muhammad al-baradei and i had negotiations with iraqis and settled a great many of them but not all. eventually the security council in 1441 said, "on those points which blix and al-baradei have not been satisfied we decide the iraqis have to abide by what they said." so it was the first time in my life that anything i had written in a letter was elevated to world law, which was nice, but the main point on it was really that it strengthened our position and we thought we could thereby avoid having a lot of debates with iraq about the mandate. >> so you were broadly content with 1441? >> i was content with it and there was one other reason. that was i liked the idea of a new declaration. the declaration i felt might give iraq a chance for a new slot. if they had weapons, which i thought might very well be the case, they had an opportunity now. here it is, and they could put the blame on some general or other. so i was hoping for that. i was in favor of the

resolution. >> did you feel that it gave iraq a realistic possibility of meeting the requirements of the resolution? >> yes, except that it was very hard for them to declare any weapons when they didn't have any. they, but we didn't know didn't have any. i mean, i ask the question because we have had at least one witness that has said that actually the way it was drafted was actually as a trigger for military action, but that's evidently not what you felt at the time from what you have just said. >> no. there is this big discussion as to whether a second resolution would be required. i for my part thought that to me it was clear that a second resolution was required. i have seen from some of the testimony that some of the british felt that it was desirable, but it was not absolutely indispensable.

i saw that jeremy greenstock had said that he certainly wanted a second resolution, but he also recognized that the views in the security council were very divided on it. i think it was ambassador meyer who said there were the three groups. there were the americans on the one side who said, "no, nothing is needed." there were others who said, "you need a second resolution", and the british were somewhere in between. now the resolution, as you recall, simply says that if something happens, in the inspectors' report or status report there is a violation, then the council shall convene and they shall consider the situation. well, in diplomatese of new york maybe this implies that something will happen, but i don't think that's necessarily how i would read it as a lawyer. if i sat on the other side of the security council, i would say, "no, we will convene and reconsider but it is an absurdity that we should hand it out, give a free hand to anyone in the security council

to decide that this resolution has not been respected and therefore we have the right, unilaterally, individually, to take military action." it would accrue to the russians, to the chinese, to anyone. this to me was not a very reasonable invitation. >> in your book, just talking about the divided views, you say that the french consent was given on the understanding that a material breach could only be registered and acted upon on the basis of a report from the inspectors, i.e. from yourself. now some witnesses have argued to us that when the french were voting for resolution 1441, they were fully conscious of the american position that no further security council decision was required to determine a further material breach. were the french really of the

view that the council would have to take a further decision or had they, as some witnesses have put it to us, lost that battle? >> no. i don't think they had lost the battle. i think they were aware of the american interpretation. they had wrangled about it. my reading is that the french and the germans too had tried to get it clearly put into the resolution that there would be a new resolution needed, but they had not succeeded. they had to give up on that one. so they went into the resolution accepting it with the open eyes that some interpret it one way and others interpret it the other way, which not a very exceptional event in the un, i may say. but reading simply the words of it, i would have said that "convene and consider" does not really give an authorization to go to war. i think jeremy greenstock first also was of that view but later said maybe it could be interpreted otherwise.

>> so was it then your understanding that it was the reports of unmovic which would be the element that would determine whether or not there had been a further material breach, or did it leave it open to members of the security council to determine on the basis of the reports you made a failure by iraq to meet its obligations? >> well, i think our job was to provide evidence and we might say that, yes, we think this is a breach of their obligations, but in the last resort i think it would be for the security council to judge whether in their view it was a breach or not. not only that, but also decide would it follow from there that they would authorize armed force? this is not what 1441 said. this was sort of implied and i think jeremy greenstock in his testimony said, you know, there was an expectation that the

council would take action, but i would have sided clearly with the french and the germans that this was not a necessity. i find it also sort of absurd that the security council would sit there and say, "yes, if any one of us comes in and maintain this is a breach, then any one of us can take military action." i don't think that's the way the security council operates or we want it to operate. giving it a clean hand -- i am sure they will be more cautious in the future about drafting their resolutions and not leaving any such implication open. >> so, just to be clear, there are really three points there. the first is that the responsibility for determining the material breach did not rest with you. you were providing evidence on which the security council would, as you say, make a judgment. >> no. >> that we are agreed on. secondly, your interpretation of 1441 was that a judgment needed to be made by the security council. having a discussion was not

enough. there was an implication that a judgment was needed, that iraq was in further material breach. am i right on that? >> also a decision to authorize. >> then the third point is that before using military action, in your view, an actual decision was needed to authorize that? >> an authorization, yes. >> this was absent from security council resolution 1441. i know you are among many other things a very distinguished lawyer and the legal argument has been made that you didn't need a decision, because you reach right back to security council resolutions 678 and 687, which had not been revoked, which would authorize military action against iraq in the event of a breach of the ceasefire conditions. so was it necessary to have a further decision? >> yes, i still think it was indispensable. first of all, the 687 and the earlier resolutions, they were

authorizing use of force against an iraqi aggression against kuwait. we were not in such an important situation now. secondly, i think that when condoleezza rice, for instance, said, and i quoted in my book, when she said that the military action taken was simply upholding the authority of the security council, it strikes me as something totally absurd. here you are in march 2003 and they knew that three permanent members, the french and the chinese and the russians, were opposed to any armed action, and they were aware that they could not get a majority for a resolution that even implied the right to military action. to say then that yes, the action upheld the authority of a council that they knew was against it i think strikes me

as going against common sense. >> although the military pressure from the united states had helped to uphold the authority of the security council, because for the first time in many years iraq had paid some attention to the security council resolutions. >> yes. >> so your distinction is between pressure and action. >> that's true. threat is a different thing from actually taking action. >> but at a certain point someone calls your bluff is the problem. >> that's true. you might be called a paper tiger eventually but the charter prohibits you from using armed force. it does not necessarily prohibit you from exerting pressure. there is a grey zone there. you are not allowed to go too far in the pressuring either. in any case i would have tolerated that and i think that's frequently done, economic and military pressure. today we have economic pressure against iran. i do not think that's illegal. i think the use of weapons or force against iran today would be illegal. >> without a security council resolution. >> without a security council authorization. as you say, the americans, to them, it was indifferent. they had already a doctrine that

said, why should we have a permission slip from the security council? so they didn't need it. i admit i agree with you that the pressure was the one that moved the iraqis and as the pressure mounted, yes, they became also more cooperative. >> i think we will want to come back to that a little later on in the story. i am going to turn to sir lawrence freedman in a moment. we are in for quite a long afternoon and it would very much help with the transcription if we could take a measured pace. thank you. >> just following up from what has been said, i mean, you have made the point about the americans suggesting that they were upholding the security council resolutions and you noting that the security council as a whole did not seem to go along with that at that time, but, as i recall, part of the american argument was to challenge the security council to uphold its own resolutions. there was a concern that from

the late 1990's a number of key security council members had lost interest in pursuing this question and therefore this whole exercise might peter out. do you think that was a reasonable concern? >> well, i think there was at least implied from the us side that if the security council doesn't agree with us and go along with our view, then it sentences itself to irrelevance. i think that's a very presumptuous attitude. i think the us at the time was high on military. they felt they could get away with it and therefore it was desirable to do so. i think this has changed with obama. obama says yes, they will still retain the right to -- they reserve the possibility to take unilateral action but they will try to follow international rules.

>> even before 9/11 and the bush administration even there was a concern that the security council was losing a grip of this issue. >> well, from the cold war, of course, the security council was paralyzed. the security system of the un did not work during the cold war, but i think it changed completely with the end of the cold war. in 1991, 1990 the russians and the others went along with the action against iraq, and bush the elder, the president, said that this was a new international order. well, that collapsed with his son and i think that the world has changed dramatically with the end of the cold war. it is only recently in the last few years some american statement with samman and others have said, well, we ought to re-discover, the cold war is over. so the security council in my view was not paralyzed in the 1990's. they are still not paralyzed. that's why it is reasonable to

look to it and to have respect for its decisions. >> thank you. what i want to ask you about is the various assessments that were published on iraq's weapons of mass destruction. there is a number published in 2002, the 9 september one by the institute for strategic studies, the british government's dossier of september and then there was an american one in october 2002. i would just be interested in your views of these assessments at the time you saw them and read them. obviously we are particularly interested in your view of the british dossier. >> right. well, the british dossier was shown to me in new york. i read it and i said to the young diplomat who took it to me that i thought it was interesting, useful. i think i probably also said, as he has quoted me saying, that i did not think it was exaggerated. however, i said this at a time

we had not restarted inspections even. much of it of the dossier was taken based upon unscom's accounts, but there was this big difference that unscom never said these items exist. they said these are unresolved issues. in fact, i don't think there is any resolution of the security council in which they assert affirmatively that the weapons exist. so this was a big difference. however, it seemed plausible to me at the time, and i also felt -- i, like most people at the time, felt that iraq retains weapons of mass destruction. i did not say so publicly. i said it perhaps to mr. blair in september 2002 privately, but not publicly because i think there is a big difference between your role as a trustee of the security council, "investigate this and report to us", and the role of a politician. individual governments here could prosecute and say, "we

are accusing you, you have this", but that was not my role. the security council did not assume it and therefore i didn't say anything about it publicly. privately, yes, i thought so. there was one particular type of weapons of mass destruction of which i was suspicious and that was the anthrax. we had an inspector in australia, rod barton, who later wrote a book about the whole thing. he came to me and said, "here is the evidence we have on anthrax." it seemed to me to be very convincing. it had one element that was worrying me. that was that it relied on some cia document, finding. they were not willing to show it to us. i was not willing to say or affirm then that, "yes, we assert that there is anthrax", but we were very suspicious. i came out right from september 2002 on to the very end when i said, "yes, there might be weapons of mass destruction." i had this in mind. i could not exclude that others existed but when i saw this

dossier that was taken to me, yes, i thought it was plausible, because what unscom has said in its report 1999 was these things are missing and they assert that is there. they might have had information which we have not had. i hoped that at any rate. so that was my view on the british dossier. the american dossier differed somewhat. in some respects it was a little milder and others a little tougher. the institute, iiss, i have not been able to recheck, but they were fairly severe as well. they all went in the same direction. they were not directly useful to us, because they didn't say how did they come to this conclusion or where was the stuff. they simply asserted "yes, it is here." >> just then to confirm what you have just told us, your feeling at the time was that there probably was something there. >> yes. >> and that, as you say, you were sharing quite a broad consensus. i would just be interested in your views at this point about

the difficulty of modulating assessments of this sort. there's a question of whether iraq was in violation of past un agreements which could actually have been quite trivial amounts of material or non- disclosure of documents, but would nonetheless strictly be a material breach. there is questions about the degree to which iraq was preparing for reconstitution should the opportunity arise. there is questions about whether they actually had a program and stocks working at the time. was it your view that these things could get rather muddled up in the way that the issue was being discussed, whether in these papers or in the wider public debate? >> well, in september 2002 i don't think anyone really was

talking much about the reconstitution, but it was about the actual existence, and the british dossier simply said that iraq has b weapons, it has c, and it has missiles. it didn't assert nuclear. i think it was talking about the possibility of reconstitution and bush certainly in the autumn of 2002 pointed to various buildings and said these were connected with nuclear in the past and they are now rebuilding them. the iraqis shortly thereafter opened the buildings to journalists and they were empty. so at that time i don't think the reconstitution was a major problem. on the nuclear side we were fairly sure -- we were sure in 1998 there was hardly anything left. like i said, we wanted to close the dossier. this was an area that i was no longer responsible for, it was iaea, but in the autumn of 2002 we began to hear about the contract allegedly made with niger about the import of raw uranium, of uranium oxide, and i reacted -- that was perhaps the first occasion when i

became suspicious about the evidence because i thought to myself, "why should iraq now import raw uranium which is very far from a weapon? they have to refine it. it has to go through enrichment and all these things." so i became a bit suspicious about it. that was muhammad's responsibility. as we know, in march 2003 he came to the security council and the iaea had eventually got a copy of the document and concluded i think in less time than a day that it was a forgery. he said it was not authentic. it was a diplomatic way of saying it was fake. perhaps it would have been better if they had said that. that to me and also the nuclear business about the aluminum tubes which figured very long -- i forget which one was in the british dossier but they mentioned one of them. they also mentioned the mobile

laboratories i think. the niger document was scandalous. if iaea could conclude in a day's time that this was a forgery and this document had been dancing between the italians and to british and the americans and to the french and they all relied upon it and bush alluded to it and mentioned it in the state of the union message in 2003, i think that was the most scandalous part. >> i would like to say something about the niger question just in the light of what you have said because the butler committee, which you recall, concluded the british government had intelligence from several different sources, that the visit to niger was for the purpose of not actually the acquisition of uranium but acquiring it, the forged documents were not available to the uk government at the time it made its assessment. so the fact there was forgery does not actually change the british government's assessment

on the niger issue. i thought for the record i should just say that. >> i am glad they didn't manage to misinterpret that one. >> just then to conclude this bit here, i suppose what i am interested in is the question of threat. your job really was to say this is the evidence. it was not up to you to say you should be really worried about this. your job was to say, "this is the evidence of the extent to which there is a breach of un resolutions", based on the evidence you had. it was not to go further than that. >> well, i think you would have to distinguish between different types of revelations or evidence that you find. you know we were given sites to inspect by the uk and the us and we wanted these sites and felt, "these people are 100 per cent -- 100% convinced that

there are weapons of mass destruction, but they also then should know something about where they are." we went to these sites and in no case did we find a weapon of mass destruction. we did find engines that had been illegally imported, we found a stash of documents that should have been declared. they did not reveal anything new. so there is evidence of more or less grey things. even the missiles i think falls into that category. they certainly violated their obligations on the missiles, but we concluded that the al- samoud 2 type missile was prohibited, because it had a longer range than 150 kilometers and they had performed a test flight i think with 180 or 183 kilometers. so our international experts

that we consulted concluded they were banned, but still it was on the margin. perhaps even more serious was their plan to combine several engines and make missiles of much longer range than they really had tried. here in answer to what you said i think that yes, you still have to retain your common sense, that there are some things that are more serious violations than others. >> just on that, i mean, i recall an argument i think from rolf ekeus that it would not be surprising if the iraqis were concentrating on delivery systems because it is not that difficult if you are determined and have the know-how to rebuild your stocks of chemical and biological weapons but there is no point in doing that unless you had a delivery vehicle. would that be -- would you share that view? >> yes. above all, they were allowed to have this. so it enabled them to continue to do research and development,

and to cheat a bit which they did. >> thank you very much. >> dr. blix, i have really a single question, which is about the burden of proof and where it lay. i know from your book you have formed a view about it. so here we are. we have resolution 1284. we have resolution 1441. now we are at the end of 2002. there is much international concern about iraq's failure to comply with the will of the international community and some nations more troubled than that about possible holdings of weapons. so was it up to iraq to prove through your inspection regime that it, saddam's regime, was innocent, or was it up to the international community through yourself to prove that iraq was guilty? which way did that go, because it was both a political

question, i take it, and a legal question? >> i think the iraqis tried to say that the general legal rule is unless you are proved guilty, you must be presumed innocent, and i tried to explain to them that this was not a parallel when it comes to a state, that a guy may be accused of having a weapon illegally and if he is not proved guilty, then he will be innocent. however, i said with regard to iraq, you had these weapons, and people would laugh at me if i said i should presume you were innocent. we make no assumption at all. we do not assume you have weapons and we do not assume you don't have weapons. we will simply look for evidence. of course, it was difficult for them. it is difficult for anyone to prove the negative, to prove they didn't have it. they said so, "how can we prove this?"

i admitted in public, "yes, it is difficult for to you do so but it is even more difficult for us. you after all have the archives and people, etc. you must make best use of this." >> in effect then the work of your inspectors could go forward without having to form a final view. that would be for the security council in your judgment. >> yes. >> yes. thank you. i think i will ask sir martin gilbert to pick up the questions. >> i would like to turn now to the iraqi declaration which was received by unmovic in baghdad on 7 december 2002. unscr 1441 required that iraq make "a currently accurate full and complete declaration of its wmd holdings and programs." how important did you expect the declaration to be in assisting you in your objectives? >> well, my hopes were that

they would declare whatever they had. i did believe at that time that yes, they might well have something and that this would be the occasion to put the blame upon some authority or some general in iraq. so i was quite hopeful that this would come. now that was also the reason why i was very disappointed when it came. it was 12,000 pages. it could have been slimmer if they hadn't repeated several things several times over, but they had only had one month and it was a lot of work. so i was very disappointed. it did give some news regarding the period 1998 to 2002, and especially on the biological it gave some news, but it didn't really resolve any major point on the unresolved issues. >> what were the major deficiencies you saw in it at the time? >> i don't think that anyone would have been satisfied unless they had come up with a report that, "here are the weapons."

certainly the americans would not have been satisfied with anything less than that and i was also perhaps unfairly saying this is a deficiency in the document. they had the difficulty. they could not declare something very much because they didn't have it very much. >> but in terms of the material breach did these deficiencies as seen by you at the time constitute a material breach? did they go some way towards resolving that? >> no, we were disappointed that they didn't come out with them, but we had never maintained they had them. so i didn't -- i certainly could not construe it as a material breach. >> i mean, looking back now with the benefit of hindsight and what we know, is there more that iraq could have done with this declaration? >> yes, maybe, because when we look forward to the 2003 in february and march, then they

became more proactive, as the term was. the resolution required active, unconditional and immediate cooperation, and as the us pressure mounted and they really saw the dangers, then they also became more active. maybe it was also a difficulty for the iraqi leadership, i mean under saddam, to persuade him to go along with something. that is possible, but certainly i have been criticized and people said that at the end of january 2003, "you were very critical of the iraqis, but then 14 february and 7 march in your statements you became more upbeat." they say, "why did you change your opinion?" i say, "look here, if i am there to observe and the circumstances change i damn well ought to also change my report." that is what happened, the iraqis became more cooperative. let me take examples. a major matter was what had

they unilaterally destroyed in 1991? unscom had undertaken some excavations of things, places where they had destroyed things, but not all. some places they had not dared to, because it was dangerous. the iraqis then in february 2003, i think it was in february, offered that we will excavate some of these things again. i remember we were in baghdad, mohammed and i. they said, "look, with modern techniques we might even reconstitute and re-find the volumes that had been destroyed." i was a bit skeptical, as a scientist. i thought if you pour 10 liters of milk in 1990 will you be able to ten years later find there was 10 liters? i was a bit skeptical. our scientists said, "yes, we can go along and excavate and look for this." that was one thing the iraqis did in 2002 and it did give results, actually, because the

place we dug up, they did not find the anthrax or chemical weapons but they found the fragments of the bombs that had been exploded. they were able to reconstitute them and come up with a conclusion that the iraqi statement had been fairly correct. so it was an active cooperation. i take another example. that related to who participated in this destruction, and we said, "look here, you must have some idea of who did it. can we talk to them? can we interview them?" they came up with quite a number of numbers actually. i think 50 or 60 names, maybe more. i said, "if you have a list of people who participated, don't you also have lists of what you actually destroyed." they had shown earlier on a diary of somebody who did something but not so much. that was another one. another item was interviews. i was always skeptical about the interviews of iraqis because any interview in iraq would be -- they would probably know about it. they would have a tape recorder

hidden somewhere if they were alone or they would have a minder. very frequently the witnesses wanted to have the minder present because thereafter they could have their testimony that they had not revealed anything they should, but we were given both on the us side, especially on the us side but also from the uk, they say that -- why don't you take them abroad? at first i had the feeling they just wanted us to kidnap these people and take them abroad. i thought it was an atrocious idea. later on there was a great deal of pressure and i concluded that you must ask the iraqis to say that you will release people to go abroad, but i must say i never thought we would get very much from them even abroad. the americans said they can take their whole family with them, ten people, but they will still have some relatives, someone against whom reprisals could have been taken. now in retrospect we know they would have said they did not know about anything. these were areas in which the iraqis were forthcoming in the end of february and the march, under us military pressure, to

be sure, but nevertheless that was a big change. i was cautious in reporting it to the un security council, saying, "i note these things but at the same time we must see how much does it actually produce." so i was cautious all the way through, but this was the reason why i changed my view. i talked to prime minister blair on february 20, 2002 and then i said i still thought that there were prohibited items in iraq but at the same time our belief, faith in intelligence had been weakened. i said the same thing to condoleezza rice. both condoleezza rice and prime minister blair, i sort of alerted to the fact that we were skeptical. i made the remark that i cited many times, wouldn't it be paradoxical for you to invade iraq with 250,000 men and find very little. so certainly i gave some warning that things had changed and there might not be so much. >> thank you very much. >> just for the record i think

you were referring to a discussion between yourself and prime minister blair in 2003. we heard 2002. >> yes. >> by the way, it would be very helpful if we could keep it as slow as possible. >> i talk too fast. >> i will now turn to sir lawrence freedman again. >> there was a lot of interest in the potential of the smoking gun and you have already given an indication that's certainly not what you found, but you have mentioned a number of other things that you did find which were small in themselves but not without significance. i think you have mentioned the chemical warheads didn't have chemicals in them but they could take them, the missiles, nuclear documents. was there anything else you found in addition to those that were prohibited items or indicated something suspicious? >> well, there were the missile engines.

the warheads i think was the most important, i think that was in january that we found them, and i remember i was in london at the time when i was told about this, and i thought, "well, maybe this is it." maybe this is the tip of the iceberg that we are now seeing and maybe we will find more. as time went by and we really found more fragments, i think -- i concluded that it was an ice -- might well have been an ice that had been broken long ago and these were the flows that remain of it and that was the reality, but in january, yes, i still thought that maybe you find more, but as to actually findings, no. it is true that we were -- we were looking for smoking guns, and rather towards the end the us when they wanted to discredit us came and said that, "look, we know that you have found the pile of automatic non-piloted --"

>> the drones. >> the drones. "you have not reported that. you have also found a contraption for spreading of chemical weapons." i talked to our people about it and they said, "yes, we are dealing with these things, but they are not really significant" and these things disappeared. so there was very little we found. the missile was the most important. of course we ordered them destroyed even though they did not exceed the permitted range very much. we had time to destroy about 70 of these missiles, which was quite a significant thing. >> in terms of the things you have mentioned how did the finds come about? was it because of just regular inspections, because the iraqis had declared them or because of intelligence that you had received?

>> the chemical munition was something that we found ourselves and it was at the site that had been declared by the iraqis. so it was a well-known site, and i think that the us later on tried to blow it up a bit, but this was something we found. we received altogether some 100 ideas, tips about sites to go to and we had time to go to about 30 of them during the period, and in no case did we find a weapon of mass destruction, but we did find something illegally imported. i think the missile engine was on the basis of a tip from the uk maybe. the stash of nuclear documents also came from a tip from the uk. when i read some of the testimony made and given here, they seem to be very proud that, "yes, we made four hits out of ten." they should ask what was the hit?

if the hit had been a weapon of mass destruction it would have been interesting, but these were hits of fragments. so they were not so important. >> so, just to conclude, what do you think these finds did indicate about iraq's level of compliance with past resolutions, including 1441? >> yes. i mean, they ought to have declared the documents. they should have declared the engines, etc. so that was a lack of compliance. you can say that. i think one can also say that was compliance with every detail of the instructions the most important, or was the weapons of mass destruction that we wanted? there is the different value and different types of evidence and i didn't think the evidence we got was very important. >> thank you. >> i will ask baroness prashar to pick up the questions. >> thank you, chairman. dr. blix, i want now to look at the question of the iraqi cooperation with the inspection regime. starting first of all with issue of access to sites. access to sites was clearly a

very key measure of iraq's willingness to cooperate. how did they measure up to this particular criteria? >> from the outset their cooperation on this score was good -- >> yes. >> and i said so. borrowing from muhammad al- baradei i made a distinction between cooperation on procedure and cooperation on substance. i said that iraq cooperates on the whole well on procedure, in particular on access. on no particular occasion were we denied access. in this sense, of course, it was a contrast from unscom which were frequently denied access, perhaps sometimes because they felt humiliated and they were frustrated and wanted to demonstrate, but, of course, that was interpreted as a will to hide something. we never had a denial of access. we had some difficulties of access when we came to saddam's

palaces. i think there was a short delay of a quarter of an hour or something like that, but there was never a denial of access. so i think they had made up their mind, and that was in marked contrast to unscom and should have been noticed. on substance on the other hand we felt that, no, we did not get that proactive cooperation in the declaration or in january, and i said even in january my statement on january 7 that was seen as very critical of iraq, that they don't seem even to have come to terms with the idea of disarmament. it was a very harsh statement. perhaps partly out of disappointment, but also in part because i wanted to warn them that, "look here, if you are not more cooperative, this is the kind of reports you will get." i remember reuters reported from london that we had said that we would like to have the

cooperation and if we don't get that, they will get critical report. so in january we came out with these very critical comments and then they changed, whether as a result of my comments or probably more as a result of a build-up, the military build-up, yes. >> you have already mentioned the question of minders. in your book you note that on one occasion you complained to the iraqis that the ratio of minders was about 10-1. how did you view this heavy presence of minders? did it signify lack of cooperation or were they a source of obstruction to you? >> that case had regard to the helicopters i think. they wanted to have -- we said, "ok, you can send minders along with our helicopters." they said 10-1. we complained and they changed it immediately to 1-1. otherwise the minders, of course, were necessary, but they were not there to guide us. we could go anywhere we liked.

the procedure was that in the evening before an inspection the chief inspector would tell the iraqis, "we will start at 10:00 from this place and you should have a minder to go along with us." he was not told where they were going. we never discovered or saw they had known in advance where we were going. then they were there to be a liaison, if you like. when you come to the site, if there is any problem, then they had authority and they could contact their authority. so minders were necessary, but 10-1 was an absurdity and they went away from there. >> did you find that obstructive, there were so many of them? >> i think they were a necessity. they were sometimes helpful. we had an accident in which unfortunately the chinese inspector died on the road. the iraqi minders were there and they helped us for a hospital and all that. so they were necessary. they cooperated on procedure. >> but when you briefed the security council on january 27, 2003, you noted some recent disturbing incidents and harassment? >> yes.

>> now that was a question of demonstrations and so on. how serious were these incidents and what did they signify? >> well, it is hard to believe that they could have occurred without the consent or perhaps even authorization from the dictatorial state. so we took them rather seriously and i didn't say i immediately reported them to the security council, because that's the means of pressure i could have on them. i can't imagine they were spontaneous. i saw one testimony here we had given -- i forget who it was testified that the uk had given them a lot of sites and all they met were demonstrations and stones almost. that's not really true. we performed on 30 of these. yes, there was some harassment and some demonstrations, but by and large this was very useful. i certainly wanted to continue. we found material, but we didn't find material that was relevant to weapons of mass destruction.

i think what was really important about this business of sites given was that when we reported that, no, we did not find any weapons of mass destruction, they should have realized i think, both in london and in washington, that their sources were poor. their sources were looking for weapons, not necessarily for weapons of mass destruction. they should have been more critical about that. we on the other hand had very rarely contact with any sources. we based our conclusions upon the overhead imagery or upon interviews, etc, and that did not hold these errors. intelligence will be used to this, that there are people that defect and give them intelligence and they want to get some reward for it so they will be inclined to give what they think the interrogators want to hear. we were not subjected to that danger. so the lesson from this site affair would have been, i think, they should have drawn the conclusion that their sources were poor.

>> can i come on to the question of concealment, because throughout this period there were repeated allegations by the united states and the uk in particular that the iraqi regime was involved in concealment activity. how did you view these allegations and was there substance in them? >> well, we had learned from the whole 1990s that they might have been concealing things, and we -- to take the case of anthrax again, that was the prime case. where was it? 10,000 liters, where? did they keep it somewhere? so we assumed that they might be concealing something and we had lots of sites to inspect, inherited from unscom and also from the iaea. so there were lots of places we wanted to go. so we certainly did not exclude. no, no, we really thought if there is something, it will be concealed.

>> i mean, in cases of small items, such as test tubes and technical documentation and so forth, what chances would there have been of you actually uncovering them? >> no. on very small items it will be difficult to do so and computer programs, etc, or prototypes of weapons, but stores, stocks of chemical weapons or biological weapons is another matter. we went to military sites. we went to the biological laboratories. we went to industries, to places where it could be plausible these things would be kept. >> do you want a break? >> yes. i think we have been going for an hour and a quarter. let's break for ten minutes and then come back. thank you.

>> go back and watch all of the hearing on steroid use in baseball online at the c-span

video library. all free, every program since 1987. watch what you want, when you want. >> the group americans for tax reform says the average person has to work 231 days this year to meet all government costs. that includes state and local taxes and costs associated with government regulation. grover norquist is president of americans for tax returns -- reform. welcome. >> this is a day when all of us finish paying for the total costs, state and regulatory, all levels of government, federal, state, and local, and that is 231 days so far in 2010 that we have had to pay for the total cost of government, federal, state, local, and all regulation. we have a great series of

speakers and a panel today. wanted to do is start off by taking a look at what you have in your handouts to lock everybody threw them so you see what is there. obviously you have the cost of government report. you have a summary of the cost of the fed report. top of your handout, speaker lists along with our many biographies for people that might want to know that. this is also the order speakers are going to be presenting. we have 14 ways to reduce government spending. this is largely derived from testimony that we submitted to the obama deficit commission earlier this year. these are concrete substantive ways we would propose to reduce the government spending substantially. we've got the ought to testimony itself right underneath that. incidentally by the way that testimony is on our website and it's been updated since then with several new ideas since we submitted it and that's going to be a continued a document we are

to update with good ideas as a way to combat the smith that there's not a very good substantial large practical ways to cut government spending. we are plenty of stating that over the course of the fall. we've got a one-page on the joint committee on the reduction of the nominees and to the expenditures known as the bird committee which is a very successful kind of antiappropriations committee from the middle part of the 20th century, which is incidentally one of the 14 good ideas. we have the quick stat on a transparency in the states and local government. we've got six months to go on till the largest tax hikes in history. this is every single increase that is going to be happening in january or has already happened. we have a one-page how the small business sector is affected by large low-income tax rate hikes scheduled to go into effect in january if congress and president, do nothing and that's all the handouts so for now i will turn it over to the person

who runs the center for fiscal accountability who will start us off. >> thank you. as ryan mentioned i am the executive to detroit center for fiscal accountability. i want to welcome all of you on behalf of cfa. of course in 2010 that falls today, august 19th as rye and mentioned that means working to injured 31 days to pay off the cost of state, local and federal spending and regulation. today you will hear from the report general who will discuss the findings and how we come to this late cost of government day and what that means for taxpayers. we are grateful of course to have a panel that will comment on specific policies have brought us to this point on the august 19th cost of government day and hopefully elaborate on ways forward to an earlier cost of government day in the future. before we begin i would like to

see three governor norquist presence of the tax reform commission and the rest of the staff for their support and editing and researching the cost of the government a report. i would also like to think panelists for taking their time to provide an always is on the various costs of government. while the cost of government day is a reminder of what exactly it is that is demanded of us to sustain above is an importer reminder in the starting point regarding the size and scope of the government. ..

>> good afternoon. at the cost of government day. happy as he can be when it is in august. so what is cost of government day? cost of government day is the day of the year that americans have been able to pay off the burden of government, both spending and regulatory and begin to earn for themselves. this year that day is august 19. that means for 231 days americans have toiled to pay off the burden of government. another way of putting this is the burden of government has consumed 63.41% of national income. so how is cost of government day calculated and what are its components? cost of government day is calculated by dividing the cost of government by national income and cost of government is broken up into two major components, the cost of spending and the

cost of regulation. those can be further broken down into two sections, state and local and federal so you can see here on this graph there is state and local spending, federal spending and state and local regulations and federal regulations. so, a little bit of history here. their earliest week calculated goes back to 1977 and here you can see the cost of government day for the last few years. so, why is it so sudden and so steep, why is cost of government day jumping so much. the simple answer is two things, spending and regulation. this year, everything has kept up. federal spending has kept a high level. regulations have increase. state and local have increase. a weakened economy is the dominator in the equation and so together these things have pushed us back a full month from two years ago.

government has grown very, very quickly in the past couple of years. so that is the basis of cost of government day and with that i will turn it back to you. >> thank you, then. now we will have the president of americans for tax reform grover norquist address the ballooning growth in government. as ryan mentioned you have at your seat 14 different solutions to stem some of the government growth and grover is going to cover some of those now. grover. >> today can be ready depressing if we just talk about love how expensive government has gotten in the direction. it is not only the 231 days it is that it is jump 30 plus days in the wrong direction. we are working in month more to pay for the cost of government than we were two or three years ago. and that is scary. certainly has done a lot of

damage to the economy. so what do you do about it? i have a series of proposals that americans for tax reform has put forward and i am enthusiastic because i see public support and popular support for a number of these ideas. the first is to bring back the byrd committee. this is a really good new bold idea. senator harry byrd conservative democrat from virginia in 1942 said that we need is a committee in congress like the appropriations committee and waits in mideast-- will means committee to his job is to reduce unnecessary expenditures and in order to help fund world war ii the government actually agree to this. it was a bicameral house-senate committee that came up with $30 billion in reductions that actually took place. do you ever wonder why we don't have the civilian conservation corps? this is the committee that did it in. the works projects administration why did that go away after, why did that not continue forever and ever since

it was put enduring the great depression? the answer is this committee said enough is enough and they got voted down. so, i would recommend that we reconstitute it. senator thune of south dakota has put in legislation to this effect as one of his proposals. i would simply add one additional idea to that, that we ought to have not a bicameral house and senate joint committee which is what they had in the past that a house committee and a senate committee because the house and the senate may over time have different ideas on how excited they are about reducing spending and they think either house should be able to put ideas forward and demand votes on them. again, these are real committees with real subpoena power. second, an idea that was put forward by mr. obama but not enacted and that is the requirement that any piece of legislation that spends money to be on line for five working days

so if the government has a bill that is going to cost money, it has to go on line for five days before the house can vote on it, on line for five days before the senate can vote on it and if they amended or change it or do anything to it, that it needs to go up for another five days before it is voted on again and finally by either house. the purpose of this is to make sure we don't ever again have thousand page bills. the only reason to have a thousand page piece of legislation is to hide unacceptable things in it. otherwise you pass 100 page bills and everybody would applaud wildly at their wonderful piece of legislation. a 1000 page bill is an advertisement we have hidden some bad stuff in here and you can't find it before you vote on it in 25 minutes so a five-day waiting period machen began the fact that read, obama and pelosi took their promise and threw it out the window tells you a lot about how important and powerful that is in terms of how it would save money. we would never have had the stimulus bill passed in its

present form if they had been up for five days and the american people could have gone through it, found the shards of glass. they would have never pass government-run health care if people had five days to look at it. they wouldn't have passed t.a.r.p. if people had five days to look at it. you can bet that a lot of it would have been taken out. third, the importance of putting all government expenditures on line. this is an idea started with governor perry of texas, all government contracts, all government expenditures on line so people can see all spending and see out can be done more effectively. fourth, two term limit appropriators. when congress created the new budget rules and 74, they said you can only be on the budget committee for six years. why? they thought they had put all the power that committee. it turns out maybe because they are term limited that is not

where the power is or they guess the structure on. appropriators people come to washington d.c. i am going to be a spender of other peoples people's money, it changes their out leg and if they have souls that corrupts their souls. it changes the nature of who they are. if they think their job is to spend money. doing it for six years our sense is that their souls will be less-- and people could spend sometimes as appropriators and sometimes as legislators. sitting congressman and senators should not be an allowed to named buildings or monuments after themselves. urging that we block grant all education funding and welfare funding to the states and allow 50 states to compete to provide those services at the best cost themselves. that way we have 50 experiments. if we would have done this with welfare years ago we would have avoided 60 years of damage to families and neighborhoods. seven, bringing in pay equity.

right now the american people have finally figured out and it has been twice on the front page of u.s. today which is like eating and jay leno's stand up routine. it remains everybody knows this now. twice on a my front page of u.s. day today has been a lead story saying government workers make more money than you do. the numbers on that of the federal workers, if you look at their pay and their benefits and attention that has been promised to them. their average $122,000 a year. state and local workers pay benefits and pensions added together, $80,000 a year. private sector, $61,000. if you had pay equity, if we paid people in the government what we paid people in the private sector we would save for taxpayers over $500 billion a year. those decimal places are in the right ways, $500 billion a year and over payments to government

workers compared to what people in the private sector get and as you know much of that is hidden in the pension and benefits. similar to that, number eight is requiring that all federal employees and we certainly urge this of state employees as well do a job that can be done by the private sector if the job is listed in the yellow pages somewhere. it can probably be done in the private sector, to compete those jobs out. simply by competing them, many times during the clinton and bush years the government workers would win the bid but they would do so by reorganizing themselves and saving taxpayers money, and simply having those bids has saved about a third of what we were paying to do those jobs. harriet's foundation has estimated bidding them all would save $27 billion each and every year. night, we should look to do what the governor of minnesota poll and he has done which is to have a policy of only replacing one

out of every two or three government employees to retire so you are not talking about massive layoffs that scare people or irritate the unions, but simply saying we are going going to use attrition to reduce the cost of government. repealing the davis-bacon act would eliminate the law which requires overpayment when we build roads. we could have a quarter or a third more or better or safer roads and bridges if we didn't have this act for the same amount of money. we should return to the freedom to farm act, which phased out farm subsidies which worked well before it was brought to an end. 12th, lead defense cuts on the table. one of the things that is very expensive during the reagan years was that he wanted to spend more on defense and when you want to spend another dollar to buy a dollars worth of missiles, first of all it cost $2 but it also requires to give new york another bus or another subway in order to get the-- or your missiles so all efforts

come with an expensive anchor attached to them and that is the domestic port aral spending that congressman and senators attached to what they they have usa must pass must pass piece of legislation. and therefore, efforts to demand we are going to do x., y or see on defense spending our commitments to spend more on port aral spending in other zones. and then lastly, not doing any more emergency spending. if it is an emergency have been on said-- offsetting expenditures from our existing programs. this was done well and effectively by a republican legislature against clinton's interest in spending money but it is a protection that they dropped when they had a republican president under bush and we should go back to that regardless of who runs the house or runs the senate. if it is an emergency to across-the-board reductions in other things to fund the emergency and if you have got

troops in another country it should not surprise you nor be an emergency if they are still there in june. so real emergencies have to be real surprises, so those are the lists of real-time reforms that would save hundreds of billions of dollars, and that is why we feel comfortable at americans for tax reform, the study done by the foundation but americans for tax reform as candidates to commit not to raise taxes. why would you consider raising taxes with the hundreds of billions of dollars of overspending that can be wrestled to the ground already on the table. thank you. >> thank you grover. we will not turn our attention to our panelists will discuss some of the findings in our case studies and explore some options forward, to call some of the costs and a lot of the policies we have been discussing today. first up will be james capretta, former associate director at the

white house office of management and budget. he will be discussing the costs associated with the health care bill that was passed this year and another focus for a steady. with that, james. >> thank you very much. ii am jim capretta fellow at the ethics and quality center. i'm also director of obamacare watch, so we are watching this new health law very carefully, and it is central to both the cost of government day this year as well as the cost of government day in 2015 and 2020 and 25-- 20205. this bill has lots of costs built into it that will materialize within the next decade. the administration is fond of pointing to the congressional budget office estimates of the new health law, as an

advertisement that they say is actually a fiscally responsible bill. now, a cbo of course is required to assess legislation as it is written including budget gimmicks. if they are written into law and implausible assumptions that they are written into law, all of that has put in there to create the appearance of balancu start with a cbo process as a starting point for examining what this bill will do you reveal an awful lot so let's do that. first, you can tell by just the very top topline numbers this is the largest expansion of government obligations in decades. in other words, as all the evidence that benjamin was putting forward and grover was talking about in terms of cost of government day going in the wrong direction, we already knew it was going in the wrong direction and in this past march they piled on the biggest expansion you are going to ever

see probably in our lifetime. it is a very massive expansion of government and here come a couple of the reasons why. first the medicaid program by 2019, will have 16 million more people enrolled in it, 16 million people just by the end of this decade. there is also a new entitlement program that will have an additional 19 million people in it. this is according to cbo, by 2019 so between these two expansions medicaid in this new entitlement program, that is an additional 35 million people on a new health entitlement program according to cbo. by the end of this decade. the cost of these to entitlement expansions will be by 2019 according to cbo, about $210 billion annually and it is expected to rise every year thereafter at a rate of at least 7%, actually of some of the gimmicks that word in the bill it would probably be rising at eight or 9% a year so we have

created another entitlement expansion that is going to grow on the future just as fast as medicare and medicaid have grown or the last 50 years which everyone now knows of courses burdening the current budget in one of the main reasons why the cost of government day keeps inching back. so, between these two expansiona very large entitlement expansion on top of what is already and the books, and let's face it this is very likely to be a lowball estimate, and one of the main reasons why is that cbo assumes a very low dumping mike you the right word of employer, employers dumping workers into the new subsidized insurance system. now they do that for a number of reasons that i don't actually agree with but they assume a very few single-digit millions of people end up migrating out of job base plans to get the coverage they been exchanges. holtz-eakin former director of cbo a few years ago, did another

study. he looked at it independently and through his analysis he is able to indicate that there is likely to be at least 35 million more people who will benefit from the new subsidies by going into the government-subsidized system. 35 million more people. so instead of having between medicaid in this new coverage expansion 35 million going and we are talking 70 million more americans going into this new entitlement according to doug's estimate. that would add another $500 billion just in the first 10 years to the cost of the bill. many millions more people will be taking advantage of the subsidies. on average ballpark, let's say it is another $50 billion each year so instead of $210 billion that cbo estimated we are talking $260 billion even there that is likely to be a lowball estimate of the fiscal consequences of this bill because as i indicated at the beginning it is filled with

gimmicks and sleight-of-hand. let's look at a couple of them. first they supposedly pay for all of this by cutting medicare payment rates to hospitals and other institutional providers of care. that is one of the main ways they say the bill is neutral. but of course, if you look at the details, what they have done is take the solo that they were actually below the medicaid program by the end of this decade according to the chief actuary of the medicare program who actually works for the president of the united states. he is looked at these numbers and said it is completely implausible that the political system is going to allow medicare's payment rate to get access to care to go below those of medicaid. medicaid rates are so low today, the network of providers willing to see medicaid patience is very very constrained. it is probably along the order of half of the positions that will actually willingly see a large number of medicaid patients and certainly the hospital network.

you can imagine of medicare rates go that low and all the medicare beneficiaries are also finding it difficult to find physicians who will see them, the political is not going to stand for that so price-cutting is not cost-cutting and health care per se and that is what this bill does and supposedly uses that to make these costs go down. lastly, on the gimmicks side i also can't not mention the class act. this is a long-term care insurance program put into the bill. this is a gimmick of all gimmicks. the only reason they put it in the bill was that it supposedly created $70 billion in additional revenue in the first 10 years of this program but of course that $70 billion is needed after the first 10 years to actually pay claims on long-term care insurance when they come do. they have double counted these premiums. take that out of the equation, again the bill's cost and the burdens go out. finally, let me just mention quickly that even if one worked

-- were to assume this this is neutral it is already clear it is a massive tax increase on the american people. i don't think people focus enough on this. this is a 700 lien dollar tax increase that just passed in march. $700 billion in new taxes. there is a .9% medicare increase in a 3.8% tax on investment income, and a 40% tax on high-cost insurance plans, new taxes on insurance premiums drug manufacturers a medical device companies allah bush will be passed onto consumers and of course don't forget the new mandate on individuals that don't buy insurance and employers that they don't provide qualified coverage. you put all that into the package and this is a gigantic new burden on the american economy that will destroy jobs. fortunately, the cost of government report indicated most of this doesn't happen until 2014 and so there were two

national election cycles between now and then. the final word here has not been uttered on what was passed in the self-love. the american people will get to have that as they usually do. thank you. >> thank you jim. moving on we are going to have veronique de rugy talk about regulations and the financial regulatory overhaul. he discussed obamacare, the huge entitlement that is going to overhaul the health care system supposedly. that is also going to contribute to the exploding cost of regulations and the economy, so veronique. >> hello. it is a pleasure to be here. my name is veronique de rugy. i want to claim the ad title of the most-- person in the country and it is because 10 years ago or 12 years ago almost they moved the cassette did not like

the government, and so i have been a little shellshocked the last two years. so i am here to talk to you about the financial regulation. we face-- there are a lot of things we know about this regulation. even though i can't he leave they pulled the same trick that they pulled out with health care when they figured out when they started implementing it and in fact it will take-- put an actual cost on that bill. i mean it is a 2000 page bill and there is a lot of things in there. some of the things we know of course is the power of the federal government to break banks. it creates a new consumption protection agency again showing that the federal government is the strong conviction that consumers are idiots at best. it restricts banks from doing what they should be doing, and

knowing what their business is and prevents them from using their own money and it creates a lot of other powers and rules. these are 300 rules we are talking about. it is quite gigantic. what it doesn't do of course and which is problematic is address the cause of the financial crisis. one of them being that they were already a lot of rules because while we have the feeling that there is this massive increase in regulation today, i mean we have to remember that it is not as if they want regulation. in the last eight years under bush, the direct cost of regulating the economy, that is like the one you can measure when you look at the money that is going to pay for agencies that actually regulate and enforce regulations, the cost just to regulate the financial institutions have drawn by 30%.

it is not nothing. it is important so this is on top of massive increases in regulation. it doesn't address too big to fail. it doesn't address freddie and fannie, which holds trillions of dollars on toxic assets. and so, one of the things that we know, economists are a little fuzzy about trying to be able to actually put a number, a firm number on the cost of a regulation. be no egg in how to the direct cost of passing these regulations and how much the agencies are spending but it is very hard, and we don't have very good numbers. we know it is just very, very big. however there are a bunch of economists that actually looked at these costs in the consequences of this new specific regulation. for instance there is a new study by the university of chicago daniel evans and josh wright-- wright and they find new job creation will drop by

3.2%. the ability for consumers to borrow will drop by 2.1%. then the institute of international finance has estimated that the reform will reduce gdp by 2.6% up to five years and lower unemployment by 4.6 million jobs. if you take cbo numbers alone, cbo's knowledge of this bill is likely within five years to reduce the number of jobs by 1.5 million. anyway, these are all the things that we no. but i want to actually talk about something that we don't really talk about and i think is one of the major problems that we have with this new regulation. whether it is health care, and this one in particular. it is the uncertainty that the bill raises in the economy. one of the things we know right now is that banks, taxpayers, families are not doing much in

the way of investing, consuming. they are pretty much saving their money and this is a problem. what we need for this economy to get back on its feet is for entrepreneurs and banks and the economy to start doing what they used to do, take risks in an environment that is very risky and uncertain. what we know is the federal reserve has shown there is $1.8 trillion of money, of capital capital sitting on the sidelines that banks would invest, that institutions won't invest and do anything with, and we know from the business roundtable that the reason is because of all the government intervention. and also this bill. more importantly, it is going to take a very long time for us to actually be able to get this uncertainty to go away and from banks and financial institutions to have a clear vision of what this will do to them.

how do we know that? well, it is roughly, first we are talking in the new creation of an agency, the consumer protection bureau, right? they still have hundreds of rules to write so right there, and we also know there is very little restriction on what this bill can do. this is a big deal. hundreds of-- which means firms are unlikely to do anything right now because they don't know what they are going to be hit with sin. that is just one. but we also know that they have, lawmakers have 120 something reports to write, so this is going to take a long time. sarbanes-oxley, a much smaller bill, took roughly two years and according to some estimates, it is going to take roughly 10 times that time to actually get some clarity and getting all these rules out.

so, this is pretty much 20 years of uncertainty to some degree for financial firms before they can actually know which type of environment they operate in. and this is a gigantic cost that no one talks about. thank you. >> thank you veronique. it is an important point to be made that is a look at cost casa government day it is relative to the size of the economy. all of these policies put forward costs more. they also cause the economy to constrict. that of course is going to lead us to a later cost of government day. another policy that has been contributing to cost of government day of course our energy policies. we have david kreutzer from the heritage foundation to talk to us about renewable standard.

>> thank you. free as the wind unfortunately does not apply to wind energy, and too many policymakers seem to think it does and when you see the voting very popular to have renewable electricity standards are renewable energy standards because they think well once we get these windmills put in or the solar panels it is all gravy from then on out and don't they last forever and so on. of course they don't. renewable electricity standards were part of every one of a proposed cap-and-trade bills. that is how popular they are. states, some of them have already enacted their own renewable electricity standards and eight renewable electricity standard requires a certain minimum fraction of the electricity provided by utilities to come from renewable sources. and the renewables are defined by degrees not to include nuclear, not to include conventional hydro which are the two major producers of non-co2

emitting and you would think close to if not renewable electricity, so we are primarily left with biomass, which provides some renewable electricity at reasonable cost in some places but not an expandable scalable way. the primary source, if we have a renewable standard that goes up to three, four, five, six, 15, 20 whatever percent the cheapest of the ones allowed by those making the definition is onshore wind. solar is also popular though and much smaller scale and much higher cost. their problems, the main problems with these renewable sources is first of all the technology just isn't there yet and they are very expensive. another problem is they are not reliable. every kilowatt of electricity going into the grid has to be matched by a kilowatt coming out instantaneously. there is no petty cash fund for

electricity. and the grid operators have a constant battle balancing the input and the output. and they have very fancy models, making predictions that look at the weather, typical usage and afternoons versus mornings and so on and planning which source of electricity they are going to have on line at various times during the day. they cannot count on wind and solar because when the only produces electricity when the wind is blowing and solar when the sun is shining. the eia, energy information administration, has made some projections of costs for the year 2016 for various types of solar, that is onshore which is the cheaper. offshores the more expensive. solar thermal which is the cheaper of the solar surface and solar loadable tick which is more expensive by a lot. but they didn't make any adjustment for the reliability. everybody you talk to knows you have to back up these two

sources, wind and solar, with natural gas combustion turbine which is the most expensive of the natural gas. it is a jet engine. you can turn it up and you can turn it down so 10 people turn on their toasters double the storage drop you need to turn on something quickly you don't start using the coal. you have got to turn on one of those jet engines and that is relatively expensive. also the best sources for solar power are in the southwest. the best sources for wind power are in the corridor running from the dakotas to texas and that is not where people live for the most part. so the transmission costs will also be significantly higher for these renewables than for conventional sources. at heritage we went ahead and adjust to the energy information administration numbers for those additional costs and here is what we get. the typical measure would be megawatt hour of electricity. for onshore wind it is $177 per

megawatt hour. for coal, it is $78 per megawatt hour. for offshore wind it is 218 dollars per megawatt hour versus coal, 78. for solar cells it is $423 per megawatt hour versus the 78 for coal. and at the current prices are the projected prices of natural gas being more efficient natural gas combined cycle production, it is very close to the coal. so if you look at the conventional natural gas and coal right now it looks like they are much much cheaper than the renewables are going to be. now how does this play out in terms of a family of four monthly energy bill? it take to get all of their electricity from coal, the family of four average electricity bill per month would be $189. if they had to get it all from onshore wind, which would be to

logically impossible because of the reliability part and just using the costs we have here, it would be $339 per month. from $189 to 339. the solar cells which we have lots of politicians getting their pictures taken next to solar cell plans. i feel like screaming stop, stop. we have heritage are developing the solar index to show which states are least likely to get anything from it. solar cells if you get all your electricity from solar cells would be $718 a month versus 189 for coal. so, that is the problem with renewables. it is just too expensive. what happens when it is a half a percent. hardly anybody notices because you get 99.5% from the pretty cheap stuff. you are averaging the last% two or three times as expensive, get spread out so you don't see much of an impact on the bill. people don't kick back and they don't press back.

when it starts to go to five, 10, 15% you are going to see dramatic increases, pretty dramatic, 10 to 15% for residential and significant ones for the commercial. in addition to technological problems. we have modeled a renewable energy standard that starts at 3% at 2012 as a 1.5% each year until 2035 and we see unemployment jumps by hundreds of thousands of jobs in the first two years. millions of jobs ultimately. the gross domestic product because you have made this and put so much more expensive is hundreds of billions of dollars per year. on a family of four bases gdp drops by $2400 on the average year between 2012 and 2035. and when you make the economy less efficient government revenues go down, government expenditures go up and the national debt rises and on a family of four bases by 2035 there would be an additional $10,000 in national debt.

i look forward to your questions later. >> thank you david. next we have benson vernuccio. we talked about how the exploding cost of our public workforce is putting more pressure than ever before and taxpayers. he is going to talk about the exploding cost of state pension funds. >> thank you maddie and thank you for having me. this is the fun topic. this is probably the most significant problem facing the state today. you have states like new york, new jersey, california, illinois that are in crisis mode over their state personnel public pension costs. estimates of pension fund underfunding on the state level can reach up to $3 trillion today. in california alone, the public pension funds are