is these are not ownership contracts, they are oil service contracts. the iraqi government has made a great effort on that. they have addressed some of the issues there where the kurds wanted to export the oil directly. i think a lot of the the issues that were seen as requiring an oil law actually got done, and there is a need for oil lougaw,d i hope they take that up when the council of representatives starts contemplating the loss. and the oil law was needed to stimulate the investment, and the investment is now there. they need it for a number of technical matters, but in terms of stimulating investment, i think they found a very

reasonable work around, and i think you will see oil production in the next five years becoming very significant. it is around 2 million barrels. if things go well, we will be looking at 8 million barrels and seven to 10 years. it may be more than that. . .

i think it has been worthwhile moving ahead and not allowing this sort of overall issue of an old log. attack targeted the new recruits. are you concerned or worried [unintelligible] now they will shift their tactics to attack the iraqi military forces, not to just civilians. do you want to see some kind of military base after the final

withdrawal in 2011 in agreement with the new iraqi government when it is formed? >> with regard to future forces, we have a status of forces agreement now. it has certain benchmarks, one of which is to be the withdrawal of u.s. forces from the municipalities. that was achieved. that is important. it told the iraqi people that the u.s. mean that that -- means it when it signs an agreement. any future forces, any speculation about that would have to depend on a new agreement. there is no agreement right now. the agreement that people are focusing on is the agreement that ends in 2011. i'm not going to stand here and

speculate on what will happen to a year-and-a-half from now other than that there needs to be a new iraqi government. the need to look at what is necessary in the future after the expiration. >> i understand that. would you like to see some military forces -- military forces base there? >> this never has anything to do with what you would like. [laughter] i am not going to speculate on which should be done later on. i have not been paid to speculate. i have been paid to make sure that we implement and that we were together with of the military to implement the agreement that was laid out that is the status forces agreement agreed upon on december 2008. >> as an informed observer, do you expect now really maliki to be the new head of the

government? >> i am not going to speculate on that. nouriel maliki won 89 seats, one of the largest. the other coalition won 91 seats. the others are much smaller. there is a certain logic to having the state of law and the group's work in coalition. i would be careful of drawing any heavy-duty conclusions from when you hear negotiations break down in that country. it seems that people do not like each other until they like each other. people disagree until they agree.

>> coming from iraq, news says that there will be a new federal post in iraq that will balance the formation of a new government. what can you tell us? >> we have not been importing ideas from washington. there are a number of ideas out there in iraq. one of the ideas being discussed among the political parties was the notion of taking something called the political committee for national security and seeing in fits -- and seeing if that political committee, like in national security council, could somehow be revived in a new government. there has been a lot of discussion on what to do with that, how to run it.

would you, for example, have a chairman that would only be in charge of having this political committee or this national security council? with the chairman of that council be -- would the chairman of the council be someone wholly has that job? would they have another position as well? i would say it is an ongoing issue. right now, you have a prime minister position. in this concept, you would also have some sort of secretary general of the national security council. but whether that ultimately is part of a solution found among a coalition that can come up with 363 seats is the issue.

no one has near three and 63 seats. that is why this has gone on for so long. because they have to work this out. they are obviously looking at different models to resolve this. one of the issues is, if you create this thing, what would be the powers of the prime minister? some people said that the prime minister has too much authority and that that is a constitutional flaw. there are different opinions about this. but it is an ongoing negotiation. >> is iran playing in this? >> whatever role they play is never helpful. they do not understand that, in the long run, if they want a

good relationship with iraq, they will have to do a better job of respecting iraq's sovereignty. when you look at iraq today, where it is, when you look at all the interest of the neighbors, it is not just iran that is interested in iraq. there is criticism within iraq and that other countries are expressing to much interest in the future of their country. everyone should understand that these problems, when they are solved, they will be solved with made-in-iraq solutions. >> this question is not based on any kind of future.

it is based on your experience. the equation between shia, sunnis, and the third group, how do you see it today? >> sometimes politics in iraq is overstated. it is an identity issue in politics and to have an affiliation with a certain kurdish party. then she a party is definitely portia. -- the the shia party is definitely shia. i would say that it is an identity issue. it is a reality there. but i would argue that sectarianism is not on the rise in iraq. if you look at some of the very

clerical type parties, they have not done well in iraq. there's a tendency toward more secular parties. eritrethey aim to be more seculn sectarian. i think it is a question of how the political process will develop in the coming years. overall, you will see iraq to do what it has often done in history, which is to be more secular than sectarian. >> how did you see the political process developing? you used the sun[unintelligible] >> my personal view is that the

tendency in iraq is toward more secular parties. whether you see a more identity issues emerge, whether you see people from the south feeling different from people from the center, as opposed to shia feeling different from the sunnis, i am not really ready to predict precisely how it develops in iraq except to say that it will be less a religious identity and more of a secular identity. >> how much of the dragon the political formation process -- how much of a spike in the recent violence is related to that?

there seems to be a loss for an ancient towards a loss in the trust of the iraqi people in this government to take care of their needs. >> i do not have a metric for you on that. the process has dragged on for too long. there is impatience among the public with of the politicians. certainly, the fact that you have gone since january that a law has been passed in the council of representatives, that is that this lead to long. -- that is obviously too long. i have no doubt that this has gone on too long. the nobel. -- the question is how to fix it. i am not sure that anybody could

lay the security issues at the doorstep of government formation. i am not sure there's a causal relationship there that is obvious to me. very clearly, iraqi people want to see their politicians pick up the pace. we were hopeful in the last few weeks as we saw the two leading parties work together on this. they have been working on some very useful ideas, in terms of power sharing. you heard the press conference between the real morality and -- between nouriel maliki and [unintelligible] there were up 8 to the degree for -- they talked about the

degree to which the kurds were comfortable. how that works out today is hard to say. i would say that things that are impossible become possible and things that are possible become impossible. i would not that too much money on some of these reflections. >> [unintelligible] >> it is really hard to say. we know that he is following this issue on a daily basis. he obviously has a lot of wisdom about the political process. he knows it very well been he knows the players very well . i suspect any role he is playing, he is playing and doing it in the best way he can to

ensure that there is a positive outcome. he believes, and everybody agrees, that when the government is finally form, you will cease zuni's, shia, and kurds in that government together. sunnis, shia,ee sonia' and kurds in that government together. you will see substantial offers of important positions there. i think everyone understands the need to bring all of the iraq components together. i think society has made very clear his view on that and how he is conveying that view is probably best left to him.

>> what did you see happen in the year-and-a-half that you were there that you did not expect you might see? and what do not see happen that you expected to see? >> first thing was -- when i arrived there over 140,000 troops, how was not sure how that was going to work. and that work very well. i was concerned by the june 30 date on u.s. forces pulling out of the city. i think that has worked very well. it worked well in a couple of ways. the iraqi forces stood up. notwithstanding these horrific events that will shutter about, nonetheless, overall, the trend lines toward violence in the cities has continued. when you go up said of the green

zone nbc plate glass windows being installed in iraqi shock -- the green zone and you see plate glass windows being installed in iraqis shops, you see something has changed. i was pleasantly surprised to see how that has developed. i was unpleasantly surprised to see the declassification -- debasification happening. it sends the sunnis back on their heels, questioning their ability to play in the political process. that was extremely worrisome. i think they got through it. i was struck by that case and other cases where iraqis often take things to the brink, where

you're not really sure what maneuver there is except to jump into an abyss. yet, they find a solution. it is a place where you have a new constitution that does not have a lot of -- has not been tested through a lot of presidents. it is a country with the democratic institutions that are functioning that have not had the kind of strain put on them that they have had since the very close election. yet there is a very -- there is an understanding of the rule of law and that solutions need to be found within the constitution. certainly, when you are an american diplomat there, your consulate talking to people and getting a sense for how they feel -- you are consulate talking to people and getting a sense for how they feel. thatl hear from people

they want to see fewer u.s. forces and then you will hear the same person say they want to saee more u.s. forces. they can have conflicting views simultaneously and that is an acquired taste. >> what does the government iraof direct still rely on the . ford? -- what does the government of iraq still rely on the u.s. for? >> i think you want to direct a question for the pentagon. i am not prepared to tell you what i for platforms are.

we also talk about the military transition, but there's also a u.s.-iraq transition. they're looking at ways to turn over equipment to the iraqis and capabilities to the iraqis. that is going on at a rapid pace. i can also tell you that the military -- the embassy, we work on something called the joint campaign plan. we worked weeks, months on this manhattan-sized phone book plan. what you see are areas in green, meaning the transfers that have happened, amber, meaning that they are in progress, red, meaning that they need more work. all of these various issues,

whether it is readiness for their forces, the state of the equipment, procurement of equipment, training for their forces, all of these issues are monitored very quickly on a regular basis by our u.s. forces to determine where the effort should be. it is quite the comprehensive transition package. when general odierno says that it is a proper that we get to 50,000, he is not just saying that because that is what the president laid out. it is because, due to the presidential laying out to that figure back in the june speech, the military has worked to make sure that, when we get to 50,000, we will have done these transitions. >> can you say that iraq is

stable today? [unintelligible] what lessons can we learn from iraq as far as security and terrorism in afghanistan is concerned? >> i think iraq is increasingly stable. i think the security problems are not ones that have broad political significance. they have several -- they have terrible cigna as part -- they have terrible significance for people involved in them, of course. but they are not shaping the political structures. i take from that a sense of stability in the country. iraq has been around a long time.

i think we can take heart from their direction and there. in terms of the legacy, someone else should answer that question. what i like to say is that we have been able to establish a relationship with iraq with an appropriate amount of the engagement on the u.s. civilian side, an amount of soot -- an amount of engagement that is appropriate to building a long- term relationship. but you cannot be handoff in iraq. you can i go there and said that that is an iraqi problem, not my problem. frankly, it is everybody's problem. i like to think that, over the course of the time that i was there, we built an appropriate relationship, that we engaged the iraqis across the board. for example, i was the first ambassador to be able to visit

all the provinces. the went to visit the provinces before because security did not permit it. it does now. the u.s. relationship with iraq is in a position to grow and to be self sustaining and to be long-term. that is what we sought. we did not want a situation where we would be considered an occupier and, as soon as we leave, we do what we want to do. i think the iraqis really want that long-term relationship. i like to think that, during the time i was there, there was an increasing trend in that direction. with regard to afghanistan, i understand why you are asking. everybody in washington talks about afghanistan and iraq, almost inflating them as two different countries with the

same situation. it is a very different situation. afghanistan has been around for a long time. it will be around again. it is amazing some times to meet people, for example, we have someone working at the embassy who used to be a peace corps volunteer 30 years ago. afghanistan does not have to be violent all the time. when you look at the mineral wealth of iraq, the fact that iraq now has all the major countries, including all the current members of the un security council with the enormous investments in iraq's mineral sector, i need you concede there is potential there

that will be more problematic for afghanistan. one has to be really careful of these kind of cartoon comparisons. certainly, we have the right strategy in iraq. it is clearly going in the right direction. i would be much happier today if there was a new government formed. i would be much happier if they were arguing with each other and the council of representatives. that day will come. >> at the risk of raising afghanistan and iraq in the same sentence again -- the question of resources and high-level attention, as the situation in afghanistan gets more and more difficult, do you leave fearing that iraq could wind up, just by virtue of limited bandwidth, not getting the sustained high level

of attention and resources that it needs and the policy engagement that you described? >> this is the charlie wilson's war scenario where we forget about afghanistan and the rest is history. i have never liked for senior level attention from washington. -- i have never lacked for senior level attention from washington. there have been well informed and engaged. i never had a problem. i never lacked for the washington bureaucracy offering me tips on how to do my job. i appreciated everyone of them. [laughter] i think the issue would be more on the resourced side.

people need to understand that the overall national security outlays in iraq is plummeting. the overall outlay of funds we are putting in iraq are coming down, yet we are having trouble getting some things funded better so much cheaper than what we have been finding. funding for peace is a lot less costly than funding for war. there are a lot of malaise that are needed, not just in iraq, not just in afghanistan, but west virginia and places like that. i think we have to be respectful of what our congress has to look at every day. i'd like to think that people will understand that, if we can

stay at it for a few more years -- and that is what we're talking about. we're not talking about an on it -- an open-ended commitment to that will go on for 30 years. we're talking about a few years during which the iraqis will have the potential to get up and running and will not require assistance from us. but if we create gap, if we fail to do with now on the assumption that they will have their own oil -- they do not have their own oil now. they will, but they do not now. it is going to take a little more time. it will take a few more years. at the end of which, we will have done the job and we will not have to be funding iraqi products for the rest of history. thank you very much. this is probably my last time here. it is a funny feeling. i will go off to denver, colorado. i will be the dean of the core

bell school of international studies at the university of denver. i will retire on the 31st of august. that is after 33 years and two years in the peace corps. >> [unintelligible] >> will i be in washington on the 31st? probably not. but i will come through in september and have a proper farewell. i will invite some of you. [laughter] great to see you all. thank you very much. >> you can watch his briefing with former u.s. ambassador to iraq chris hill again tonight on c-span at 8:00 p.m. eastern throughout this week, washington journal is taking a look at the financial crisis, its causes and impact.

tomorrow, how consumers have been affected, live at 9:15 a.m. eastern here on c-span. funeral services for a former alaska senator ted stevens will be held tomorrow in anchorage. he died last week in a plane crash on the way to a fishing trip. we will have live coverage of the funeral service. that starts at 6:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. book tv and primetime continues tonight with a focus on campaigns and elections. senators story and donald ritchie on the 1992 race on new dealer fdr. and kenneth ackerman on the assassination of america's 20th president, james garfield.

this c-span networks provide coverage of politics, public affairs, nonfiction books, and american history. it is all available to you on television, radio, online, and on social media websites. find our content any time through c-span video library. we take c-span on the road with local content vehicles, bringing resources to your community. it is washington your way, the c-span network, now available in over 100 million homes, provided as a public service. >> a discussion of policy proposals from the heritage foundation. issues like intimate programs and defense spending. this is about 35 minutes. -- issues like entitlement programs and defense spending. this is about 35 minutes.

>> good afternoon. thank you for joining us. it is my privilege to welcome you. i also want to welcome our on- line viewers and for those of you turning in four regularly scheduled bloggers briefing. you can e-mail us and we will get your questions and comments that way as well. for those of you interested in the recording of today's event, it will be available on heritage.org later today.

>> on behalf of our border trusties and the entire staff of heritage, a does my great pleasure to welcome you here today. this is the unveiling of our publications solutions for america. after 19 months of liberal change, america is in real need of new ideas, new policies, and new solutions. liberal politicians have desperately been campaigning on the notion that the other side, we conservatives, are not offering anything new, that we have no policy ideas, no alternatives. i think solutions for america proves that that is false. solutions for america is a comprehensive guide to reforming government, instead of 120 conservative policy alternatives in 23 broad categories that define what a

more conservative government would look like. solutions for represents a powerful policy agenda that will resonate with mainstream america and is a real alternative to the excesses of the overreache we currently see in washington. unprecedented power and control has been centralized in washington. the government has grown exponentially in size, scope, and reach. yes, we have opposed to the is an old power grabs and we should have opposed them. however, that is not to say that have alternatives. one of the main concerns we have is what is happening in terms of entitlements, for example. they are very specific and very personal. i have three grandchildren. it is unfair for my generation to be saddling each of those

grandchildren with a two hundred thousand dollars mortgage with no house attached to it. that is their share of the unfunded liabilities that our generation is passing on to them from the big three in entitlement, social security, medicaid, and medicare. unemployment is up and americans are more pessimistic about the future than at any time since the 1970's. that is why we answered these challenges and solutions -- the sound is in solutions for america. they return power to the people and they are bold and transformational ideas. they are not necessarily new ideas. some have been around for a fair length of time, but they are bold and they are transformational. one thing we have learned is that intervention in areas such

as energy and health care and an adjacent -- and education has forced the government to do less well those things that it should actually be doing, such as providing for the common defense. fundamental elements of the american spirit, such as individual freedom, entrepreneurship, federalism, they have been ravaged by the less radical agenda. we think america is at a tipping point. we want to make sure it gets back to its basic rates, to the fundamentals as outlined by our founders in the constitution. we have to reignite that flame of liberty that made america the greatest nation on earth. solutions for america, we believe, provides the policy fuel for that agenda. some of the specifics that we talk about in solutions for america include placing a firm cap on overall federal spending add 20% of gdp and limiting the

future growth to inflation plus population. it requires the three entitlement programs i mentioned to live within firm, a congressionally-approved, specific budgets. limit the amount of welfare spending in the 71 categorical programs and require recipients to give something back for what they're getting, pay federal workers pensions and wages comparable to their counterparts in the private sector, recommit to peace through strength, repeal obamacare, and on and on, revives federalism as one of the fundamental beliefs that conservatives believe in, where states are typically the laboratories of experimentation, where the federal government can learn so much as it did back in the 1990's on subjects like welfare reform, from wisconsin,

from virginia, from other states that word experimenting. solutions format offers something new, real reform based on conservative ideas and principles. the counterpoint to fall as an expansive government programs is not different, follows, and expansive government programs. candidates for office nationwide have no policy alternatives to the veiled loss of eight of bigger government, higher taxes, greater control, and more spending. millions of americans have already stood out to demand a return to limited constitutional government. we believe that solutions for america presents a way to make that vision a reality, to build an america where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish. thank you for being here.

>> good afternoon. welcome to heritage. he described reasons quite well for why we took the initiative to compile these recommendations into this report. in a nutshell, it is no ordinary time in this country. we are added to pinpoint. a lot of other sears people have looked -- we are at 8 tipping point. a lot of other serious people have looked at this. two of the other ideas that known to emphasize relate to our entitlement state. in a nutshell, if there's any take away, it would be to realize that the era of unchecked and unlimited entitlements must come to an end. there are two ways to do that.

the first one relates to the big three, and medicare, medicaid, and social security, the middle- class entitlements. it would require them to compete for funds the way all other programs do, require congress to look at those programs every year, every few years if necessary, to figure out if they are on course or not and make necessary changes, instead of making them go on automatic pilot. another idea relates to the 71 programs that comprise our modern welfare state. our welfare expert calculated that they are not in one place. it is $1 trillion per year. it is about $30,000 per family with kids who qualify for these benefits.

many experts would say that poverty is as intractable today as it was when we first started this endeavor back in the 1960's. we propose a couple of big ideas. one is to look at them in a holistic way in the federal budget. have commerce consider them as one entity, a category called welfare spending. let it grow only to the amount of inflation every year. you require congress to look at these programs, determine which ones work to alleviate poverty, which ones do not, and then do something about those programs that are failing. believe me, there are quite a few of those. another idea is to turn a portion of welfare received into a loan that will be repaid over time as the person surmounts party and becomes more self- sufficient. he also proposes putting in more

work requirements, programs like food stamps and housing. another one relates to federalism. this is a sense that, over the years, the relationship, the balance of power, between the federal government and the 50 states governments, the federal government dominates. the state level organizations come to washington spend most of their time petitioning for more money. they worry about a formula and are not worthy of the notion of sovereign state governments that have their own ability to manage the affairs and help to care for their citizens in local ways that reflect local conditions and not the one-size-fits-all ibm. they are in -- one-size-fits-all idea.

there are specific recommendations and gives the states a chance to be the lead in addressing these aspects of people's daily problems and lives. there is an ongoing debate in washington about how involved we need to be. there are some who argue that the american people are not ready for both solutions. they counsel incrementalism to wean the people away from where they are today, presumably supplicants inof the american welfare so that they can adopt their ideas. there are others who are ready for this. they believe the american people can actually sustained big thinking, bold ideas, turning the government upside-down in ways that are going to get us sustainable once again.

it is with those kinds of people on capitol hill that we cast our vote right now. this is the way to go. this is not the time for tepid thinking. this is not a time to be overly cautious. the base line out there doing nothing is the worst possible outcome right now. that is what we see across the board, not just on domestic policy, but also our domestic security experts. a review panel came to the conclusion that the trend line for the military, personnel, procurement, and force structure, are leading to a train wreck. we are not just dealing with domestic milton of -- with a domestic meltdown. this takes bold proposals. at the end, i just want to say that there is a premise that

doing these things would create sacrifice and would be the political equivalent of a root canal. our argument is that the root canal comes from doing nothing. that is when you let the trendlines accelerate and goal on their merry way. we have to change these programs. you have to get federal pay calibrated to that vehicle to the private sector. you have to get the entitlement programs that and structured so that people who are under the age of 50 may get something out of medicare and social security when they turn 65. curley, those people under 50 have discounted us -- currently, those people under 50 have discounted s. thank you very much. we look forward to your questions. [applause]

>> thank you. we will open it up to questions for you in the room. >> michael just said that the root canal would be the real way to do this stuff. what are the calculations for coming in six months? a lot of this ic from republicans. -- a lot of this i see from republicans. they promise a lot and not match up to their expectations. >> the baseline includes tax increases on january 1. our top recommendation is to do no harm. it is never a good idea to raise taxes. it is an especially dumb idea to do that during a recession.

our top recommendation is to keep the rates and level of taxation where it is today. you can go beyond that. because we are in recession, there are a couple of policy ideas we have included that would be beneficial and create a special birth of economic activity. take the top corporate tax rate down. we recommend to put it to the level of the average of the 30 largest trading partners. that would take it down 10 points to 12 points, which is about 25%. the other is to let businesses write off investing in plant equipment. that will give some confidence for businesses to do those types of investments and create new jobs and grow their firms. there is uncertainty that prevents them from doing that. and lot of the rest of it has more of a long-term benefit. these a trend lines are so

negative. when you see demographic changes, the retirement of the baby boomer generation, but for example, there is a long-term benefit. another is giving money back to the states. they would go to transportation, education, health care, law enforcement and all that. that would improve the quality of those services when the states are the ones in charge of designing them and delivering them as opposed to the one-size- fits-all idea of the federal government. >> if we pass the stimulus, we will find things that are shovel-ready was the idea. how long does it take for of states to reap the benefits? >> they have an immediate effect in terms of how businesses view investment decisions and what they do with their assets and

what kind of risks to take. it lowers the cost of making the decisions and makes it easier to grow their firms. that is a short-term benefit. they will show up in the models very quickly. >> icu have a couple pages -- i see you have a couple of pages holding terrorists accountable. you have the proposed cordova initiative, islamic center or mosque named after the city in spain that was conquered fort islam -- concord for -- conq

uered for islam. you do not address that in this report. >> we do not. there should be local control, local autonomy in question, such as the zoning, etc. we obviously believe in freedom of religion. no one questions that. but, i think, in our gut, we feel very strongly that respect for other faith traditions has to be neutral. we do respect other faith traditions, but we expect them to respect hours and others as well. it seems that, if the organizers of the cordova scheme in new york really wants to bring people together, there are plenty of alternative sites in lower manhattan.

this is something that is splitting the community apart. it is not a very sensible way to act in terms, again, showing concern for bringing us together. they should consider whether they are -- whether there are less controversial ways to bring together harmony that they want. this is not just a random site in lower manhattan. i have been to ground zero in number of times with friends, with officials in new york. i know how it is considered sacred ground. i think it is a very bad call on their part. >> we will take a question from one of our facebook viewers. "how do possibly get america back on track when the president and those who control congress are so off-track?" [laughter] >> we are very optimistic at

heritage. we also believe that the american people -- we looked at the polls of the last 18 months and had the chance to look at and then just a lot of the ideas and policies that have been voiced to us by this administration and the leadership in the house and the senate. if you look at the polls, there told.ight-worard america has always been somewhat right of center. it was there during the elections of 2008, believe it or not. people have seen the spending and reports about the debt and the way the stimulus plan has worked or not worked, of the intervention of private firms putting in unions ahead of creditors in bankruptcy is situations like they did with chrysler -- a whole range of these exposures to these types

of policies has made america a more receptive to the ideas in our report. our optimism is unbounded. my expectation is that, come january, the people that will be in congress with the congressional voting cards will look different from the ones that are there today. my guess is we will see a lot of them calling us up asking for briefings and explanations on how to take these ideas and develop them even more. >> mike is absolutely right when he stresses the of basic american political tradition. there are as many self- identified conservatives as liberals. a simple phrase that all of you know well is [unintelligible]

>> the bush administration tried to go toward the idea of privatizing social security and in the campaign essentially fell flat. what is the way to improve the whole issue of saving social security without having to scare seniors and ending up having to divide seniors between people who are younger? >> one challenge is to draw a direct link between the kind of ideas you're talking about with respect to social security and the inter-generational effect it would have on their kids and grandkids. over the years, we've found that, even the older folks see the numbers laid out, and then stand the implications in terms of taxation on their children and their grandchildren. taxes would have to be levied to pay for all the promises made to

the current generation of retirees and the near-retirees, people 50 years old and older. they do not want to do that to their grandkids. there is a political bond that it can be treated in that education. -- that can be created in that education. a report has found that, liberate them from having to pay payroll taxes and do the same thing on the employer's side so that the fica tax would go away after you turn 65. that would be an incentive to keep the older workers in the workforce. we also have money to keep them in private health plans and not on medicare. you can keep people basically living and working in the private sphere for a longer time. there are ways that you can recalculate the benefits that

would be given to somebody so you could help the trust fund as well without hurting the worker. it is an exciting new way to put money on the table and it would help alleviate the so-called pain that some would see from retirement payments. >> there's a question for you from a facebook user. "how do we stop the entitlement mentality, reinstalled the glory of the american ideal, and encourage people to pull themselves up from the mock?" [laughter] >> i read a lot of polls and i take heart from this. allstate did one a year back at the height of the financial meltdown, looking at self- reliance in terms of financial issues. americans are very self-reliant people and they do not like

feeling as if they are a part of a welfare state for a handout the arrangement with a the government. they want to do things on their own. they trust themselves much more and at a higher level than they trust the government agencies or government regulations to do things for them during the most important as the to remember is that the american spirit is with thius on this. we can put them out there that it will not be distorted by special interest groups. with a fair shot and fair debate, we win. i expected the resources will be there to have a fair debate in the years ahead. >> do we have additional questions in the room? >> one section that seems to be missing is pretty important, campaign finance law. how can you have campaign finance law reform and ensure

freedom? >> full-length instant disclosure is the best way to reform campaign finance reform. getting down in the muck is going exactly the wrong way. every regulation begets another regulation and perspective let's have full instant disclosure on the internet and who is supporting who and how much. i would personally favor read. -- favor it. jettied one caveat to full

disclosure is that there is no limit. part of the idea is that someone get a lot of money to one campaign, there is accountability created, and you have a public discussion on a canada receiving such a large amount of money. that creates in and of itself disciplined on how that happens. we're totally libertarian on that. [inaudible] [laughter] any other question? >> i see you have a section on making federal policy merit- friendly. have you to find merit -- have

you defined marriage? >> one man and one woman. >> for either one of you, we have the american spirit with us on these issues. a lot of these proposals have been floated in various forms before. how confident are you that the spirit on capitol hill is there? how many of these do you have -- allies with and sponsors for on capitol hill? is it substantial or are you still working on that? >> we have a number of them. we believe the welfare reform is going to be introduced by congressman from ohio and some of the other ideas have been developed over time.

during the stimulus debate, jim demenemint offered some alternatives. and other once we're working with with people on the house side. it could may bp the next congress to reflect the economic thinking. the other. -- the other point -- as much as we can foresee this and sustainability coming, it was still in the minds of most lawmakers far off in the future. today it is that much closer. social security is actually in the red, six or seven years ahead of projections. it is going to be in the red for

the rest of our lifetimes. when you look at 15 years earlier, people were talking about this happening in two decade or three decades. it has happened now and that is going to force the sober people on the hill to look at this in a different way. i would not underestimate the power of this incoming freshman class on members of the house and senate to shake things up a little bit and a fine with the baseline should be. -- define where the bass line should be. you can find both full report at our website. there copies out in the hallway if you do not have one already. i want to thank everyone for coming. i want to thank you for your comments and questions and thank you all for joining us. take care. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

>> coming up tonight, and

christopher hill briefed reporters on the political situations in iraq. perhaps this week, "washington journal" is looking at the financial crisis. tomorrow, a representative of the u.s. public interest group on how consumers are being affected at 9:15 a.m. eastern here on cnn. funeral services for former alaska senator ted stevens will be held tomorrow in an anchorage. he died in a plane crash on a way to a fishing trip. we will have live coverage of the service. that will start at 6:00 eastern here on c-span. tomorrow on c-span2, british politics. jack straw testified last week before the british iraq war inquiry. of five-member committee involving -- examining british

involvement in the war. we will air his testimony on wednesday. >> " tv continues tonight with the focus on campaigns and elections. a recounting of the presidential race of 1960. donald ritchie on the 1932 race between fdr and incumbent herbert hoover. and the campaign and subsequent assassination of james garfield. book tv is in prime time all this week on c-span2. >> after nixon lost the california governor's race, the owners offered the former vice president the job as commissioner of baseball. nixon was flattered but declined. he told the owners, "don't tell pat.

she would kill me for turning you down." >> whether baseball and the presidency or the cia and the korean war, find it at the c- span video library. it is washington your way. watch what you want when you want. >> our discussion on the effects of long-term deployment for military families. the woodrow wilson international center for scalers hosted -- for scholars hosted this event. it is about two hours.

>> she has small fee and large shoes to fill. i have done my best to fill them. she is an author of many important votes, most recently one about the first cases involving civil rights for mexicans. she is agreed to moderate this panel. >> thank you and good afternoon, everybody. what i had planned to do is introduce everybody with a few sentences, because you have biographies, people who were watching on the web cost do not.

we're very fortunate to have with us today sara manzano-diaz, the director of the women's bureau at the department of labor, and who was unanimously confirmed just this past february. think of today's congress. she was unanimously confirmed. this is remarkable. [applause] she was previously deputy secretary of state for regulatory programs in pennsylvania. this is her second appearance at the wilson center since this job and we feel fortunate that she is in washington. however, she has the lead quickly. and therefore what we're going to do is we're going to listen to her and focus very importantly on the homelessness of veteran -- women veterans and

what happens to veterans who do not have families. she will take a couple of questions before she has to step out. and then i will introduce the other members of the panel and we will hear their remarks. please, the podium is yours, miss manzano-diaz. >> how are you this afternoon? good, that is what i want to hear. first of all, i want to thank the shelf with a kind introduction. and also thank you all for the attention to be here. i am excited to be here. i wanted to start my remarks by reading an article that was in the newspaper that i think illustrates why one of my four priorities at the head of the women's bureau is homeless women veterans. of 47-year-old mother of four

shines crowds. she always says facing the rest front door when she goes out to eat. and before sitting down, she makes jurors to identify the quickest route out. elmer is a military army sergeant and is among a quarter of million women who have served in the wars of afghanistan and iraq. but the numbers suggest that speak of her life changing experience is $50 million, the amount that was spent last year by the va in compensating all female veterans from the war on terror for psychological damage according to white "chicago tribune" article. a medic in the 82nd airborne division, she waited 20 years to get a combat assignment.

within months of arriving in afghanistan, her career as a skilled metic began to unravel. she reported being raped by a polish officer and canned our province in the spring of 2003. in a separate incident, she was injured -- she injured her had fallen off a military vehicle. today a combination of posttraumatic stress, trauma brain injury, has enveloped her life in a light fog marked bike imbalance, disorientation, and around the clock headache. as a result of her injuries, she is a higher risk of stroke and early onset of alzheimer's. the ultimate cost of her maladies is unknown. last year, mental illness accounted for 35% of the $22

billion spent on disability payments to the veterans who served in all the war from vietnam forward. and lastly, the chicago tribune analysis recorded with the department of veterans affairs found that the that's psychological ones are for more extensive than any other type of disability. the reason why i read that to you is that is the reason why one of my priorities is homeless female vets. the obama administration last fall -- actually, the president signed an executive order establishing the of veterans employment initiatives for the executive branch. joined by the secretary of veterans affairs, secretary of labor, secretary of homeland's security, as well as others.

the executive order creates an interagency council on veterans employment. it will advise the present on the veterans employment initiatives. secretary sublease, my secretary at the department of labor, -- secretary solis, my secretary, chairs the council. in this case, we're talking about homeless women vets. the women's bureau is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. it was greeted in 1923 months before the women got the right to vote. my four priorities for the women's bureau would be pay equity, work-life balance, promoting good higher-paying jobs for women, such as green jobs, non-traditional jobs, and

science and technology and then of course homeless women vets. those are my four priorities. let me take you a picture said that you will note -- according to the va, they estimate 131,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. the vast majority of this population is single and comes from poor, disadvantaged communities. 45% suffer from mental illness, half have substance-abuse problems, and they cannot deal with their stress and america's homeless veterans have served from world war ii onward. 47% of the homeless veterans have served in vietnam. more than 67% of them served our country for at least three years, and 33% for stationed in

a war zone. one of the things that the women's bureau did is that we conducted what is called listening sessions. those listening sessions, we went out and actually talk to homeless women in shelters to hear directly from them what were the issues. the listening sessions participants consisted of 75 women veterans who are currently homeless, some with their families in the shelter. three of the women recently have secured permanent housing. the women veterans range from mid-20's to their early 60's, with the majority being in a a's and 40's, representing diversity in the group. african-american women were 47%, caucasian 42%, latina 8%.

>> you can find more affirmation on our web site. we went specifically to new york, pennsylvania, texas, kansas, california, oregon, and washington. based on these listening sessions, these are things that we learned. unemployment -- many women patterns lost their jobs, did not have enough job training, or had difficulty transferring their skills obtained in the

military to civilian economies. the lack of veterans benefits also played a role. many women veterans just did not get enough information about the benefits that they were entitled to. mental health issues -- to the sexual trauma, while in the military in addition to the posttraumatic stress disorder, it is a growing problem among the women. in talking with these women, we found that existing programs and services for the veterans did not take into account the needs of women. programs that are supposed to be gender-neutral failed to ensure the quality in the levels and types of assistance provided to both men and women. based on our findings on the session, the women's bureau is now testing different types of projects or models to better serve women veterans and homeless women veterans. for example, if in washington,

d.c. recently, the women's bureau conducted a jobs fair specifically for women with companies who have actual jobs, because of bad debt not have an actual jobs, we did not want them at the fair. we want to connect homeless women veterans to actual jobs. 50 thatund that out of actually came, only 14 got a second bidder. and we're watching to see how many of the 14th actually get jobs. in missouri, we are partnering of the mill group and doing what is called a stand down. that stand down, they will be provided information and given an orientation specifically for them. the types of assistance that all homeless veteran needs, food, clothing, medical, mental-health assistance, job counseling referrals.

a web-basedreating resource guide for homeless women veterans. one of the things that we learned is that the majority of homeless women vets are concentrated in california, new york, florida, texas, louisiana, and the state of washington. and we're working with a group in seattle on a case study of eight homeless women vets and working to connect them to permanent housing as well as provide the kind of psychological needs that they have. for all of this, what we're doing is trying to see blood type of model works. based on our listening sessions, we work closely with bets in the department which is the veterans employment training unit, we were very closely with them, this week based on the listening sessions they have

issued an rfp, which you can look at at our website with regard to homeless women vets and their families, or homeless man with their families. veterans with their families. it is a $5 million competitive grant to be issued to six providers and we're hoping to do this between the models that we're looking at and the models that they create, trying to find ways in which we can specifically deal with homeless women and their children. based on this feedback, we will be able to show our findings and see what is workable, which is what we need to do. i would like to share of comment -- some of the comments from the women. one woman noted, thank you for providing this job fair. some of us did not know that the information was available. another woman said, thanks for not letting us as if we were invisible.

to me, this statement indicates why the women's bureau is working on this very important issue. we're working to ensure that when transitioning from military to civilian life are not forgotten. in collaboration with other agencies, federal, local, and also advocates, we're working to find a successful ways to in -- reintegrate the women from these homeless women shelters into the kinds of supportive services that they need, to transition and reintegrate into though real workforce as well as permanent housing. with that, i would be happy to take questions. >> thank you so much, and in the interest of times, we will take a couple of questions. yes, in the back, please. just wait for the microphone.

>> when you do a job fair or something in order to identify people who need a home, had he reach out to those people? where do you find them? so that they know about it and they can take advantage of it. >> in this particular case, my regional office contacted the va, contacted the advocacy groups, and that is how they found the women, and then they look for employees who have actual jobs -- employers who have actual jobs and invited them. more registered and actually came. i think about 150 may have registered, hit the actually came, and now 14 at second interviews and we're hoping that all 14 get jobs. you still have numbers on how many homeless women there are? >> we estimate about 6000 homeless women concentrated mostly in those six states that i talked about.

>> i only took one question. if there are any other hands. >> this is great and glad that the women's bureau was undertaken as. can you talk about if you have a sense with of the reasons for women veterans becoming homeless are different or are the same as male veterans becoming homeless? is there a different scenario involved? >> from what we learned, although both veterans and suffer from a vote -- posttraumatic stress syndrome, on top of that you have a situation of sexual assault. one of the reasons why we're doing an all-female stand down with a third party is because the stand-downs' done by the aba or other groups is ask for males. for certain issues, they do not want to actually deal sometimes with other males.

as a result, some of the services that are provided are difficult for them to go and beat in a co-ed situation. we're trying to say whether as a model, women helping other women is the way to deal with this. we are also working with the v.a., we're working with other federal agencies, so it is not just the women -- the women's bureau by itself. but we saw this as a particularly vulnerable population in terms of not just women vets, but homeless women vets. we feel that at a time when in the history of our country, it is the largest influx of women fighting in the military, if they went out there and fought for us, we have to fight for them. this is our way of trying to give back to them. >> we will take one last question.

>> and kate sylvester. you have any data on how many of these women have children, what they're cowed custody situations are? >> i do not have any bad. but as we go forward, we will try to inquire and find out, but there were women with their families in the homeless shelters. the numbers i do not know. it is specifically geared for homeless women and their families in the shelter so we will have a better idea after the rfp work is completed. >> thank you so much. it sounds that there are a lot of problems be solved but you're on your way to solve them. thank you for taking your time to do this. [applause] >> has to can see, we watched

people from the earlier panels today but we are compensating it by giving you a full range of really interesting people. i will just introduce them briefly. we're going to do a good deal more about people from military families. one of the things we haven't talked so much about it is people with long-term deployment and what happens to them. we will be hearing about that as well. i will introduce each of our speakers now and in order and we will have questions at the end. starting with eliza nesmith, who served in military child programs in this country and abroad for 26 years. her responsibilities include developing and coordinating

policy, organizations for child- care, and a host of other organizations and entities. this is a real networking lady. thank you for your expertise. our speaker after that will be joyce wessel raezer, who is been director of the national military family association since 1997. she has worked with military services and has written a chapter entitled "transforming support to military families". our speaker after that is kathy roth-douquet, who is the founder of blue star families. she is an author as well as a member of the clinton white house. she currently serves as senior

legal advisor and is a fellow at the truman national security project. mary keller, she is the president and ceo as well as a co-founder of the military child education coalition. it serves are around the world as an advocate for our military children. she was the chief researcher and author for the u.s. army's secondary education study. and she worked for the u.s. pacific command. shelley macdermid wadsworth is a professor in the department of child development and family studies at purdue university, where she also directs the military family research institute. she is an associate dean. she currently serves on the

veterans committee of the institute. five extraordinarily distinguished panelists and we will start with eliza nesmith. you can sit down or stand up, whichever you prefer. >> first of all, thank you for inviting me personally to sit on the panel, but also thanks to the wilson center for turning the spotlight on this very important issue that you're all here to discuss today. as the introduction stated, i am in a policy office. i work for the air force. there distinct differences among all the services. i have found over the years that the general public has a tendency to think that they all operate all like, that they have the same mission, and that they are all like "the military," it is all soldiers. of course we have soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines as

well. they have distinct cultures, not only with the military families, but with the families who are serving with them. as mentioned, i am in the air force programs. i have been doing this for quite a long time. by choice, i stumbled into it but i thought it is really worthwhile work, because mission is important. regardless of where you are -- regardless of where you are by politics, it still is an important type of work with you think that we have a military that is to fight wars or to defend peace, it does not matter when i am in conversation with you. i am from south georgia and try not to engage with my high school friends on this topic. i engage a few people rarely is because this is what i am paid to do. i feel committed to it and have been doing it for a long time

but i work for the administration. as long as i agree with what i am doing and what the administration says, then that is what i am here for. but bureaucracy aside, even regardless of your politics, these are families that are serving and i speak to air force, where they're located in 35 countries, 35 states, seven foreign countries, we're in the district of columbia, but we're in the territories and spread out all over the world from turkey if to career to north dakota to southern texas. families are stationed there. we have very few locations where families are not with their airmen. we also have a grip of people -- a group of people who are in different locations that are all around abroad to may or may not have families. my job is to make sure that family programs are real resources, that we work with our

partners and provide the service that are needed for military families. if you have never been on a military base, you might find it surprising -- the microcosm of the rest of the country that a military base can provide. we have supermarkets, department stores, we have social workers, as we have doctors, we have counseling centers, we have child care centers, we have marinas in some places, golf courses, bowling centers. we have some nice installations that are good to be assigned to. people have a military way of life in the air force. we still have 15%-20% of our young people who will join the service, so they are from birth to adults are making that choice because of the military way of life. by definition, one. in a family has a paid job. -- one person in the family has

a paid job. that helps for people who may not have a stable income. they have an opportunity to live in government housing. over the last five or six or eight years, we have been partnering with the civilian sector to have housing that is out in the community private and on a base. that has done something to support services at the base. what are we doing about a sense of community? before, when you walked onto or drove onto a base, if you are contained so you would not have to go out into a housing area papain the people in the community. it is change the way that we are approaching programs on the support side, in trying to reach out not only members who are living the way but since the war since -- the war and 9/11, the guard and reserve have played all large part in this war. how we reach those families as

well as those members? one thing that the research may be will discuss, is children living out in communities to are not very well populated, they are finding themselves isolated in these communities. they may not even identified themselves as military young people. they may not think about what their parent does until they deployed and they're gone for a long time. it happens with the town will have a strong -- where the town will have a strong opinion about the war and whether we should be in it or not, and this causes this feeling of shame, my. does this and we do not want to tell anyone, so children are keeping these types of pods inside themselves. we have quite a few support programs for national

partnerships, all the services do this. . the usda and 4 h partnerships, where we can reach every town in united states and territories, with partner with them to provide more services. we partner with the boys and girls club of america, a small partnership there, so that we can reach out into communities and help young people with a sense of belonging that is so important to them at any age, where there are certain they these feelings of isolation. we have quite a few programs for spouses in the air force. one that we have is called heartlink, where we are interested in getting young spouses who have just come into the air force in less than a year, and we teach them all the many, many acronyms that are peppered in everyday language. sometimes i have to laugh at myself. i can write a whole sentence in

only acronyms. the release that thing is that whoever i am sending it to knows exactly what i am talking about. it is just carry on a lot of levels, but it is a language that you have to learn in order to get by and to be able to get along in that environment. as i mentioned at the onset, i am a policy office in the washington area, and so the main part of my job is advocating for the programs on behalf of families that i may or may not see. i hear from them quite frequently on the telephone and by e-mail. but my job is to be able to explain to senior leadership the importance of funding programs, to advocate for it so that it can be relevant to the mission, and get the funding for it. and when you are looking at very expensive aircraft were very expensive ships, sometimes it is

hard to say, well, what is the pay off? do we buy a new ship or do we have to pay for the family programs? that is the constant conversation that we have. one of the things that is important to the programs in the support area is working with partners like the ones that you see on the panel. we work with of them on a daily, monthly, weekly basis to make sure that we're in sync with their advocacy and what we can do to expand our programs in arts installations. we have about 175 of these partners that we work with quite frequently to try to help the military families get access to things on the outside, if we cannot get them on the inside. you get used to being on a military installation, and i think about several years ago, i was on a base nearby where my sister lived, and i -- she would

come home and spend the night with me and go to this function. i got her off base because he did not have a sticker on the car that would let her come in. we part of base, and then we drove on through and we did that thing at the gate in which fbi days. i am looking over my sister and she has this death grip, her face is all white. she said, did you notice that he had gone? i said, yes, i did notice it. that was supposed to make you feel safe. she said, it did not, it just scared me. i thought, that is really interesting -- appointed you, people from the same family, my father is a world war ii vet and my husband is a vietnam-arab that. if you do not know that, as you grow up without the idea of what the military's about, guns, blowing things up, but ending the pace, that maybe what springs to mind. if you do not know about the

very rich support services that are provided for families so that those soldiers can go out and perform, then it is important to know that. you may not know that the department of defense at the very high honor of having the premier chou of combat -- -- child care program in the country. we do not know about the world, but we certainly know by the country by a number of parameters that those programs are able to be sustained for the parents as they moved from place to place, and one aspect of that is continuity. a child moving from germany to alabama to korea, we want to have a certain sense of sadness as they are moving from place to place. the military puts a lot of time and attention into that very basic benefit that a military member can get.

great -- two minutes. thank you for that. the support services that are offered are wide and extensive. we have many programs out there. it is always a challenge to us to advertise them in such a way that everyone knows. i would say that most information is passed word of mouth from person to person. we learn more from people as they have an experience good or bad at the last insulation. early on, i were to a child care center and we have been working hard to make a very good center. we had changed hours and all sorts of things. i was talking with someone and out on the road and trying to get her to come in. she said, i would never go there. i said, we have been working hard on it. she said, it is not a good place in the hours are not good. had he been there? we made a lot of changes in six

months. she looked at me and said, i never have actually been in your center but at my last days, it was terrible. the message that i leave is that the consistency of programs not only on the individual services is important, but also as a department said that if a soldier has a good experience when he shows up at an air force base, and the same as at a navy base for a marine base, that they have a pretty good sense that they are. the same level of care and know that they are being cared for and their families are. with that, i will stop. >> hi, it is great to be here and be part of this panel. at lunch i referred to this panel to someone as they "it takes a village" panel. justice military families -- just as military families, in

all shapes and sizes, so we need a broad organizational response and partnerships between government entities, private organizations, university-based support services -- and private citizens, to do what needs to be done to support military families. my organization is here because of the generosity -- the vision of military spouses 40 years ago and to the generosity of a lot of military family volunteers who gave their time and service all of those 40 years, and to the generosity of foundation, private individuals, corporations, and others who believe that what we were doing to support military families is important. and that generosity has never been stronger than it is right now. our organization has done a lot for military families, and it's

doing more and more all the time because people in the american public want to support military families. they are of the american public, they are of the broader communities, and it has been gratifying to see the support that that community has given all of us to increase our efforts to reach out to military families, learn what they need, an advocate for those needs, and then when necessary, develop programs to support those needs. hicks here we are, heading into the ninth year where we know a lot about war and we do not always know a lot about the families. we know that deployments to iraq and afghanistan are different. he believed as an organization that supports military families, staffed by military family members, that multiple passed along deployments are straining does families. we also note that there have

been all lot of programs and initiatives that have been put out there to support military families. not just on the department of defense and individual service, but private organizations, churches, civic groups, and communities -- people of one to support military families. there is a lot that we do not know and that knowledge is especially critical on how our children are doing. our organization have done surveys, done a lot of informal listening to families over the years, because that is what we did, but what we believed was missing was a large scale cross- service -- component being active duty -- the research on military children and youth. there have been some research studies, but what was missing was that large scale look --

encapsulation of what children were saying about what they needed. and after trying to prod congress and the department of defense, we as a small nonprofit said enough is enough. we have wasted so much time and missed golden opportunities and using baseline information without knowing children before the war, we need use that information to better serve families. we raise money from foundations, the robertson foundation and the sierra club foundation, and commissioned the rand corporation to do research that would to be on the ending that -- that would go beyond the anecdotal information. we chose the rand corporation because we thought they had the experience necessary to do this type of research and the credibility on the hill and in the department of defense, which is what we wanted.

we wanted these findings to be taken seriously. we wanted to ask two questions -- our school-age children fairing and what types of issues to military issues -- children face related to deployment? we were very lucky in that we had a sample population to do this research will. we sponsor a program called operation purple. it is a summer camp program for military children, he can supply to us to host an operation purple camp, it is totally free thanks to donations from our sponsors. youthilitary installation programs, a variety of camps across the country, we even did a camp this year in germany. we use the applicant pool from our operation purple program for 2008. we had 9000 applications, and we

were able to come up with a stable of 1500 families that represented all the military services and all the components, children ages, a 11-17, and we had 28% minorities, 47% girls. if we followed these families over the course of the year -- and we followed these families over the course of the year. we saw how does families were doing. our baseline results were published in january 2010 issue of "journal pediatrics pd are longitudinal findings will be released in the next couple of weeks. how our military children staring as compared to other u.s. children? our researchers use, until so that we could do this comparisons. there is good news here. military children are

functioning at or above the u.s. average and an economic engagement and interrelationships. where we are seeing issues, however, and caution in at lower levels are in family relationships, anxiety, and emotional difficulties. 7% of our kids said -- reported in their care givers reported that they were doing pretty well. 30% of military children reported elevated anxiety sentence, compared to out 15% in the civilian population. slightly more than that, 44% reported higher emotional difficulties. visa things like, are you having trouble sleeping? these sometimes feel afraid? variety of questions to get those emotional difficulties. when we look at the information to say what are some factors related to deployment, that seem to be most important, we found

four significant factors. the interesting thing was that these factors held true across the services and across the components. that was one of the things we wanted to say. were we going to see different results for reserve children vs. active the children? but we saw the same four factors, the age of the child -- older teens tended have more issues related to deployment in yonder teams in our sample. girls report -- both boys and girls reported certain issues, especially -- however, girls reported more issues with reintegration. the cumulative month of deployment was important. it did not matter whether we were talking to marine families who deployed on a seven months

out, equal time back, to army children to experience long deployment or air force families who have more frequent but shorter deployments, what was important was not the going in the coming, but the cumulative time gone. how long was that service gone over the last three years? we let it but frequency of deployment and that cumulated month -- but it was the cumulative month that was the factor. children do worse, vulgar time away the parent was. -- the longer time away the. was. we love it when the research accept everything that we thought we always knew. we are military spouses and we have been saying for years, if nobodyin't happy, ain't happy. children did better when they're

scared ever did better. if the care giver was in danger, children did poor. our research borel what we knew about military spouses. when elected older teens, -- when we look at older teens, they were more likely to take on household responsibilities like doing things around the house. they were more likely to miss school i activities. some wanted to get the driver's license, but the care giver would say that is going to wait until your dad get some. they had trouble adjusting to the new retain and dealing with the returning parent. perles had some of those issues, but especially for reintegration. they worried about that deployments and that parents changes. they were more in touch with how the parents were getting along and more worried about the

parents. i have talked about that team wanted months of deployment, the mental health of the care giver so important, children whose non-deployed parent reported less mental health, they did better. everything was better when that parent was doing well. there has been other research that we can talk about during questions that has just been released in the last few months. we're finally starting to see some research on military families bearing out some of these issues, but expanding quite some of the questions that we raise, that future researchers will have plenty to do. but looking at that cumulative time gone -- there was a study published in the "new england journal of medicine" that

showed their use of military health care services went up, the longer that service member was deployed. we know that there are a lot of good programs out there. we know the whole lot of things are done. our challenge now is delicate that programs in light of the research. use that research to start setting up measurements and saying, if this is what we know, because families are telling us it is going on, how can we structure of programs if we know that total months deployed matters or to mark how we maintain the mental health for that 70% that were doing ok as they continue to experience on deployment? how we target programs for older kids and not take away from the programs for the younger kids? remembering that we have a lot more little kids in military families because of the age. how do we help caregivers

balance -- strike that work-life balance and take care of themselves? military services have put a lot of effort into creating a respite care programs for caregivers of younger children. was the respite from mom with a houseful of teenagers? how we help them find that? and how we use the results of the research and talk about them in such a way that would not seem critical of our military service members? talking about guilt, if the parent getting ready for unemployment. some of the research some -- coming out and says look what i am doing to my child, how do we help them do something constructive and helped them find ways to meet their service obligations and their desire to serve while keeping them connected with their children to

rebuild that family relationship? there is a lot for all of us to do. our association is sponsoring a summoned on may 11-12 where we're gathering folks not just from the military side but from private organizations and other agencies to look at how we can use this research to target programs, evaluate programs, and build new partnerships to work together to meet some of these needs and think about how to continue to meet them. even after the war goes away, we're going to be dealing with the legacy of nine years so far, how many years of war. a lot of these kids have spent half or most of their lives dealing with multiple deployments. we as a nation have an obligation to recognize that legacy and provide the support that they need.

>> thank you. i get to sit here between two of my role models. thank you for the wilson institute program this year and for sponsoring this. i was particularly happy about this conference, because it represents academia bringing us here. academia is an unusual bedfellow for people who are involved with military service. i think that academia is one of the place that disconnect with the larger society, and the military is the greatest. they're people here already engaged with some level of the military. i know it is being found in made vehicles parked an ability for us to discuss this issue -- it is being filmed and maybe it

will spark an ability for us to discuss this issue even more. why should anyone outside the military care? secondly, why is there a disconnect between academia and the military community, and what perhaps is missing? a lot of people care about us because they felt sorry for us and they hear terrible stories and there is a long narrative since the vietnam war that the people who participate in military service are victims. it is easy to talk about the harm that comes from being in the military. in a way that fits into the scenario. but that is not a narrative that is helpful for those of us to

serve, because it is a volunteer force, and those of us who are still in are not looking -- those of a steering the car and having to drive a ford, needs to feel that good, strong people are coming in, and part of what is going on is that we are partners in this service that is necessary for our country. we're not the accouterments, if you want to be in the military, and frankly i want to retire the terms breath. -- brat. they are a necessary part in national security and we need to treat them that way. regardless of your politics, i feel like we need to go back

into a civics lessons in america. it is not that if you are against the war, maybe you would be against military service. the way democracy works is that all whole society figures out what we're going to do when somebody execute said. it does not mean because your opinion is different that the constitutional process that leads to democracy, otherwise we're not a democracy. there is no politics that can be his military service -- be had danced military service in a democratic severance rigid system that we have right now. -- in a democratic service that we have right now. it is undermining the experience that military families feel. i want that to be something

there is an expression that there are not any atheists in foxholes. there are not many on the home front either.

there are tremendous challenges that are involved with the existential choice to put a person who you love in harm's way. and that is not something that is part of academia. it is not something that is easily measured. it is not something that is susceptible intent. it is another thing would like to put on the table. i think we will be better off when we have a better reconciliation between academia and military service, which includes encouraging military service at our top institutions, which is the place where i think it is probably least comfortable

right now, for somebody to choose to serve. a does would like to have that be on the table for this discussion as well, because -- i just would like to have that on the table for this discussion as well, because i believe that is what is going on here. i appreciate the study that mfa funded. i think it is something congress should have done, and i am sorry that the burden fell on you, but in convinced it is an important thing. we did find that the top concern for military families was the effect of deployment on the children. we also found the spouses need extra help during deployment. that is something that i think has a lot to do with the effect this has on families. i spoke recently to a group of

mixed specialists organization. i jettisoned my expected remarks based on my own feelings that i was at the little bit -- i was a little bit at the end of my rope, frankly. i ask the people who were there, why do we do what we do? this is a volunteer force. none of us have to do this. why do we do it? and, when we think that maybe we're not going to do it any longer, why do we think that? it was a really dynamic, fascinating, interesting discussion, at least to those of us who were in the room. we do it because there are great things that come to our families from doing it. we feel proud of ourselves. ira kids feel safe and connected to a community in a way that -- our kids feel safe and connected to community in a way that does not always happen in larger society. we feel a part of a community of

goodwill. there are lessons for a larger society that i think the military community has to offer to the society. joyce's book about this already. my children are -- joyce spoke about this already. my children are eight and 12, and this is the only world they have ever known. but there appears do not know about that at all. -- their peers do not know about that at all. my child is in sixth grade. my son has to hug his daddy goodnight via monitor. we wondered, why do we do this, and it should we keep doing it? the answer to this matter, because it is extraordinarily

consequential. we have well over 200,000 people deployed around the world you're not in afghanistan or iraq. both democrats and republican foreign policy elites concur that that is the national security strategy to have since the end of the cold war. this is the kind of military our country is setting ourselves up to have. unless it is something that is embraced by our country, we are not going to be able to be successful as a country. so, the effects that this ongoing war has on military families matters, but also the effect that pressures have on the military itself, mattered to the country. that is the circle went to bring around here. this is not just about the welfare of our community, it is about the state of our democracy, to my mind. i think it is a great topic for a serious institution like wilson. i am glad we're here discussing

it, and i look forward to what comes out of a program like this one during -- like this one. >> i like to add my gratitude to the wilson institute and to george washington university, and to everyone who has worked so hard and been so patient with the panel, and thus making a collective decision as to whether we would use power point or not. i guess you can figure out what we decided. one thing about the military job coalition for education i want to talk about. some of the things we're learning from our perspective, but in our research and in the field, and also we were asked to think about some of the gaps the we saw out there as a team. military child education coalition has spent around for 14 years. the name tells you what our mission is. we're focused on children from birth through college age whose

parents serve in active duty forces, the national guard and the reserves. we actually have filled days, programs, at 2 under and 35 schools with both military and civilian children -- 230 high schools with both military and civilian children learning how to be a peer support for people you're going through changes in their lives. in one place, they helped kids through various hurricanes and other things that happened in their community. we also have 120 middle schools and our program. we employ military spouses around the world. we have over 200 military spouses that work directly for our organization, and many of them were in our parent-to- parent program. we have 72,000 military connected parents in the last few years.

parents talk to each other, and we have to give them good information and give them a chance to pass at intermission on. we also do extensive professional development. we are certified through many accreditation agencies and also with graduate student courses. also we do a lot of research, and i will talk abut that. at any given point in time, there are almost two million military connected kids. 75% of those kids are below age 12. when i say to million, i am talking about birth through college age, and they have parents in active-duty forces, the national guard and reserves. about 1.4 million, our school kid age. that is the size of the new york public schools. if we took all of the military

get and put them in an -- in one school district, it would be the size of the new york city public schools. no one would think that every student in new york city has the same experience, came from the same family, has the same sort of needs, hopes and once. the same is true of military kids. the most important factor is that they are kids first. their baby stars. there toddlers' first. they are third graders -- they are babies first. they are toddlers' first. they are third graders. they are annoying teenagers. they are college kids trying to help their families. the unique thing about these children is that they have a parent do every day served our country, and those are an active duty, but parents in the national guard to our everyday

giving a component of their lives in a willingness to leave their lives to serve our nation. there in classrooms with everybody else's kids. only 8% of military connected kids, actually less, attend the department of defense school. most americans do not have personal experience with the military, and certainly educators do not have personal experience with the military. sometimes they get mixed up and think the military kids are in those military schools. it is interesting, late-night sometimes we will get a call at our office from a very upset parents the will say, i cannot stand it with this child anymore, put him in one of your military schools. that is really not what we do. military kids are in the classrooms with every other child. we have to first recognize their

needs as being the needs of a child. what they also experience is the destruction in the home setting and the continuity of parenting. that is so important for children. routine and predictability are tremendously important for children, from the new baby to the elementary school age child, to the preschooler. that predictability. they need does loving adults around them -- those of loving adults around them, and that will help them frame their world. a child the recognize the situation that the family is in, and their temperament needs to be recognized. sometimes the teacher will say, i was looking at this child, and i realized there perron was deployed, and they had a worried look on their face, and i went up and said, you are obviously worried about your dad being deployed, and the child says, i

am really worried about long division. children are thinking as children. we have to balance that perspective. for young children though, if you take the egocentric them and mix it up with their associated logic, kids end up with magical thinking. that is true for all thinking. for a military child whose parents come back profoundly changed, it could be that that child thinks that they're renting behavior is different because they did something. it is associated with if i had been good, or if i had said good night, or if i did not really want to talk that night, then daddy came back different. i am responsible for that. so the parent is trying to deal

with their issues, suddenly single parenting, or a single parenting for extended periods of time, and trying to listen wisely, thoughtfully, carefully, and help the child worry well. what do i mean by worry well? you're not as giving the child did knowledge men. i am understand why you are worried, but this is -- giving the child the acknowledgement. -- you are giving the child is the acknowledgment. i am understand why you are worried, but it is not because you did something wrong. we have done a lot of work around the idea of behavioral economics and what that means for families. we talked about the paradox of choice. sometimes i think we all, as

parents, as care givers, as non- profit organizations, as friends, we think that one or two choices is good so a whole lot of choices must be better. but for families and parents, too many choices, especially when you're stressed, can actually add to stress and cause people to shut down. this is also true for children. being able to frame choices for kids from loving parents and loving adults better in school and in their communities is so important for establishing that equilibrium for kids, that no matter what happens, there are adults around you do care about you, who are proud of the service of your family, who is knowledge that, but you also are going to help you frame that in the context of the multiple psychologies that kids live-in, school, home, the ballpark, everywhere that kids live.

how do we help teachers and others know what that means? how do people slowdown? the hard thing is, after nine years of war, people can be worn out from this. right now, we have 900 interviews conducted, and we're using some new software, and we have a researcher year. the important thing about what people tell you in there in debt we had a principal who said he could not figure out why parent teacher conferences were getting way off schedule. parents were lined up and supposed to come in for 30 minutes. the first group or all on schedule, and then we talked to the faculty, and what we

realized was that we had young families that started off talking about the parent teacher conference in the spelling and report cards, but spent the majority of the conference being so grateful that that teacher was just listening to them. so what we have learned is to slow down. how elegant is that? just listen, just listen to people. just slow down and listen. what we also learned from the sixth graders that we interviewed, one said, you know what, i figured out that when my dad comes, i will have to help him get rehabilitated. it is slowing down and listening. it is listening to the developmental needs of kids, the situational needs that they go through, but also looking at their school performance.

in the research, in terms of the gap, there are a lot of assumptions being made about military kids and their academic performance that are not based in solid evidence. they could be true or not true. while we are working on at the department of education and department of defense is how military kids are doing overtime. also partnered with the gallup organization and america's promised with the gallup student poll where the fifth graders through 12th graders who were interviewed, 25,000 of those kids identify themselves as military kids, and we are working with them now with a grant we have from the foundation. how do we help kids foster hope? and nancy, i know you would love

to see this data. it is so important, because hope has turned out to be so important in kids goal setting and the way that they think, engagement. do i know the to go to if i need help? do i know how to use the resources in school? can i make good choices? we have to know more about military kids on the long term, but together this mosaic is starting to come together. i would ask you first and foremost to remember that their kids first. they deserve for us to capture their story so that later, the story of these children will inform the story of children in the future. >> thank you. thank you for being so patient. >> i have enjoyed learning. i am very glad to be here. i do indeed work, although that

has been questioned since i travel so much. i am led administrator with staff -- in an administrator with staff, i am sometimes skeptical of a clear and compliant chain of command. i work at the university, which most people do not think of as a hotbed of military activity. we do have about 500 active students and 300 students attending on the gi bill. we are the midwestern, of the entrepreneurship a bit camp program -- boot camp program. the dean of perdue, in the early part of the century, created the coast guard reserve. they will be naming a ship after her soon.

although i did not know that when i started all of this, i am joining a long line of people led perdue with military connections. i from my remarks today around questions that were -- i framed my remarks today around questions that were in the preamble to this session. what are family's needs? our family's needs be met, and how are they not being met? but like to share with you some of my theories about this. when we think about family's needs, i think it can work to think about them in terms of, getting a personal stress continue impurity might not know that term -- , adding a personal stress continuum -- combatting a personal stress continuum.

you may not know that term, but it has to do with color coding levels of stress. green might involve coping with military life, deployment efforts to, and also appl address policy gaps that make it easier for kids to move around the country. yellow needs, i would argue, might be thought of as needs that are more severe kent related to actually undergoing things like moves toward -- more severe, and actually related to undergoing things like moves or deployment. or when someone is in harm's way and you are worried about them every day, and that is producing stress.

military spouses are under- employed, and that is an issue. finally, read challenges, in terms of need, including things like marital instability, maltreatment problems that need to be addressed, psychological health problems that result from the exposure to combat and the correction that comes from that to family life, and problems in the health care infrastructure. those are some really quick ideas about some of the needs that we have probably all spent much of our days thinking about. but it is also important to remember the military families are very diverse. you have heard that today from people who have spoken, but i really want to or _ it -- i really want to underscore it.

we use the term military kid, and the term family. what that generally means it is a heterosexual couple and a biological child or children. i recently used the word partners to refer to unmarried partners, and i learned later that somebody mildly took issue with my remarks because they assumed i was referring to gay people, and the policies had not changed yet. but what that told me it was how rigid the thinking about married spouses is. half the force is unmarried and presumably wants to formalize partnerships. the members of the military do not yet get enough attention in our programs, practices and policies. military families are models of strength and they are models of vulnerability. we talk about them sometimes only from the perspective of

vulnerability, but they have a great deal to teach us about strength, and we need to pay attention to those lessons. well the academic researcher who starts looking at averages and expects to see off the charts conflicts, off the charts divorce, and off the charts issues. that is not what you see. military families are models of strength and vulnerability. the problems of this developing -- of the civilian community are the problems of the military community. even those in the active component live and civilian communities. their children attend civilian schools. every member of the reserve component lives in civilian communities and their children go to civilian schools, and they get their care, all kinds of care, from civilian providers. to talk is the military and civilian communities are separate is not correct.

even for members of the active component, it is much more like this. our family's needs being met, and how are they not being -- how are family's needs being met, and how are they not being met. we've come up with many creative ideas and have really tried very hard to create an infrastructure of support that was never envisioned when we made the transition to rely heavily on the reserve component. the complete transformation that that decision required really is only being completed now. one of the best known instances of innovation in that area is military one source. some of the main know about that, some may not, but the mother of that is in the room. i am looking at her to say if it is ok.

there are creative partnerships with the red cross, with the national child research council, lots of new ideas being created. divisibility of family issues and visible commitment to families has come up a lot. my impression is that sometimes things become superficial, in the sense that when push comes to shove end people are forced to choose, many decisions referred to giving the military member priority. as soon as things get tight, family members go to the back of the line. as soon as people are outside their comfort zone, they focus on in the service member. to some extent that is understandable, but deployment, military life happens to families. it happens to a system. as long as we do not acknowledge

that and design programs, policies and practices that do not a knowledge that, i think we will not be getting the full value from those. in civilian communities, we have also seen an explosion of funding, a lot of innovation, a lot of strategies and programs, but it has been hard to get a valuation data, as has been the case in the military. i will not bore you with all of the reasons why it is incredibly hard to do, i will just tell you that it is. it is a very complicated landscape. it is frustrating for families and frustrating for everyone who tries to help them. and then we end up with this sort of weird red sea, where on the one side are mountains of providers who would like to help military families, and on the other side are military families who are feeling they're not getting the support that they need, and there is a parting of ways in the middle that we seem to have a terrible time getting

across. that is definitely a problem. i hear a theme that we need to focus and choose what works and promote what works, but there is a caution there, which is that nobody, nobody, i believe, has the power to tidy up the landscape completely. department of defense can control what they do with their money. the veterans affairs can control what they do with their money. they cannot control with the sierra club does. focusedxtent that we're too much on what to stop doing and how to stop doing and not enough on how to do and focusing and leveraging and supporting of the creativity and innovation, i think we are going to find ourselves frustrated in the end. researchers also, i think, have not been as constructive as they might, in the sense that, i think there is an enormous, and to some extent

disproportionate, attention to posttraumatic stress disorder, which is only one of a long list of results from combat exposure. it is only one of many things. i think there has been a relative lack of attention to family systems and family system dynamics. studies that nih has funded so far are overwhelmingly focused on treatment of service members and do not focus on families. a program i had applied for was canceled. for what ever reason, i think we are still not seeing as much attention to really trying to understand what families are experiencing, as much as we might, but there is attention thereto, which is that families are tired. they do not want to be treated

like drops on a slide. it is annoying. i sympathize with that. i am part of the problem. but haditha know how to fix problems if you cannot understand what they are -- how do you know how to fix problems if you cannot understand what they are? i will close by talking about what we are doing, how we are responding to these challenges at the military family research institute. even though our name has research institute, for the last two years, i have been asked to put somebody else's money where my mouth is. we really try to practice what we preach. so, i started out as a researcher, and now i am also engaged in engagement and outreach activities, which is a really wonderful opportunity. so, we have worked to generate important new knowledge about military families. for example, we have been working hard on trying to understand the course of reintegration for families, the typical and atypical past

toward a supplementary reintegration -- passed toward supplementary reintegration following deployment. you'll soon see a paper coming out about that. we also support military families. the best example of there is a program we develop and deliver for children as part of the reintegration program. it is a military/academic partnership with a goal of trying to help children and their families. we also work to strengthen civilian communities primarily in our state by raising awareness and by raising the preparation of civilian communities and the professionals in them to receive and support the military families who live among them. i mentioned this to illustrate some of the ways that academia can contribute, and some of the work that we have been privileged to do, which is the

support and education of people, many of them are in this room, who have taught us and helped us learn how did is we might be able to be useful -- how it is we might be able to be useful. so i use that as an example for any of you who might be interested in being engaged in any of these activities. >> thank you, all of you. this was quite wonderful. there is a wealth of information and so many ideas to think about. it will be hard to put them all together right away. perhaps you can help with all of that with your questions. the floor is now open for whatever you would like to ask. >> it seems the sort of a

recurring theme of the day, and it has been a recurring theme since i had joyces' job and before, that there are lots of programs out there, lots of help up there, but there is a red sea between the providers of the help and the people who need the help. we do not ever seem to talk about how do we get across the red sea? where is moses? does he existed? it goes back to some of the point that christina was bringing out about being on the ground and asking for help, asking for suicide prevention, a basic training. what do you say to somebody -- i do not want to be a counselor, but how do i deal with this problem? how do i teach a wife of an 86

how to deal with the problem when the wife of then eat -- the of an e6 how to deal with the problem when the wife of an e4 comes to her and says i cannot deal with this anymore? those programs exist, but how do we get people to them? >> sometimes egos and ownerships get in the way. we have a tradition, and it is not just among the people who work for the military services or the department of defense. it is also among a lot of nonprofits. we have the if you build it they will come tradition. we will establish a program. we will put up the family center. we will do something and tell everybody, here we are, or we will build the website and say, here we are, but i think we're

starting to see different kinds of outrage. part of data reaches to the local community, the people who are already in touch with -- part of that outreach is to the local community, the people who are already in touch with military families. they're not making uso volunteer counselors, but they're saying, we know that you come in contact with a lot of service members and families. here is some extra information for you. we need to see more of that. we need to have a really serious conversation with people who understand social networking and how technology works, so that we are not just and doing another if you bill did they will come in terms of our website, that we are doing some punished for families and teachable moments, and a push to people who support families -- so that we're doing ush for families at a

teachable moments, and a push to people who support families. could we get a list of every service members itself down and taxed them every once in awhile with two questions, -- text them every once in awhile with two questions, how are you doing, and have you signed up for this or that service at a va? i feel encouraged because i think people are talking about it, but to me it involves reaching out beyond our comfort level as service providers who are enmeshed in the military system to those people who have ideas, who are willing to help, but you do not know who to ask and you to offer the help to. i am more encouraged than i have been for a long time, but we still have a long way to go and the problem continues to be more complex. >> a group of military families

and non-profit organizations got together back in january at a conference called the americans joined forces for military families conference. we had representatives there from the joint chiefs of us, the census office, national security council, the senate armed services committee. we had all of the people here on this panel represented. we of outside groups like the chamber of commerce, the council of churches, with the idea of trying to get all of the people who are kind of stakeholders and experts in this area and ask, what are the things all of us can agree our problems, and what kind of problems, so that we have a certain amount of legitimacy and balance behind it. maybe then we can move forward. there were taught three ideas

for missing and needed programming, and top three areas for unmet need. pretty much, this is what was agreed across the board by all groups. top three unmet need for mental health, families, children and jobs for spouses. the programming needed was some kind of comprehensive clearing house that allowed people to understand through the thicket what was that there was available. a competitive that was creating a blueprint for communities that would give -- a component of that was creating a blueprint for communities that would give communities a manual for how to deal with these kinds of issues. the second one was comprehensive life cycle spouse training, instead of haphazard kind of training, or getting the same training over and over again -- he would never take an army

officer and give him basic weapons training over and over again during his career, but that is what we tend to do it for spouses. this is kind of with the uso idea was talking about. i am for getting with the third one was. a couple of days are moving forward. there is some interest from the senate armed services committee, interest from the white house, coalition groups trying to get this moving forward. in we do need to get out of our -- i think we do need to break out of our silo and get pieces of this moving forward. the cheats wives -- chief's wives are a very important part of this, and all of them

expressed that this inability to reach the programs that are e exists is one of their top concerns for current and it needs. >> from what i have been hearing, help for military families comes from a number of sources. we have an incredibly vibrant civil society devoted to military families. the government is involved. the federal government is involved. i am wondering, since so many members of society -- since so many needs of society are met by a different components of the society, i am wondering to what extent military families get help from the foundation's board from communities around the bases -- or from communities around the bases?

>> local communities are the nexus of support for military families. almost all chambers of commerce and said military affairs have communities that are deeply involved. local school boards are deeply involved. in rhode island, as they develop statewide plans and have the state resources. this is extremely important in the times now under very constrained budgets. people should not lose focus on helping military families, because there is no reason to reinvent a program for restores -- or resources it is already existing -- or resources for military families if it is already existing for families in general.

>> it has been very gratifying up.ee states stepu perdue is not alone among universities to have engaged in this effort. a lot of states have enacted legislation to support military families. i see that there is a huge consequence of all of the guard and reserve call-up during this war, and that has been the community engagement. it used to be that it happened in terms of capitol hill, but it is happening at a state and local level. when you are a banker, or the sheriff's deputy, or a postmen, or a second grade teacher called up to deploy, then someone you know is heading off that is part of that community. that community embraces that person and that person's family. but what happens is that good will and that understanding now of, of all, we have a military

family in our midst and they are having trouble getting somebody to take care of their health care, and they're having other issues and, let's send care packages, but it is also translating into state laws to support military families. there are funds that are covered by tax donations to provide financial support for military families that are coming out of the state or unemployment compensation for mobile military spouses, or tuition breaks for national guard or reserve members. there are a whole lot of things that have happened at the state and local level, and a whole lot of that has been driven by the immediacy and awareness of those barred collops. -- guard call-ups. >> allotted to go back to this question that you posed about

that -- i wanted to go back to this question that the post about the gap. what is interesting is that from a historical perspective, really in the army, since the mid 1980's, it is interesting that i have heard that again and again. over and over again we create these programs. of course, there are more now. but i have heard about this gap over and over again, and i wonder what you think of this. i have only anecdotal information about this, but in looking at, reading a lot of after action reports that family support groups and family readiness groups supply, interviews with officers wives who run them, biographies that have been done on family support groups and things like that, one of the things that comes up that i never see dealt with in a thorough way into the research or public discussion of it, is something that i am not quite sure how to label, but it is

sort of the status difference between army spouses, where spouses made the -- may be e-1 through e-4's. they may be younger families. they have a lot of needs. but they may feel disconnected from someone with an older family at a different point in life. on the other side, it is the older people saying they cannot reach them. that is what i feel like i read over and over again, for example when i read the first gulf war reports. we tried to reach out to them. it is really hard to reach them. and they too sort of trace data in a way that to do maybe with them having different -- they

too sort of a phrase it in a way that had to do with maybe them having at different education level, a different experience. i do not know what you want to call it, class, age, education level. >> i think it is a really complicated issue and i was really careful with my choice of words, because i said i think there is a gap. the reason i said i think is that really, we know far more about families who can use the services than we do about families who cannot or will not. most of we know about those who cannot or will not is speculation from the people who can do and well. so i am cautious about what i see and what i know. i will also point out that you will hear the same thing in the civilian community, where if i were to ask each of you about

the programs and policies that are available to you from your employer today as a pop quiz, you would know about 30% of the things that are available to you, because it is a teachable moment. when you are not at that teachable moment, it does not sink in. you do not care what your employer offers for elder care support until your parent calls and says that they broke their heads. some of the may, but in the general, your average employee has relatively little idea of what is actually available to them. but i do think there is a little bit -- is either a class issue, and they think there is an element of class in the -- it is also an institutional issue, which i think you are talking about, which has to do with institutional and traditional approaches to social service provisions.

we will build it and they will come, and what you have seen in the last 20 years, in terms of trying to change the course of communities that are challenged, is that more and more the emphasis has been ongoing to where the people are coming going to them, and locating them in places and going out and finding cases, as opposed to waiting for them to come in at the door. but it is true that officers and their spouses are typically college educated. enlisted men and their spouses typically are not. we know that education has implications when it comes to class structure. i call it the shadow rank structure. >> i would like to add two things. one, the military has no

authority over spouses. many family members do not want the military acting through official channels. there should be away for a house to file in a room of one's own, for a military family to provides support and information. we did that with the idea of leaving people back to services. we do not create a parallel universe, but from a creating a safe place to get information that is not command. i will tell you, i am about as well resources or capable of a person as there is out there in terms of a military spouse being able to help herself. i have a graduate degree. i have friends in high places. i have money in the bank.

i have a support network. but it is hard for me. it is hard for me to find resources and feel supported. if that is how i feel, i can only imagine how others feel. there are services out there, but there is a gap. those of us who are closest with the programs and so impressed and thrilled about what is out there, it is so hard to understand how it is that that does not trickle-down, but i live in the bible belt self carolina -- south carolina, and it really does not. we all need to be involved in finding new partners and expanding this and making a difference, going places where we have not gone, and bringing services to where families are and not expecting them to come to us. we are working on a program to

have art museums around the country that are free to military families to show their appreciation. families do not have to find it, but they can stumble upon it. these are the ways we can start to make progress. there is pushing and pulling. >> we have to talk about going where the families are, and the families today, where are they, and a lot of us have been doing this for a while, and i do not have my finger on the pulse of all of the families, but i hear a lot. a lot of people say, look at the installation. retirees will come home to the military installation, go to the military hospital, go to the exchange, because they have

moved around a lot and that installation is tom. home. that pattern has changed. spouses work for civilian employers. our kids go to civilian schools. what i hear from commissary people is, why are not more family's shopping at the commissary, it is such a good deal? they're not coming here and retirees are? for this bouse, their home as wal-mart. they have travelled across the country to strange towns -- for the spouse, their home is walmart. they have travelled across the country to strange towns, a new environment. what makes them feel at home? walmart. they tell me that they do not go to the center.

afterward and after getting the kids in bed, they get on facebook at midnight and reconnect with their high school friends. that is where their support this. so, how are we -- and that is why the discussion about going to where they are, and going to the people who interact with them where they are, is so important. maybe if we really wanted to help more military spouses, we would do uso training for walmart. >> we work with the faith community around the country. we spoke to the virginia council of churches. we said, just ask the question in the churches across the state, do you have any children or any families who are connected to military, including brothers and sisters? they said, that is a good idea, we had not thought of that. but you know, a lot of people do

get their support through nontraditional ways. it does not mean you need a sign over the door that says "a military family program," but rather that you have a way for people to connect with each other. >> just a quick question as to whether there is a standardized benefit for children for therapy, and always dealing with the issue of distance and access. i would also ask or mentioned, i think self-help is always going to be the issue, especially with increasing internet activity and that way of networking. you may have a very degraded resources as a result. >> our time has expired.

one quick word before we break for the next session. listening to all of you, and listening to the speaker's earlier today, it occurs to me that what we need here is a lot more education. it sounds as if we need ways to educate military families about the kind of help that is out there, and to some extent we need to educate ourselves about how to reach them. it sounds as if we need more education of the civilians who work with them. it sounds as if we need more education for academia. i say that after a long career in academia. i am feeling the pain here too. but most of all, it sounds to me as if we need more education of the public. somebody said earlier today that the average american does not know very much about the military. the average american does not know very much of the military families. perhaps conversations of this

kind can help to bridge the gap, or perhaps we need to think a bit more about how to get that information out there. as soon as this panel and, please stay for a conversation about how we go forward from here. certainly, that can be a major part of it. but before we open the floor up to all of you, please join me in thanking our panel. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> tomorrow on c-span 2, british politics. jack straw testified last week before the british foreign inquiry. a five member committee examining british involvement in the war, and what led to the 2003 invasion. here is all testimony, wednesday

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