seeing similar interaction between her office at the white house and the american medical association. so this didn't just happen in isolation of one case, but there were two cases where a medical opinion of partial birth abortion was notine lymedically necessary. >> let me go with you. many of my constituents are concerned about how judicial the status of the rights to keep and bear arms, especially in our state of utah. despite what some people may

claim, i think the vast majority of americans are pleased with the court's ruling on both the district of columbia versus heller, and that was in 2008, as well as mcdonned versus city of chicago earlier this week. now, these decisions embodied the obvious interpretation of the second amendment that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, a fundamental right. and a right that local state and federal government must at all times respect. some fear the future an act of the supreme court may overturn these landmark decisions. they were both 5-4 decisions. the more immediate concern may be the lower courts might apply the heller and mcdonald decisions to narrowly, so narrowly that they have little or no practical effect and that is present concern. courts can claim to be applying these precedents while

strangling them and undermining the rights of law-abiding gun owners. how much is this a concern and you know of general kagan's record in this air, is this something we should think about whether we consider to vote for or against her in her confirmation? >> certainly, there are many issues with what is the legitimate scope of gun control which the heller and mcdonald cases haven't answered. the heller case said i can ban carrying guns in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings. that seems to imply there is a right to keep and bear arms in general public places. that has not yet been litigated. a future supreme court might allow lower courts that were hostile to the right say you can only have the right to have a gun in the home. mayor daley is proposing replacing gun laws in chicago which would say you can only

have one hand gun per person in the home and you can't take the hand gun out of your home. if someone is on your porch, u trying to burn your house down you can't go out and protect yourself. we clearly saw justice so the moyer and ginsberg want to overturn heller. they are not content to merely chip away at it, but want to get the right as a meaningful individual right entirely. they would replace with it a right that said it's only individual and only for the militia and who knows what the militia is. maybe that's just when you're on duty in the national guard. they would make the second amendment nullified. >> do you have any comment, mr. olson? >> read the heller case

carefully. the opinion of even the dissenting judges, justice breir and others accepted the fact that the second amendment protected an individual right but went on to say it's all a matter of the scope of the right. you haven't gotten that commitment from solicitor general kagan. in other words, if she were to go on to the court with what we know about her now, she could be the most anti-gun justice on that court. >> i appreciate all your testimony here. i know you all have sincerely given us the best you can. this is a particularly difficult thing for a lot of us. you can't help but like elena kagan and you can't rep but recognize she is a scholar and she has a good sense of humor. she is a decent person. but i i remember -- it was hard

for me to vote against sonia sotomayor, but her comments to us have not been lived up to with regard to this issue alone and there may be others, as well. the things we were so worried about turned out to be proper worries. so this s always a difficult thing for us, especially when you have a nice, intelligent person. you want to support. all i can say is this, mr. chairman, i understand there are differing points of view and differing feelings about these matters, but we are talking about one of the most important positions in the world. one of nine in the greatest court in the world. it's something i really take seriously. i'm anguishing over this,

without question. mr. chairman, thank you for being kind to me. >> thank you, senator. senator sessions, do you want to ask questions? >> i have one question. >> i read a recent op-ed article in "national review" online concerning general kagan's abortion history or analysis of that. >> without objection. >> miss young, one thing that bothered me was i had indicated in my opening statement that it appeared that miss kagan when she was working in the clinton white house convinced president clinton, who was prepared to sign the partial birth abortion

ban, apparently that passed with over 60 votes in the senate, and that she perhaps convinced him not to do so, but she testified at the hearing, i was at all times trying to ensure that president clinton's views and objectives with respect to this issue were carried forward, suggesting that she simply didn't provide any input one way or the other into that debate. is that the way you read the record? what's a fair analysis of the facts on that? >> sir, in my written testimony we detail that she, the counsel she gave to president clinton after she discovered he was inclined to support a weak ban on partial birth abortion, she wrote a memo to him claiming a

ban, a previability plan would be unconstitutional. this is particularly troubling to us, and i think should be to the committee because bans on partial birth abortion are among the most supported by the american people, and yet through her argument to president clinton in that written record, she's already clearly indicated she's prejudged that she believes that the ban that has currently been upheld by the supreme court would be unconstitutional. so our concern is that she has demonstrated through that record a real hostility to very common sense regulations on abortion and that she would actually work toward taking our jurisprudence on the life issue far beyond what we have in roe-v-wade right

now. >> thank you for you and your leadership on the abortion issue. it's a matter of legitimate interest by millions of americans who deeply are concerned about what they think is a procedure that is indecent and does not speak well of our nation. i would ask briefly since my time is about out, to share with us what you feel when a judge or slim majority of the court declares that the constitution answers the question on whether abortion should be legal in america or not, and how much, when that happens, how difficult it is for the american people to seek redress from a

constitutional declaration on an intensely intense social issue and moral issue as abortion. >> mr. sessions, i believe that's the reason it's still being debated today because the court interjected itself in that issue. my concern over elena kagan and her propensity to advance these created rights for homosexuals, that we are going to see her write the roe-v-wade of gay rights into the supreme court. it's very concerning. what happens is these issues are never resolved. 35 plus years later we are still debating this issue of life. it will not go away until it is addressed in the right and appropriate forum. >> you agree? >> i think it's really important for us to recognize in the record that even scholars who support an apportion right agree that roe-v-wade represents more

of a political and policy agenda than anything rooted in the constitution. >> i couldn't agree more. i'm afraid that is so and it has not gone away like some justices thought and it's still with us. mr. copel, briefly, i don't think people who believe the right to bear arms realize how fragile it is, with one vote difference in heller, a one vote difference in mcdonald, any state, any city, any county in america could possibly completely ban ffrearms because they would basically be saying either it's not an vide right and only applies to a militia of some sort, or that if it is an individual right the states are not bound to follow that constitutional principle. am i overstating that? >> i think that's exactly right. what was at issue with mcdonned

was the point why the 14th amendment was enacted, which was to make after the civil war with all the troubles we had seen caused by states being able to violate first and second amendment rights and other rights of american citizens, there is a decision to say the whole bill of rights should apply to the whole country. if mcdonald had gone the other way, maybe the right to arms would still be robust in places like colorado under local decisions, but we don't want to have the right be robust in places where it has a strong popular support. people, if you're an unpopular speaker you should have your first amendment rights even if you're someplace where everybody else hates what you're saying. likewise, you're inalienable right exist, you shouldn't have to hopscotch where your rights

exist. >> thank you. chairman leahy, i do believe it's healthy to have this panel and people come before the country and be on c-span and present official positions before this senate, and i think is a healthy part of democracy. i appreciate the chairman allowing us to have this opportunity. >> thank you. on behalf of the chairman. thank you for your kind remarks and thank you for your very avid participation in the hearing. i have one final question for professor sullivan. some mention was made about positions general kagan made on affirmative action in the clinton administration. in general, were the clinton administration's positions on affirmative action in line with the mainstream at the time? second, did she ever to your knowledge while dean at harvard

act inconsistently with affirmative law? >> answer to the first question yes, second question, no. she acted quite consistently with those laws. one thing i would add, senator schumer, i would just caution the public in inferring too much from positions as an advocate as though those positions necessarily will translate into positions as a judge. we learned from the first day in law school advocacy does not entail, necessarily, an apeians of the position but rather it's a particular skill lawyers are quite well trained in. it may imply something, but it's just not necessarily so. sometimes i think we prove too much in our statements with respect to people in different sort of roles. >> thank you.

miss greenberger, do you want to say something? >> just indulge me for a moment, yes. i know, of course, there are deeply held views whether roe-v-wade should be overturned. that isn't something i want to address right now. i do know, obviously that, is a very important goal for dr. yoest and mr. perkins, as well. what i did wanted to address was sounded to me like a very serious charge regarding the actual record of women's health. i think what would be very important and i would command this committee to look at is the actual record in the cases. the physicians who testified under oath. for example, justice o'connor,

in her opinion, referenced to a significant body of medical opinion regarding the fact that for some patients and that means for some women, that it was a procedure that led to greater safety get tailing of the particular conditions. so i think people can have a lot of different opinions, but of course because we are talking about a justice, the facts, what records show, what the trial courts found, that that is where the real wisdom would lie in this. i would urge looking at those facts which i believe are consistent with elena kagan's record in her attempt to bring the facts to the president's attention. >> thank you, miss greenberger. with that i want to thank all ten of our witnesses for their

differing, but all interesting and heartfelt testimony. you've helped the panel and i think helped the country move further along with this process. with that these hearings are now adjourned. >> today, the utah republican issued a statement. he shares support for nomination as solicitor general, he says the supreme court nominee needs legal experience and the a corporate philosophy. the committee vote is expected in mid-july. sunday, c-span will air highlights from the first three days of elena kagan coat the supreme court nomination hearings.

that lot questions about abortion, and treatment of any combat and. that the sunday morning on c- span. our online source for the taken nomination offers high-quality video of the hearing. it is organized by date and center. links toso find resources, twitter and facebook conversations. it is all available at c- span.org you can also purchase programs. on the program, and click on by now. >> one of the best quotes i have ever heard about money and politics -- he writes about political action

committees and won a political prize. sunday, we will talk to jeff smith, the national investigative correspondent for "thh washington post." >> c-span, our public affairs content is available on television, radio, and online. you can also connect with us on twitter, facebook and youtube. sign up for our schedule alert e-mails et -- at c-span.org. >> today, panel on the service members and veterans. until then, a conversation on immigration from today's " "washington journal"." >> our guests ali nrani is the executive director for the national immigration forum.

thank you for joining us. you met with the president about immigration reform. what did you want to hear and what did you hear in the meeting? guest: we wanted to make sure that he was focusing on the right of all aspects of immigration policy. by and large, it was clear that he wants to fix the immigration system and he sees the waste and harm that is being caused by our immigration system as it currently stands. it has been an important week or immigration policy and we will see what the rest of the summer and fall have to hold. host: you can call in about immigration. the numbers are on the screen. and we also have a line set up for residents of arizona 202- 628-0184. the president spoke of yesterday

about immigration, really, his first speech on this topic since he has taken office. guest: yesterday was the first time he came out and talk about immigration, a very substantive speech. and what was important was not only what he said, but who was in the audience. in the audience you had the leading evangelical churches in the country, the national hispanic coalion, the southern baptist convention. the president was speaking to the middle of america saying this is what we have to do and they were stding up and applauding. christian leaders in our country were saying, this is a good fix. host: peter baker reports in the "new york times" --

talk to was about what your organization with like to see happen with people who are here illegally right now? -- right now. guest: we feel a few things need to happen. first, that federal government needs to require them to register for lal status. once they do that, study english, has a criminal background check, pay fine, and after a time frame, get in line for citizenship. but there are strict, tough steps to take bore they are in line for citizenship. that is fair and practical. that is what the majority of americans want. the majority of americans do not think that detaining and deporting 11 million people makes sense fiscally or four people across the country.

host: you have said that the president is calling this a broken system and is talking about fixing things. he has also criticized the arizona law. what is being done, though? the justice department has not taken any steps forward with communicating with qarizadah on how to deal with that. guest: we expect -- with arizona on how to deal with that. guest: we expect they will deal with that. it is undermining our cotitution. we cannot have localities and states just throwing sand in the face of the constitution. it is important that doj steps in ahman and really bring a stop -- steps in, and really brings a stop to this law. host: democrats and republicans say a bill will not pass this year. in this article be called on republicans to join him in passing a bill, but walked out

facing a big -- bigger divide than ever, including having urged one key lawmaker read been a major ally on the issue. guest: i think there's a difference between conservative leadership and conservative politicians. conservative leadership are close to the grassroots. when you have evangelical leadership you have mayors and governors, employers. these are people who every day, they arealking to people on the ground. and they have come to a conservative leadership and said, we ought to fix the broken immigration system. and then you have conservative politicians. they are more than willing to place the blame game with democrats. that is what we need to fix. host: republicans were willing to discuss immigration reform even under george of the bush, but now obama has not been able to gain traction as well with them. tell us how this dynamic is

playing out. guest: you have a republican party that has more less said, we are not going to do anything. every day we hear more examples about their obstructionism, which is more and more remarkable. the only issue on the table right now as a country, will they have a track record of working with democrats? in the past five years, 10 years, 20 years, worked with democrats on immigration reform, but now we're not going to? they're cynical players in this. the senate leadership and house leadership have put proposals on the table. let's move forward. host: let's go to fairfax, virginia, good morning. caller: i'm a registered republican, but i do not know which party i'm aligning with. it is unclear what the pooh --

with the parties to truly stand for. it is interesting. you have largely management by emergency and then you have a xtreme management, management by buyout. the world of was killed in the gulf was not an american company. -- that was spilled in the gulf was not an amican company. you have a buyout, too. the party in power is always playing politics where the leadership among politicians in d.c. seems to eroding across party lines. host: let's stop there. guest: rght now in washington

d.c.s an incredible stalemate. but in the case of immigration, we have seen a detailed proposals put on the table from senators reid, schume menendez, leahy, durbin, of which talk about immigration reform and how to fix it. in march of this year you have nator gramm, a leading republican from south carolina, put a proposal on this -- on the table and now he is back tracking. yesterday, the president was serious. at some point, the grownups have to come to the table. host: and we have a line for qarizadah setup 202-628-0184. let's see some comments from

obama about immigration. >> obviously, the problem is greatest along our southern border, but it is not restricted to that part of the country. in fact, because we do not do a very good job of tracking who comes in and out, large numbers of avoiding immigration simply by overstaying their visas. the result is immense -- an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the united states. host: this idea of porous borders, what you think should be done to deal with the border situation? guest: we need to have a strong border. we need to have a secure border. in our studies of what border policy looks like, the weakest part of our border are actually the point of entry. the majority of drug store in north or south are actually going for a point of entry. we have been advocating for additional dollars at the point

of entry. that is where drugs go to our borders, not across the desert. that is the real source of stress on the border. let's put the dollars into the point of entry. with the secure port of entry, then we have a secure border. host: youngstown, ohio, democrats line, ann. caller: i have two comments. in europe, they have id cards. unless we id the whole country, the immigrants would not feel they were different. and i d not see anything wrong with that. i also believe that the immigrant should be included,

that we should be able to track the 11 million people and tey should be allowed to become citizens eventually. and i do believe the republicans want them to work in their houses and clean up their yards. guest: you have a wonderful two points there, one is the hypocrisy. we depend on immigrant every day, but we forget who they are as people. that is something that we have to come back to. immigrants are our neighbors. they are the peop that we work with, the people the be asked to provide services. this question about a vinification is very important. if we have 11 million people who are literally afraid of going to the police to report a crime, we are all less safe.

if that person is a victim of a crime and does n feel they can report it to the pole, we have a problem. there is a big distance between staff those people and local -- local police. they need to know they can report crime because they know they will not be reported to immigration. they can get on a path to citizenship. as you point out, they should be able to one day. host: from "usa today" island, has tried to --

is this racist? guest: if we're going to be basing our law enforcement on the facts that somebody is walking down the street with somebody else and not speaking bh, yes, we have a problem. if you are working in tandem and -- not speaking english, yes, we have a problem. if you were walking in tandem and not speaking english, that should not be a problem. last time i was in arizona i met a young man who was deployed to afghanistan and he said to me, why am i going to go fight for my country when i come back to my state and i am asked for my papers? that is what arizona is turning into. . .

>> well, we finally got the message. these signs. these signs calling our desert and at the drug and human smuggling area. these signs, warning people of danger, and telling them to stay away, art 80 miles away from the border. this is an outrage. washington says our border is as safe as it is ever been. does this look say to you? what is our country coming to? we will not surrender any part of arizona. washington is broken, mr. president. do your job. secure our borders. arizona and the nation are awaiting. adn't really heard a lot from governor brewer since she signed this into law.

what's the response to this ad? >> well -- guest: well, the resources on the board have quintupled and immigration campaign is part of that. i think she is playing politics with a really serious issue in the state of arizona, and at the end of the day, she is not doing anything, necessarily, to improve the state. so this law in arizona actually decreases the trust between the law enforcemt and the community and it makes the area less safe, because people feel they cannot report a crime. host: andhe signs were erected after local ranchers asked for them.

after they reported increased problems. >> i spoke to a woman whose husband owns one of the largest almond exporting business in the world. she said people are coming to the desert because they can't enter through a legal path. we need to have ports of entry that are secure. this is a person who lives on the border, owns a significant amount of land on the border. she says i don't need a fence. i just need a fixed immigration policy. host: mike calling on our independent line, what are your comments? caller: i lived in my in new york all my life and moved to phoenix in the past 1 1/2 years. the economy here is horrific. i've never seen anything like it. it's horrific. illegal aliens, everyone's

fighting forhe illegal aliens but what about the ones that lived their life here, even the ones that entered legally. you had to show yesterday about extension of unemployment nefits. people calling with the most horrific stories, heart-wrenching stories. you have to put the illegal aliens out of the country and let americans fill these jobs. >> first of all, the fear and the anxiety in the country is real. the fact that these unemployment benefits have not been extended is a serious problem for millions of people across the nation. there's no doubt about it. absolutely no doubt about it. however, to blame the immigrant for the economy and the state of the economy, i think is -- takes us in the wrong direction. to actually fix the economy, a fundamental part of fixing the economy is fixing our immigration system.

in fact, independents think like the kato institute found by fixing the broken immigration system and making taxpayers out of them actually contributes over $1.5 trillion in economic growth over 10 years. in fact,, another think tank found that same program would create over 700,000 jobs over 10 years, so actually immigration reform creates jobs, so because of every job for a person who becomes documented in terms of picking an almon there's another job createed in packaging and sell that almond. but if you lose that picker, all those other jobs are gone. that's the challenge. to blame and escape go to the immigrant and fall into this trap brewer is laying for us. host: welcome. caller: hi. i've got three comments. i keep hearing all this stuff

about illegals. you know, as a citizen, if i go before a judge, and i've done something wrong, the first thing, and i say hey, your honor, what's going to happen to my family? u know what he's going to say? you should have thought of that before you did the crime. my grandma waited eight years to become a citizen and had to learn enough english to get her citizenship. as far as rewarding people for beaking our laws, when are we going to start rewarding bank robbers? that's numbeone. number two, all this stuff about americans won't do jobs, they are crazy. number three, we are supporting borders in afghanistan, pakistan, iraq, iran, and we can't secure our own? guest: jim, the question you

bring up inerms ofeople who won't do the jobs. i agree with you. and immigras are doing hard jobs, but also americans will do those jobs as well. so that's a false pretense that americans won't do these jobs. i think the idea that people, immigrants should not be able to legalize their status because they broke the law, the fact is that we have 11 million people here. we have to have a practical solution. and a practical solution means requiring tm to legalize their status and pay their taxes. if we make them taxes we generate billions in tax rev knew, those are dollars our economy sorely needs and right now under current law, if you come here legally you are not eligible for any program or benefit from the federal government for at least five years. so there is a tremendous

benefit to our nation for through immigrants whether they are here legly or whether we are able to legalize their status through immigration reform. >> ali noorani is our guest from the national immigration forum. with the mission to advocate for the value of immigrants and immigration to the nation. and you met earlier this week with the president at the white house and of course, the president gave a bigpeech yesterday talking about i mean investigation. that's our topic right now. let's go to los angeles, california, lauren. democrats line. good morning caller: good morning. i just have a couple comments. you know, think, as i told the screener, i think i'm probably going to have to become an independent. my party, democrats have and are becoming more a party of the very, very wealthy, and the

very, very poor. and there's no room for the middle class and democratic party anymore. and i think immigration. when you're talking about immigration, first of all, these are not immigrants. these are inner lopers. my other comment is we hear a lot about they are already here. gang members are alreadyere, so should we develop a picy to make gang members feel more welcome and not deal with gang members and not deal with their crimes and the fact that what they do is illegal? beuse wl, they are already here. what are we going to do? and then they raise other gang members. instead of worrying abo 11 million peopleho are in this country illegally, when is the predent -- when are all these feel-good groups goinggto start worrying about the middle class? guest: lauren, one thing you were say thrg about gang members is a very interesting point because with these 11

million people who are un documented we've got to get them right with the law. by doing that we figure out which ones are gang members and we believe in order gain status you have to go through a background check so t person here and doesn't want to register for legal status we know they are a problem. los angeles or any place here in the nation who is documented or not, wants to live in a secure and safe community and want to make sure their children can play on the street and in the park every day. that's what they want. that's why they came to america. they don't want that gang member in their neighborhood just like you don't want that gang member in your neighborhood so we know the person who is not going to register is the one here to do harmo our law enforcement resources can go after them.

if we have 11 million people and there's a needle in that haystack, the best thing way to find that needle is to shrink that haystack. >> the strong arm question is what we are going to do with the 11 million people who are here? enforce the laws on the books so have customers paying a fine for every illegal that they hire. as they do this state-by-state, state-by-state, these people will get the idea, geez, i don't have an easy job here anymore. the other thing i'd like to bring up is talking about infairness, a person who comes here has a child called quote an anchor baby. that's how they are eligible to get $1,500 a month until the child is 1 they can have two, three, four, doesn't matter. guest: this issue of the

exactical solution here, and to believe that we can spend, you know, $500 billion to deport 11 million people, it doesn't me sense for our nation. right now our country needs taxpayers and tax rev knew, and there are nearly 11 million folks here who want to pay the taxes and that crooked employer who needs to do the perp walk is the one who is winning right now. because they are exploiting the undocumented worker, the american worker and not paying their taxes. not paying their taxes. so by reforming the immigration system, every one ofhose workers is protected under law and that employer has to pay their taxes and if not they have to do the perp walk. we want to see the system fixed as much as you do. host: new york mayor michael bloomberg stays country is

giving a short troist immigration and economic problems will worsen until america sends out a more welcoming message. he said on abc's good morning america that an overly restrictive policy who can create work with an entrepreneurial spirit. guest: our immigration system doesn't low them to stay. so we train our competition. that's how out of w.a.c. our i mean -- out of whack our immigration system is. host: let's go to texas where cynthia is on the dental line. -- 202-737-0002. -- >> is on the democratic line. caller: i want to address an issue that's real. several years ago i had occasion to go to the social

services office on behalf of my mother. while i was there, there were two hispanic women speaking spanish. they were there to receive welfare. they had their children with them. and between the two of them, i believe there were eight kirn. -- children. and to make a long story short, they were there for food stamps and welfare. they did not speak english. i thought, ok. well, don't judge. but when i finished my appointment with the adult services, i came out, and they were getting into a car that -- [inaudible] here's my question. how can l.a. countyend annually over $1 billion in welfare for illegal immigrants and their children? 24% of the u.s. allotment of welfare and food stamps is

going to the children of illegal immigrants. guest: so are you saying because they were in the welfare fice and not speaking english that they were not here legally? because i don't think that's a fair assumption. i'm not familiar with the laws in l.a. county. but if l.a. county has made a decision to provide services and benefits to families who don't speak english all the time, i think that's well within the privy of the county. but i think what we're getting at is the fact that our immigration system and this debate is leading to assumptions about people that is really just harming the fabric of our country. you know, those children, as a nation, we have decided over and over again that we are going to invest in the future of our children. those children deserve that opportunity to be healthy, to be able to go to school and to

be successful, because at the end of the day, we, as a country, will succeed. so i think we just have to be careful about what we assume about people and what language they speak or do not speak. host: on twitter, it's written he is saying -- guest: well, we're seeing more and more companies move to mexico and china and canada and in fact, we're seeing our agricultural industry move from the united states to mexico. because in the united states they cannot get immigrant workers because of the immigration system. so once our industries move south or to another country, they are not coming back. so fixing our immigration system is a bottom line issue. host: independent line? >> you know,- caller: you know, this is nothing but a push for amnesty. this guy's a joke. why don't you ask ali if he

statisticsically knows how many people have been killed by illegal immignts and how many police officers or peace officers have been killed by illegal immigrants in the last 10 years. people who shouldn't be in our country. guest: you're asking me a very good question. we believe in the immigrants we work with across the country believe that those folks causing investment crime or killing people do not belong in our country, period. period. and we can spend billions of dollars going after 11 million people or we can figure out of those 11 million, let's require them to get legal and right with the law and those who don't, that's who we spend our money on to get because the small number who are causing these kinds of heinous crimes are hiding within this haystack. so we can debate the politics and question our assumptions but at the end of the day we have a haystack we need to shrink and that way we can

prioritize ourroblems and that's our problem and that's what we need to fix. host: you're on with ali floor ronny. calleri do disagree with all you have to say, sir, but after 9/11 i thought for sure that night we would go ahead and secure the borders. so this issue has been going on for a long time. certainly not the current president's total problem. the problem is, and the discussion hasn't come up is we wish to remain a sovereign nation, a nation olaws. either you're supposed to be here or u're not. now you cannot have your cake and eat it, too, in this life. now there's been a dare lix of duty -- dare election of duty going on throughou the decades, but we want to solve the problem now. not out of meanness or harshness. now when you try to parse out each individual feelings and

things that's when we get way off track. guest: i'm trying to talk facts with you. here are we spending our resources and keep our country safe? after the tragedy of 9/11, we put into place hundreds of laws, all talking about enforcement. did that fix the problem of our broken immigration system? no. people who desire to come to our country do not have a legal path to enter so we have to fix the legal immigration system just ads much as we have to end illegal immigration. right now there are 5,000 visas available for low-skill workers. yes, there is a major employment crisis in our country. there's a major economic crisis in our country. but the fact that we have only 5,000 work visas creates an imbalance we have to solve. so i'm not trying to talk emotions but numbers so we do

get past the emotion and talk facts and we get to a solution. host: let's take a look at present obama talking at a university about the arizona law. >> into this breach, states like arizona have decided to take matters into their own hands. now, given levels of frustration across the country, this is understandable. but it is also ill conceived. and it's not just that the law of arizona is divisive, although it has already faned the flames of a debate. laws like arizona put huge pressures on local law enforcement to enforce rules that are ulttmately unenforceable. it puts pressure on already-hard-strapped state and local budgets. it makes it difficult for people here illegally to report crimes, driving a wedge between

community and law enforcement. making our streets for dangerous and the jobs of our police officers more difficult. host: you mentioned you expected the justice department would file suit against the arizona law. hat other response? >> there's been a number of lawsuits filed. we would like to see them move through the system and a program that the federal government uses that in essence grant this authority to localities. what it's led to is indiscriminate profiling. so if an immigrant isn't even driving but walking down the street, the officer has a right to pull them over and act as immigration agents. >> the problem is local police who have been given this job of enforcing immigration law has been give an job that's incredibly complicated. do we want local police checking our tax papers?

no. we want the i.r.s. to do that. that's their job. so the focus needs to be on your responsibility and we need to get congress to work. >> hi. host: good morning. caller: good morning. two points i would like to point out is border security has way more to do than just stopping illegal immigrants. it's stopping drugs. it's stopping arms that are going into mexico, killing mexican police, and soldiers, so we're asking afghanistan and pakistan to do something -- and if you don't think al qaeda doesn't know our borders are such a joke, what is going to have to happen is there will be an al qaeda attack traced back

to someone from canada and mexico just walking across our borders. guest: you have a very important point. we have been advocating for stronger border patrol. right now, if a person wants to smuggle guns or drugs, they literally drive up to a port of entry and get on through but our government is not putting boots on the zri. instead they are putting up a fence. that doesn't solve our jewelry problem. so we should b spendingoney on where it cous. for the border it means there. host: go ahead. caller: this question is for ali. basically, i'm 26 years old.

i don't have too much of a political stance. but as far as i look at it, i see a lot of young americans involved in a situation, as far as arizona goes, because this is the first state to step up and say we're going to question illegal americans. how do you look at it, as far as a society goes? and other states to look upon it as mexicans, canadians, whatever ethnicity, are illegal immigrants. whyoes the united states get the opportunity to justify the right to judge another ethnicity as being illegal? guest: well, brian, thank you, very much, for the call and engaging in the debate. when we look at the arizona law across the nation and ask voters do they like the arizona law? 70% will say yes, we like the law. we ask the same group of

people, do you the federal government fix our immigration system? oh, that 74%, 85% will say yes. so the fact right now is peoe want something done. whether they are 18 years old or 80 years old. that's just a fact, and i think for us as a nation to move down this path and stoing anyone who looks ordinary person sounds like an immigrant, because we won't with ask them for their papers? i mean, we fought wars against a country or countries that operate that had w. so we have to be careful where we're going and really fix t laws we have. host: when city police stop me i have to show my papers or license or whatever so why not illegals? >> so in arizona one of the scarer parts of this law is if i am playing soccer on a field,

and i may or may not have a permit to be playing soccer, and i'll start driving by and say are you playing soccer? i'm going to ask you fur a -- if you have a permit 67 all i've done is potentially broke an city ordnance. that's the level of fear around anxiety in the state of arizona. on the road, yes, you should have a drivers license. nobody eels quibbling about that. but if you're playing soccer or walking on the sidewalk, should you be asked for your papers? host: scott from illinois. caller: i worked in construction for 10 years in california, and also illinois. and that was a laboror's union. so i've worked with some illegals. some of the guys that i worked with, they didn't care about the constitution.

they don't care about the declaration of independence. they don't car about our national history. all they care about is making money, sending it back to mexico, and not keeping our jobs here. they are taking our economy over there. and that's what i'm concerned about. i mean, this is important. guest: this is really important. ano become a citizen. so what we find is when we talk to immigrants across the nation and i understand we talk to one or two people who are outliars. they want the opportunity for them and their family to stay in the states and become a citizen. part of that process is learning about our nation's history and our solution. most of us learn about immigrants every day. that's the important part. this idea that they are just sending dollars back. but the reality is when people are here and doing jobs here, they are creating more jobs and

actually spending their dollars in local communities. so it's very easy for us to use that one specific example, and then make it the case for everybody we thi is an imp grant. the challenge for all of us in this country is to look at the big picture and understand in our napings, because we make taxpayers out of everybody and we shadow people and -- host: karen, independent caller. good morning, karen. caller: good morning. good morning ali. i just turned this on a few minus ago, and i'm just very upset, because i feel that we, as americans, are not being told theruth. years ago, i had my father show me things that they were trying to restructure our country with different booklets he had that

you cannot get your hands on today, but and don't hang up on me. but through the trilateral commission he has a book word-for-word where rockefeller and -- how they wanted to form these three areas of our world with asia and north america and europe and try to restructure our whole country and make it into a nation where industrialized areas of this country are moved out. and to -- now you have the european union, and we're trying to become a north american union with canada and secure, and that's why they are not going to waste time an money to the southern border of mexicond thh miranda -- we gave much money to secure the

southern border of mexico. guest: this issue to a sovereign nation is important to talk about, because we as a country are a country and we need to have strong borders. we have our own constitution and government. that is the way it sauls always should be. what we're struggling with now is as my generations go, as people came to p late our nation and make it great, people are still coming. and to make this country great. so i think we ha to really struggle with this challenge of what does immigration mean to us as a nation, but also realize we are a sovereign nation. we are the united states of america and we have a responsibility to live according to our constitution. and that's what makes us special. and that's why people still want to come here. host: clinton in maryland. a democrat. caller: first of all, let me say how impressed i am with

ali, and yourself, dear. you're one of the best. for the lack of sounding naive on this subject, it seems to me that we have to go back a couple hundred years historically. the ople we're trying to keep away from our borders in coming in, culturally and historically, it's their land. and i know this is the third rail in this whole argument, because we talk about security and guns being run into mexico and drugs are coming out, and all of those criminal matters. but it seems to me, and much smarter people should debate this. much smarter people than myself should debate the -- when the

united states was created the whole issue of texas and the mexican territory. host: because we're short on time i want to get a response. guest: first of all, thank you for the kind words. yesterday at the president's speech, i met a tribal leader who -- who is part of a resident vacation along the border. and he was talking about the the security issues that they have. but also the desire that they have as native american nation on the border, to make sure that people are treated well and humanely, as people are trying to immigrate to the country. so you're right. it's not just about the immigrant today and just about the immigrant 100 years ago. it's about who was here hundreds of years ago, as you put it? and that's the amazing part about this issue. it's not cut and dried. it's not black and white. and every person

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> live coverage on a form of mental health coverage for a veterans. pentagon and veterans of fails officials are participating along with a advisers. hosted by the alliance and mental ailments and this is expected to be 90 minutes. live coverage here and cspan. [general chatter]

>> we will go ahead and begin even though the meeting next door with dr. hyde is lingering a bed. i see people continuing to come in. this is a very important symposium. i am john bradley. i am a consultant to the national alliance of mental illness and particularly to the nami concern of veterans affairs and their acute concerns about this war and what is happening to our combatants and veterans. we have a wonderful panel of experts here today. i will not bore you with what i think -- i would rather you hear directly from them. i would like to proceed.

thank you cspan for beginning to cover this. i hope the larger audience of cspan as this as a learning opportunity. this is a highly important subject and very topical. our premise for today is a question, really. can be enormous mental health care costs systems and behavioral health care systems of the department of veterans affairs and the military health- care system respectively, can't they play together, can they work together, can they help our combat and population, our veteran population challenged by mental illnesses to improve their lives and move toward recovery? nami, we have seen examples where that can come true in a local environment. the issue is, can it come through -- to systematically and

generally so we can naturally tell that it is happening? in that regard, there is no spattered -- better speaker to begin with a bent elspeth cameron richie md. he is the primary mental health advisory to the u.s. army surgeon general. over the past two-three years has become the face of behavioral health care in the military services. i had the pleasure of appearing on a panel with her in the mental health colchis -- caucus. i found her to be a superb spokesman for military the april health care and also someone who has an innate understanding of the challenges surviving for combat. colonel richie is a graduate of harvard university and also attended george washington university and as war -- or at walter reed and uniform

university of the health sciences and is eminently qualified richie has published over 130 different publications in this field and the field of forensic. we welcome her to this panel. [applause] >> it is a real pleasure to be here. i want to enlarge the promise to start with. i know that the dod and the army can work with the va. we do it all the time. ira and i go back a long way. since we have nzami here, how can we also engaged all of you an hour together. one thing i hear a lot is frustration. i hear people saying that they want to help and how can they help. they send their donations in and they offer and it does not get to the people they want it to. that is for all kinds of reasons, but the promise i will have with you all today is that there is definitely ways that you can help and what we need to

do, partly this afternoon and in the future is to have a way that you all can provide us with what we need and we can help with what you need. i have to start every talk i do with a little bit of history. the history is to emphasize that all wars produce psychological reactions. we have studied them from world war i, world war ii, and so on and so forth. what we see in general is that the sooner we can initiate treatment, the better. some of the treatment, much of the treatment has nothing to do with mental health. it has to do with leadership, with cohesion, with unit morale, with people feeling now richard and taken care of. however, mental health and behavioral health or whatever we called these days the family has a place. it has been almost 10 years since 9/11. i was walking through the pentagon yesterday with a colleague and i was pointing out

the memorial chapel and i was reminded about how much my life and all your lives have changed. we have been out were continually, in my opinion, since 9/11. i am not sure whether we have had a chance to process that. one of the good things about 9/11 was that we as psychiatrists and psychologists were working throughout the pentagon in a very upfront way with the people who were lieutenant colonels and colonels and who are now three-star generals i will speak army here. i can tell you that the army gets it. our three and four-star generals are so interested in the mental health, the suicide rate, a traumatic brain injury -- weak are always going over to the building to try to work with them. they are really interested in this subject. this war or war is have been going on for a while. it has been numerous multiple

deployments. it has been numerous exposures to severely wounded soldiers. for us and the medical field working with detainees and iraqis but one of the things that is terrific about this war is the strong sense of support from the american people when i walked down the street on connecticut avenue in uniform or if i fly somewhere, people come up and thank me. that is a wonderful feeling. as one of the things i think is so positive for our military to bed. however, there are still definite issues that we have to deal with. one issue which comes back to the issue of dod and va is held integrated are our programs. we recognize there are numerous programs and how do you integrate those programs. we struggle with that. is not easy. it sounds easy to be on the same page but when you get to with the devil is often in the details.

we are a volunteer army and we know we are going to war. we know we are going to deploy. we are seasoned and tired. i like an old-fashioned term called battle scarred. soldiers do not like to be called victims. they can understand what it is like to be tired. back in world war two when we used the term battle fatigues, we go round and round with the words but the concept is there. many people have taken a look at us and i am not listing them all but certainly many people have criticized the system that has been good. we found many areas to improve. we have been given quite a bit of money and that has been helpful, thank you to congress for that. we spent that money wisely, i think, mainly in hiring new providers so access to care is much improved. nevertheless, we have a thousands of wounded soldiers

and we have the major effects on the families that are. so are we tend to think of the families of those who are deployed but the families of the wounded and the deceased are still important, too. let me broaden desperate there is a concept of the nuclear family, the children of the soldier. it is apparent to the soldier, two brothers and sisters who are often teenagers, nieces and nephews. the extended family is critically important. to remind you there is a range of deployment-related reactions. i will define ptsc for you in a moment. i think you all recognize this, everything from kicking the cat to actually taking one's life. the ptsc diagnostic concept to reiterate, post-traumatic stress disorder was not considered a diagnosis until well after the end of the vietnam war.

as we look in retrospect, we see that every war has had an influence on that. by definition and the diagnostic statistical manual, it is a traumatic experience that leads to feelings of fear and helplessness. i don't like that definition. i am trying to change that. the reason for that is our soldiers are very well trained. they do not react with fear and helplessness. they pick up their weapons and lay down suppressing fire and grab their wounded comrades and go on. that does not mean that experiences and there are often multiple ones after being at war for so long and some of the ones, don't have a cumulative a fact. you also have a range of different systems, re- experiencing the physical arousal. what is often the most difficult is the numbness per they come back, and they don't necessarily connect with society. they connect with their buddies who have been there but especially for the guard and

reserve who are getting out of uniform, it can be very disconcerting another thing about soldiers is they don't like to seek treatment. they would much rather go on and do it. it is of and the mother, the white, the child that pulled them in. here is a challenge for all of us and all this i don't just mean that military and a va, i'm a nationally, how you reach out and engage with a soldier or veteran who does not want to see a shrink? i am a big believer in barbeques and memorial services. barbeques and pick them to get people together to play softball and baseball is a way to engage where you are not sitting around in a room talking about feelings. soldiers still like that, believe me or memorial services because soldiers want to honor the memory -- memory of their fallen comrades. by definition, ptsd has

symptoms which don't necessarily cause impairment. in our soldiers, you hear the term signature wounded in the war a lot. traumatic brain injury or ptsd. i like the idea of the blast as significant -- as a significant weapon of the war. the ied or whatever causes theptsd, the amputations, the blindness, the blast and cause a multitude of things. what we have in many cases with our soldiers is multiple impairment and they all have to be addressed, not just one. i want to talk a little bit about where we have been, where we have been and where we are going where we have been, we have been doing surveillance like you have never seen before. i don't have time today to present data but we have more data than we have ever had.

much of it is available on the web if you googled mental health advisory team or are epidemiological consultation team, it is all there. we have had difficult with access to care. that is improving. we have had difficulties with stigma which is a complicated subject. we have had a rise in suicide rates that you are familiar with. we have been doing a pretty good job as the service is working together, army, navy, air force, marines working together with the department of defense and the va. we have an of balding comprehensive health strategy. we have set up a number of different -- we have a number of comprehensive health strategies. one of the things i have found after being in uniform for 24 years as an army psychiatrist is

that this is hard and complicated and complex. many times we try to come up with simple solutions and there is not a simple solution. it will take all of us. we have now best practices of things we have learned that we are pulling together. mental health assessment teams 7 is going into afghanistan as we speak. they will look at issues of how do we deliver care. the conflict is high in afghanistan. we are trying our best to make sure we get care out to all the remote areas. congress has given us a lot of money for psychological health. we have managed to increase the number of providers in our system by almost 70% in the last three years. that is pretty extraordinary and that is something i am proud of. we have put out a lot of training material to reduce the stigma. it is not all about posters and

videos. we also have to be changing our policies to insure that soldier's do seek treatment and they are not penalized later on. we have a lot of new policies out there to screen for post- traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries. we have been criticized in the past four missing base. i think we are doing a ton of screening now. some soldiers say it is too much but we are improving what we are doing we now have a comprehensive behavior health system. we are looking at best practices as we bring people home. how can we take it from being just a screening questionnaire and a quick handshake to being something we are able to check up on the soldier three months later, six months later, nine months? this is where you all, and because many of our soldiers leave the service. 40% stake va services which is higher than ever before -- 40% 40va services.

-- 40% seek the base services. services. we are doing a lot withtele- madison. it can be helpful and we have a lot of innovative processes. there is a balance there because we want to project it out but we also want to maintain what most people find is so important which is the relationship with somebody. we want a balance between the technology and maintaining the relationship. our traditional treatments have been for soldiers or veterans with just ptsd and how we treat soldiers who have all of those symptoms together? i will skip over quickly some of our key findings from afghanistan and iraq.

i will have our moderator way that may. i wanted to let you know that all of these are on the web, the amount of exposure that soldiers are seeing. traumatic brain injury again is a major issue for many of our soldiers. much of this is mild, much of it is for people who have a concussion, most soldiers get better fairly quickly, some don't. we have lots of new research of their trying to understand why and how peoplsome people get together quickly or not. we know this is caused by a number of multiple forces whether it is blasts, being hit in the head with a bullet or wrapping your head in an automobile accident one problem in afghanistan with arab mind resistance vehicles is they tend to turnover. there is lots of potential to

hit your head for the impact of this will vary depending where the soldier had hit. s. there is an enormous amount of research going into this area. fortunately, the treatment for tdi is quite similar to what we have done before in terms of making sure that soldiers are treated immediately and they are screened. in most cases, we need to take them out of the fight until they are ready. i will close with a couple of comments about our suicide rates which as you know have gone up. this is an incredibly high priority for our army leadership. like many things, this is not a simple problem to solve. there are multiple recommendations that we have to try to decrease the suicide rate. the risk factors are different than the civilian society.

it is less about traditional mental illness and mooe about getting in trouble or having a breakup of relationship and having a weapon easily available this is a conundrum for us because in theater, soldiers need to have weapons to protect themselves and their colleagues but they also have to make sure that we want to decrease the risk of suicide. we have had some recent trends in older soldiers with disabilities. whenever we go and look at a cluster of suicides which we do. we find common themes. that includes stigma, operational tempo, major platforms of soldiers coming back. we are trying our best to improve our behavioral health system. we do not still have a number of providers we would like to have.

we have lots of initiatives to get more providers. this is where i do my recruiting pitch. get ready for this. how many providers are here in the audience? ok, we need you. we need you in this uniform which is a very comfortable uniform. you don't have to shine the boats anymore. you can keep your lipstick your combat pocket. we also need civilians. we need tr-care providers. this is not just about suicide. there is a high burden of mental disorders right after injuries. that is not surprising. we are a very resilient population, but we are also highly expos. ed. how are we on time? 12 minutes cup, because i can keep talking about this all -- two minutes, cause i could talk about this all that.

we have looked at suicide prevention. our past approaches have mainly been about training and education. unfortunately, we are learning that getting somebody to the schrank does not necessarily prevent suicide. there has got to be everybody in it, commander, family, etc. or long term helping the person. this is a good aide. this can add about two years ago and emphasizes aides but that is not enough. we have a lot of things that are pushing us to the right. they are individual factors. they are human factors. they are environmental factors. many of our largest installations like fort bragg on 95 which is a drug corridor,

fort carson has methamphetamine labs in the national parks, fort stewart, fort hood, all of our big institutions and i don't want to single them out but are instead -- installations are not stand alone. for our reserve and guard soldiers, they are among the rest of the community, as you have all of those instill -- installations and factors pushing it to the right, what you have to have is a variety of different approaches, some of which the army can do and some of which the va can do and some of which you all can do to both decrease substance-abuse, to decrease suicidal tendencies, to push mental health forward. we talk a lot about resiliency. that is a nice term. i will attempt to for later on. this is our army suicide prevention campaign plan. we still have a number of

challenges here. these are the same challenges we have had for the last four or five years. there is an increasing amount of soldiers with these symptoms. we have our own sense of tiredness, are wounded soldiers, and we have solutions we have been working on. many of them are not flashy. many of them are day by day, how many more providers can get to see soldiers. one thing i will and don, i am delighted to see a couple of dogs here. make sure the camera gets shots of those bricks one thing we have been doing is we are using dogs much more in the treatment of our soldiers, both physically wounded soldiers who had problems with mobility, a hearing, blindness, and there is a lot of interest and work that is anecdotal at this time about the use of canines for soldiers with ptsd. it is in the anecdotal stages but one of my next project is to highlight and standardize the

policies about using animals with soldiers and also to look at getting better research for the use of dogs. there are other animals used as well we have been working very closely with our colleagues on that. my final challenge to myva -- we have to end this with competition, i challenge the va to join us to work with cute little animals that are not just cute but real providers of support. for the cameras out there, i am being a little bit facetious but it is true. with that, i will turn it over ira katz, my comrade in arms. do we have done for one question? >> any questions or comments? >> since i picked on you --

[unintelligible] [inaudible] >> first of all, thank you for the presentation you gave. i have a question -- it comes back to the command level in implementing all that you want to do. how will you do that from lowest nco going up the chain?

you need to work with the platoon leader or the commander or be it a section leader. you need to tell them not to just tough it out but go see somebody. thank you again >> great question. one thing we have seen is that the senior leadership is very, very committed to this. how do we reach exactly the people you're talking about, the platoon leaders, noncommissioned officer in charge that is a challenge but it is a challenge we are committed to. there is a bunch of training products we have put out there. the defense centers of excellence has a lot of it. the most important thing that we need to do is not only talk the talk but walk the walk.

we need to make it very clear that soldier's are able to come in and get treatment and that it does not impact on their career. when we have done that and demonstrated that, we will have made a difference. thank you very much. [applause] >> my name is ron morton and i am a veteran of the vietnam war. i suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. i have a son-in-law currently in the army who deals with -- he is a mortician of affairs. he identified the bodies. he is very proud of what he does. there is a part of me that is constantly wondering and worrying when he will start

exhibiting symptoms of post- traumatic stress disorder. i applaud what you are doing. that is not enough. every day soldiers are committing suicide in this country, every day " ! i have had enough. we should learn from the vietnam war. we did not. we did not learn a single damn thing. men and women are dying every day as a result some of you will be irritated at what i am saying, tough. when we can say that another soldier will not die from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, then we will have done something. for those of you here with the va, two days ago i saw a report that 1800 veterans possibly were

infected with hiv and hepatitis c. what the hell is going on in this country? what do we have to do? we risk our lives as military people only to come back to possibly being infected with a disease that will kill us. i know this is not typical of the form for these things to be said. but they have to be said. nami wants to work with the va and the department of defense. i will be on the board this year for better or worse. i am in. i will not let it rest. [applause] i cannot. i was just over at the multi- cultural seminar because i figured that i'd do not want to go in with the va and department of defense because maybe i will say something that will irritate folks. well, the days of not irritating

folks are over. my son-in-law has given a "wonderful grandchildren. i cannot imagine what my life and my daughter's life would be like if he suffered from ptsd and committed suicide and i know that is a possibility. we need to change the way we are doing things. we've got to get more aggressive. it is not just about money, it is about a state of mind i will not take up any more of your time. [applause] >> onto our second panelist, dr. katz is completing a four-year term as head of the v mena still held. in 2009 -- as head of the va mental health. we are thankful to him to this day for all the work he has done very dr. katz has received a

ph.d. degree from columbia university and his medical doctor ship from the albert einstein college of medicine. he is the founding director at the va . i consider him to be a personal friend and i am very pleased he agreed to come here to to the va today. dr. katz. [applause] >> first the advertisement -- we have va suicide prevention stress balls in front. if everyone would take five and give four to friends and colleagues, we would really be working him to get the message out. how many people came here from pamela hyde's talk?

good, good, those of you who were there heard her speak about veterans and military issues. the director of samsa used to veterans and military mental health as an important part of overall mental health in america. she gets john, thank you for arranging this va/dod symposium. next year, it should be samsa/hhs/va/dod. what goes on with veterans and families and active duty personnel america's business. does not often the corner. it is important for the country as a whole. ms. hyde pointed out there were 2 million children in america

who had one or more parents who are in afghanistan or iraq. that is a big deal for america now. it will be a big deal in america for a long time to come. thank you. cam, and i appreciate your talk and what you have said. i want to focus on an important difference between dod and va. dod provides an supports war years. --warriors and it has a health system attached to it to serve their needs and those of their families. va is primarily a health and benefit system. we focus more on the problems that occur as a result of war. cam focuses more on preventing

them and getting the job done. can we work together? of course we can work together this is a critical time in the partnership between these two departments. i want to focus on a but first provide some background. we are a benefit system. about half of our budget is passed through to veterans and their families in need. as a health system, we have 21 networks, over 150 medical centers, almost 800 clinics, about 250 vet centers. we served the 24 million veterans and america, 1.8

million are women and that number is growing we are focusing here and we focus a good deal lately on new veterans, those returning from iraq and afghanistan. by and large, veterans are more likely to the elderly than the rest of americans. about 40% of those served by va are over age 65 and almost 60% of american men over age 65 for veterans. we provide services to a subset of veterans who are eligible for va care based on ois service and service-connected disabilities and other sorts of disabilities or income. there are 8 million veterans enrolled for care in va and

about 5.2 million arsine each year. that is 22% of all veterans. of the 5.2 million veterans that are seeing each year, about 1.6 million have a mental health diagnosis. that is about 30%. we are seeing returning veterans and i will talk about some numbers, but i want to point out, as our secretary has, that all returning veterans have baggage. this is an adjustment to get into battle mind and be deployed and it is an adjustment to get out of battle mind when veterans and service members return home. most veterans who are returning from deployment do not have a mental health condition. some do.

all need support, some need specific mental health services. we talk a good deal about ptsd and often use the term more or less as a metaphor for any and all mental health conditions that can result from deployment. it is important if i have someone who comes to me as a doctor and they say they have ptsd or their wife or parent says they think he may have it, it is important that they get a comprehensive evaluation. they may have ptsd. they may have nothing at all. m.a. abnormal readjustment issues. after the stresses of deployment or they may have a mental health condition, but something else an evaluation is really important and an important step. here are some numbers.

arbitrarily, i stopped at this slide after about 1 million cumulative veterans return from imply it. we can take a look at the statistics with round numbers. it basically, here is a rule of this is a little more than the numbers colonel which he mentioned. almost half come to va for services. of those that come to us, about half have a mental health condition and of those who have a mental health condition, about half have ptsd. so, it is a sequence like that. ptsd is common but not universal. it is an important part of the mental health story but by no means the whole story.

an early example of va and dod working together very successfully was on a post- deployment help reassessments. when service members come back from deployment, they get post deployment health assessments. and then they go home. there are concerned about the bea's because they may not sent to the people or may blow them off and not disclosed sentence because they want to home.om barret they a this is an important service but it is not enough. dod established post deployment

health reassessments. three-six months after return. symptoms can emerge or people may be more willing to talk about them if they are persistent or interfering. this takes a look at some this takes a look at the most recent version of the instrument after about 100,000 people were evaluated with it. about 50% of all screen the service members and veterans come to the va for care. everyone who returns from employment is eligible for expedited va services for a period of five years. 60% who have a signal of come to va oing on on th

for services and 70% of those who disclosed symptoms of ptsd come to it va for care. it is about 40% of those who screen - 4 ptsd will come to va but over 40% of those screened positive. 70% is not perfect. it should be 100%. we are working on this. it is a signal that the partnership is such that va is seeing those who we should be seeing and those who really need our help. who do we see? this is a look at oef/oif

veterans paris. let's focus on man who receive care from va last year. 5% of the total work oef/oif veterans. there was a 90% of veterans from prior years. with those with a mental help diagnose is, it was 6% who are oef/oif. of those with ptsd, it was about 15%. this is a group that has our attention and the nation's attention, but it is a minority of those seen by va. most of those we see our veterans from prior year is. eras. there are different conditions among different veterans pare.

like with the rest of america, the most common mental health condition is depression, ptsd is second. among pef/oif veterans ptsd is the most common condition. va has done an enormous amount to enhance our services over recent years. one way of talking about the s is that in 2005, our core of mental health staff was under 14,000. it is now almost 21,000. we have done -- done a good deal and it shows. colonel richie mentioned information on suicide. i want to point out one highly important component of this. this is a look at veterans who used va are versus those who do

not. young veterans under age 30 from 16 states where they cdc has this been data, in 2005, veterans who came to va were almost 20% more likely to die from suicide than those who do not. we think this is because of increased rates of ptsd and related conditions in these veterans. however, by 2007, veterans who came -- these are the young veterans under age 30, came to va were 30% less likely to die from suicide than those who did not come to us. this is a sign that something right is going on in they va

system. it is an important finding and an important advance, but it raises the next question. we have responsibility for veterans who do not come to us as well as those who do. the public health model for mental health care that our secretary is advancing really focuses on pats into va medical centers and clinics as well as the care that is going on in those va medical centers and clinics. ari keylay, the most important of these paths -- arguably, the most important of these paths is the path from va to dod. in advancing this model of collaboration, our secretary and secretary gates established a va/dod summit last autumn and

used findings from these -- from this summit to form an integrated va/dod mental health strategy that was approved a month or two ago. now so many of us are intensively involved in the planning for operationalizing this strategy. very briefly, it talks about a public health model. it talks about continuity in the middle of the blue circle's. in clinicals services. it talks of dod resilience programs at va prevention services to decrease rates of mental health conditions in those who are vulnerable. it talks about out reached to our community.

we live in the same communities and are working to plan our outrage and interaction with community agencies and organizations. maybe most important, it talks about messaging to our society as a whole. i want to allude to some research recently done by our national center for ptsd, taking a look at returning guard members in connecticut. the national center found that whether or not veterans experienced or felt themselves to be understood and supported by their communities, this affected the rate of ptsd bay fell. those who felt more supported at

more protection against ptsd. supporting our troops as a matter of patriotism, of course. it is also a matter of public health. i hope and i am very glad to say nami working with so many others in welcoming back veterans and supporting them. thank you. [applause] >> before our next speaker, we can have time for one quick question. the german back here? there is a microphone right there. >> where do you see the support in va? well that stand? do you understand what i am talking about? >> [unintelligible] [inaudible]

>> yes, sir. >> i am daniel williams from birmingham, alabama and a state representative of the veterans council. dod and va ban diamide veteran from the iraq war. my transition was easy for dod to the va. the va had dropped the ball. do you think va can attain a theirin-processing differently? can va -- they have new members come in and the doctors but they do not have a facilitate to put the doctors in parent >> this is an important issue for us. we look very carefully at our

national statistics. they show we are doing pretty well about access quality and continuity of care. nevertheless, we hear stories about things not going well. everyone in va is continually asking ourselves if we are doing the right thing. all i can ask is that you communicate with me and others, ira.katz@va.gov. let me know your story because i really want to understand it. if it shows a systematic problem, we have to fix it. if it shows a lapse and a time and a place, we have to fix that, too. statistics are encouraging and

anecdotes are at least as important. we have to understand them and try to fix things. thank you. ira.katz2@va.gov. >> we will run out of time. we have three more speakers. i apologize. my next speaker is a dear colleague of mine who is a former staff colleague on the senate veterans' affairs committee with maybejon towers is in his 14th year of service. he currently holds the title of senior policy adviser. he was the league committee staff on issues including

compensation, pension, housing, and moral affairs and other issues. he continues to serve as the budget and operations analyst and because of his tenure, he is a general adviser to the chairman and ranking member on most members before the committee including nominations. with that, i would like to introduce y friendjon towers [applause] . >> thank you very much. i am in my 14th year and you would think as one of the younger folks on the panel that i would have a power point presentation like the first two speakers but no. anyway, thank you for the invitation to be here today. i want to thank all those who have served who are in the room. thank you for your service to your family members whose support you with care and compassion, thank you as well and to all the providers who show their compassion for those who have served. i want to give them a quick

thanks as well [applause] . i want to give a short talk, from a congressional perspective, what we have seen in the way of progress on the issue of dealing with the challenge of those returning from the current conflict and prayer complex with mental illness and then the progress we have observed in some of the challenges that remain. first, i think it was ron who came up here and said it is not just about money and he is correct a substantial amount of resources have been devoted which va to increase the mental health capacity to treat those who have served our country. in just a 10-year period, we have gone from a $10 billion budget for mental illness -- $2.6 billion up to $5.2 billion.

that is a doubling of the budget for mental illness. we are also seeing by way of progress a growing recognition that va/dod cannot do it alone. we need to rely on community providers. some veterans simply don't feel comfortable, v and toa or cannot access the va so it makes sense for them to go to their closest community adviser. in the past ,the va has been reluctant to use community providers. the tendency has been to have more of that care provided in house. lately, we are seeing a growing recognition to embrace partnerships with community providers and i think that is a very positive thing. let me talk global about the recent legislative enactments that are a demonstration of the progress that has been made as

we observe those who come back with mental, as and some of the conditions that go along with mental illness. a couple of years ago, congress passed public law #110-387 and one portion of that law recognizes that some people may have a substance abuse disorder. there was a directive in that law that specified there should be a minimum level of services available and va to treat those who present with both mental colmes and substance abuse disorder. the minimum level of services were based onnih guideline t is. he va had already been moving in this direction. this put in statute the way it should be. in addition to substance abuse

disorder, we recognize the challenges of screening and appropriately recognizing the distinction between those who present with mental momus and those who have a traumatic brain injury. the treatment for both is different. . . and network of centers that the lot of peer counseling, support, and outreach. but this is an effort to get va to also embrace some of these

systems of care, a peer support, that may be available in the community. it goes in line with the recognition that we have to do this together, not just a government solution, but rookie with other providers in the community as well. and on top of that, there was another directive to do a pilot to make better use of community mental health centers that are, in many cases, closers to where veterans live. north dakota and help centers for many veterans who reside on reservations. and other community providers to deliver a readjustment counseling and other mental health services, specifically those returning from the current conflicts. another big sign of progress is i think we're seeing a greater emphasis on treatment and therapy said actually have been proven to work. two in particular for p t s t -- 4 ptsd that were validated and

reported in an issue to congress. conative process herring there. prolonged exposure therapy for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. any reason response to a budget question, be confirmed at 72% of its facilities, both of these types of evidence-based treatments are available. and at 94% of its facilities, at least one of the two are available. i think it is a sign of progress that if something works, we should get it out as broadly as possible. what are the remaining challenges? the colonel talked a little bit about the stigma that is still associated with seeking mental health treatment and the fear for many of our active duty at the potential repercussions them may have it that goes on to their record, fear that that may hinder their advancement, and i

think one of the things that the congress has done to respond to this, in addition to what the colonel says is an emphasis to try to demonstrate that there will be no repercussions, is to recognize that we need to set up a method of delivery that active duty service members feel comfortable with. and in the most recent public law enactment of two months ago, 111-163, there was an authorization for active duty oif/oaf service members to seek counseling at va's said centers. so if active-duty service members feel more comfortable going into a setting where there are others who may have experienced the same types of banks that they have, that is available to them now, and their visits are completely confidential. they will not be reported back to the chain of command, so again, it is making that

available to them. talk of a little bit about the generational differences, and dr. katz mentioned that va still primarily treats older veterans with mental illness, and there is a challenge to get some of the younger veterans who have recently separated into va or care. some of them just do not see the day as the system for them. they just have this notion in their minds that it is their fathers or grandfathers in va, and it is just not for them. for some, that might be true, and that is why we have to emphasize the of the providers that are out there and willing to give them the care that they need. we had testimony in the march 3 hearing in which a marine oif veteran said that when he went to va, he felt just like a number. he did not feel like that was for him. he was not getting the care that he felt he needed. that was his perspective.

but what he did find useful was seeking help from my faith based organization in the community. it goes to the point up the challenge of recognizing that one size does not necessarily fit all in dealing with this challenge. again to the issue of getting, i think all would recognize that we want to encourage and try to get those who are suffering from mental illness in for treatment, and how do you do that? obviously, the importance of family encouragement, family observance, to be the first line of defense and encouragement for veterans to get in for treatment. so there are many different responses and ways that we can encourage folks to get in for treatment. i want to go back to that hearing and the same veteran, when asked at this very question at the march 3 hearing, he was asked, what would it have taken for you to get into treatment sooner than you did? or you and your friends is suffering from the tests -- from the same types of things to get

into treatment sooner than you did? and it took him about half a second to respond. he said, you know, i receive disability compensation from the va. it they would have without that, i would have been in the next day. that is a radical idea, but that was his immediate judgment as to what would have incentivize tend to get in. it was an interesting point to make because three years ago, a commission that was chartered by congress to study the disability benefits system made a similar recommendation, that receipt of disability compensation should be conditioned on the of veterans seeking treatment. now those are very explosive and controversial ideas, because it is almost like a negative incentive, that you are going to take something away from someone in order to attain the and that we all feel is the right and, which is treatment and hopefully

recovery. my boss looked at that recommendation, so he said, revenue and net in -- rather than negative incident, how about a positive incentive? how about we do what many private employers are doing and we consider paying a cash stipend to encourage veterans may not otherwise seek treatment to get in the door? and if you do, you get a wellness step in for coming in the door. so thinking outside the box, creative ways to retain that end that think we all agree is the one that we're after. another challenge is, and i mentioned earlier how positive is that we have the va's rolling psychotherapies, but another challenge is, let's do more research and learn what the other evidence-based treatments and therapies are that are out there. so i think we need to continue to research in that area.

and make progress in that area as well. finally, the question of outreach is always a challenge. we need to see new and creative ways to encourage those who are suffering from mental illness to come in and get the care that they need. this was mentioned as a huge issue that many who have mental illness simply will not come in. and one of the things i would like to touch on here, in my 13 years plus on the committee, i used to work on va benefits, and va's benefit system has the ability to know which conditions of veterans are suffering from by way of mental illness. they have their addresses. so you have the one arm of the nba that has already touched a

veteran in some way, has given them a disability rating, knows the condition they suffer from, but you have the other arm of the va the present treatment. and to what extent of those two systems integrated and talking to each other? do we out reach the specific population? do we know whether that specific population has actually come in for treatment and sustained treatment? so this is another area -- we look at the statistics on the disability benefits side. there has been a 40% increase in the disability rolls for ptsd from 2005 to do that tonight. so the obvious question there, with the tremendous increase, are people getting better? and have we matched up what is being on the benefits side with the health side, and rather than a passive, we hope folks who received disability come in, how can we encourage that to a greater extent than we are now? and finally on the issue a

permit the continuity of care, want to touch on something that was highlighted a couple years ago as a problem in a commission. there were two very different systems of care, but really what similar missions, i think, the department of defense would like to get folks into treatment so they can remain on active duty and go back to service. i think that is the preference of most. in the va's case, their mission is to restore the health of disabled veterans to the greatest extent possible. so very similar health-oriented outcomes. but the systems we have set up may not promote that continuity of care that we're all looking for. i will give you an example. someone who is on active duty can avail themselves to the dry care network of providers and may have established a good relationship with a community provider paid through by the t ricare system and is comfortable

with that provider in seeking regular assistance through that provider, as we want them to and encourage them to. we do not want them to feel like there's a stigma associated with seeking care. but then when they go out of service, the go to the va system, and the va system may not make as as a provider available. the debate -- the va's tendencies to want to have folks, and keep a care in-house. so do these two systems of care, different payment methodology is, different eligibility standards, promote that continuity of care that i think we all agree is necessary? and my last comment is going to be on the importance of family members, not just from a support element, but recognizing that the mental health and well-being of family members is essential to the effective recovery of the service member, of a veteran. i think congress has recognized

that and has given to be a standard authorities to provide mental health counseling to family members where it is appropriate. public law 110-37, again, expanded the authorities for veterans' centers to treat family members. i mention the family caregiver law. there is now an ability for family caregivers of severely injured oif/oaf veterans to receive benefits, and for older generations of care givers, they now have the ability to at least six some element of counseling. the hope is that if this family caregiver lot, as it is applied to the older generation of caregivers, is successful and feasible to expand to others, and that will be made available as well. those are just a few of my thoughts. thank you all for listening. [applause]

>> thank you very much, jon. the next speaker is tom tarantino. he has a very long biography. he is an iraq veteran, serving in 2005. the mission in the u.s. army. discharged as captain in three years, which is pretty neat. so you lost a good one there. he is currently serving as a legislative associate on health care matters including mental health care matters for the iraq and afghanistan veterans of america. the only veterans organization that lobbies exclusively for the rights and benefits of iraq and afghanistan veterans. tom. [applause] >> get afternoon. i am not really a professional. i am kind of day grunt actually. i spend about 10 years in the

army in various capacities and sort of found myself in this very odd position of being an advocate and talking to people like you and working with great people like you see on this panel. so if i am @ liddell colorful, if i am little loud, please forgive me. i am not used to being terribly diplomats said. i work with congress. [laughter] instead of sort of talking officially, i kind of want to go through a little bit of what i saw coming home, and then markkaa that has changed to now. so i came home from iraq in january 2006. i was a promotable attended. i led two platoons through combat in baghdad. a calvary platoon and a mortar platoon. essentially, i walk the streets of the city for a year with my guys. and it was a weird environment that we came home to.

i think it was just at the point where the army was really starting to understand that there was something going on. so one of the first things we sell was the post deployment health assessment. this was a fairly new thing. certainly new to us. we did not know what the hell it was. we just knew we had to stand two to three hours in a medical clinic filling out a form and being seen by a litany of doctors when all we wanted to do was go back to the officers club and get drunk and hang out with our wives. what struck me immediately about this, and this was before i knew about any of this stuff, was that there were different stations shops. there were different stations for every medical thing you could fine except for mental health. mental health was like one-half of one page. about 10 questions, and you checked the box. and soldiers were pretty smart.

if you check yes, you go see the wizard. and nobody sees you for the next four hours. if you check no, it is miller time and you get to go home. and this was largely how it was back then. it really took an emphasis on leadership to get their guys to take it seriously. but ultimately, i mean, i cannot order my guys to check yes in the box. you can only lead them so far. this is different. this is changing. one thing about pdhra and the pdha then was a was still largely paper based. it had not been fully integrated. in a lot of units, depending on your organization, you have a stack of a couple hundred of these and they could sit on a desk and table a report beleaguered overworked assistant would enter them into an assistant that look like -- into a system that look like

something from the 1980's. this is changed now. it is much more integrated. there is actual follow-through. my co-worker, our deputy executive director, just returned from his fourth tour. he was in afghanistan six months ago. they before yesterday he gets a call in the office from his pdhra -- >> what is that? >> 's deployment held three assessment. thank you. when you come home, you get a physical. you get a physical 30, 60, and 180 days. so you'll be able to see the delta of those changes in your behavior and your physical health affer you come home. i do not have to tell anybody in this room that visible injuries did not show up quite a way. -- right away. it takes quite a while sometimes. this is changed. the process is getting better. it is not all the way there yet, but it is highly courage that todd with downstairs for 35

minutes and came back completely floored. this is the fourth time he has had to go through this, and now there was follow-up, questions. there was a professional asking him questions about things he wrote down. so we are seeing a lot of progress on this. and this is in four years. it is encouraging. we're also seeing that the army does get it. the cooonel is right. the army does get it. who need to get it are the troops. and the woman in front said it best, you know, you can give every four-star general a ph.d. in psychology. it will not make a bit of difference until you teach them what to look for. when i was in iraq, i had a kid who was one of my best soldiers, a great guy. i'd just gotten him right before we left. he quickly integrated into the

unit in took over his truck. he was a real hard charger. he had spent six months between oif 2 and coming with me to oif 3. he thought he was going to be in tanks and drilling stakes in the desert. lee was wrong. within our first month, he went from being the target charging nco to having issues. u.s. for getting things. he was leaving sensitive items around. he was angry out of the sector. we had no training. we did not know what was going on. all i knew was i had to take him off the line for 30 days but it was getting to where we cannot maintain combat effectiveness. turns out, not very great feat of leadership or in the intuition on my or my superiors part, but just through kind of blind luck, that after about a week of being back and talking to people, his behavior started

to change. i said, you know what, maybe there's something else going on. maybe this is not a discipline problem. maybe you are having an issue. so you is able to go see mental health, and he was able to spend about a month going through a process, and he eventually came back inno the unit and was ok. he is still ok, actually. but this is what we're seeing in a stress force, where we have people who are exhibiting symptoms of a wound that they have received, and it is being treated as a discipline problem. and that will not change until we educate those junior leaders. the force is stressed. the force is tired. the military comes home from a yearlong employment only to get maybe three months before they have to start gearing up for their next year long deployment. and leaders are not educated

enough to make good leadership decisions amongst that high operational tempo. this is something that also is changing. the army is instituting this resiliency program. when i think resiliency, to me that means education. it means you're teaching someone that a mental health wound is like getting shot. i always tell people, if you got shot, you are not going to walk around with a hole in your chest and put some tape over it and drive off. that is ridiculous. you go to the medic and get the bullet out and get some back up and back into the fight. the same with mental health ones. if we tell them that from the first day in the military, if we do not do that, we will not be all the way there. it is encouraging that this has also happened. the beatty is also doing the integrating of new media. they have done some really smart people that are learning how to communicate with this latest generation of veterans. i think the number is high 70%,

low 80% of veterans under the age of 30 who have served in iraq and afghanistan. these are people who have never had a driver's license without google maps. i just think about that for a minute. these are people who have had e- mail addresses and aim addresses before they had their driver's license. they do not find community based on today -- where they live but do they can connect with, who their common interests are. this is a different population that looks at the world different. the dod -- this morning, i was looking at activedeployment.org. we're we're lagging behind is being able to present those resources to this population in a manner that they are accustomed to. military one source says the phone counseling program that is excellent, but the user interface on the website is actually quite poor. it is essentially a very large billboard.

i can pull this phone out, and i can say, i want to go get sushi, and it is going to tell me every restaurant within walking distance. it will also tell me how good it is, how much it costs, and then it will give me stories from 20 other people recently a there, and it will tell me how good that is. why do we not do that for our resources? because that is what i expect. when i go to military one source, i expect not just to know what is out there, but i want to know of my community thinks about that. i want to know whether soldiers say. i want to know what mental health professionals say. it is google. it is out there, and this is the world we are accustomed to. we neee to bring the services of to that level. so the next logical step, going back to this screening, and i will talk about the future, is implementing something that we got past in the national defense authorization act last year.

that is face to face mandatory mental health screenings. mental health screenings are largely still self-reported when you come back. it is getting better. they are paying attention to the self-reporting more. but t, she gets this, and actually, i do not need her to do this because they're trying they'rehell to do this. we need to help the dod is you out there. it is one thing for congress and the community to say every single person must be screened. and that is the right answer, the way forward. you cannot do it if you do not have anybody to screen them. you ought to get innovative, creative. >> and provide follow-up care. >> and provide follow-up care after work. it is not that initial conversation that'll make the difference. it is that conversation six months later were that trained professional can see the differences in the answers and the differences in the behavior. because if you catch these things early, then you do not

get to what we are starting to see now. where we're starting to see suicide rates skyrocket, or starting to see veterans of iraq and afghanistan entering our justice system at levels that are higher than any previous population. this is a the next great thing that we're going to start seeing. i know current tv next week will have a special on this. and it is frightening the level of the veterans are suffering from mental health injuries exhibited all the signs, both in service and out of service, never received the care, and they wound up in the prison system. it is staggering, and it is something that we're going to have to be catching up with for the next several years. we also need to start tracking veterans. we have no idea how many veterans exist in the united states of america. we have no idea. the va does a really good job of

best obtaining that number, but we do not know. why? because we do not track them. who filled out their census form? did anybody see the question as said are you a veteran of the arms services? if you did, you were drunk, because it does not exist, not there. the only way we find out if someone is a veteran is if someone in iraq's with a particular social service that happens to ask if they are a veteran. that is we're, right? that is incredibly weird. the kerner -- and the colonel was talking about the cdc data base. the cdc actually does this in 16 states. we have been looking for legislation to expand the database to all 50. it would cost $50,000,000.10 time and a couple million a year to maintain it. but we would be able to get all

sorts of information, not just for suicide, but for a host of things. and it would solve a very simple problem. i talk about justice interaction. we do not know how many veterans are in prison in that country because we cannot get the dod and doj to share the information. the doj collects information about everyone that has been arrested. the dod has information about everyone that has been in the military. the systems do not like to talk to each other, so it is almost insurmountable to make that work. we need to start tracking these things, getting data, so we can define night resources out there and put them where they need to be cut and not work in the dark. i will not talk too much about dod-uva integration. it is happening. not as fast as i would like, but it is happening. there is a way forward. there is a light at the end of the tunnel. but we're so far behind in the

u.s. government in just a basic technological infrastructure that it is going to take some time. so now that i am and advocate, you know, i do this for a living, and i can put into context the things i saw when i was in the military, and it is interesting. i think if i were having a conversation with myself five years ago, the guy from five years ago with think i am nuts or just kind of a pogue, a dork. that is ok. i am lot smarter and better looking now. screw that guy. i want to thank you for being here and taking an interest. the military is a very unique culture. some of our at idiosyncrasies are a bit odd at times. there things we find hysterical that most people find horrifying, but that is ok. we're only going to see great

progress when the civilian sector starts paying attention. military communities. we do not come home to small, isolated areas. reservists and national guardsmen can go from baghdad to kabul to their front door in the 72 hours. that is no joke. so it is going to be at the community level where all this stuff is going to get tweaked. it will be the community level, at your level, where you're going to start seeing this. and the better educated york, the more you understand these issues, the better you can either treat them or direct them to someone who can. and i just wanted to end fight thank you -- end by thanking you for being here. [applause] >> thank you so much. >> man asked a very quick question, please? >> of course.

>> and i will keep it quiet. i came here, i am the new executive director of nami vermont, and i very much appreciative all of your presentations today. but there is a little bit of discomfort on my part because i came, in part, to hear a presentation on how we, at nami on the state and local level, can support what you're doing. and some of this conversation, frankly, has been between agencies and organizations. and i understand that because there's a lot of collaboration happening. we do have, as no, and i am not an expert on it, a veterans council that is committed to providing one family to family class per year for veterans at the va. i am to find out in other ways how we, as it halfway to veterans and families, and we are one of those pathways that you discussed earlier, through

our support groups, through our educational groups. we have family members to go to our class is because they're having challenges with their veteran loved ones. so i am not hearing quite that reliance and request for our support and help in specific ways. so when i meet with our program director, our new program director, in the two months and we evaluate our class offerings, i want to be able to make sure we are addressing in reaching out to veterans families, and i am asking how we can do that. [applause] >> ok, let's say the answer to that so we can get our last panelist on. then we will take that issue up. our last speaker is joy, the deputy national legislative director and has been at dod since 1995. she is an army veteran, for kermit -- former medic, and was

in germany. i consider her a dear friend. and i think her for coming today to speak. [applause] >> thank you. good afternoon, everyone. well, it is 3:30 p.m. friday afternoon, and i know we're out of time, so i am going to make this really quick. i appreciate being invited here as part of your conference and especially to be on this panel. you know, mental health issues, i think the doctor put it best, especially the issues of our current generation of veterans have really had the nation's attention. and certainly in congress, and in what i do in terms of legislative advocate for our nation's disabled veterans, we certainly see that we have had a number of hearings over the past several years, with an obvious focus on these veterans and post-deployment health issues. and particularly post-deployment mental health issues. as we have heard a number of

times, there has been a lot of target of funding provided to dod and va by congress to look at these issues and ramp up programs. everyone wanted to get ahead of the curve this time, and we have a lot of dedicated people, including the people at this table, who have been working hard to make sure that that happens in that the changes that need to be made are made. dod has been involved. we work with four other major debtor and service organizations, four of us together, and put out a policy document with recommendations. we do include a section on mental health. we hope you'll go online to www. independentbudget.org to review that. it has a brief summary of issues that we're concerned about, all of which have been talked about today. nami and others are endorsers of

the independent budget. we also are part of a consumer liaison and the advisory committee for mental health. dr. katz has been a great friend and his staff. i know they were incredibly hard to try to make stages -- changes and headways. we applaud them for their efforts. and trying to implement the uniformed mental health services handbook to make sure comprehensive health, a variety of services throughout the va system, no matter where a veteran needs to be seen. will also continue to press the issue, and i have heard it a number of times during the speaker's previous to me, we want to make sure all areas of that veterans have access to this. even now the focus has been on the newest generation, those of us that have been around awhile

really know that many people have suffered, and we cannot leave anyone behind. we need to make sure that we adjust and adapt to these services to meet everyone's needs. we have talked a little bit about traumatic brain injury, mild to moderate, and collaboration. we see that there are no separate lines anymore between dod and va, and we are happy the agencies are starting to work together to collaborate. it is best for all of those who need our care and treatment. i will close by saying, you know, there is a number of issues we would like to discuss. i am just out of time today. but we appreciate the collaboration and cooperation with nami. we work together at dav as well. we all have best interests at heart of all of those who we all serve. and i am are hoping we get to answer the last persons

questioned. i think it was appropriate with regard to veterans and families. our members are talking about that, too. they are seeing their grandchildren coming back and other people and how to approach them, how they can interact. jon and i before we let the office, i had to come over today because we're working on a new brochure we want to go out. and we're stretching it out to say it is not just for veterans but family members and appeal to everyone. someone can take something away from it. >> [inaudible] >> yes, we're listing a number of resources in it. we know about the peer to peer work you're doing at the mou with va. that is absolutely critical. we hear that with our veterans. i will turn it over so we can wrap up and take the last few questions. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. the colonel has volunteered to take up the question from the lady from vermont.

we appreciate the question. >> thank you. it is a great question, and i alluded to it in my opening remarks because this really should be not a dod/of the dialogue but a national dialogue. what i have seen work the best on a state-by-state basis is that you first get the helping organization together and doing a good needs assessment. there is a ton of people doing the same thing, and then there is considerable gaps. in a small state like vermont, which has a lot of good stuff going on, it is fairly simple to do. it is harder in the california and other places. i would start out with a good needs assessment. then make your matrix and say these are the holes and these are how we can help. but the one caution is, frankly, your name. soldiers do not like to be considered mentally ill. there are a lot of consequences to their jobs and careers. by the way, i believe the most

effective mental health intervention, besides an dogs, is a good job. so anything that may threaten the soldiers livelihood is going to be viewed with suspicion. but i think nami can play an incredibly important role in facilitating that statewide needs assessment and say, where do we go from here? >> i also have a request for your job, i think, is to keep us up. we already talked briefly about our statistics, requirements, and policies. they are good. but what about the care for every veteran? that is or we need you to watch over us and watch very carefully. know about our handbook of mental health services for medical centers and clinics that

specifies what care must be available to every veteran who needs it. and coach your friinds and colleagues about asking for what they are entitled to. if they get it, great. if not, a coach them to say, but principle number 17c in this document says he must give it to me. and if not, call him. i mean, we can do a lot from washington about getting requirements out there. but we need help in the field in making sure that the right care is delivered to the right people at the right time, and for that, we need nami and dav and so many others. keep us honest.

>> thank you. yes, ma'am. thanks for your request and. >> i talked briefly with a lady today who did not know what nami was when her son had his break. and this was like two or three years ago. so we're not a household name yet, and what we needdfrom you guys is the assurance that we will get referrals. that families will be referred to family class and that veterans will be referred to our nami connection recovery support group. that is what we need, because we do not know who they are. >> thank you for that comment. i do not know dr. henderson is here, and i do not know she knows the answer to this, but nami does have a national memorandum of understanding in place on family to family education, which expired june 30, 2010. i am told it is being renegotiated. there is a natural link between nami locally and va medical

centers through family to family, which we're hoping to expand on but my personal hope is that we can bring the nami connections program into va health care because it is a powerful teaching tool to help people deal with mental illness. [applause] >> hello. i am from birmingham, alabama, birmingham nami. my father was 22-year navy. we moved 17 times. air naval station. we moved, and i loved the navy life. i just loved it very much. i felt it was a wonderful place to be as a child. my little brother, youngest of four, he tried to go into the navy but cannot because use later diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he was put on the delayed entry program, whatever that is. i come to you today because after help found in hat -- found in birmingham nami 20 years ago

and tried do not combine help, he did not go to the va. but we have come so far, crisis intervention and so forth without reach through nami, which i had a task very proud o.

i just want to thank god that he put me there that day. i know i cannot help the va hospital. they know it all.

and i met this young gentleman here, and he has a great story to tell. i cannot wait. two things. if we can get your mental health police and the va hospital to have intervention teams. if we can work with the probate courts in the community and work to train law enforcement officers and maybe come up with a model in 16 cities in the county, it would be great. the other thing is, can we come up with the public service announcements of for veterans like we did with glenn close? that would be wonderful. >> thank you for your comments. from my experience, you're doing the right thing by seeking support from your elected legislators. that is very effective. i have my own concerns about the existence of the sufficient number of inpatient resources for veterans in va medical centers. va has moved very forcefully to an outpatient primary-care model, and now we're moving to the medical home model. all of these approaches i think

are embedded with some assumptions about a declining need for beds. on the other hand, , we know that the american and prisons and jails are full of mentally ill prisoners. so one of my observations over the years, not that i am an expert, is that we have shifted wed in the 1950's and 1960's was a fairly large population of institutionalized people in mental hospitals and moved them to jail. i do not feel like that is progress. maybe it is. your comments are appreciated. doctor, i do not know you want to address the crisis intervention issues. >> [inaudible] >> first of all, i want to thank everybody who is here.

i am and army veteran. i was a german citizen when i was in active duty, and that is when i became a military survivor. i have been in the reserves [unintelligible] looking at this little ball right here, it says, press one, for veterans. ok, -- [unintelligible] i have the phone number in my office. i did not see the person i wanted. i pressed alaska, were i am

friend. she is my other boss here. i got a recording. we will call you back whenever. for something, press one. the veteran was in crisis. they need to be able to see that. i did not see that at all. another thing is that on the website for military trauma, it states that soldiers and veterans who have experienced these problems are eligible for mental health care counseling. guess what, i live in alaska. it takes forever. you can go summer 24 hour by boat or half an hour by plane, which costs a fortune, to see counselors that are in in

bridge. it is a long ways away. it is rough to be able to afford fuel to drive to a counselor that is trained in the military trauma. older veterans were not oif veterans, they have so many people coming back with severe delays or with ptsd from something in the economic or korea. we have a hell of a time getting connection the day i left to come here. i was again denied service connections for my ptsd for a month. if there is anything else, please fix that ball and make press #one huge so if a veteran is in the crisis, the will push the right button. thank you. >> thank you.

any comments in the response? >> [inaudible] it is a critical problem. how to get services to people. would it be susceptible for you to repeat counseling by telephone or a computer video system? >> ok, i have discussed that with a recovery coordinator. and also the one in charge in anchorage, alaska regarding out reach. >> let me do this, ma'am. there are a couple other speakers behind you. i was going to say the same thing. we're using telemedicine and

webcams vigorously to go to places like alaska and afghanistan. >> i am with nami georgia and have been working with the program for about four years. it is a speakers bureau in which people in recovery from mental elvis go out and talk about their experiencee, there lived experiences, and i am a speaker myself. down in georgia, georgia has done a great job already getting into the va and with family to family in connection stuff. i have been able to kind of fly on their coattails with their own voice. we will go in there at the end of july. i already have a vietnam veteran as a speaker, and i am and hoping to get a younger one so i have at least two veterans speakers. but what you mentioned about educating the upper command about whether it ptsd, depression, anxiety looks like,

we would love to get involved in that effort. unfortunately, most of the speakers -- they are civilians. so there's a certain kind of resistance, because we're not military, but we really would like to help with that. if anybody has any recommendations, it you might want to talk to me afterward, i would really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> just to understand, i worked -- besides nami, i work for federally qualified health center where we do primary-care services. i am trying to understand what kinds of services a veteran may get in such a setting -- for example, if you were to write a prescription for an anti- depressant or something that may not be covered on a limited formulary, is it possible -- is that connection there so that a veteran might be able to get the medication filled at the -- as a

veteran? obviously, there will be a gap between attending to get services in getting things filled are getting treatment carries through. that kind of understanding would be helpful for people that have been on this side of the military table in the primary care. because we do not understand what is going on in this room.

we were talking about family and orientation. i work with what is called a

cycle social rehab program in the va system. what i am finding there is a family setting. our veterans, mostly vietnam veterans, but they're coming in and finding that family environment where everybody knows each other, and we see each other almost on a daily basis, both staff and patients. the benefit is they feel that family environment. but what i do is i facilitate two connection groups. i do not remember music connection groups and the va. it is very hard to get started. the biggest call that i am getting is how do you get your groups in, and those people are coming from civilians. they have no military or veteran background. as a veteran, i can relate to them, and my fear is that when the civilian goes into the va and if they can start a connection group, having the correct training to work with the veterans. i am in the dark now.

but to have the correct training to work with a veteran, such as a vietnam veteran comes into my group and talks about nightmares, a civilian might ask them what it was about. a veteran facilitator will say, ok, how do you deal with that nightmare and please do not tell me what it is about because then everybody in the room will be, you know, in the midst of their trauma. so how do we, as nami, get facilitators trains and then use connection in the va system to kind of cross that barrier? where the people who cannot get the day to day care that they need and the support that they need, can we use the connection groups for the consumer, and how do we go about getting the connection facilitators trained and able to get into the va facility? i find that the eighth facility

not wanting to support -- i find that va facility not wanting to support the connection groups. you talk about peer-to-peer, we have peer specialists in our program, but now they are wanting to have talks of training pier specialists for volunteers. the initiative to bring in the peer support, i would really like it to be through a nami connection because the structure of our group. if you have any idea of how to bring that into an integrate all of this through connections? >> thank you for that. we have our national member of nami veterans council, and one

of the jobs is to accomplish some of the very things you're talking about. >> on the connections -- [inaudible] >> this is very important, but to the microphone. i want this to be nationally broadcast. >> we're working on the pier specialists. we're working on in our own voice in getting a new video that is both military and a spouse and family members, so that doesn't go through the steps of how we live with mental illness, we're doing it as a family and veteran approach. we're also looking at connections with that veteran peace. many of our veterans within na mi are taking this trainings for the signature programs and have been for the last eight months. you'll see a big push for this in the fall because it is a major issue, not just for the council but also for your current nami board.

>> i am pleased to see that peer to peer had a special segment of our veterans. but i want to know that will come from the va side or from the military side that we can come to the post and come to the va and be allowed in the facility. i hate to use the brand and i did in, but i think that across some of the barriers. >> let me address that as well. there's a ton of training and educational materials out there. national center for post- traumatic stress disorder, army behavioral health. i do not think we need that many more videos, frankly, although a few more will not hurt. if what we need is a will and an interest, and that is exactly what you're bringing up. i would start with seeing some of the available products. the thing i caution you about in terms of coming to military facilities is that there are approximately 550 groups were wanted to help walter reed. so walter reed has to protect

its folks, and has to sort through all these. but there are a lot of other stations that have not had the same level of attention. so i would encourage you to reach out to other places, fort hood, fort bragg, and the other arenas and look into the guard and reserve who often feel forgotten about. .

>> dod providers, yes. but every health and mental health care provider in america should know about psd -- ptsd and know what a squad, a platoon, and brigade are, and have the sense of what it is like to be there or to have loved one who is there. it is an element of health care that goes beyond our systems to affect all of american health care. it is a matter of adding this to the curriculum in medical and nursing schools and social work, and everywhere else. and we need your help in delivering this message. >> i think with that we will call a halt to the proceeding. we appreciate your attention today. i dearly think the panel. i think the c-span audience for hanging in there with us. have a good day. [applause] c-span3

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> president obama and vice president by then traveled to charleston, west virginia, where they spoke at the memorial service for senator robert byrd. other speakers include house and senate leaders and vicki kennedy, wife of the senator ted kennedy. we will show the service tonight at 8:00. >> sunday, your questions for syndicated radio talk-show host bill bennett. the former education secretary and the author of more than 20

books for adults and children joined the discussion on american history, education, and politics. three hours sunday as part of "book tv" three day holiday weekend on c-span to. >> one of the best quotes i have ever heard about money and politics is it is like water behind a whole. >> to write about political action committees and their influence on congress, and one the pulitzer prize for his reporting. jeff smith, national investigative correspondent for "the washington post." >> sunday, c-span will air highlights from the first three days of elena kagan's supreme court confirmation hearing, with opening statements by senate judiciary committee members and their questions on campaign financing, executive power, abortion, and treatment of enemy combatants. sunday morning at 10:35 eastern

on c-span. our website offers on demand highlights from each day and portions organized by date and senator. you will find other events with elena kagan and past supreme court confirmation appearances, plus links to resources, twitter, and facebook conversations. all at c-span.org/kagan. to buy copies of the hearing, go to c-span.org/videolibrary. find the program you want to purchase, and click on "by now." news from the labor department with a report that the unemployment rate fell to its lowest rate in almost a year, at 9.5%. here is more on numbers and what is behind them as the commission of labor and statistics testifies. it is about one hour 10 minutes.

>> the meeting will come to order. and i would first like to recognize myself for my opening statement. today's employment report from the bureau of labor and statistics shows that in june the economy added 83,000 private-sector jobs. this is the sixth straight month of employment gains in the private sector. you can see that the light blue is the gains of jobs in the private sector. the red, the redv-chart -- when president bush was in office. you can see down in the valley. at the low point, we lost over 779,000 jobs. the last month president bush was in office.

when president obama took office, it has been a zigzag, but we are trending in the right direction and gaining private- sector jobs. since the beginning of this year, the economy has added 593 jobs in the private sector. as expected, the june report showed a sharp decline in temporary business workers, government workers causing total non-farm payrolls to decline for the first time this year. additionally, the june employment report showed that the unemployment rate ticked down to 9.5%, and the number of unemployed workers declined by 350,000. although the overall unemployment rate has declined from its peak of 10.1% in october, not all demographic groups are seeing the same trends and unemployment rates. for example, the unemployment

rate for african-american workers continued to rise after october, although the current unemployment rate of 15.4% is lower than the peak of 16.5%. although the unemployment rate for women showed little change in the first five months of 2010, the unemployment rate from women declined in june to 8.3%. we have made real progress in the past year. last june, this country lost 452,000 private-sector jobs. while these job gains are not as robust as earlier this year, the trend is definitely in the right direction. the policies that democrats in congress quickly put into place over the last year are working. in addition to overall private- sector job gains, there were gains across many sectors in our

economy. manufacturing employment has risen for six months in a row after falling three straight years. consumer spending has risen every month since october of 2009. surveys of both the service sector and the manufacturing sector showed that the growth is expected to continue. but we have to be patient. the path to recovery is never in a straight line. for the millions of workers who lost their jobs it will take time for them to become employed again. we also have to be vigilant. the recovery is still fragile, and our economy is still vulnerable. in fact, nobel laureate paul krugman believes we are in the early stages of another great depression. he recently wrote that this depression, "will be primarily a failure of policy. governments are obsessing about inflation when the reaa threat

is deflationary. preaching the need for belt- tightening whee the real problem is inadequate spending." i am disheartened that the senate has failed to extend unemployment insurance benefits, despite the fact that there are still 14.6 million unemployed workers bearing the brunt of the worst economic crisis since the great depression. as a result, an estimated 1.7 million unemployed workers will lose benefits by the end of next week. some members of congress do not want to extend unemployment benefits because they believe these benefits create a disincentive for people to seek work. as this majority staff report shows, this is a report that was developed and released recently by the lec, the evidence is

clear. these benefits do not inhibit job seekers from vigorously looking for or accepting work. instead, these benefits provide an enormous benefit to society by stimulating the economy as well as preventing workers from dropping out of the labor force. every dollar that an unemployed worker gets he or she plows right back into the economy, because they need to. that helps us reduce the deficit. that helps us keep our economy moving. even former fed chairman alan greenspan expressed strong support for extensions of unemployment benefits after the first bush recession. in a hearing before the joint economic committee in may 2003, chairman greenspan stated, "when you are in a period of job weakness, where it is not a choice on the part of people whether or not they are employed or unemployed, then

obviously you want to be temporarily generous." and that is what we have done in the past. and i think it has worked well. in may 2003, we had fewer than three unemployed workers for every opening, and the unemployment rate was 6.1%. the most recent data shows that there are five unemploymenyed workers for every opening, and the unemployment rating is 9.5%. this provides more than stimulus for the economy and a social safety net for people who are out of work. it is fiscally prudent as well. disabled workers to become discouraged and drop out of the work force enter the social security disability insurance program, which is much more expensive than unemployment insurance benefits. we all know that unemployment

benefits stimulate the economy. every dollar in unemployment benefits multiplies to create over $1.60 in economic activity. at a hearing before this committee in february, the director of the nonpartisan congressional budget office tessified that extending these benefits is one of the most effective and efficient ways to stimulate the economy. and surely it is obvious that getting the economy to grow and getting people back to work are crucial to getting our deficit under control. moreover, this will be the first time since 1959 that the government will allow unemployed benefits to expire when the national unemployment rate was over 7%. it is time for all members of congress to put the american people first. i yield back the balance of my time and yield to my colleague

and good friend mr. grady. >> thank you, madam chairman. happy fourth of july. i hope you enjoy the holiday. i am pleased to join again in welcoming dr. hall before the committee this morning. today's report is more disappointing news for american workers and their families. even excluding the layoffs of temporary census workers, job growth remains anemic at 83,000. at the slow pace, it will take much of a decade to return to normal levels. unemployment fell for the wrong reasons -- six and 52,000 workers leaving the labor force. -- 652 workers leaving the labor force. those not seeking jobs rose to

2.6 million. that is an all-time high. 6.8 million ameeican workers have remained unemployed for six months or longer. in january of last year, president obama promised the economic program would restore confidence and jump-start the u.s. economy. the last month, the consumer confidence index fell dramatically. consumer confidence is flagging because families are frightened by dangerous deficits as far as the eye can see. as for jobs during the economy, two of the administration's top economists predicted that if congress were to pass the stimulus bill the unemployment rate would remain below 8% and non-farm payroll would increase to 137.6 million jobs by the fourth quarter of this year. democrats in congress did enact the american recovery and investment act, but the stimulus has fallen far short of both these important projections.

the growth of real gdp slowed by more than one half, from 5.6% in the last quarter of 2009 to 2.7% in the first quarter of this year. the number of economic indicators flashed yellow in the second quarter, suggesting economic growth may be sluggish for the remainder of this year and next. americans do not see an economy in recovery. they feel the white house is incapable of protecting our beaches are getting people back to work. this anemic economic reform after the recession began in 2007 is in sharp contrast to the robust growth that benefited american workers and their families after the 1981-1982 recession. the obama recovery is one-third the recovery of the reagan recovery. it is one-third the recovery of the 1981-1982 recession.

president reagan's economic policies were a tail wind, accelerating real economic growth. president reagan pursued pro- growth policies, including large reductions in marginal tax rates, deregulation, and trade opening, combined with this inflationary monetary policies under paul volcker and alan greenspan. reagan laid the foundation for two decades of prosperity. in contrast, president obama and congressional democrats have pursued anti-growth policies that have hindered this recovery. businesses are slow to hire because they fear higher taxes. there is just telling regulation and a dysfunction in washington that is in geologically driven and increasingly anti business. instead of encouraging business, president obama has given entrepreneurs reason to worry. businesses are not reluctant to hire because they are waiting to see what washington will do for them. they are reluctant to hire because they are afraid of what

washington will do to them. ominously, president obama and congressional democrats are insisting on reckless increases in congressional spending now and in the future. this puts the aaa reputation of the u.s. government into jeopardy for the first time since alexander hamilton resurrected the finances of the united states after the revolutionary war and put us on the road to becoming an economic superpower. the congressional budget office projects that under the president's budget federal spending will grow to 25.2% of gdp, far above its postwar average of 19.5%. this is a structural budget deficit in excess of 4% of gdp. consequently, publicly held federal debt will rise to 90% of gdp by the end of fiscal year 2020. in the long-term budget outlook, the cbo projects that under the

alternative fiscal scenario, -pwhich he spurned -- which kees current policies in place, this spending growth will cause the federal debt to explode to nearly 10 times america's gdp by the end of fiscal year 2084. president obama and congressional democrats are pursuing reckless policies that are clearly unsustainable. unless they're excessive deficits and debt accumulation are put into reverse, the united states may experience a debt crisis similar to greece. we're putting the future of our children and grandchildren in great jeopardy. unlike gris, no one will be around to bail us out. dr. hall, i look forward to hearing your testimony. >> the chair recognizes congressman cummings. >> thank you, madam chair. it is so easy to take a look at these reports every month, commissioner paul, --

commissioner hall, and have a spirit of fear as opposed to hope. i have chosen hope. when i think about from whence we come, and the chart here tells the story very clearly -- back in january 2009, we were in deep trouble. president obama came in with a patient, our economic system, which was in deep trouble and was in intensive care. he took that situation and turned it around. i do not know how many people have been in intensive care, but it takes time to heal. and i do believe our country has

come a long way. is it where we wanted to be? no. i wish that we could wave a magic wand and the folks to come to me on a daily basis in my district, the ones who are saying they cannot find jobs -- i wish they could find them. but the fact still remains that we have come a long way, and we do have a long way to go. i have often said that in these hearings, when we hear our jobs reports on a monthly basis, the question becomes so often when do we root for the home team. when do we acknowledge progress? when do we give this president, this administration, this congress credit for what we are accomplishing? we must keep in mind that 60% of

the gdp is consumer spending, and my good friend mr. brady is right. it is about confidence. the fact remains that one of the things to get that confidence going is going back to what the chairwoman talked about in most of her speech this morning. we have got to get people employed, but we also have to make sure that those who are not employed and cannot find jobs through no fault of their own have some kind of way of making it through day-to-day life. sometimes i listened to my colleagues on the other side and i wonder, what do you say? maybe they have never been in those situations where the person just could not find a job. so what do you say to the person who cannot find a job? just go and die? just get lost? no empathy? no nothing? through no fault of their own?

i am hoping, madam chair, that the senate will act. i think it is very sad that we leave for a fourth of july vacation and when the fireworks are going off and people are having fun there will be a lot of people throughout our country who will not be able -- that are not trying to get down to disney world. they are just trying to get to the nearest amusement park. they are not trying to eat steak. they are simply trying to get a hamburger. books who are just trying to live their lives, people who were doing fine a few years ago, doing fine before the country was put in intensive care through no fault of their own, doing fine while others were getting, at aig and other big firms, major bonuses of billions of dollars for running our country into the gutter.

again, one of the things we did not talk about yet this morning is that a lot of people at the beginning of this week were saying "the sky is going to fall and we will move from 9.7 to 9.9." i heard it all week. not a mumbling word yet about the fact that the unemployment rate went down to 9.5. hello. rooting for the home team. we still have a lot to do. but the fact still remains that we have come a long way. and the chairwoman is right. we are going in the right direction. and i think that this congress can work with this president to speed that process up. and so i choose hope as opposed to fear. with that, madam chair, i yield

back. >> thank you very much. i would now like to introduce dr. keith hall. he is the commissioner of labor statistics for the united states department of labor. that is an independent, national, statistical agency that connects, processes, analyzes, and disseminates its central statistical data to the american public, the united states congress, other federal agencies, state and local governments, business, and labor. dr. hall has also served as chief economist for the white house council of economic advisers. prior to that, he was the chief economist for the u.s. department of commerce. dr. hall also spent 10 years at the united states international trade commission. thank you for your public service. we look forward to your testimony.

>> thank you, madam chair. thank you for the opportunity to discuss the employment and unemployment data we released this morning. non-farm employment fell by up 125,000 in june, and the unemployment rate edged down to 915%. the larger employment reflects a fall in the number of temporary census workers. the number of jobs in the private sector is up. private-sector employment has risen by 593,000 so far in 2010. in june it was 9.7 below its previous session level. federal government employment decline shortly. the number of temporary census workers dropped by 225,000, leaving 339,000 temporary workers on the census peril. in the private sector, temporary help services employment continued to grow over the month. the industry has added 379,000

jobs since september 2009. employment also rose in management and technical consulting and business support services in june. amusement and recreation gained 28,000 jobs, will transportation and warehousing was up by 15,000. mining employment continued to train up. the industry has gained 56,000 jobs since october 2009. employment in thing of pressuring also trended up in june. -- in manufacturing also trended up in june. the manufacturing workweek decline by half an hour in june, more than offsetting an increase in may. nonetheless, factory hours remained 1.3 hours above their recent trough. employment in health care edged up in june. construction employment fell by 22,000. specialty trade contractors accounted for most of the decline. that has shown little change over the last four months.

on a measure of a survey of households, the unemployment edged down to 95% in june. of the unemployed individuals, about 6.8 million have been jobless for 27 weeks or more. in comparison, 1.3 million were unemployed for 27 weeks or more when the recession began. the labor force declined in june following an increase earlier in the year. that declined by half a percentage point over the last two months. the employment population ratio edged down in june. among the employees there were 8.6 million individuals working part time who would prefer full- time work. the number of special workers has fallen by 525,000 over the past two months. in summary, payroll employment fell by 125,000 in june as modest growth in the private- sector was more than offset by a

large decline in temporary census workers. the unemployment rate edged down to 9.5%. i would now be happy to answer questions. >> commissioner hall, what are the bright spots in this month's jobs report? are there any particularly encouraging areas that you can report to us in this month's report? >> the biggest bright spot is the drop in the unemployment rate from 9.7% to 9.5%. all the private-sector job growth was not strong it was job growth. it has been growing now for six straight months. i think in context that is a positive sign. manufacturing employment continues to grow. not strongly, but it has grown for six straight months. that also is a good sign.

temporary help work continues to add jobs. that continues to be a good job for future growth and employment. the was not strong job growth in any portion of the economy. there was not strong job loss either. i think there were some areas where there was modest growth. >> what sectors are experiencing more job creation than job losses now? you mentioned manufacturing. what other areas? >> manufacturing is. retail trade declined a little this month, but over the prior six months it started to grow modestly. temporary help services -- i mentioned that. education and health services continue to grow jobs. leisure and hospitality has grown jobs for the past six months, and in june as well. >> are there any others sectors that are showing signs that they

might have job growth? that are giving indication that are getting stronger? >> there are no real industries that are losing jobs strongly. everything is either hovering around a little job growth or is growing a little bit. i would say the biggest indication is the temporary help services. that has been strong. that suggests that at some point workers will start to bring back other workers. >> as you have said, we are trending in the right direction. are there any further indicators that overall job gains will continue in the coming months, besides the temporary help and the six months of job gains in manufacturing? >> i think one of the more encouraging things -- this month the manufacturing work hours declined. that is not a good sign. prior to that, there had been a

pretty steady rise in manufacturing work hours. that is generally a leading indicator as well. >> i would like to ask you about the gulf region. have you done any analysis on the impact of the disaster on jobs in that region? are you tracking that? >> we are starting to do some tabulations on that. we are probably not going to be able to simply identify what has been the effect of the oil spill, but we will probably have some nice tabulation that will show you the areas that could be affected. in terms of overall job impact this is probably going to be a tricky thing to estimate, because you do get a job boost from cleanup and activities like that. and of course you have tourism and such along the beaches that will be impacted. we do have pretty good data on that. i think as more of our data becomes available people will be able to tease out some of these

facts. >> when will it be available? >> some will be available over the next few months. the best data we have will not be available for quite a while. the apparel jobs that we simple right now -- at some point, we are going to do a census of all of those. we do that once a year. that will give us detailed information. but that will not be for a -- until later in the year. >> commissioner, i cannot believe you just said a bright spot is that the unemployment rate fell. do you realize that is because 652,000 americans gave up looking for work? >> the labor force did decline by that much. >> next month, another 600,000 people could give up looking for work. should we organize some parade to cheer it? it seems to me that it is not good news, going forward. and i also -- the second

quarter, i think all of us were optimistic about it. it started out strong. it has not moved forward. i do not see any payroll job growth by industry in this month's report that is the specifically -- statistically significant. do you? >> i do not. i would agree that we have not yet seen strong, sustained job growth. that is clearly something we are going to need to see at some point to start lowering the unemployment rate further. >> i think companies are hopeful that their customers will start demanding. consumers will have confidence. companies will have confidence to make investment and hiring decisions. but that is not happening. i think it is the policies of washington that is holding this recovery back. i would like to point out -- i agree that the unemployment benefits are a tragedy.

i point out that democrats have nothing to blame but themselves. this is not a surprise. we have known this deadline for months. they hold a super majority in the house and they hold the white house. i guess other than blaming george bush they have to look in the mirror for those who will not be getting help this month. but i think most people who are on unemployment are looking hard for work. they are struggling to find it. what they really want are jobs. this report today is not very encouraging news for them. one concern i have, and the chairman raise the issue correctly -- the impact of the gulf oil spill. clearly, it is going to have an impact on tourism. the tourist season is pretty short. shrimping in the ocean season is very short period.

there will be real impact going forward. have you been able to estimate another equally important blow to our economy -- this six month drilling moratorium of 33 deepwater wells? the federal courts have stated -- have stayed the moratorium, but the secretary has announced the will find a way to reinstate it. in our region, we had a woman laid off due to the drilling moratorium. there are almost 50,000 jobs directly related to those rigs in the gulf coast or the deepwater area. thousands of businesses -- they say they cannot survive six months without business. have you had a chance to study

the impact of shutting down our energy exploration in the gulf for a six month period, including the rigs that will leave? it was announced this week that rigs are leaving for was to africa or the middle east and will not be returning for a year because the company is already redeploying workers to other areas that are allowing energy exploration. the have any estimates yet but the devastating economic impact of the moratorium will be? >> we do not. if you like, i can follow up and see what sort of numbers. >> what these think the impact from the gulf spell will start showing up in your reports? this week, for example, it was small, but there was some tiny job gains in recreation and tourism. do you think we will start seeing that impact in next

month's report are the following month? >> whatever impact there is, i think we will. the difficulty for us is teasing out the impact of something like that, because in context of 130 million payroll jobs, that sort of impact is difficult. i think we have the right sort of data that someone could take a look at that and try to make some estimates, but to be honest it will not be easy. it is not because it is not there. it is because it is very hard to isolate. >> thank you, councilman. >> i need to respond to my good friend and colleague. there is a lot of revisionist history going on. blaming the democrats for the loss of jobs is absolutely factually incorrect. we see clearly in this chart in red, white, and blue for the fourth of july that is coming up -- clearly, president bush not

only inherited the surplus, but we see throughout his administration in a big way we downward trend. the last month he was in office, this country lost over 779,000 jobs. that is an undisputed fact. with president obama and the democratic policies, we have started trending in the right direction. it is true that recovery is never moved in a straight line. there has not been a straight line up that v chart, and it doesn't stand for victory, but it shows progress. we are moving in the right direction. it shows that we have gained private-sector jobs, the truest indicator of an economic recovery, consistently. it zigzagged, but that is the light blue. we are trending in the right direction because of the efforts in the recovery act and

stabilizing our economy. the recovery will take time, but we need to stay vigilant. we need to continue working. we need to continue helping our people buying jobs. i assure you the democrats will not stop until every american who wants a job can get one. i now recognize my good friend and colleague mr. cummings, who has been a leader in creating jobs and helping small businesses. >> thank you very much. mr. brady said when democrats look in the mirror we should blame ourselves for the plight of our many constituents who are out of work. i just want to be very clear that when i look in the mirror i feel good about the fact that just yesterday i voted to try to help constituents get unemployment benefits while the other side of the aisle gainsaid it. i do not know what merely want to look into, but that is the

mirror i look into. i do not want to get into the blame game, but i want to make this picture clear. we ask you about the gulf coast, and we understand there are 33 wells we are talking about out of 3600. there are 33 wells the moratorium effects. when we see the damage that has been done to our environment, when we see it the 11 gentlemen who were tragically killed -- as a matter of fact, one of their own fathers was with us yesterday in the transportation committee. when we see all the damage done to our environment, a six month moratorium to try to get this thing straight so it does not happen again seems to be a small price. we understand it does affect people. i have talked to folks on both

sides of that issue. the fact remains that tens of billions of dollars of damage has already been done. lives have been lost. we have to figure out how to bring a balance to this. i think the president is doing the right thing. the other thing mr. brady talked about -- i heard some people on cnbc talking about it on my way here. they were saying that last month we had an increase in the number of jobs. i am not talking about this report, but the last one. but the rate stayed the same. is that right? >> yes. >> it stayed the same. there were saying you have a situation where if you are going to live and die by the rate, there are certain variables that come with that.

the overall picture is still that we are going in the right direction. in other words, we are not moving backwards. is that a fair statement? >> that is a fair statement. the data is showing improvement over several months. >> this temporary jobs thing -- you talk about it every month and you say that is something significant. at what point would you expect to see that temporary prediction -- that temporary job prediction -- turned into some permanent jobs? do you follow me? >> sure. it is not clear. it predicts turning points very well. and it is continuing to show growth. but to be honest the reaction varies at times.

sometimes it comes faster, sometimes later. >> these private temporary jobs had growth? >> there was. >> what is the significance of that as opposed to public? >> as opposed to public? the private sector is a reflection, probably, of the fact that establishments are more likely to bring back temporary help workers first before they start bringing back the permanent workers. that is why it winds up being sort of a leading indicator. it is perhaps an indicator of some uncertainty that they are bringing back temporary folks instead of permanent players. >> at least they are going in the direction of increasing. >> that is true. >> there was an article in "the new york times" yesterday that said that employment in the manufacturing sector is on the rise. in fact, it said that there will was -- that the report

today shows an increase of 9000 jobs in manufacturing. >> that is accurate. >> what is the significance of that? >> first of all, manufacturing has not shown sustained job growth for a long time. in fact, the last recession -- the recovery after the last recession, manufacturing did not regain any of the jobs lost. this is the first time manufacturing has showed some recovery from recession in quite a while. >> that is a good sign? >> that is a good sign. >> i see my time is up. >> thank you very much. commissioner hall, at our hearing in may we talked about dr. krugman's testimony at the treasury department. he testified at an earlier joint economic committee hearing that the recovery was fragile and it was moving in the right

direction, but very zigzagging. he did say something i thought was interesting. he said that in most recoveries the driver of new job creation has always, historically, been small and medium-sized businesses, but in this recovery it has been larger businesses. i would like to ask you -- do you have any numbers on small and medium-sized companies and their hiring patterns? wheat in congress have initiated a number of incentives in support to small businesses, to help them gain access to credit, to give them a tax relief for hiring new unemployed workers. i would like to hear the status, since it is such an important part of our economy, of the employment movement of small and medium-sized businesses. >> to put this into context, in

the last recession -- in previous recessions, the job loss was somewhat centered in large firms. this particular recession has been more evenly balanced. it is more jobs lost at small and medium firms than at past recessions. that has been notable. in this early stage of the recovery, hopefully, the large industries -- the large establishments have had job growth since september, but the medium and small have not. they have been lagging in recovery. our data is not up to date yet. we should be coming out with new data soon. that is the early indication. >> since this is such an important engine of our economy and employment in our country, would it be possible for you to supply us on a more regular basis with information on

employment and small and medium- sized businesses? >> sure. that is a tabulation we have not always done, but we can make an effort to update that for you. it is a little bit difficult for us, because our sample size is not very large. that is what we do not do it all the time. but if that will help inform things we will do what we can do. >> [inaudible] in the first six months of 2010. we have now six months of unemployment data. i would like to see if you can't put it in context, setting aside the temporary census jobs we lost. you noted that 225,000 were lost. how would you characterize overall the job growth in the first six months of 2010 do? >> the past six months, we have average 100,000 jobs added a month.

well that is not strong, sustained job growth, it is job growth. i have to say it is not -- that has actually been fairly typical. last two recessions, one of the things i have been struck by is the labor market, once it hit its trough, the first six months afterwards -- this recession had a trough somewhere in november and december of last year. the six months since then we've added about 100,000 jobs. the last recession hit a trough in something like june or july 2003. the first six months after that, we increase by about 100,000 jobs a game. it is very much the same. the six months before that, we were losing about 275,000 jobs per month for the second half of 2009. >> is this a labor market in

free fall, or would you characterize it as one with early stages of prior economic recoveries? >> i would say this is consistent with the recoveries in the last two recessions. >> do you see anything in this information that is a potential pitfall or problem we could see in the future? >> no. just that we are at a point, as in past recessions, where we have some job growth but it is not strong job growth. it is not sustained yet. i would say the biggest risk is probably a higher risk until we start to get the strong job growth -- a higher risk of things not improving quickly. >> thank you very much. mr. brady. >> this recovery certainly is not consistent with the recovery of '81 and '82, where job growth and unemployment was three times better than the obama recovery.

i will take comfort in telling our workers and small businesses in the gulf coast, who will lose their jobs and are losing their jobs and losing their businesses, due to the drilling moratorium, that they are "a small price to pay" for this over reactionary and politically advantageous policy-making here in washington. what is frustrating, i think, is that this democrat congress has had control over mms, that oversees the gulf, for three years. they have done nothing to reform it. the obama administration themselves approved british petroleum's operational waivers on the well. the approved the cleanup plans which have turned out to be awful. they have failed to support our gulf coast governors and local communities in protecting the marshes and beaches, that is why

you see them on tv every day pleading for help. now i try to reinstate a drilling moratorium, they are intent on turning an environmental catastrophe into an economic catastrophe. i am not just talking about 50,000 direct jobs which will be lost, or the $2 billion in wages that will be taken from the economy. i am talking about thousands of small and medium-sized businesses that simply will not survive. what is frustrating is that 24 lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have sent a letter to secretary salazar, recommending a path forward that would protect the safety and security of the golf and allow exploration to go forward on the development and appraisal wells in the gulf that pose almost no

risk at all, a proposal that would save 95% of jobs, avoid an energy supply problem in 2011- 2012. we are just hopeful that maybe the small price to pay folks who are going to suffer can get some relief on this white house. maybe congress could delay their unemployment checks as well. jobless claims were up again last week. construction is stalled. no industry, as you said a moment ago -- none of the job growth is statistically significant. now there are worries from europe. there are concerns about manufacturing slowdowns in china and throughout the world. that is keeping consumers at bay. the saving rate continues to go up.

people are banking their money rather than buying something. i am looking for optimistic signs in these numbers, and the sooner we get this recovery going the better. but i just do not see what i think we are all hoping for. we need at least 250,000 private sector -- not government workers, private-sector workers -- each month. that is just to start working off the unemployment rate in a sustainable rate. >> that would be a strong, sustained growth. >> lowering the unemployment rate not by workers giving up, which is what happened this month, but by workers going back to work. we need at least twice the job growth rate in the private sector that we got this month. is that correct? >> to make a strong move

downward in the unemployment rate, we need something like that. >> that is what we should be shooting for in all our policies appear, adding at least 250,000 private-sector jobs to the peril so we can get this unemployment down and people can get some hope back again, consumer confidence can rise, and companies will again not be so fearful of washington, energy prices, new taxes, and the regulation. they will make those critical business investment decisions. thank you, commissioner. >> and thank you very much, madame chair. the chairlady was asking you a few minutes ago about medium- sized and small businesses. do you remember that? >> i do. >> in my district we just had the federal reserve, and talk to some small business folks a few weeks ago. the federal reserve was trying

to get a feel for what problems they were experiencing. what we heard over and over again from the small business people was the had a problem with accessing capital. they said that they had a lot of opportunities -- a lot of opportunities to do certain jobs. the banks were not lending, and they could not get access to capital. i was wondering. when you go through and you make -- the chairlady was asking about certain information that is not in your reports. you do not go into why certain things happen like that, do you? you do not go that far. you do not even draw conclusions, do you? >> no. >> that certainly is a very significant -- you do not have the money. it is very hard to do what you have to do. you have been pushing pretty

hard on this side of the aisle, trying to get these banks to do more to open up the door so people can give the devil. one thing that is interesting as i listen to you -- i cannot help but think about years ago, when i was learning to ride a bike. and remember you said the chain had to catch, but if the chain did not catch you were not going anywhere fast. what we have is things moving in the right direction. but there needs to be some kind of catch. there needs to be a push to get us moving even faster. but once that happens it seems that if someone is listening to what you are saying today -- we might see that motion that sends us into another level of progress.

in the past, has that been the case? in talking with the chairlady, you were talking about how this compares to 2003. and you said six months, you see 100,000 jobs each month. so what have you seen in the past, with regard to when you get beyond that six months? and is there anything different about this recession situation which would cause yoo to have less optimism or more pessimism? >> it is true that in the past couple of recessions, after the six month time period, up fairly soon the job growth did strengthen and become sustained. then we got well on our way to recovering all the jobs lost in the recession. the biggest concern that i would have, going forward, is that this has been a very severe

recession. and we do need -- ideally, we would have even stronger job growth than the past couple of sessions to recover those jobs. otherwise, it is going to take a while. that would be my biggest concern. we really do need even stronger the last couple of expansions to get back the jobs. >> those other recessions -- or the associated with anything like the problems we have had, with regard to wall street? >> no. those other two recessions were mild recessions and relatively short recessions. this has been neither mild nor short. >> i am not putting words in your mouth. i am going to repeat what i said. president obama came into this situation, having to put a

patient in intensive care. not just in critical care, but intensive care. and now it is taking a while to get out of that. it is a slow process. all of us would like the patient to get better quicker, but the fact remains that for every person out there, and believe me, i feel their pain, because i see them every day. when i go back to my district today, a guarantee you people will come up and say to me "i am looking for." a "but we are going in the right direction. i just want to make it faster. >> thank you very much. i agree with my friend and colleague mr. brady that what we want in this economy is robust private sector job creation. but i believe that trying to create 250,000 private-sector jobs a month is a very daunting job, given the fact that the

former president, president bush, created roughly that much during his entire eight years in office. again, for the fourth of july, our chart is in red white and blue. we are losing -- we were losing over 779,000 jobs a month. it takes a long time to recover. but we are trending in the right direction. . .

>> in in a report, we noticed that one out of three working mothers was the sole breadwinner for her family. you noted in your last in want hearing that it was women with children that lost their jobs during this recession. i am concerned held are staring. >> i do not have that data handy. we do not have that data yet, but we can fall with the numbers. >> in a report, we found that these workers were experiencing

the highest unemployment in history for younger workers. it did things get any better? what's not significantly. >> you also released that on hispanic members. he reported that the driver in the hispanic community show that latino workers went into the downturn and you were more likely to live in regions that were hit hard by the housing burst and the housing bill in states like nevada, arizona, florida and california.

do you see that the construction will improve in the near future? >> no, the thing that you would want to see a first is the pickup in new-home construction. we have not seen a big pickup in that. it takes a while, once the housing starts to pick up for the employment level to pick up. there are not good signs on that, yet. >> with the latino community, we felt that we needed to provide -- to focus on policies to provide these workers with skills and the ability to be mobile to move where the economy is better in the construction trades. we have been looking to try and

improve that. my time has expired. my colleague, mr. brady. >> i hate being outnumbered on this committee. i do think that president bush should apologize for the united states losing its soccer game the other day. chicago not winning the olympics, did. and democrats not passing unemployment benefits for those who are out of work. if let's talk about debt. it has an impact on our economy. debt is skyrocketing. 1.5 trillion dollars last year and 1.4 trillion dollars this year. hearing the report on america's debt, we have had economists before tell us that when debt

reaches a certain level, it creates a very strong drag on the economy, usually are run the 90% level. we are at 83% of the gdp for all thadebt, and it will skyrocket r the next decade and that puts us below greece, italy and portugal and other european countries that are in trouble and in budget deficit. we only trail greece and ireland and we are at 10%. this debt will increase as far as the eye can see. the only thing being considered at this point are increasing taxes on families, small

businesses, capital dividends and on companies that are trying to sell all around the globe. commissioner, debt causes higher interest payments, it puts a strain on their and puts a strain on companies' borrowing as well. it tends to put a drag on the economy. can you estimate how much our economy is hurting as a result of the debt that we are accumulating and what that would do to our economy? >> that is not my garden to hoe. >> you are a wise man. [applause] [laughter] >> can we talk about where you see a the trend for where construction is stalled out several months from now?

the few jobs that we saw seem to be in services, temporary services, some services in consulting and a small amount in recreation and tourism. are there any significant trends in the numbers this month that we can be looking to? >> i do not want to speculate too much about going forward. i think that the trends we have already seen will be what i have mentioned. those have been the real trends all of this year. >> thank you, madam chair. >> thank you, my good friend and colleague. you mentioned the deficit and that is a concern that we have.

the deficit was $941 billion during the first eight months of 2010 and $51 billion less than the record shortfall recorded over the same time last year. both revenues and outlays are down, and the debt -- we do have a strong debt. the total debt for the federal government was $13 trillion and we paid $150 billion in interest in the first eight months of 2010, or 1% of gdp. we are not in comparison with greece. we certainly need to focus on it, but to compare our economy with others is factually inaccurate. now, mr. cummings is recognized for five minutes. >> mr. hall, you spoke about the health-care industry.

you said that the increased jobs? what's yes. >> has that been a steady situation? >> one thing that i have been trying to encourage my constituents to do is to look towards those fields that seem to be on the upward trend and seem to be providing jobs in a steady wavy. the reports are that a lot of companies are doing more with less and therefore will not be replacing people in the same jobs. people have to be retrained. people are looking at this right now, if there are areas where you see a trend with regards to jobs, either increasing or not losing, but seeming to have a quite steady -- some kind of

stability for gross, what would those areas be? >> the one that jumps out is health care. healthcare has steadily added jobs throughout the whole recession and that is a fairly remarkable thing when you consider how many jobs we were losing when they were still growing. in going forward, the demographics of the american population are going to probably encourage job growth in the health-care industry as well. >> when you look up the health- care industry, is there a breakdown? is this general health care or is this various types of health care? i am curious. >> we have some breakdowns in various categories. >> can you give me an idea of what some of them might be? >> sure. >> by the way, i want people that are watching this to get an

idea of -- there have been people that have been out of work for some time and they want to figure out where to go from here and they can possibly go to a community college for some training. i want to give them some sense of hope. >> sure. we have ambulatory health care services which includes offices of physicians, and health care services. that sector added about 7400 jobs this month. that was the major part of the jobs in health care this month. hospitals have been losing jobs this past month and the past few months. there are also nursing in residential care facility is that have been adding jobs -- care facilities that have been adding jobs.

child day care services have continued to add jobs. >> are there any other areas of health care that might fall into that category of staying steady or increasing jobs? >> sure, i think that -- i do not have the numbers in my mind, but we do produce some long-term forecasts on occupations and industry growth and we just released some last year that give you an idea about the industries where we expect job growth through either replacement or just growing industries. there are a number of areas, mostly services. they have quite a bit of promise. >> the tourism industry and restaurants, how are they doing? >> they are doing ok.

they have actually gone up and down. they have not shown a real clear pattern. we did have growth this month in retail, broadly. >> the reason why i mention tourism and things of that nature is because it might show some confidence on the part of consumers if they are doing things that they might otherwise be so concerned about finances that they would not do it. >> that makes logical sense. i have not seen a real clear pattern. it does not seem to reflect so well on consumer confidence like you think that it might. >> the last question, if the president called you as soon as you finish here and asked for your summary of this month's report, what would you say? >> i would say that this is not

a strong report. but the prior six months have been encouraging. we did have a drop in the unemployment rate. we did have some job growth. the past six months have had some job growth. >> thank you very much, commissioner paul, for being here today. the last six months, the data clearly shows that the labor market has begun to turn around and is trending in the right direction. without a doubt, job creation will be at the top of our to do list and it will remain there until americans across america are back to work. i would like to wish everyone a safe and happy independence day. thank you very much. >> thank you.

> good morning. >> how are you? >> good. >> good morning, everybody. before i depart, i'd like to say a quick word about the state of

our economy. this morning, we received the june employment report. it reflected the planned phase out of 225,000 temporary census jobs. but it also showed the sixth straight month of job growth in the private sector. all told, our economy has created nearly 600,000 private sector jobs this year. that's a stark turnaround from the first six months of last year, when we lost 3.7 million jobs at the height of the recession. now, make no mistake: we are headed in the right direction. but as i was reminded on a trip to racine, wisconsin, earlier this week, we're not headed there fast enough for a lot of americans. we're not headed there fast enough for me, either. the recession dug us a hole of about 8 million jobs deep. and we continue to fight headwinds from volatile global markets. so we still have a great deal

of work to do to repair the economy and get the american people back to work. that's why we're continuing a relentless effort across multiple fronts to keep this recovery moving. and today, i'd like to make a quick announcement regarding new infrastructure investments under the recovery act -- investments that will create private sector jobs and make america more competitive. secretary locke and secretary vilsack have joined me here today to announce that the departments of commerce and agriculture will invest in 66 new projects across america that will finally bring reliable broadband internet service to communities that currently have little or no access. in the short term, we expect these projects to create about 5,000 construction and installation jobs around the country. and once we emerge from the immediate crisis, the long-term economic gains to communities that have been left behind in the digital age will be immeasurable. all told, these investments will benefit tens of millions

of americans -- more than 685,000 businesses, 900 health care facilities, and 2,400 schools around the -- across the country. and studies have shown that when communities adopt broadband access, it can lead to hundreds of thousands of new jobs. broadband can remove geographic barriers between patients and their doctors. it can connect our kids to the digital skills and 21st century education required for the jobs of the future. and it can prepare america us upgrade to a smarter, stronger, more secure electrical

grid. so we're investing in our people and we're investing in their future. we're competing aggressively to make sure that jobs and industries and the markets of tomorrow take root right here in the united states. we're moving forward. and to every american who is looking for work, i promise you we are going to keep on doing everything that we can -- i will do everything in my power to help our economy create jobs and opportunity for all people. now, sunday is the fourth of july. and if that date reminds us of anything, it's that america has never backed down from a challenge. we've faced our share of tough times before. but in such moments, we don't flinch. we dig deeper, we innovate, we compete and we win. that's in our dna. and it's going to be what brings us through these tough times towards a brighter day. so i want to say happy fourth of july to everybody. i want our troops overseas to know that we are thinking of your bravery and grateful for your service. thank you very much, everybody.

>> next, a look at state budgets. the citizens budget commission had a guest on today's "washington journal." this is 35 minutes. ntinues. host: continue our five-eight series called -- five-day series called "states and the red" with a look at new york. elizabeth lynam is the research director for the citizens budget commission. the budget deficit, $9.2 billion. how significant is that? guest: it is pretty significant. we were the epicenter of the financial-services meltdown, and had significant problems with the spending that has not

matched revenues this year but we have a budget that is about $130 billion, including federal aid. it is about 25% of new york's quds force revenues, without federal aid included. -- own source revenues, without federal aid included. our economic indicators have been disturbing. we are seeing signs of recovery. new york city in particular has been on the upward move in terms of employment numbers and unemployment numbers. there is a sign of recovery on the horizon. but we don't expect to see anything like what we saw in the recovery after 2002, for example, which was very short and swift upward economic movement -- sharp and swift upward econnmic movement. that will not happen here. the recovery will be much slower. host: we have been looking at states in the red. tomorrow we will talk about florida, and also, pennsylvania and new hampshire and the coming

days. if you want to join the conversation, we have regular numbers to call, and it winds up as the sociall -- and a line set up especially for new york residents. this is from "the washington post." "new york is fourth in line among states looking at a budget gap in fiscal year 2011." , but "vid paterson said we may be looking at a lifestyle around the country that may look like a depression, not recession." he made a last-ditch plea for federal help. what does the governor ought to see -- want to see the federal government due to step in? guest: the federal government stepped in and year and half ago

with a sizeable package for the state. he would like to see one part of that, as the other governors would, extended, which is the medicaid assistance. is a matching rate that new york and other states get from the federal government for the medicaid program, which has expanded rapidly as people need services. host: explained the situation before the governor paterson took office, and the causes of the shortfall. guest: the deficit -- we had been doing well economically. it was typical for a state budget as large as new york's. we have seen it doubled since gov. paterson took office. like most states heavily dependent on the income tax, the revenue stream and tank very quickly, and that is what happened.

the state suffered a high losses in personal income tax, mainly from the financial-services sector and people on wall street. host: how is the governor approaching the shortfall? guest: he has been very aggressive with the legislature, parricularly try to get spending cuts that he says will help future years. one of the things you have to remember is that with the expectation that the economic recovery will be slow this time around, we will have budget gaps for the foreseeable future that are larger than what we have seen. he has tried to put some savings proposals on the table. the legislature has been resistant to that and has fought to have restoration in the budget. he has been aggressive in using his constitutional powers, because new york state is a very strong executive budgeting state and the governor has a lot of power here to force the legislature to put cuts in place. at this point in time, he is building -- wielding the veto

pen, has the line item veto, and is threatening to veto thousands of legislations. host: we're looking at the front page of "the new york post," " the write stuff," saying that the governor at leas -- "unleashed a vetopalooza." guest: we have been calling it vetothon here. two days of vetos. the first bill he got was a restoration of the school aid, and he vetoed that almost the minute he received it.

it has been quite a bit of drama here as a political football goes back and forth between the legislature and governor. host: republican line, green river, wyoming. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a comment. we don't normally see these deficits in new york, but all over the nation. john conyers was on "democracy now" yesterday, and one of his colleagues came up with a little motto like the republicans usually do, and that is "the war is making you poor." if we look at 70 cents of every tax dollar going to the military-industrial complex, at all public-works, schools closing left and right, parks are closing, you take 55 cents back from the military- industrial machine and invested

back into our country, and then we would see infrastructure, our roads being fixed. we have the technology to go ahead with the wind turbines. we have the technology. we just take it away from the big oil, take it away from the big company, and give all our research and all of our resources -- we cannot put america back to work -- we can put america back to work, we just have to give them the profits and get off fossil fuels. host: to new yorkers feel like they should be getting more support from the federal government to lessen the burden? guest: i think that is why the governors of these large estates are lobbying the federal government to extend the assistance package. there is no doubt that the federal government has its own financial pressures, and that is likely to develop for the as some of the bills come home to roost even into the future.

the pressure on the federal government has grown, and the size of the package that they had initially promised the state to bail out medicate has shrunk to a that is why they are lobbying the was the expectation that the larger package would be in the extension. federal pressures of grown and looks like the packet will be substantially reduced. it is a question of how much the federal government will continue to help the states as they sort out problems. host: eric from upstate new york, independent caller. caller: hey, this is eric did i want to know what is going on with the cigarette tax. what the hell is going on? guest: they did increase the cigarette tax here. the revenue bill included about $290 million in cigarette tax increases. the price per pack will be about $10 in new york state. new york city has its own taxes on cigarettes which will make them even more expensive doww

there. it is one of the items that they put on the table. they have been trying to use the cigarette tax to reduce smoking and we have seen smoking be reduced. it is a public health goal that they have compared with our revenue need. host: the legislature in new york was scheduled to vote on revenue for the budget but that ended up getting pushed back. why, and what does that do? guest: there were outstanding issues with some of the larger policy points that the governor had wanted. there it is the proposal to free the state university campuses from the legislature's authority to appropriate funds and that is controversial. there are legislators that are seeking changes and the package and trying to negotiate with the parties who are trying to get the revenue bill done. at the votes in the senate, which is closely divided, or not

there yet. they had to break the holiday weekend and hopefully resume to finish up the revenue bill next week. host: democratic caller in orlando, florida. caller: i am currently on unemployment right now, and i have two weeks left. i wanted to go to school, but they told me that if i go to school, i will use unemployment. why would they want someone not to go to school -- not if i go to school, i will use -- lose unemployment. why would they want someone not to go to school if they want unemployment? everything is done online. everybody can get access to a computer at the school or whatever and applications. i don't understand why, if you are trying to dgo to school, tht

would deny you unemployment if you go. guest: unemployment is one of the areas where the federal government has extended a number of times the number of months that people can qualify for. i am not familiar with the rules in different states in terms of how you would get the assistance. but there are a lot of people unemployed trying to make their way back to the work force, and probably more needs to be done to help people do that. as jobs comeback and we see some recovery, it is important to get people ack to work as soon as possible. host: the associated press reports that a wave of cens -- census layoffs cut payrolls in june for the first time in six months. employers cut 125,000 jobs last month, the most since october.

the loss was driven by the end of 225,000 temporary census jobs. businesses added and a total of 83,000 workers, an improvement from may." what is the significance of these numbers? guest: it means that we are showing signs of coming out of the darkest point, and states like new york, for example, might expect a slight increase in the revenues that they have expected. that will help out, but not nearly to the level that is going to be needed, because deficits are so significant. in new york, we might see 200 million or so from some of the economic recovery, and that is very small in terms of the $9.2 billion budget gap we are facing. i should point out that although this year the budget gap is $9.2 billion, that gap will grow, and by the year 2013, 2014, it is

expected to reach almost $20 billion, because spending growth is outstripping what you're seeing in terms of revenue expectations. host: texas, democratic caller, kirby. caller: good morning, ladies. i am a new york pensioner living in texas. spitzer, your former governor, says he wants to get his hands on the pension money. heworries me get tw -- worries me. two, can you give me a long- range outlook on how pension is holding up? guest: the pension fund in new york is doing well. they had losses last year, but they were up 26% year over year in -- the growth this year was quite good. assets are strong. new york has a long tradition of slowly funding its pension

system. it is an area where we have a very good practices pri won the state comptroller sends the bill to the state, they pay a. there is a proposal pending in the revenue bill that is not passed yet that would bar of on the pension fund to the smooth out -- that would bar w -- would borrow from the pension fund to smooth out some of the shortfalls but to borrow from the pension funds is a slippery slope. we have lobbied against that in the revenue bill, and hopefully it will be amended. there has been a lot of controversy. but by and large, pension assets did well this year. the state comptroller does have a sole trusteeship over those pension funds, which has also been a point of controversy. but as some of the scandals have come up on mount influence peddling and so forth with some , they investment bank's

have cleaned up some and put upward in place to monitor and have better transparency and accountability -- put a board in place and have better transparency and accountability for it. host: elizabeth lynam, you wrote "preliminary analysis -- is the budget balanced?" "the targets have fallen short in the past as the efforts to reduce the size of the state workforce through early retirement. lobbying of a federal officials to pass an extension of the relief aid for medicaid may or may not be successful as the federal budget comes under greater pressure from other expenses. accounting for these risks, the size of the current deficit could reach $2.4 billion with no down or changes to revenues.

and you talk about some of the things that may need to be done to tighten this gap. can you lay this out for us? guest: there is more work to be done with the revenue bille, and we still have a $500 million budget gap, but for, as you point out, some of the risks on what they are assuming in the financial plan. they in the past have tried to collect cigarette taxes on indian reservations with no success. we have not seen many people leaving the state workforce for early retirement they did an incentive package last year that yielded only 10% of the expected savings. of course, the federal issue, which we have talked about, and whether the federal government can extend the 8. -- can extend the aid. those are more sizable if the state legislature does not pass the revenue bill.

so the budget gap is there, there is no way that the budget is balanced right now, and more work needs to be done. legislator host: will probably have to come iito -- legislators will probably have to come into special session here before the election, which is atypical for them, and two other cuts, and look at what else can be done. -- and do other cuts, and look at what else can be done. for example, attacks on to greet beverages, a public health benefit -- a tax on sugary beverages, a public health benefit. there are items that can be taken up again, and should be coming to get a budget that is balanced this year. host: independent caller, rome, new york. hi, nelson. caller: hello, c-span. now american knows what the most dysfunctional legislature reside in new york.

how can a state with a big deficit -- like, a few miles from me, there is a new dorm and athletic center going up, $30 million, just started. why can they not put these projects a site for a year or two until they get things straightened out? guest: well, a lot of what you are seeing in terms of construction of new york is federal stimulus money. besides the direct operating agents, the federal government did a very large capital infusion of four states to try to put people to work -- large capital infusion for states to try to put people to work. it would seem strange, given that there is financial crisis underway, but a lot of this capital dollars are federal. the other thing is that the capital spending doesn't affect

the operating budget as directly, because there is a lack always, and you are really doing the projects with borrowed funds. they have reduced the size of the capital budget and cut some projects that were going to be funded solely with state money, but the savings from that is relatively small, given the size of the problem, because of the delays and the lags and the fact that is borrowed money. that is what has been happening. i have also seen a lot of construction around the state is largely federal. host: paul, democratic line, st. louis, missouri. caller: good morning, c-span. glad to talk to you. all of our government services, from the cities, counties, state, and federal, their hospitalization plan is paid for their rest of their life by taxpayers, the retirement is paid by taxpayers, rest of their

lives. but the workers who are paying it or told to work until they are 70 years old, and they pay their own hospitalization and some of them don't even get retirement. this is, you know -- it is not right. all the government workers retire early, with all the benefits paid for by the people that you are telling to work until you are 70 years old, and then you have to save your own money for your retirement. guest: it is a very large issue that you raised. it is one that about areas in new york, where stron -- it is one of the battleground. in new york. we are a strong -- it is one of the battleground areas in new york. we are a strong union state. organized labor is resistant to changing some of the benefits they have, which are at this

point very out of line with private sector benefits. it has really been unfortunate, because it does increase the resentment that people feel in the private sector who do not have the kinds of retirement packages and health insurance that public employees do. it will be an issue that continues with us. as the next contract is negotiated and we have a new governor coming in, i think that those lines will be very clearly etched out and it will be something that the unions are really going to need to make some effort to show that they are part of the solution and not part of the problem. host: is the governor less beholden to political interests and concerns than others might be? is he concerned about the future of the party? what are the political motivators as he makes these decisions? guest: well, he has announced he is not running again, so he does

have a freer hand to be aggressive. as i said, he is not trying to preserve relationships with legislative leaders. he has been throwing gas on the fire in terms of using the veto pen, and has used every ounce of his constitutional budget powerpoint and that's got to -- has used every ounce of his constitutional budget power, and has gotten pretty creative with it, actually. he has taken strong executive budgeting one step further and put a lot of savings proposals in temporary extenders' that have gone to the legislature, and they have had no choice but to adopt them or face a government shutdown, which they have not been willing to deal with. he has got a sizable amount of power, and he is not afraid to use it. if he had been concerned about his next term and what happens

politically for him, he would not have been quite as aggressive as he has been able to be. host: a reminder, we are talking this week about states in the red, profiling five states. today we are talking about new york specifically. this piece in "the financial .imes" talks about this issue "only vermont must balance the budget annually. the litany of cuts and tax increases and tonic in its have become a familiar refrain in state capitols." we have a special line for new yorkers to call. we now have kenny on from huntington, new york. he is a republican. caller: good morning -- well, if you want to say is good. host: right ahead.

have you on. -- go right ahead. we have you waon. caller: it is a tough economy around here. hello? host: you are breaking up, but can you give us your question? caller: yes -- so -- host: i think we are going to have to move on, unfortunately. chicago, illinois, independent line. caller: good morning, ladies. how are we doing? host: fine, thanks. you are on with all is the line -- with elizabeth lynam. caller: in my humble opinion, yoit is incorrect for the states to have to balance the budget every year. i am a keynesian, and i think

that one of the greatest mistakes made was to rein in the budgets in the mid-to-late- 1930's, causing another depression even worse than 1929. ok, i will let you go. thank you very much. guest: well, yes, i think your point is taken are not the federal package that they did -- the federal package that they did. new york expected federal aid of $20 billion, which is now something be expected during the last downturn of 2001-2003. the federal government has stepped in from the keynesian perspective through not working at the economic outcomes through large layoffs. the federal government certainly does not balance its budget. i think there is an argument

about states to be made about whether or not they should balance the budget. but most agree that the federal government is where you would really about in balance and that the states as a small unit -- allowyo would really imbalance and that the states as a smaller unit have to balance. this was a multi your situation, and new york, for example, did not balance the budget last year. we ended up dropping some payments and tried to roll things between fiscal years because we are on a cash basis here. they are sort of looking over a period of years rather than just within the annual period of the de facto matter of how they have to manage their cash flow. i think question really is will we get the additional federal aid? that has pros and cons. the pros -- yes, it would

continue state assistance so that you would avoid layoffs. on the other hand, states are not going to see recovery for some time of the magnitude that they are used to, and they need to restructured spending. there is a middle distance there in terms of states preparing for the end of this battle aid and trying to restructure to live on a -- in the work the end up -- states preparing for the end of this federal aid and try to restructure. host: wilmington, north carolina, democrats' line. caller: i am a student living basically on financial aid. one of the flaws i have observed in the system is that there is really no accounting for student loans for what the pell grant is

actually used to pay for. i have been wondering if anyone in the government at the federal level or state level -- new york has a very good system for its students -- has anyone considered trying to do something to make sure that the money we are giving to students is spent on education and not on booze and cigarettes and things of that nature? guest: well, i think, yes, there have been some efforts to look at pell and reform it. i am not an expert in financial aid or on pell in particular, so i do not know where that stands at this point in time. but the larger point i think that you are making is that

every dollar we are spending the leads -- every dollar that we are spending really needs to have the effect we want it to have that as part of the restructuring that i am talking about. the federal government needs to do it, and so to the states but we need to make sure we are targeting our funds and getting all we can get for them. it is not a lot of money to spend for ineffective or ill-use programs. host: new york. tom is in independent caller. caller: good morning from troy, new york, across from sunny albany. good morning, elizabeth. i am independent but i work for the appropriations committee in congress about 10 years ago. let me say that the federal government will not be in any position to help out this state. we are all in trouble. but in new york state, the democrats currently have control of the executive and

legislative branches, which one might believe would lead to a coherent,, effective, efficient approach to dealing with the fiscal crisis. perhaps new york can be seen as a microcosm of the u.s. federal government, but let's hope not, given the historical this functionality -- historical dysfunctionalities of new york state? can we expect the government to work in a responsible way to respond to this crisis? is the solution beyond the reach of the government as it is struck in new york state and do politicos have courage to deal with this problem in a responsible way? guest: i think that really is the question, a question i'm asked a lot, actually. the political will have to come from the electorate, certainly, and we do have a choice facing us in november. people should exercise their rights in new york to try to change circumstances that they

do not like. that is the ultimate answer. now, can democracy really work here, given some of the influence-peddling and problems with the structure at large, the way that districts are drawn, in terms of the legislative districts and campaign finance limits, which are high, and how much of a say do people really have within -- with inside baseball, inside the capitol set up? it is an interesting and important question. there are larger reforms that had been proposed many people think we need to open up the constitution and take a look at amending some of the problems that have come up. we have an old constitution that has not been amended since the 1920's. circumstances have changed. campaign finance reform -- people often put forward proposals to lower our limits

and reduce some of the influence-paddling with special interests. independent redistricting commissions have, as a possibility. -- have come up as a possibility. there are large-scale reforms that people needed to support, frankly. furthermore, they should take a look at their individual legislatures and look at their records -- legislators and look at their records and use the franchise to make choices about where they want new york government to go. guest: what are the least popular -- host: what are the least popular vetos the governor is looking at now? guest: restoration to school aid. the governors of a job was to have reduced school aid -- by about the governor -- the governor's our original proposal

would have reduced school aid by $5.. billion. he vetoed the restoration. if the veto stands, there will be stuck with a $1.5 billion cut. that is going to be very difficult for legislators and the school districts around the state. on the other hand, school district spending is among the highest of any state in new york. it is an area where we do need to tighten our belts if we're going to deal with the fiscal reality of ahead. it is on the one hand, on the other. it is a painful one for people to bear, but a necessary one, also, and will be a highly contested in terms of whether the legislature will override the vetos the governor is sending them. host: massachusetts. caller: good morning, c-span,

and ms. lynam. i want to comment on what appears to be one of the most significant issues we're facing today as a country, and that is employment. i was listening to callers i have been a longtime viewer about c-span, a first-time caller. i think it's the issue is not going to tax itself. -- i think that this issue is not go to fix itself. they are playing games and the senate, especially on the republican side. this is our real issue. the unemployed people of this country need an extension right now. they don't need it next week, don't need it in a couple of months, whenever senators a congressman come back from the july 4 holiday. they need to sort it out now. is the real issue. -- it is a real issue guest:.

guest: it is another symptom of rising fiscal conservatism at the federal level. people there are balking at the size of the deficit they are facing. it is a battleground, and certainly, one would hope the federal government can actually find the resources to assist people, but also deal with the fiscal circumstances and a responsible way. -- deal with their fiscal circumstances in eight responsible way. host: let's talk with lisa in manassas, virginia, an independent line. caller: i really appreciate seeing the five estates in red. i was struck by the california want yesterday it. -- california one yesterday.

being a native californian, there were probably going to have $3 billion. i recently left california, and i feel like i'm part of republic -- what are people in individual states doing? california people are just living their lives and spending the money and not tightening the budgets, not getting prisoners out in the streets and cleaning up the freeways. people are expecting the government to take care of them. guest: well, yeah, it is an interesting point. people like to pay taxes pretty universally, but they -- like -- people don't like to pay taxes pretty universally, but they'd like to government services. they have high expectations and

they don't have high expectations to pay for it. with taxes and what is needed to pay for priorities people have, we will pay higher taxes and people will at some point face a very large tax increases as the chickens come home to roost. it is interesting -- people set to meet several times recently, where is this recession? if you go to a new york city, there are tourists all over the place and they're spending money but i think a lot of people have tightened their belts and not consumed what they would otherwise consumed. we definitely see that in the personal consumption numbers, that people are very concerned about spending money now. that will slow our recovery, and is slowing its. there has been built-tightening, but people have high expectations of government and

we may have to pay higher taxes to do that for people. host: elizabeth lynam is the deputy research director for the citizens budget >> saturday, on "washington journal," look at unemployment numbers by emily kaiser. then, david kramer, former deputy ve-- he discusses what it means for russia relations. later, a look at state budgets continues with john hall who talks about his state's $6 billion shortfall. we take your calls and e-mail slide every morning starting at 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c- span.

>> now, a look at political campaign ads that canada -- that canada is our bunning in several collections. >> today, we want to take a look at some new campaign ads that are running in a few key senate races. joining me is amy walters, the editor in chief of the "national journals." give us a recap of what happened with the race for the senate seat in that state. >> this is former senator obama 's seat. had he stayed in the senate, he would be up for this election cycle. congressman mark kerr is a republican from chicago.

if you look at the state, it is a pretty blue state. the president did very well there. democrats could easily hold on to that seat. a funny thing happened along the way. the family of jack and lewis owns a bank and she has been in a deal of hot water for loaning money to some unsavory characters. the bank was unable to sustain itself, so that was something that mark curt is hoping to use against jan lewis. . . as treasuror saying the state lost a lot of money in a college loan program. can't do that successfully, why should we send him to washington? so controversies then evolved

about mark kirk's own resume, and that's some of the adds you will see, hopefully in the next couple seconds. >> yes. let's take a look at his ad as well as his opponent's. >> mark kirk, he's caught in a lie. >> i was the navy intelligence officer of the year. >> he claimed an award he never won. >> explaining a second false claim. >> what he said about his military record did not match what actually happen. >> the last time i was in a wreck was in uniform and the iraqi defense network was shoong at us. >> not exactly. >> he said he served in iraq. >> i served in iraq and afghanistan. >> he claims he fought in the first war. not true. >> still -- >> i command the war room in

the pentagon. >> he does serve in the pentagon alert center but does not command it. >> he did violate pentagon policies for intermingling his military work with politics. >> where does he think he can get away with lying about his record? >> i am mark kirk and i approve this message. >> alexi is only 34, but what a 34 years it's been. at his father's bank he made tens of millions to of loans to risky investors and ms. then now running for senate, alexi supports higher taxs to fund billions more in spending. alexi, ji newell use, trust him with your money? >> what has been the intact of two negative ads? >> well, it's vy early. it's unclear how many people

are going toee these, but i think there's a couple important things to remember, one, this is going to be an ugly, ugly race. if you live in illinois, you're going to see these types of adds than what you will in times of hope and change and let's hold hands kinds of things. the second thing is these ads are starting so early. there was a time-honored rule that you start advertising after the labor day weekend and the fact that both are up right now they understand they need to get out there as quickly as possible. because by the time labor day rolls around, it may be too late but the voters in that upestate don't have the best options in frontf them, basically one candidate saying yes, i may have inflated my resume but at least i'm not part of a bank that collapsed

and gave money to mob characterize verse strers other candidate that says yeah, well, i may have some problems with my bank, but look, at least i don't make up stuff on my resume and exaggerate who i am. >> and mark kirk in recent days has come out and apologized for those misstatements and held a news conference about it. we'rgoing to air that nies conference tonight, 8:00 p.m. eastern time for those who are interested in watching it on c-span 2. let's go to connecticut for the senate seat to replace and it's between democratic candidate and republican linda mcmahon. linda mcmahon has come out with a new add -- with a newed a talking about the business -- with a new ad, talking about the business she used to run. >> like illinois, a bloom enall

this is well known and has apatrol ratings then about a month ago it came out he, too, had inflated his military credentials, a lot of controversy around that. however, democrats keeping the pressure on linda mcmahon. she made her money and is spending a lot of it as the head of the world wrestling entertainmentormerly known as the w.w.f. others contain the sport, itself, has led to some abuses by the wrestlers, many who had abused steroids, and that the folks in the w.ment e. didn't do enough to clamp down on that use and the context of the w.w.e. is inappropriate. violent and not well-suited for the young people who look up to these athletes. >> it's a headline in today's wall street journal talking about how the w.w.e. has become a factor in this race.

she addresses it in her campaign. >> before i decided to run for the senate, i had a regular job. ok. maybe not a regular job. i was the c.e.o. of world wrestling entertainment. a soap opera that entertains millions every wee and everyone gs in on the action. that is not real, but our problems are. connecticut families are hurting. we're losing jobs because washington politicians are spending money we don't have. last year, connecticut was 47th in job creation. we can do better. we've got to do better. it's time we reign? run away washington spending, pass a budget attempt to control that spending long-term and stop taxes increase scheduled for the end of this year. we cannot if we send another big politic government to washington. it's time to shake things up.

it's time for something different. i'm linda mcmahon, and i approve this message. >> that's the latest ad in the race for the connecticut senate seat. let's go to our guests, jim bender, one of the candidates in that race is outith an ad headdng into the july fourth recess. let's take a look at that. >> the federal govvrnment is devouring everything, taking over anything in its sites. we have seen it feast on benefits, college loans and our health. >> i'll put our government on a strict diet and see he's finished fattening up on your hard-earned dollars. we know we don't want to government running anything. >> yum. >> i'm jim bender, and i approve this message. >> amy walter can you give us a quick update on that race. >> i apologize to anybody eating breakfast that the

point. really not hungry anymore. you know, this is a very interesting race. the state of new hampshire for the last two cycles has been decidedly blue. this year, though, republicans starting off with an advantage at least on the so called congressional ballot test, voters saying they would prefer to have a republican rather than a democrat. kelly ayod is senior considered the favorite. she's the state attorney general, but there are a couple others also involved in that race. that is primary so it's a long way to go before they pick a republican candidate to face off on paul hodes who is right now starting off in the polls but republicans who are spending time and money on each other will give them somewhat ofn advantage. this will be a competitive race but right now the republican

candidate has the advantage. thank you for your time this morning. >> for more information about campaign 2010, go to our >> he writes about political action committees and their influence on congress. we will talk with jeff smith, national investigative correspondent for "the washington post." >> thursday evening, the house approved a supplemental spending measure for the wars in afghanistan and iraq. next, the debate from the house floor. the gentleman from wisconsin's recognized. mr. obey: mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that all

members may have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the pending legislation. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. . the gentleman will suspend. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. obey: mr. speaker, i yield myself five minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. obey: mr. speaker, the underlying bill presented to us by the senate is essentially a bill to provide funding to continue the war activities in afghanistan. why, people might ask, are we trying to add this amendment to that proposal? i would suggest the numbers tell the story. with this bill from the senate,

we will be spending in this fiscal year $167 billion on the war in iraq and afghanistan. it is obvious to any but the most obtuse that that expenditure is killing our ability to finance a recovery of our own economy. we tried to deal with that problem in december with the $90 billion economic package. the senate declined to act on it. we proposed smaller packages on two occasions since then, and both of them -- could we have order, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: gentleman makes a point of order that the house is not in order. indeed, the house is not in order. the gentleman from wisconsin is recognized. mr. obey: about a month ago, we offered a $23 billion package aimed at trying to save teachers' jobs, teachers who are

otherwise going to be laid off because of the severe economic conditions in virtually every state in the union except a few states like north dakota and south dakota. we now bring before the house a bill which reflects what we have been asked to do by a great many members. it attempts to provide a much smaller aid package to keep those teachers on the job, about $10 billion and it tains a few other small items, including almost $5 billion in additional pell grant funds for some 87,000 students who are going to need them badly. we were also asked to provide offsets, and so we have done that. we have offsets for virtually every dollar above the president's request.

and those offsets are pleasant. and they are not popular. certainly, i don't like some of them myself. the fact is that they are necessary were we to provide a fiscally disciplined bill that has a chance of getting the votes to pass this house, and that's what we have done. i think people need to ask themselves one question. are they interested in simply standing by and allowing teachers to be fired day after day for the next three months all around the country or are they willing to do something about it? i hope the answer is the latter. and with that, i resevere the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from california. mr. lewis: mr. speaker, i yield myself five minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for five minutes. mr. lewis: mr. speaker, let me

begin by making a personal observation. this evening, we are embarking upon the most irresponsible convoluted legislative exercise i have seen in my many years in this body. my dear friend and former chairman of the senate appropriations committee, the late senator byrd would be embarrassed by this process or the lack of process, because it greatly diminishes the integrity of this congress he loved so dearly. i can hear senator byrd's voice clear as day. shame, shame, he woull say. it was 35 days ago that the full appropriations committee was scheduled to mark up the fiscal year 2010 emergency supplemental before us. republican and democrats alike had a number of amendments they planned to offer to make the package a better piece of

legislation. but for reasons that remain a mystery to everyone, that markup was abruptly canceled three hours before it was to occur. tonight, the house is considering legislation written by chairman obey and the majority leadership with absolutely no input from rank and file members on either side of the aisle. the only legislation we should be considering today is a clean emergency supplemental funding bill to provide critical funding for our troops. foreign assistance and economic assistance for afghanistan as well, pakistan and iraq should be included, fema disaster assistance, oil spill cleanup assistance and relief for haiti. many other funding and policy items could easily be addressed through our regular order spending bills. just hours ago, we were sent a

package of six different amendments and two resolutions to the taling 153 pages. including were efforts to cut off troop funding, a timetable for troop withdrawal from afghanistan, billions of additional spending on the domestic programs, a variety of complex legal settlements, piggy backed into a $1 billion summer youth program and a deem and scheme resolution that proposes spending of $31 billion more in discretionary spending in fy 2011 than were spent in fy 2010. it's worth noting that only in washington could chairman obey and chairman spratt characterize this increase as a cut. i'm deeply concerned about the impact these amendments could have on our ability to approve a bill for the president's signature prior to the july 4

recess. the failure of this body to approve critical funds for our troops before the 4th of july would send the wrong message to our men and women in uniform and delay needed money for other emergency needs. further, this inaction would force our commander to begin making budget decisions that could compromise our military readiness. it would also signal to our enemies the lack of resolve that could undermine our mission in several, very dangerous areas of the world. the fact that we are sitting here in july without this spending bill passed and signed into law is, frankly, astonishing to me. the president submitted his request in february of this year. the senate passed its war-funding measure on may 27 and indicated it was ready to

conference the bill with the house. the house never marked up this supplemental or had an opportunity to amend it in anyway. and yet, here wer 35 days and tens of billions of dollars in spending later and we still have not approved funding for our troops. yesterday, the nonpartisan congressional budget office released a long-term budget outlook. c.b.o. noted our national debt equaled 40% of our national output. by the end of this year, the federal debt will represent 62% of our national economy, a 22% increase in the level of debt in just two years. the additional unrequested, nontroop-related spending the house is considering today would drive that debt even higher. i recognize there are tremendous political pressures that come to bear on majority measures when it comes to opposing measures

sponsored by their own party. today my request to the members of the majority is quite simple, please think long and hard about the consequences of supporting anything beyond the clean senate supplemental bill -- 30 additional seconds. i urge my colleagues on both sides, particularly my friends in the majority, who are truly concerned about the ever escalating rates of growth of spending to reject these amendments and reject this 4th of july spending spree. let's support our troops. pass a clean version of this supplemental on a broad, bipartisan basis and get this package to the commander in chief. our men and women in harm's way deserve nothing less. i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. obey: we are told we are

told we are committing a mortal sin. i would simply point out just a few weeks ago, as the gentleman from massachusetts pointed out earlier in the debate, when the defense authorization bill was on the floor, only nine republicans in this house voted for it. they felt then that another matter was evidently more important than providing passage for that bill. and yet today, they criticize us because we are suggesting several additions to the appropriation bill. i find that inconsistent. i would also point out that there are a number of high priority national items that we are trying to add besides education funding. we are trying to provide additional funds for pell grants, $5 billion. we are trying to provide $700 million for border security.

$180 million more for energy loans, $163 million more for school installations, gulf coast -- i yield myself -- for gulf coast oil funding and $16 million to buildal processing center at fort hood. i would like to know what is wrong with any of those items. woy like to yield two minutes to the -- i would liie to yield two minutes to the distinguished the gentleman from texas, mr. reyes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. rahall: i thank the gentleman for -- mr. reyes: i rise today to urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this amendment, the obey amendment, because during these tough economic times there are many areas that merit attention and this amendment takes a

comprehensive approach towards addressing the vital needs to our communities. the support in this amendment for border security and law enforcement. border security is a major portion of the concerns of americans as we have seen in the recent days. this amendment provides $701 million to strengthen our security efforts along the u.s.-mexico border. the funds would be used to hire 1,200 border patrol agents and 500 customs officers that would be working the ports of entry, critically needed today, as well as improved tactical communications and making much other needed investments in the security along the u.s.-mexico border. in districts that i represent are concerned about the level of violence affecting our southern

neighbor, mexico. as a former border patrol chief and veteran in the united states border patrol, i know very well what these resources that are provided in this amendment mean to a critical area such as the southwest border. i'm particularly encouraged by mr. obey's efforts in this amendment to address the long-standing needs of our ports of entry by funding funds to officers. for too long, inadequate staffing and infrastructure have made the u.s. and mexico border less safe. this is a major step forward in making our nation even more secure by providing funding for more officers at our ports of entry to conduct a more thorough and efficient inspection and keep americans safe. in addition, the bill also provides -- the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. reyes: another 30 seconds?

the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. reyes: this amendment provides $10 billion to support our teachers across the country and another $4.9 billion to fill the shortage in the pell grant program. it is vitally important that we recognize that the resources that are dedicated here are important, not just along the border but to the security of americans everywhere. therefore, i urge my colleagues to vote for the obey amendment and i thank chairman obey, speaker pelosi and majority leader hoyer and chairman price for their leadership on this important issue. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from california is recognized. mr. lewis: i recognize our leader of the homeland security committee, mr. rogers of kentucky. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. rogers: i thank the speaker for the time. i rise today to voice my opposition to the blatant

exploittation of our brave troops and the brazen process being undertaken here tonight. with this ongoing char arch de, the democrat majority has chosen to drag out the consideration of this supplemental appropriations bill, now five months lagging. they have chosen to bypass the markup by the appropriations committee. they have chosen to dictate by the few, rather than legislate by the representative many. and worst of all, they're holding hostage vital funding for our troops as a vehicle for more spending, more bailouts, more encroachment by the federal government into our private lives. a clean supplemental, mr. speaker, could have easily been

disposed of through regular order months ago. regrettably, the majority has waited until the very last minute, twisted the rules of the house and put the pentagon and our warfighters in dire straits. this abuse of congress national security responsibilities would be outrageous if it wasn't so sad. and for what? for what? another bailout? more spending? political points? to curry special interest favors? the american people want a fiscally responsible government that first and foremost provides for the safety and security of this great nation and the american people expect the congress to meet that solemn responsibility while mindful it is their money, not ours.

instead, let's call it what it is. the democrat majority has hijacked our national security for their perceived political security. this is not the governance the american people want, nor deserve. we can do better. and so i plead with my colleagues to restore regular order and return to the business at hand, which is providing for our warfighters and responsibly wielding the power of the purse. i urge a defeat of all these amendments and this bill. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. who seeks rk nix at this time? the gentleman from wisconsin is recognized. mr. obey: i yield to the gentleman from texas. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from texas is recognized for two minutes. >> mr. speaker, i had the

humbling privilege of representing fort hood, america's largest army installation for 14 years through three combat deployments. it is now next door to my district in central texas. fort hood has sent more troops to iraq and afghanistan than any other military installation in america. and despite that sacrifice, sadly the soldiers and families at fort hood to to face an unbearable, unspeakable tragedy at the hands of the terrorists in our mids who -- midst who killed 12 fort hood army soldiers and one army civilian just several movements ago. mr. andrews: the center through which soldiers go -- -- mr. edwards: the center through which soldiers go to fort hood, it's the last place they see while serving in iraq or afghanistan, is a soldier development servicing center there. at the request of the pentagon,

i want to thank chairman obey for putting our request for $16.5 million into this amendment. first, because that center was old and inefficient and too small, but most importantly because the soldiers from fort hood who have sacrificed so much for our nation's defense in iraq and afghanistan should not be asked to process through a building where 12 of their fellow soldier comrades in that installation were brutally murdered at the hands of a domestic terrorist. i thank chairman obey for putting this in. it is a meaningful dignyified way to show support for our troops. and i support this amendment and ask my colleagues on a bipartisan basis to support it as well. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from california seeks recognition.

seeks recognition. who seeks recognition at this