au-prince needs is

more people. and there is a drawback to port-au-prce today because as you build, to rebuild of course you are creating jobs and that is the one thing stations meet today's jobs, so there is a need to address population of port-au-princeo we are trying to do that working with usaid and the united nations. the dynamic since the earthquake we did not work a lot with the united nations forces in the things that we have done. we mentioned the general and i have known each other 46 years and we found urselves on the 13th of january working side by side like wehad done in 1984 and we recognized that no one group could do this alone even toather it was an insurmountable challenge, so we

determined immediately we must work side by side on everything we did. that has translated to mean today we are continuing to work with the new -- manusta and products i mentioned which is a great thing to see if we go out and work together because we relied upon -- iowa relied upon a joint task force relied upon human forces to provide a safe and secure environment for us to do humanitarian assistance. and i think aa surprise to many, security remains stable through the course of the operation at a time when many thought that he would revert back to its violent ways from the gangs who controlled most of the city it did not happen. i submit it did not happen because of the leadership of the

united nationmilitary. the forces there and the actions that they took in the days following the earthquake. and ovously, all the other military that showed up to provide help to the haitian people responded appropriately so. i found them to be resilient, every patient and very gracious for all of the support, and we have benefited from that relationship. so as we go forward, one of the areas we're looking to provide from the u.s. southern mmand is to be prepared for the next disaster that would strike haiti because if history is any indicator, there will be another disaster whether it is heavy rain. we really do not need a hurricane as all of you know to create a disaster in haiti. all of you need is about 5 inches of rain and about eight of our period and you have a disaster of potential immense proportions. more so today than prior to the earthquakes because th

situation that they find themselves inwith these displacepersons. so we are preparing to be able to react quickly come as quickly as possible to respond at the request of the governmt and our ambassador to return if necessary to provide life-saving support. so that's what we are doing today. and we have left with a joint task force. i will leave it there and then be prepared to address might have. thank you. >> we can take two or three questions if anyone has them. if you have a question can you come to the microphone over here because all of this is being taped and record it and we want to capture every body. we will let people come in and get their seats in. let's take the first question. please identify yourself by name and organization.

>> kim from international developed. thank you for a much for your presentation. que opened by talking about deteriorated situation in port-au-prince with creased numbers of demonstrations. and the end of your military presence in haiti yesterday. what ce tonow, what comes next? what is manusa in the position to this to? the last time we saw demonstrations like this was in the lead up in the january 04 in the lead up to they were received from office. i don't see the international community allowing the law enforcement office the demonstration continue. what happens? who is a way to guarantee th security of the country? >> i think the best way to do this to have all of the questions answered now and then we will stop and te general will respond and we will go on with the program. >> good morning. my name is [inaudibl

and i am from the haiti renewed allian. the question -- i want to thank you for the good work thatyou have done to my country because i'm from haiti. the question i would like to ask is always for a long time there has been a back-and-forth. every time there is a disaster that the international community miers' there a plan for haitians especially to words and emergency preparedness because it seems to me we've never really had that. and we always rely on the international sort of community to come and hep, and is there such a plan to transition in

haiti to help just in case a situation like that could occur? .. what is in place right now security wise and how strong do you see that minustah force and other as kind of in a longer-term plane, setting the

basis for longer-term economic security? >> okay. there are no softball questions here, that is for sure. with respect to the potential for unrest and political violence that has long plagued haiti er the years, i think minustah, my personal assessment is that minustah is in the best position they have ever been and to work with the government of haiti, the haitian national police and others to obviously, to continue to provide a safe and secure environment. worst-case obviously being able to react to demonstrations etc.. he even with a lot of dire

predictions of violent demonstrations, we haven't seen them materialize, but nevertheless, my relationship with the u.n. forces there and minustah reassured me that the commanders there are doing everything they can to maintain a secure environment. they are paying attention to all the things that we would expect them to pay attention to. they have built up a number of forces there, but given the fact that the haitian national police are still very much in a stage of trying to establish sufficient capacity that you would need for a police force and much less a national police

force to secure the streets of port-au-prince let alone the rest of the country, they need a lot of help and they are going to need to continue to get this help for years to come because in my view, that long-term solution to security and haiti is the establishment of professional police force that respects therule of law, that respects humanights with the judicial system of course to go along with it that can support that, but that is a long way off and will take a lot of work. the ability in the short-term i think for minustah, the united nations along with the government of haiti to address potential insecurity i think is as good as it has ever been, and they are prepared to address it accordingly i think as they go forward here through the

political season if you will if the elections take place, as they desire to do so. bu again, we haven't seen any indicators that would lead us to believe that the violent nature of political instability-- the haitian people enjoy the rights of all democratic people, to protest and they have de it very pceably over the last few months, so i think hopefully they will continue to respect the rule of law as they express their viewss they go through th political process, and not resort to violence as they go forward. so, i think that is the best i can offer in terms of that, but i do believe that they are focused on this minustah. at the plan to build the capacity to react to natural

disasters, the answer to your question is yes, we are-- we being through usaid and the u.s. government as well as the u.n., look to build capacity in the government of haiti and when i talk to our ng partners and haiti, isked them to look and see how we can build capacity in the government of haiti in all these areas, because truly, the solution in the long term, in terms of ability is how do you build capacity in the institutions in the local community as well as the national government. it has been severely affected by the earthquake itself but even before the earthquake it was very minimum to say the least. it doesn't exist adequately today. we are building a sum of these programs as i mentioned with u.s. southern command engagements emergency operation centers for example with local

mayors so that they can have some capacity to react to local emergencies as best as possible but they have no national system in place that is needed to do this, so they will be subject to the ability of the international community to provide them the critical assistance. as you know, it is unfortunate that it is very susceptible to flooding and it is a disaster waiting to happen subject to nature, quite frankly because just the geography. it was an area where they are going to need tremendous international response if they have a hurricane comes through that region. again this year as the did in 2008, the government of haiti nor the local capacity does not exist to appropriately respond.

and i would submit that regardless of how good the government of haiti and the local communities would have had in the ability to respond to a disaster, it would have not been sufficient. at this earthquake had struck in a community and the united states it would not have been sufficient. they would have needed outside help and the entirworld to respond, because it was just of that magnitude and in fact it destroyed most of their capacity that ty did have, so, but nevertheless we do need to work very hard to rebuild our capacity. i think it is too early to really say. i think in terms oyour last question about providing a basic element of securitin order to allow the economy to flourish and to build and create jobs appropriately is going to take

obviously a lot of time and a lot of international effort d investment. there are lots of programs on gog to create jobs, whether it be work for cash programs through the relief organizations they are, but those are just to provide emergency work for work programs. the longer-term job creation and the elements of security goes to i think what i talked about earlier, is how do you build a haitian security force being their national police that can prove basic security on the streets, where entrepreneurship and microeconomies can start to take root a flourish and provide an environment where they can be viable. that is a question that ithink is yet to be answered, but i

think investing in the haitian national police to increase their capacity to the level it needs to beto provide a basic level of security is fundamental to many of the things that need to be done, whether it is creating the economy, to getting their education system to the level it needs to be a i would put education-- i mentioned jobs but in my view, you could argue that education is fundamental to creating jobs as well, so i think we have got a lot of challenges in all those areas. >> thank you general keen for responding to those questions. my name is bob maguire. i'm the chair of his haiti rking group and i will now move us forward to the rest of our program, looking forward

from some perspectives that are complementary to those presented by general keen and some that are slightly different. we have three speakers. one is a rresentative of the international organization. one is the representative of an international ngo that works on human rights and development issues, and one is a haitian american scholar, who works on macroeconomic issues, so this is the blend that we have for you. are representative of an international organization is dr. auguste kouame. he is the lead economist and sector leader for poverty reduction and economic management for the caribbn and the latin america and caribbean regional vice presidency of the world bank. he joined the world bank in 1996. from the perspective of an international ngo working on human rights and development issues, we have subfive, who is the director of the robert f. kennedy memorial center for human rights, and she developed

an overseas rfk center program for day-to-day operations and long-term strategies and was due to go to haiti tomorrow but is postponing the trip. of course she is actually going to the gulf coast tomorrow. and are haian americans doll and someone who works on macroecomic issues is dr. ren aubourg. he is the assistant professor at the school of public affairs and director of international programs at the center for public finance research at american university and it is worthwhile mentioning that in that capacity he manages a cooperation program between american university and the central bank of haiti. dr. o'berg has been in haiti fairly recently. he has two to have 20 goats there. he is overseeing the reconstruction of his family's residence and he continues his work with the central bank and other economic authorities in

haiti. we will begin with dr. kouame and moved to monika karla varma and then ren aubourg. i would ask each of our speakers to try to keep it within 15 minutes. >> good morning. it is a pleasure to be here. i will try to keep it within 10 or 15 minutes so we can have time for questions. i will first say a few words on how we saw haiti after the quake , and how we se haiti going forward and then if you allow me i will say a few words out what we have been doing to respond. we all know the quake of january 12 was a very powerful one. it caused 120%, destroyed 120%

of haiti's gdp. it cause growth to decline to a projected 8.5% this year compared to an expected 2.5% so the quake has caused a loss of growth of about 12%. this is verysignificant in a country where gdp per capita or income is already one of the lowest in the world and the lowest in the western hemisphere. the government in haiti has traditionally been very small in terms of financial capacity. government revenue represented on average about 10% of gdp compared to 20 to 30% for other developing countries and because of the earthquake and damage to government ability to collect revenue, the government

submitted 7% of gdp this year so this will leave a big gap, essentlly because there is a need for reconstruction. there is a need for government to have a population meet e basic nee. as we just heard, there are a lot of people-- close to 2 million. it is significant the government will spend 20% of gdp this year to meet those and other needs, so if you are-- there is a gap of 20% of gdp that the government needs to nd somewhere and it is going to come mostly from the international community. i say that because it is a challenge that we want to discuss later on. there is also a big gap in government in the whole

country's ability to mobilize over our economic it vividly and that is a factor in the large payment deficits for the country. the good news is that because of the earthquake, we have seen an increasing-- but other payments are under stress. infrtructure, we are very limited, as we knowhen there has been serious heat with the earthquake, especially roads and other means of transportation. now, thiss a picture-- i am not trying to present you with the big picture but this is the realy on which we have to work, and from which we have to try and improve. what are the challenges from that? in the short-term, we think

there were three main challenges. first, there is the challenge of dealing th the population. the population has been used to living in a crisis prone economy , but this is probably the biggest tat many living haitians have experienced in their lives, and and they hope the government will respond and they have heard the international immunity will respond. we have heard of demonstrations in one of the questions. the second challenge is to deal with the international community the international community is an important partner of haiti, has been in the past. it is hopefully to be less so in the future when haiti become

self-sufficient but for now it is an important partner in rebuilding haiti, and there are other pressures on the international community. resources. be heard some partners will be traveling to the north of mexico and there are events happening quite a mullah, happening in chile. there is the global economy crisis. the international community expects to see action in haiti. the third challenge is to deal with the invasion of the economy , the private sector both international and domestic. the good news after the quake is that the private stor stayed

in haiti and in fact seized the opportunity from the quake, but have to be protected. otherwise it is very possible that some of the economic activities that were and should take place in haiti may go as well. how to deal with these short-term challenges. the government quickly moved to reestablish basic and key economic function, key economic and financial function. we do not see a collapse of financial systems in haiti. government payrolls will move very quickly, but in fact revenue collection has revealed somewhat. so the short-term prospects are good if the populationnd the

international community and the private sector take the time to study very carefully what is going on. i think there will be less impatience, but unfortunately people don't take the time to analyze things and we can't expect that seing results. in addition to improving or establishing key economic and financial functions, the government will need to move very quickly to take advantage of the low-hanng fruit and show visible results. now, in the longer term, the big question for the long-term is whether haiti can move from a crisis prone economy to a desirable economy. the wish of everybody is that we hope this will happen, but it won't happen-- i will take a

lot of work. the conditions for this to take place are there, but there is no guarantee for results. there are a number of things that we need to be done for the next decade to be the decade of haiti if i may put it that way. first, the potential of the economy to be transformed into unfortunately agriculture has been a great potential but has never really at least in the recent history, then tapped. the private sector has tried to operate despite a business environment that is at least conducive in nehboring countries. if this were to improve, it would seek more investment. accesses been quite limited.

only 0.6% of fate finance has-- country has access to microfinance in haiti. you may see more people with axes to micofinance because this is what many people will actually use for their small businesses. they list is long andi hopefully will have time to come back to some of them during the questions and answers. reading some of the documents the government put forward in new york on march 31, as the dominating-- it is quite encouraging to see the government. if you have time i would encourage you to look at it. it is very wellprepared, very good vision and there is a document also prepared by the haitian private sector, which is a very good document. said so the vision is tre and

the intention is there. i think the result is, if we go by the amount pledged, there is hope and we are as a partner of haiti repaired to contribute to that. now, what has been done and what are we doing going forward? the day after the quake our president announced that haiti would the provided with 100 million to help respond to the quake and we have started a project are ready to transfer a good part of these resources on march 18. to have the government repair infrastructure and had some of the ministries again. we have increased the size of

some of our existing projects. for example in education, community development and we are in the process of developing support to have government meet the final-- that i mentioned eaier. going forward, we hope that we will get more resources from our next round of organizations for the i., which will be our-- and with the expected payment we hope to have a lot more resources for the reconstruction in haiti. i think i have used my time and i would happy to answer questions. thanks. >> thank you to you for hosting

today's meeting and for having me here today. just to give you a little bit of background on the robert f. kenny center's involvement in haiti, we have been working in haiti since 2002. we give an annual human rights award to courageous leaders on the ground who have met with the human rits struggle and in 2002 that went to our partners in health which i believe most people are now familiar with. she was a voice for her work on the right to health. not only was she doing grndbreaking hiv/aids treatment at a time when it was considered difficult to do so in resource poor settings but she was doing so from a human rights perspective and really over the years what that has meant is working in partnership with the ministry of health to build its capacity to do a job. haiti has a constitutionally recognized right to health. the rfk award begins a partnership, a long-term

partnership and the take on the social change goals of our partners and engage from washington. over the years we have looked at the international community, the u.s. government, the international financial institutions role in haiti at times when there was no money going to the government and really looking at what the impact of the international community interventions were on economic and social rights, specifically how water and food in the last year we have been looking at the impact of u.s. food aid. all of this is done really with a human rights space framework, really looking at the issues of development of food, health and water and education as human rights and not charity. since the earthquake, we have taken lessons learned from these interventions. we have also followed the last two donors conferences as well to really look at how these lessons can help towards the goal of building back better.

i want to take a moment to go back a little bit into the history of assistance to haiti, not too far back with the recent history and as i mentioned for a number of years the international community has really, with helpmoney going directly to the haitian government and what that meant was that went through ngo's. being from an ngo myself in parting with many ngo's, ngo's and haiti doing valuable work however what has happened over time particularly when you are lookinat the public sector is that a parallel structure, parallel structures have been created and therefore weakening the public infrastructure. the other thing that we have looked at over time also as i mentioned are the donor conferences and i think it is important to look back and note that in $2,048,000,000,000 was pledged to haiti. we tried to track that money. we had a team of 20 people at nyu with different institutions trying to track where that money went.

we could not track it. last year in 2009, after the big hurricane hit haiti, a lite over $350 million was pledged. that money was eventually tracked by the special envoy's office and at the donors conference in march, the number that was put out is that only 30% of that money was actually fulfilled. only 30% of the pledge money ever got to haiti. this has been what we have been hearing from the haitian governme. now, why is this important? obviously now the need is greater than ever and we need to make sure that that money is fulfilled. yesterday in the dominican republic there was a meeting to follow up on the donor's conference and president preval said since the donor's conference they had only received money and $55 million. there are nuances and a lot of reasons for that but i think it is important to highlight that we as the international commity need to fulfill our obligations, and being a human

rights attorney i just want to clarify there is no obligation to intervene in haiti. there's no obligation to go in and provide assistance but once we make tha commitment we do have an obligation to do no harm. what does that mean for the haitian people, when you hear in 2004, i remember right after the donors conference being in haiti and people were saying we hear a billion dollars is coming but we don't know what projects it is supposed to go toward. we don't know what the plans are. similarly, in 2009, it took us several weeks to find out which countries had pledged what money that was going to haiti. this year things are a little bit different. there is a real effort for transparency. there is a web site that is up to tracks ad list the pledges hours after the donors conference and there ian effort to make that information public. let me step back for just a

moment and explain why we are very focused on transparency and accountability by talking a little bit about whai mentioned earlier, human rights-based approach and i think this is critical as we are moving forward. it is something that is an important piece, there is a large amount of money going into haiti. a real effort, a real good will. support every corner of the world, how do we make sure that that money is sent in the right way and supports the human rights of the haitian people? human rights, rights-based approach includes several fferent components the key is participation, putting patients at the center of all of the work that we do. that means consulting with communities when projects are designed, monitoring and giving information when projects are being implemented ..

recently since the earthquake to really push but that's going to be critical. often difficult conversations with the donor nations, but as support. what does that mean? our government is talking about giving about $100 billion in support, the brazilian government gave $15 million very recently in budgetary support. so these are things that are going to be critical if we are serious about actually resulting and building the capacity of the

government and transparency. again, this is critical. it's not just transparency for all of us in this room who are following and the website is a great way to do that. the idea behind the website which is being hosted by the ministry of planning and the u.n. tipi is to be able to plaque to the contract pledged with feedback from the ground up, so that's sort of the hope. we are not quite there yet and have to monitor to insure that is actually implemented to the full extent. but how does the informatn get down to the local community? that's not, you know, a web site is not going to be that answer. it's going to have to be committee meetings. it's going to have to b thrugh the text message or there are lots of creative ways o radio to get that information out to the local communities that ar waiting for this money. accountability. we talked about building up gorlovka which we have seen as

does need a t strengthening but also accountability for international and a government level projects. if a project is promised but not delivered or is not delivered properly or is never at all what is the redress complete mechanism wch we argue should be built into the capacity of the government. there has been -- there are probably experts in this room familiar with the complaint mechanism, but really in haiti is critical that that be built into the government capacity. the final element of the rights based apoaches nondiscrimination which is fairly self-explanatory. there has been some really incredible rhetoric post earthquake. we went with a member number of donors. psychiatry clinton, administrator shaw, a lot of folks in the government are taing about partnerships, and transparency, capacity building

to read the question is what is the machinery to do that, and i think that we need to -- i now that we have had some good conversations with folks at usaid recognizing there is a lack of transparency. what are we actually going to do about it? i would argue a similar site is needed at usaid similar to the recovery.gov or what has been planned through the undp and haitian government and haiti could be a pilot project. we should be able to track if we are giving money to education we should be able to track it down to the floor not just to see the building but to actually see the school was functioning with their teachers and students are attending schools. accountability as i mentioned is critical that we invest in that sort of accountability mechanism. there are some positive development. the interim commission i think they have their first informal

meeting yesterday. the inform meeting will happen on june 14th and that is basically a body that is to set policies for and coordinate the aid. a friend of mine from the inspector general's office and i'm sorry for calling about, but there are lessons we need take very seriously about it's not just coordination but what are the nitty gritty mechanics we talked aut. there will be other disters but unfortunately may fall upon haiti whether it is hurricanes or what not to read how are we going to retool and readjust our plans and commitment when that happens? is also the multi donner fund the world bank is hosting. this is something a lot of groups of been calling for for years to pull the donor funds into a centralized place where there's coordination and there's oversight of these projects. the fund has been established

the world bank put some money and to establish it, the brazilian government gave $55 million recently to it. however, the amount of money that we expect to s in that fund is only about half a million dollars of the 10 billion we have seen pledged so although the mechanism is there and they are going to be -- there are always technical challenges need to be utilizing that further. i just want to go back a little bit becuse we're talkng to a colleague from usaid so i will take this moment to talk about some of the work that we have done free earthquakes looking at the u.s. aid and i think this is critical as we are talking as the rhetoric has changed as the machinery is changing how are we going to actively catch up and one of the places there is a lot of talk is the reform that is moving forward but i just wt

to give you a snapshot of u.s. food aid and a study we did last august in the central plateau. we opened the right approach perspective looking at the right to food basically quaty of food, acceptable the, how culturally appropriate it is and what we found is that of those who had received food aid for those resurveyed 60% didn't know how to prepare the food they had received. 40% it was a type of food they hadn't eaten. more than half the surveys spent over four hours in line to get the food primarily women. 10% of the trip was spoiled or not a double and 10% said the food made them ill. this was before the earthquake. a bigger problem we need to talk about this the machinery that we have to deliver the food. 15% of our food is multistate meaning food that must be sold to fund a project. what does that mean in practical

terms? if you have to sell food on the local market to build a road or a development project you have to sell that most of the time across lower than local producers. you are undercutting the agricultur community by doing that and we have very strong conversations with people off the record who say this is hampering agricultural development in haiti. the other thing is laws around local procurement. our food aid comes from the united states to haiti and what does that mean? this is why we are seeing things like culturally inappropriate food. we talked about the need to strengthen the agricultural sector. part of that is clean to be we are bringing in a lot of food from the reunited states. there's a lot of montum right now and i think for those of us on haiti to not consider to work

on he, tse of us who have had involvement in the gears are involved in a strong way and i think if we look at photographs that we saw in the video it's hard to see those every time we look at them and i think the fact this room is packed is encouraging. there are a lot of people focused on this in the international commity and i think everybody has the good will and good intentions but i think we really need to make a long-term commitment to providing we talked about the inpatient people and the international community private-sector. a lot of an official at the level of the haitian government as well and there are going to be very difficult times ahead as we reached towards elections of the administration increase in how are we going to a right to the moments and stay committed so we can get to the point where ultimately the haitian people are respected and realize that we are all there to support that

i would be happy to take questions. >> i would like to thank usaid for being part of this panel. i would like to structure my position on these points. first, an overview of the situation prior to the earthquake and then i will talk a little about the challenges the haitian economy faces and finally i will express some of my preoccupation witrespect to the upcoming message in flux of aid to haiti. let me stop the the custard with

the economy. for once a long time if you look at the data on haiti prior to the art critic, there was some positive to the element in the economy. for the fifth consecutive time they had a per capita growth that reached 2.9% in 2009 which is quite considerable given the fact that the country was stroke with to hurricanes. yet they declined from that number to single-digit numbers. they were more in the range of 1 dollar for 40 u.s. goods. international reserves were around three months. the government had implented preventing military policy and also the policy with leaders financing he creation.

so as a result of some of positive performance, june 2009 the country went from 1.2 billion debt consolidaon which would be about 60% of its national debt and which put eight in it sort of became the country to reach the comprehension .4 the initiatives it seems only one aspt of the situation. the other thing to keep in mind that the same time is that all of this occurred on the backdrop of poverty and income inequality. in fact if you look at it shows he's not only the poorest country in the atmosphere it is also the most inequitable one. the plot from the house consumption service from 2008

shows 56% of the population lives on less than 1 dollar per day. the reason why i talked about household living conditions because i don't have more recent data on the sly assume the same trend has continued over time. so 56% of the population lives on 1 dollar per day via 76 on $2 per day. haiti has the highest coefficient at 2.65 making it the most of the highest income disparity in the world. the second highest with coefficient of 1.55. so what is interesting to note is the top 20% of the population 69% of the country as well and the other hand the 20% of the

population ges only 1.4% of the world. so the reining part abo the 60% portion of the population which we present more like the middle class we see 29% of the country's wealth. to realize that during that time we have had massive drain of the educated population of the country. it went first to the countries with population about 5 million people and among all countries in the world in terms of the immigration of educated labor. as of 200083.6% of its labor has and agree to than always surprised when i go to haiti as a part of the program that only amine th theamerican university i'm always shocked to see that when i ask x or y is

there because they may have migrated to canada or to the u.s.. so this is a serious problem. let me talk quickly about some of the challenges. and the reason why i mentioned to you the snapshot is because of the fact that if the aid is not managed properly, the situation that you have in terms of the income disparity can exact and crete tension with respect to the economy so that we say quickly a few words of the challenges from the earthqke. many reports have identified the challenges that are important so i will not go too much into this. what i would like to focus on primarily is the challenges as they relate to my own experience

it's iortant to note it has been the most affected the earthquake has been in the sector with about 40% of the damage. in terms of the challenges it' important to note there is a possible fiancial loss steve to be vindicated. the description of the earthquake is possible that there may be the capitalization of the banking setor asset increase to thinking system portfolio of non-performing loans. and furthermore, the banking system in haiti is very concentrated. the three largest bank accounts for more than 80% of the banking sector and have referred the financial. another problem has to do with the increase in terms of

short-term. it's important that something like this occur. there isn't really a supply problem in haiti with this concern. if you look at the issue it is only about 36% which is much lower than the average in the region which is about 55 to 60 persons so the main issue there is traditionally most of the goals about 10% of individual dollars and in fact the same person get about 80% of the loan so we have to show something like this but there are so many people from the lower class and ddle class that have lost their house so they will be finding some form of financing. it is also important for productive activities. what is interesting to note is

on behalf of the credit extended to the service activities only 1% of agriculture in the transportation sector. let me talk also about some of the preoccupation that i have with respect to foreign aid. and the reason why i want to mention that is that report has not insisted on some of the potential problems. if you look at the literature, basically the emerging consensus is that no country can left out of poverty just based on foreign aid and this is about half of the century has experienced in the development work short so the aid to be effective certain conditions have to be aligned

and i am going to talk about a few of them. so massive foreign aid can either be a curse a blessing it all depends on cerain things and what we talk about the first point. you have to have important complementaries between foreign aid and policies and look at the institutioin terms of which affects. so the literature doesn't show there's a strong and positive relationship between aid and growth. however it shows what matters isn't aid is criminally the type of aid that is given. humanitarian aid has a lethal effect onthe growth. however other types of aid such as the aid to agriculture or social sector projects do have

an impact on the economy. however that impact has time-life and it seems to be shorter to the agricultural products than to social projects. this is a need it is given to the education that tends to be more sort term in terms of impact. the second thing also is that aid tends to be very fungible in the sense that the government or national government can locate their resources in response to the flow so it may be difficult ifou try to channel aid to the public sector of what can be hampered by the composition of the public expenditure that is favored by the local or the national government. another point is that how it is

perceptive and effective nature of anticipating and preventing potential results of capital inow and also become crucial. one of the problems with foreign aid coming to a country is tha if it just goes into the international reserved what happens is it will tend to lead to an increase of the monetary supply. and pressure and this will affect the role that you have inside the country and this will tend to hurt the competitiveness of experts due to their position of the local currency. so it is efficient like this

there be a need to accept liquidity. none in the case of the central bank of haiti, one of the preferred way is to stbilize the liquidity is by the selling of what is called the bond which are basically issued by the central bank. the probl with something like this is that these bonds have high interest rates and in a situation where you already have some type of bottleneck and people are not secure of where to go in terms of the future dependency will be for the local bank to invest in the bond and therefore they have their money there and they are not interested to give money to the private sector. another problem is that the

relative capacity consensus of the beneficial impact. what is important speech to the capacity wih the sanction and what's important here. before pouring money into the sector beavers have to ask yourself whether or not the money that was already in the sector was used properly and effectively in the first place. if not, just pulling money into the sector because it has been identified as a priority may and up just creating additional risk. furthermore, what shows often and it exacerbates the assumption of the problem is that you look at the donor

organization, ngos and government often there is a lack of coordination between the various urgency's and often for skilled local resources and you end up with serious bottleneck in any type of aid. and finally, they brought up the issue of how flexible policy makers are in addressing the trade-off between the capitol resources of financing and comforting of aid. one thing i saw at the convention earlier is that the relationship between aid and economic growth tend to be more pronounced in countries where you have some political institutions than in countries where the institutions tend to be weaker so to go back to the point abt the flexibility, in

terms of trade offs. what is important to realize here is that the research shows that grants tend to be more appropriate for i called the need based projects, whereas the loantend to be more appropriate so the type of project. so therefore those are some of the types of things that will need to be taken into account. and this is more ofn analytical evidence based on what i have seen in my trips to haiti is the housing market is becoming more and more segmented in the sense that part of the housing market of u.s. currency. d i have a sittion where

many of haitians i know out of their hallmark of the market because they can't afford paying rent that are extremely expensive. so in the end, i would like to conclude by saying that i welcome the aid that is given to haiti,ut i think that is what will in practice be the test and whether the aid if works and how this is managed because my fear is if it is not managed properly you may end up with a situation where overall tension becomes even bigger in the society in the sense that there is no effect on the west segment of haitian society.

thank you. [applause] >> thank you to all of our speakers for actually keeping well within the timeframe. it enables me to have a few minutes for comments and then we will go into our q&a. i think one of the things we have been hearing a lot today is the juxtaposition between patients and inpatient or frustration. it's going to be i think a dichotomy that hopefully will not grow it will be somehow managed. but i thought it was interesting what it edmondson digest r. dee and the dominican republic and i would like to read a quote from him. he of course is the second three general special representative for haiti of the u.n.. he said yesterday that tangible change must be solved by the

men, women and children living in desperate conditions in camps in order to avoid this discontent, these demonstrations we heard about, being transformed into social and political instability than he added the international community must support political stability in the country without political stability the efforts deployed by the haitian government or the international community will not bear fruit. so it is somewhat of a assessment from mr. malai who is on the top of the scene. i'd like to share with you briefly three kind of barometer's i will be following as this process goes forward in terms of haiti monika kalra's pe found itself and move forward and build that better. one barometer i will be looking at is how it works with these subcontracting were outsourcing

of the aide to haiti. in this fairly realistic to see the patterns that were established in the past where muchf the international systems will go to externals investors, private sector, non-governmental lectors or for-profit contractors will remain the order of the day. but we have been there and we have done that and i think some of the statistics that renee showed in the inequities in the society suggest this approach toward aid has not really accomplished any kind of a broad equitable development in haiti. sweating get willie very important to see what would be the outcome of this subcontracting of haiti monika kalra's to the limit outside interests particularly again with the juxtaposition of rhetoric we've been hearing of the donors' conference of partnership and cooperation and so on. i am sometimes reminded of

apparently sometng einstein once said that the manifestation of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. we've got to do things differently. another factor i will be looking at myself is the presenc of the haitian government has both national, regional and loc manifestations in the recovery. ..

>> my third barometer would be looking at the role of ordinary haitians with their country particularly the youth where are ordinary haitians in the rebuilding process? has it been effectively mobized with the cash for work programs? i have seen reports from the haitian press of frustration

that the population is not being mobilized lower included in this continues and idle mines and idle hands can result. this is an important opportunity to mobilize ordinary haitians to rebuild their country and to learn skills sanding gauge talent and have a greater ske in their country. and as a subset of that barometer i will we watching very carefully for success or failure to decentralize th country and the general referred to the population on the countryside and those of you know, me i will we watching very carefully an idea i have been working on that is the mobilization of patience both young and old

with the civic serviceorps as facilitated by the constitution of 80. with that final comment to reopen two questions and answers if you will please come to the micropho we will take your place to be heard in the recording of this. you can address your question to the piano or to a specific speaker. please address yourself. we will put questions in groups of three then we will take it that way. >> first one to think the speakers' it was very interesting. i am from the brookings institution and i have two quick questions. with the question of inflation we have seen a massive influx or the prices are doubling with an one year. is anyone taking charge to

make sure the same thing will not happen in haiti with the of coordination and the reconstructions authority to make sure those are avoided? second, everybody is talking about building government capacity. ngos space-bar money for a driver who speaks a bit of english than a government pays for people so how you build the capacity if it is easier and beneficial for individuals to work for ngos? >> thank you very much. next question? >> i am an economist but i am speakg for myself.

first of like to thank you for this. and the presters today. one particular aspect is that there was pleased to see the panel as haitian national which has not been the case in a lot of the forms that i have been tive. i think it is for doing what you are saying with the nclusions of robert maguire for what he will watch out for to see how the haitians will be allowed to participate in the rebuilding of their country and having the professor to have a very good example because they are haitian professionals who not only know the country but have the capacity to intervene

that is very important for kobe on that would also like to comment on the brain drain aspect everybody has mentioned the frustration and the person before me mentioned the disparity between the ngos and the government sector as competing for resources and everybody talks about enhancing capacity but a lot of us need to think about how to keep capacity not just in the govement sector but in haiti because the frusations talking about ordinary people when i went to haiti, the frustrations that i heard were professional how will you keep this professional? the lot have migrated. a lot of people choose to live elsewhere but a lot of patients would have liked to

have stayed in their country but little by the tone after the earthquake there discouraged because they're not being used. thank you. the third questioner then we will respond. >> i wonder particularly having working on a story this week with dr. requires first barometer they he said he would monitor is the subcontracting and so one of companies coming into the market and looking particularly at the seed distribution going on by one of the largest seed companies of the world. i don't want to mention right now but published yesterday with is distributed usaid little accommodation for the haitian peasant farmers. what guidelines would be putting in place cahal were

companies coming in whereve they are at too not only make sure the work is accomplished but to accommodate beyond what the government might do for the companies as well to accommodate the ne of the tradition of the haitian people? >> >> who on the panel wants to address any of these points? >> issue of the inflation and go to capacity of government? >> with respect to the issue i came across perhaps one month ago a document where discussing the potential

defects with the haitian economy with the influx seven terms of foreign-aid so they are very concerned about it especially since one of the things that is being used in monetary policy partly is the indirect form of inflation targeting. it would seem to me the central bank. >> on the inflation and government capacity to confirm that warning them that with haiti the risk is

lower because the world economy and haiti in particular was a sure paid declining path coming out of the global food crisis and expecting it to be very, very low a because of the expected reconstructio activity as of 8.5% it could be higher or close at 10% but we do t expect the inflation we saw in 82 years ago. however, it is important in addition to the monetary policy instrument with the domestic supply that is one of the things we're watching

in our project to insure that thi mey comes then we have a supply of fruits and services. not only generic work but to quell inflationary pressures but there is no magic bullet. so you have to have some inflation with double digits but in terms of government capacity, you are absolutely right. we want to do good work in haiti you need labor you use the comparison and it so

happens that has a highlight of the government so you compete for good qualy workers. i don't know if there is a short-term solution to that we have also seen because they can increase very significantly what we do th institutions like that it is not perfect but a stopgap measure that will work with the government in addition to maintaining their jobs to have salary increases on human capital by doing so hopefully when it improves but again this is a difficult situation and not particul to haiti.

>> like to address very quickly earlier with said gdp it says of what there is a saturation point* with marginal returns and we need to make sure that saturation a point* is that the early impact if we are giving aid two agriculture, industry and so forth and there is a saturation point* whenever you look at those numbers that is a concern all that money is coming to the country but you allow

various capacities. >> in terms of the second questioner i accept with great pleasure compliments to the working group we have renee here today will be asking you in the fall to join us on the panel. [laughter] are there any comments of that issue brain drain more broadly or within the government? >> i think the government has an effort to stop it. they contacted the american in university to try to come up with a program so raer than sending it happens i

was that the central bank in the 1990's where they had to recall some patients who i was from one among those that went back to work and the governor of the central bank had where he had sent about 25 patients to get master's degrees in the u.s. universities. what happened wants that ended they came back but once the situation started to deteriorate this degree from not american universities did not catch up elsewhere so the new governor when empowered decided to try something different.

he decided to have them be trained in haiti. that is one where we have found certificates 220 shops and those causes are exactly is same as they were getting here. the only difference that as a result we can reach more people so every other month month, we go to haiti to deliver those spin like we have to move a little faster because they have a long line of questioners but are there any comments on the third question posed on this the distribution issue and guidelines for companies coming into haiti? >> or shall we learn more by reading his story?

[laughter] i think you have stone to the panel on about one. >> can we get three more questions? >> my name -- , by to think the panel for their presentation. my question is around the political implication with how that impacts the reconstructions because the issue that i hear is when the country gives money to haiti they insist that it goes to haiti to do that. the haitian government with flexibility the 12 higher to do a political project and for instance there was an

airport that was supposed to be built with the government. and has been nearly five years the airport has not been built so how does that impact the reconstructions never? first of all, is that the problem in second out is that impact? >> thank you. >> i am from the neck. i like to pick up the immigration threat to but look at it more broadly

because this is something of concern not only to haitians but the u.s. and that is given what yohave all said in terms of the current and continuing dislocation and some of the frustrations experienced by the haitians come a what temptations in haiti? i like your assessment whether you think that is as it has been put forward a character issue the patients are resilience or did that have to do more with the u.s. immigration policy? given some of the projections you have made about potential future disasters whether political or climatic why do think the prospects are for haitians and how reaching a red line and deciding they have had enough? >> thank you very much.

>> i am from a company based in north carolina. i have two questions. lated to economic activities so we are unanimous in thinking and reconstruction i want to know specifically what is the world bank and organizations doing for the environment for businesses? it is very difficult to and it takes a long time but you don't have aertain business structures andhe right to property is not clear. and simple things in terms of changing the rules that

would be inviting to business investors prototypical a i would like to ask what is being done so that asian-americans were proven to be good government contractors so they are considered as part of the strategy? >> thank you very much. year question of course, to be the subject of wonder two panels. but please comment very briefly and then we have time for four more right afr this. the can tie the immigration threaded what keeps people in haiti and what is the tipping point* a then the last question of the world bank. and others proving the business and environment.

>> just go ahead. >> i will make a quick battlestar with the last question. thank you for the question. it is very important question. the world bank we have the and canal finance corporation to focus on private-sector activity they have been very busy trying to see how the business started restarted from a low point* where haiti runs on the criteria for starting a business so starting a business in haiti is known to be very, very difficult

and with pain to access -- taxes but the business is difficult and one thing that makes it difficult is you need access to land. what we are doing we having gays with the government to try to see wha is the low hanging fruit in the short term and i learned last week the prime minister saw that having the business registered has been shorter and but to register business

you have less agencies to go through. also trying to improve the taxes and we work with the interbank to provide loans more quickly so in the longer-term tried to work with the world bank that is a good number of business people in haiti. you will not see the growth because government cannot have growth without the privateector bt as far as procurement mere nine doing anything specific but i will tell you what we can do short term is haitian

american businesses should get involved in the u.s. aid two haiti they can play a big role in how to be employed. >> in respect to the taipei question many of us are not the following we have all seen the implications of different companies coming in with the project we have tracked for many years that is a much longer storey brolin of the issues that came about the projects were supposed to come in if you have this coming in it was one of the harder places to

work and these companies did not know how to implement in that setting but on a broader level it would affect the ngos and highlight the need at a minimum coordinate with the government and partner with the government. >> any comments on immigration? >> i will just mention obviously this is something that we watch very closely we saw no indications of increases directly or indirectly of immigration over the course of the last five months of the post earthquake and if you look at the history of immigration which has caused it to a natural disaster disaster, but nevertheless

this is much different than previous natural disasters what i founby interacting with the populists, the expectations we not very high as long as you were meeting basic needs with what they were looking for, ty were not looking to make their way to the north coast to get on a boat but to survive some measure of hope and it has been addressed already that hopes to exist but the patience is wearing thin and this is something we should pay close attention too. >> we have much a limited time so if you could keep your questions to just one and make it as quickly as you can. >> thank you to the group to putting together the for. in the country program manager and i am interested in the whole question around

ngos and government capacity building it has been written about right after the quake i will give two examples of what i have seen in terms of ngos the first is working very closely with the ministries of agriculture and education and. the other groups doing civic education at a very local level in which the mayor and magistrate are in because they are throughout the constitution but what have you seen and whether relearning about ngos and capacity building? >> good morning. -- i would like to know if

there world bank will address specifically the fraction of people living in extreme poverty. [inaudible] is it necessary the problem of theseabled that are can be have part of the security or part of the political problem is what we have to think of them. >> thank you. >> with the embassy here in washington. the panel asks to sell some questions and to put it more directly it is interesting to see how this

international aid framework will do and you also identified some founders that are very much related so i'm curious to know what is the initial assessment and is now our not -- not our progress but the answer is after we had a very public and positive ceremony >> our last question. >> i with the council on hemispheric affairs seven by to ask you a question in light of the recent demonstrations and frustrations with net also is the process of th successful election in november and its concern to be a true partr in the reconstructions process fam a calle bank them for keeping it tight and let's have one type answer keeping

one eye on the clock. >> with respect to the best practices of partnerships we have partnered with partners of health and when example i can speak two and much more detail networks at every level they help two takeover or run the clinics and other no longer functioning for the ministry to read pass them and get them up and running. good dayere working in university hospital and doing a lot of work now to build up the education system. every step of the way there is say relationship with the bull and capacity building. >> we still have three questions that need to be addressed. >> about the road think?

>> it it for those that are living below the 60% of the population as we have heard, there is a large number of stations who believe 78% in an earthquake the short answer is yes. to address extre poverty so by definition the inntion is to benefit the poor we have the committee

driven one of them is called -- this will give micro ground two committees to prepare the project for the community and the village and building extra classroom for the school a can be anything that will improve their lives and because it could put farmers in the village so there is

no need to repay if you have time to look at the high suggest that you do. it is very important we also have the program that benefits from low income families and that also benefits the extremely poor. many people do not believe in the world paint pay attention to extreme poverty but this is what we do and i allenge due to find projects. >> although if i could follow up quickly on this, and other parts of the world, the world bank is supporting cash transfer

programs and brazil is one major example is anything about having conditional cash transfer program in haiti? to make this is something we discussed regularly. with cash transfer context, i talked about the school program is not a cash transfer as such but gives incentives for families to send their kids to school it would benefit so that we can implement in haiti. with the community coming together with the individual community comes with their own project they would benefit from the program so to build social capital to

have balance our people living in the community or outside of the community but i think the answer your expecting is well you provide cash to famils on the condition that they do something, but in haiti the conditions that if we word to do that in haiti, which wemight the beneficiary size would be so large and brazil you can do it because the group is sizable but in haiti -- you'd have to do is 70% of the population.

i am not saying we will not do it by that will work better. >> monica, perhaps i could see you commenting on the trends of the framework we have heard about? >> as i said the trends have very potive things we are seeing. most of the donors that we met with understand and accept the principles with a new level who donor capability and there is a lot of sport for the idea of partnering with the government. i think we have it to see what that will look like once the money starts to come in and whether we're

able to get the information necessary to make it transparent. take an example technically how difficult that is we ha over a dozen agencies a different reporting requirements it is difficult to see where the money went if you look at the different ministries and implementing partners it will be very tricky to make that transparent but there an effort behind that. there will be some very difficult times ahead in whether we will stay engaged and deliver going in. i think there are positive signs but we're very cautious what we look at. and whether there will be enough coordination on the ground too mechanicall and

sure the all these people are working in conjunction and one of the things we have touched on is multi donor fund is not voting members in how do we find a way to support and strengthen civil society preaches patience moving forward? i don't know if that answers your question but it is an overwhelming amount of challenges that we face. >> we will and by having the lt. general making a couple of comments from the last question. >> with respect to the election coming up four hopefully coming up, there is a great opportunity here

with the government and the international community to see the elections carried off and do have an a safe and secure environment. we can look att and see over the course of the government we have a long period of stability we have not enjoy a 47 times three have t possibility to see him pass off his administration to the next administration and a peaceful and safe and democrat manner. but again the conditions are such that they are sitting on many respects. but to move quickly for humanitarian assistance over

the course of the coming months to address the issues with respect two patients and surely deliver aid fast enough over the issues i think to a large degree would determine and ifhe mechanisms are in place to do that and we don't have day catastrophic event interrupt this in the process and unable to respond quickly, if a disaster does strike the international community must respd quickly and address it and to minimize the loss of life that potentially, to demonstrate we were prepared to do that and in a manner to unable to move forward

becausi think it will test everyone's patience. i like to look at the glass half full and see a smooth transfer of por to provide a historic opportunity. >> with those comments this brings are very informative and productive meeting to win and you will see you in the fall please think our speakers.

>> a look at the political climate and midterm elections. former president of the service employees international union live at 11 a.m. eastern here on c-span. c-span recently spent an afternoon with senator mary

landrum. she met with officials and observed the observations taking place. [inaudible] are you on the operating team? how was a working out? you bet on it a few days? and what they pay you today? [inaudible] that's something. for different post.

is it adeate for you? no feelings from the fumes are the oil? you're putting down boom. well, good. you're doing a good job and thank you. we told bp today that they're going to pay people hopefully for a whole year and advance because this is what they make their money in the summer. they have to show last year that my operation grows to $200,000, and so give me $200,000. bp is going to have to do it and have to do it for their own reputation. it's not going to work anywhere else in the world. no other country will have them

if they don't do the right thing now. and they cannot wait for litigation. right. >> it takes four years. >> we need to focus on the claims process, and that is what i am one of focus on, streamlining the claims process. >> they are gng to do another one. an automatic send out of the second checks, but they are averaging $3,100, because it wanted to get money out quickly to people. there overpaying some people and underpaying others. but this month they have to focus on the big claims a whitehornback -- the big claims like hornback, the big hotels, still waiting for their

imbursements because they have not given reimbursed or for the big climbs. and then you have disclosure issue. we got 7,000 miles of title land? its 7000 and we approve today how many miles? 30. this is the scale of this. we don't need the barride all 7000, but if we're talking abt sand protection in certain places, is going to be more than 30 miles, because that is $13 million a mile. maybe we can do it for cheaper, maybe $10 million or $5 million a mile, and decided once 7,000 miles that we have to protect, maybe only protect the critical

1000. but that is the scale of it. it is not just a couple of islands but lots of places along the coast. >> if you're talng those two islands, both sides will see nothing but beautiful marshland. there's more marshland there than anywhere else. that got a big clump of oil a mile long coming in there right now. >> we do have a sense of urgency. but there are clubs of oil coming into mobile. when you look at the big picte, it is extremely urgent, but this is the whole gulf coast. it is affecting us right now, but i was sitting right now -- right next to gov. riley, and he was pitching a complete fit to the president, saying, you said

all the boom from alabama to louisiana. to you, if that changes in the next week, and it all starts ving to mobile, and he is telling the president, you've left us defenseless. >> the coast is full of navy boom, and we don't have enough containment. >> i am t defending them, i am just telling you it is a big coast. >> you got marshland in louisiana that you cannot clean up. but when you talk about the beach, it is a different story. we can claim the beach. they can skim biloxi beach. but the areas where we have, if you can go in and did that.

>> do we know how many miles it would take to block all the marshlands in louisiana? what is it? >> 21 miles. >> if we stop it right at the coastline. >> ande should focus on that and get that done. >> some of the fisherman, they use their resources recently to put boom out. and that is part of what we don't see that and our area. when they talk about clinton, they're talking about training and not doing it. they're talking about laying people off that had been putting them out, to bring in people from outside with vessels. >> vit that would hire 25-kan. no vote owners.

-- they said that they would hire 25. no boat owners. >> we obviously need more resources. we had good news that the federal government has approved of barrier island plan but we need more of everythg. we need more barrier islands, we need more boom. we need expedite i claims process which is what i am focusing on. not oneerson should lose of boat, of business from this experience. nothing is their fault. not only is bp responsible but we have to make sure that the czechs get into the hands of businesses, whether charter vote captains, camp owners, restaurants, seafood operators, where houses, etcetera

that is what we're focusing on the day. -- focus in on the day. -- focusing on tday. >> now this is held down with the pipe?

>> the pipe is a longer feign. -- thing. it absorbs the oil. the absorbent boom is the stuff outside of it. it needs to be picked up because it is so been with the oil. richard soaking with oil. >> and the yellow is the hard boom.

>> this is what the oil looks like.

[inaudible] >> we have been trying. >> you have to wait on that. >> yes, it is coming. [inaudible] >> a little better overclouded.

[inaudible] [inaudible] >> how many boats the draft? >> i have two. i was a commeral fisherman for 42 years.

>> its about how many employees. [inaudible we're going to try to make sure that you are alcompensated. [unintelligible] you or a fisherman? how many ptsd you have? -- how many boats do you have? thank you. are you a charter but fisherman? -- i charter boat fisherman were to mark >> i am so pro of the people that live here, a model

for the state of louisiana. you are doing such a good job. i can tell you how proud i am of you all. [unintelligible] we're begging and pleading with everybody. i am so proud, and when i see you working hard, i tell you something. >> i will be brief. all of you guys have been out here for weeks now. you would rather beoing other things. there is no better people to be out here working. and though it may come every dare we are in meeting, i could go on and on. we want to make sure that we use

at our local assets. we saw about a week ago it's about three of four times bad and it is heading this way. wha we had last week is about to get worse. please don't hesitate to call on us. we got a great team that is out here. the senator will be pushing to get more boom for us. i know we are short supply right now. and that the mayor said, they are talking about the contingency and other parts of the state that they had a plan like year. we have to continue to push please don't hesitate to let us know a betr way to fight this battle. jud>> we did not want this to ce to our family so we have to stop it. we do not want it to get to our

families. and that is why we're here. the people were outside from here and did not know that this is our livelihood. that is what is making the difference. >> i want to support what they said. you could not have two battered champions thanthese men. they have been honest. you're getting high marks o what is happening. but a workable plan together. -- they have put a workable plan to gather. [unintelligible] and i agree, this is about o family, our future, about our kids, about our way of life. no one could work in hotter

weather for longer hours. we are doing all the above. [unintelligible] were trying to get more 18 inch hard boom and more absorbent boom. we want to hire louisiana people, louisiana boat capt.. and i've told bp that if somebody made $50,000 last year, you're going to write a check for $50,000. i know what a person to lose a business or home over something now was not our fault. and when the federal government [unintelligible] excel rate revenue sharing, because the billions of dollars

paid by the oil and gas company and taxes to the federal government, the federal government takes billions of dollars every year, and we deserve a portion of that money so we can restore these wetlands and hopefully we won't ever have another oil spill like this. that our marshes will be stronger and get a better plan in place. i know we have a lot more to do. there was a lot of oil out there. we know that the worst is coming, and we need more boom here right here right now. and i'm going to try to get it. so god bless. >> one quick thing. about a week ago, went to a meeting andanted to take people in and out.

the mayor said, they have been out there in shrimping, four weeks at a time. they did not come home. we're not bringing them back to the port. know that every minute that an opportunity comes up advocate and your behalf, this man is out there doing it. we're going to support them. when we see it, then we can let you know what is coming. it gives a little more time as this comes in. >> it is so nice to see everyone working so har but we all lot of people that still are not working. we're trying to do whatever we can to help those people. we're when it tried did you and

get other people that home -- that don't have jobs. we had the proper gear and you're going to get paid and i know everyone has family and friends. they want to come want but they are not on. such as thank you and keep up the good work. >> thank you very much. i know you all are used to it. [unintelligible] you got to keep going in some ways. thank you. we will try to do everything that we can. thank you all very much.

[unintelligible] >> oh, my goodness. ok, take care.

>> it met a lot. -- it meant a lot for you to see what they were doing. [unintelligible] where is it? itwas going to be a long dam hall. people don't know the direction and the scope.

>> they are good people. >> i am standing on topf it. this is the hard boom. no, this is 18 inches. >> the plans approved so far to not address all this paris. 30% of shellfish produced in louisiana, and this entire estuary here. the beach runs along here, with

thick oil running for the passes beginning at 3:00 this morning. a lot of that oil is out in the barataria bay. there was sheen that they were not able to get we don't expect they will be able to get all this time either. where scattering them out in this parish. >> people are criticizing it, saying it s hurricane protection. no, it is for the oil. >> you're going have beaches where it is much easier claimed oil off of the san read it and the marsh land which is virtually impossible. >> this is beach. this is our beaches look. from here to florida. this is beaches. this is what we're trying to protect. these are beaches.

this is where tte marine life is. this is more important. you can clean the beach. you cannot claim this. it falls into the water and you never see again. >> thank you. >> the center is going to do a press conference and about 10 minutes. >> i've been with the state for year ran for governor, traveled every inch of louisiana. i know these marshes well and i know the people well. they are the hardest working, most open hearted, generous people in the world. and you could see them out there on his workload. their heart and family and

future are on the line here. they see that there's not a lot -- not enough money, little response from the federal government and other places as well in terms of getting things approved that would help, they look at the wealth created in the gulf, and they think, when as louisiana going to get any portion of these revenues the federal government has just taken out of the gulf to prote ourselves and say this cst? it is heartbreaking and there are things that we can do it we have to stay focused on those things and make sure that the federal judge permit protec this march. -- federal government for tax this march. we got through all of the hurricanes. this region has probably suffered more in the last decade, and probably the most in terms of any place. thousands of people lost their homes in katrina. churches,