my name me -- and the chair of the committee -- i am the chair of the standing committee on law and national security. my name is harvey rishikof. we r celebrated our 60th anniversary -- are celebrating our 50th and a retreat in 2012. we have begun to hold luncheons. -- our 50th anniversary in 2012. we have a number of the events coming up. i want to do some business. we have the 20th annual review of the national field of security law conference. we have the opening panel which includes people from the

national security agency. we a people who will discuss cyber security -- we have people who will discuss cyber security. we will discuss the unmanned aerial systems, national security, and adequate challenges for national security lawyers. -- and ethical challenges for national security and lawyers. senator lindsey graham will also be attending as one of our speakers. we have an invitation extended to dana priest to talk about the issue of first amendment and national security. we also will have our traditional breakfast on november 18. we will have the senior associate deputy general counsel for international affairs attending. he will discuss, we hope, the pending publications of the famous documents.

we're really here to listen to dick clarke. we have a series of books that he has written. he has written five books in the last couple of years. some of them fiction, which i highly recommend to you. some nonfiction. the book issue is something that we have in our community, that we have been committed to. we have another author here with us from dhs. we have the author of a book on the borders and the concept of securing human mobility. we have the authors of a book on homeland security, something that our committee has been very supportive of over the years. in the way, dixon book --

dick's book, "cyber war -- the next threat to national security and what to do about it" -- also co-authored with robert knake. robert has also done something on the council on foreign relations. it is on the website. as you can see, our committee has been dedicated to making public and bringing the perspective of the legal community to these pressing issues that we have facing us in the 21st century. dick clarke is quite literally an internationally-recognized expert on homeland security, national security, server security, and counter-terrorism. -- cyber security, and counter- terrorism. he give thoughtful commentary. he attended and taught at

harvard. he has served the last three presidents as a senior white house adviser. over the course of an unprecedented 11 years of white house service, he has held numerous titles including special assistant to president for global affairs, special advisor on cyber security. he has had a very distinguished career prior to those particular positions. he was at the pentagon, and the intelligence community, and at the state department. he served as deputy assistant at stake for intelligence. -- deputy assistant of state for intelligence. he is in the private sector. he is a partner in a consulting firm where he is advises clients on a range of issues. i first met him during the clinton administration. dick was at the national security council. i was at the fbi. the department of justice and

fbi are hard organizations to crack. there was an amount of respect for dick and the service that he had performed at the national security council, trying to focus the united states government on the critical terrorism issues and the emergence of cyber issues. he has been at it for very long time. regardless of how one feels about it and the issues that surround this, it is fair to say he is someone who has devoted a substantial part of his life to service of the public. he is always labored in a manner which he thought he was doing the best things he could to ensure the stability of the republic and the security of the public. i would like to have war round of applause for dick. we should -- i would like to have a warm round of applause for dick. we should thank him for joining

us today. i look forward to this discussion. [applause] >> thank you very much. i thought i had stopped going to meetings on targeted killing, but i am glad to know there are still such thing. as you know, a week from tomorrow, stephen colbert's rally to "keep fear alive" will be a few blocks from here. as a warm-up to that, i thought i would talk to about cyber war. there are three different phenomena here. the risk of being a little bit pedantic, it helps to define terms. the three phenomena are cyber crime, cyber espionage, and cyber war. they are related, but distinct. they are all problems we have not solved. we have not come close to

solving. two weeks ago, the fbi announced arrest of 20 people, simultaneously, here in the united states and united kingdom, who were cyber crime mules. what does that mean? they were, largely, russian students here in the united states who had been asked by organized criminals back in russia to open bank accounts. large amounts of money were dropped into those bank accounts. their only obligation was to transfer that money out of their bank accounts in the united states to offshore bank accounts. they were all arrested. the people who actually did the cyber crime and generated the money to go into those bank accounts were not. they almost never are. cyber crime is now a

multibillion-dollar enterprise. income coming in from cyber crime parallels and will soon probably eclipse the amount of money that comes in from narcotic crime cartels. billions of dollars. for the most part, that cyber crime is crime against banks, credit card companies, and when you are affected by it, for the most part, your bank or your credit card company will make you whole. we do not have a big outcry in this country about cyber crime, because, for the most part, although identity that can be time consuming for you as an individual to fix, it does not cost you money. at least you do not think it does. a cost you money if you are a stockholder in a bank -- it costs you money if you are a stockholder in a bank or if you consider your banking fees, because banks pass on the costs

of cyber crime. for the most part, sophisticated cyber crime, which is getting so sophisticated that cyber criminals are hiring engineers and hackers so that they can go into source code and computer chips of things that are being manufactured, so that when those things are sold, the cyber criminals will be able to get back in. when you buy a computer, there is some risk. when you buy a router or a server, there is some risk that cyber criminals have already put a back door in. but the cyber criminals tend not to be in the united states. only the mules are. they tend not to be in the united kingdom. attended the in places like belarus, moldova -- they tend to be in places like belarus, moldova, and russia.

when the fbi get court orders and can trace the hack back to servers in moscow or minsk, they can then ask the state department to issue letters so that we can get cooperation from law enforcement officials in those countries. then guess what happens? nothing. nothing happens. we have, in effect, cyber crime sanctuary countries. now, why would nice people like the russians and others create side for centuries -- cyber sanctuaries? cynical people would think that law enforcement officials are on the take in those countries. they are getting part of the billions of dollars from the cyber crime activities. even more cynical people would point about that, from time to time, those governments might ask the summer criminals --

cyber criminals who they know to do them favors. i'm reminded of a scene in the "godfather" movie with marlon brando. there is a supplicant. he says, someday i will ask you for a favor. well, i think that happens with cyber crime. you are allowed to do your cyber crime from russia or belarus or ukraine, as long as you do not attack in your own country. then, when the russian government wants to do a cyber war against estonia, as it did in 2007, or a cyber war against the nation of georgia, as it did in 2008, well, you know, those attacks on the infrastructure in georgia and estonia that crippled the banking system, the telecommunications systems --

they were not done by the government of russia. no. the russian government says they were done by patriotic activists. the russian government would not prosecute. it is convenient for some of these governments to have the people around to do their little dirty work for them in cyberspace. we have had problems similar to this before, where there were countries that are not living up to international standards. we dealt with it. one that comes to mind is money laundering. we had sanctuaries for money laundering. narcotics, terrorism. nations got together and created the financial action task force. the established la -- they established laws, model laws, and asked for them to be in

force. islands in the pacific and caribbean did not, and they were told, if you do not pass those and enforce those laws and you continue to be money laundering sanctuaries, the united states, u.k., germany, france, japan will no longer convert your currency. i had the pleasure of calling the prime minister of one of those little caribbean countries and delivering that message. it was kind of fun. it took about two weeks to get the parliament into session and pass them all along. we could be doing things like this with regard to cyber crime sanctuaries, but we are not. we could have sanctions against countries that refuse to cooperate in prosecution of cyber crime. we could limit their access to the rest of cyberspace. we could scan all of the

message traffic leaving their countries. we could have an international system to do that. they could pay a price. but right now, we are paying the price. the government has been unable to get its mind around the problem of cyber crime and thinks it is something that we need to send assistant u.s. attorneys off to worry about in 90 different jurisdictions. send fbi agents into the companies and put crime scene tape around their computers. that is the way we are addressing it now. we are obviously not seriously addressing it. related to cyber crime, cyber espionage. some of the same people who are doing cyber crime are doing cyber espionage. they are -- there are others doing it as well. what is cyber espionage?

primarily, it is espionage -- the second-oldest profession in the world. cyber espionage is importantly different from regular espionage. in the old espionage, if you imagine you were the kgb station chief, the resident on massachusetts avenue, and you had the job of recruiting some of the -- somebody in the cia and the fbi to be a russian -- a soviet spy, that is a really hard thing to do. if you pick the wrong fbi agent to recruit, he would arrest you. if you pick the wrong cia agent to recruit, he would turn you in. but yet, they succeeded in getting robert hansen of the fbi and older james at cia and others -- alder james at cia and others. those people were traitors to their country. they took pieces of paper, in their suit jackets, their

briefcases, out of cia and fbi headquarters. it went a little parks in fairfax county, dunkel's -- they went to little parks in fairfax county, dug holes in the ground, and eventually those pieces of paper would get into moscow where they would be analyzed. there was a lot of risk and a lot of work for very little reward. cyber espionage is different because there is very little risk. you sit back in moscow or beijing or wherever. instead of having your agent break into a file cabinet, you have your hacker break into a server. and you do not get a few pieces of paper. you get terabytes of information. i see looks of confusion about some of those things. let's say you get library of

congress' worth of pieces of paper. you can measure how many l ibraries went out the door. it is not just government sites being attacked. it is not just classified information that is being stolen. it is information from companies, information about intellectual property, chemical, pharmaceutical foremast -- formulas, by a tech information, design of aircraft -- biotech information, designs of new aircraft. corporate information -- what is the new product? when is it coming out? how much is it going to cost? corporate information -- what are the other oil companies going to bid to get that big an iraqi oil concession? you might have noticed that two

weeks before the auction on the last iraqi oil concession, most of the major oil companies around the world were hacked, except for the chinese oil company that won the bid. it happens every day. cyber crime happens every day. cyber espionage happens every day. the secret network at the pentagon has been hacked. the secretary of defense's personal computer as an act. the chancellor of germany's personal computer has been hacked to the head of the british security service sent a letter to w o years ago to the ceos of the 300 -- two years ago to the ceos of the 300 largest corporations and the u.k. and said, you must assume that your network has been successfully attacked and your intellectual property has been taken by the government of china. i suggested to janet napolitano that perhaps she would like to write that letter to a few people.

google, you may recall, admitted that it had been hacked by a chinese entity and that its source code was compromised. what we now know is that google was right when it said in its press release, we are different from other companies because we are telling you we were packed. what we now know is that during that one hacking campaign, 3000 american companies or successfully hacked. -- were successfully hacked. like the head of the british security service, we need to say to people, if you have anything of value, at any intellectual property, however fleeting in value, if you have formulas designed -- anything of value, it can be taken. it has been taken. it is already gone. this is despite the fact that we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on anti virus software and on things called fire walls

intrusion prevention and detection systems. none of that stuff is successfully stopping these penetrations. that is cyber espionage. what is the difference then between cyber espionage and cyber war? a few keystrokes. if you have penetrated a network in order to collect information, you can then take the next step of engaging in destruction, disruption, or damage. cyber war is when a nation state engages in unauthorized penetration of the network in order to do disruption, destruction, or damage. a lot of people still think about cyber war in terms of ones and zeroes attacking each other on some fourth dimension. cyber war is actually something that happens in the real world.

if you do not believe me, ask the people who are running the iranian system. somebody created a very targeted cyber-guided missile and launched it against the iranian centrifuges. stuxnet is what the media calls it. it involves encryption. , which aretacks o very valuable things inside for war. they have never seen the light of day before. this attack used not one, but four. its toll certificates from various sites so that it looked authentic -- it stole certificate from various sites so that it looked authentic. it attacked one kind of software. type of system that

runs electric systems. and it did, well, something once it got into those networks. i note that the international atomic energy agency observers say that the centrifuges had been operating at a very slow rate ever since stuxnet got into the wild. it cost centrifuges to slow -- caused centrifuges to slow down and malfunction. somebody did that. the united states government admits that it, experimentally, attacked an electric power grid in idaho. experimentally, they got into the control system for the grid. experimentally, they got into the control for a particular

generator and caused that generator to malfunction to the point where it was about to explode before the experiment was stopped. a couple of years ago, i was watching tv and there was an ad that came on. it was a black screen, white words. it said, sometimes a power blackout is just a power blackout. sometimes it is cyber war. i am digging, who is sponsoring this? -- thinking, who is sponsoring this? then the seal of the united states air force. -- force appeared. there is a 24th air force which has no pilots or missiles. it is there to fight in cyberspace. united states navy has created a fifth fleet -- has created a new

fleet. the fifth, 6, and seven fleets are out in the world. attend fleet has been created -- the tenth fleet has been created. it has no ships. its job is to fight in cyberspace. between 20 and 30 nations have created military and intelligence organizations to fight in cyberspace. cyber war israel -- is real and it can cause things to happen. it can cause generators to explode. it can cause trains to the rail. i asked the head of the union rail if he relied much on computers and he said, i am not at train company, but a computer company. remember when the red line derailed last year, the metro response to that was to have the conductor start driving the train. up until then, the computers had

been driving the trains. the derailment occurred because one of the computers malfunctioned, one of the switches on the tracks. the cyber war plans that are being drawn up by many nations around the world cause a tax or could cause a tax that would explode generators -- cause a ttacks or could cause attacks that would explode generators, cause pipelines to explode, or cause mass confusion in financial systems. the united states government has drawn a red line around attacking financial systems. but a demonstration of how computer dependent our financial system is, the other day, actually a year ago by now -- when the stock market went a little funny one afternoon, and

some stocks that had very little intrinsic value were trading -- one company had a net value of $1 trillion by the time the hour was over. other companies that had obvious value were trading at about one penny per share. something went a little funny. the s.e.c.'s into to that was, -- answer to that was, oops, let's just pretend that never happened. let's set of values back to before that began. investigation -- the investigation think the answer is that one of the many commuters -- computers engaged in automated trading made some trading action that generated that mistake. well, what else could you do to the stock market if you were malicious? i am not saying cyber war is

about to happen, although there are little examples of that happening with some regularity. nation states do not go out and attack each other just because they have a new weapon, thankfully. you get a new sports car, you might go out and break along, see how fast you can go. nations usually do not do that. we have nine nations with nuclear weapons and no one has used them in anger since 1945. in the future, when you do have political circumstance, economic circumstance where a nation state decides it wants to conduct wartime activities, it has the option now of conducting wartime activities in cyberspace, a standalone cyber attack, or augmenting kinetic war with cyber war. as you look out on the horizon and ask yourself when might that happen to the united states,

what scenario could develop, think about what would happen if israel bombed the iranians or if the united states and forced the last u.n. security council resolution that allows for the inspection of iranian-bound ships on the high seas. somehow, that activity generates a situation where we are dropping iron on iran. iran would presumably want to do something back here in the united states. in the past, for them to attack in the united states, they would have to call on hezbollah or other extremists to do a terrorist attack. now, in the age of cyberspace, an iranian cyber force could attack in the united states without ever leaving tehran or wherever they are. they could cause the kind of disruption that i have just

spoken about. causing a key element of our infrastructure to explode and malfunction. and it is as though our policy -- it is as though we were a football team that believe you only needed offensive squads -- an offensive squad. think about the redskins, if they only had an offensive squad. that is a bad example. i mean a team with the really good offensive squad. think about the team with the best league -- think about the team in the league with the best offensive squad showing up one day without a defensive line. that is kind of the united states. we have got a really good offensive capability in cyberspace, but we do not have the ability to defend this country. it is the policy of this

government that the new cyber command is essentially military. my friends and the department of homeland security proposed to defend the rest of the government -- my friends in the department of homeland security are supposed to defend the rest of the government. somehow, they are supposed to provide for the rest of us. essentially, the electric power grid, railroads, banks, pipelines -- all of the things that could be attacked in war are on their own. the government's policy, when you boil it down, says you guys should really defend yourselves. it is a bit like the 1960's. we said to the president of u.s. steel, the russians have a lot of bombers. in the case of war, they might comment on your steel plant. you ought to go out and buy some fighter planes.

some air defense missiles to protect yourself. that is what you're saying. that is our policy. all of you electric power companies, all of you chemical companies, all of you refineries, all of you trade companies -- you have to do more on cyber security. we might give you some advice. that is our policy. and in terms of cyber war, what is our national strategy for fighting cyber war? what are the rules of cyber war? we do not have any, as far as i can tell. we do not have a national strategy. the pentagon implies that they have one. as far as i can tell, they do not. it is akin to the early 1960's and the arena of strategic nuclear strategy.

when the administration came into office and asked, what is our strategic nuclear strategy, they were a bit horrified to find out that our strategic nuclear strategy at the time was to go first. it was called launched on strategic warning, go first. our strategy was to launch all of our weapons against all of the targets in the soviet union, china, poland, czechoslovakia, and romania. the administration said, we need a more refined strategy than that. from what i can tell, our policy on cyber war strategy is very similar to the curtis lemay strategy foreign strategic nuclear war. -- strategy for strategic nuclear war. we need a strategy. it needs to be discussed publicly the way they discussed strategic nuclear war.

we need academic participation . we need to know the legal implications of cyber war. are they the same as the laws of our conflict? are there things that are off- limits? how can you be sure when you launch a cyber war that it will only hit the target? i talked a little while ago about stuxnet which seems to have been targeted on those centrifuges, but also caused a communications satellite to stop working. there are issues of collateral damage. finally, let me suggest that, when we think about cyber war, we need to think about cyber arms control. i know all of you who have done arms control will immediately say, there is a verification problem. many you -- many of you said that about biological arms control and chemical arms control, strategic nuclear arms control, conventional arms

control. those were hard problems too. but those were hard problems that we got through. it took 15 years to novitiate conventional arms control -- negotiate conventional arms control in europe, but we got the agreement, just-in-time for the warsaw pact to collapse, but nonetheless, we got the agreement. it takes a long time. you begin with baby steps and confidence-building measures. we're not doing any of that with regard to cyber war. it may not be the case that cyber war is amenable to arms control, but we will never know until we try to find out. right now, the administration is not seriously trying to find out. so, with all of that, i hope i have adequately prepared you for the "keep fear alive" rally a week from tomorrow. [laughter]

thanks very much. [applause] >> dick has graciously agreed to take some questions. please wait for the microphone. you have to project your questions. >> you tell me when the last question comes. >> sir? >> i will wait for the microphone. there are some in the military, probably a small minority, who think there should be a fifth service army-navy-marine corps- air force-sidcyber. how do you feel about that? >> in the research for doing the book, i did find there was a two-star air force general who had said before a congressional committee, in the past, we

demanded physical fitness standards of our people. when i think about what we need now, he said, i do not care if a person can run 5 miles with a pack on their back as long as they can take down and electric power grid. that suggests to me that the military is at least beginning to adapt to the needs of cyber war. i think it may be awhile before they create their own service. sir? >> with regard to stuxnet, is there anything that can be learned by the aftereffects, in terms of the iranian response or capabilities? what does that tell us about the risks of an offensive strategy, whether it is ours, israel's, whoever's? >> i think there are lessons to be learned. the first is that a very sophisticated, complex weapon

could be made. it has obviously been made by nation states and has been used. so, while we were writing the book, a lot of this sounded theoretical. when we look for examples of unclassified natures, we did not have the perfect one about -- that stuxnet is. it makes the case that nation states are involved in this and they're doing very sophisticated attacks. stuxnet also demonstrates that there are problems with collateral damage. this was meant to be a very targeted attack. if you look at the code, if you de-compile the attack, as people have, there are all sorts of things built into the attack so that it does not spread. it is almost as though the code for the attack was reviewed by a

legal committee. [laughter] that was supposed to get a reaction. >> [inaudible] >> you talked about the challenges inherent in trying to reach any kind of treaty with regard to cyber war. i wonder if an additional challenge is not that there are still significant segments of the government that thing that we can and must dominate cyberspace, yet it seems hard to imagine that any other country is going to enter into a treaty that locks in our suppose the dominance of cyberspace. >> i am glad you used the word "dominant." if you read through the unclassified and i suspect a classified military documents on cyber war, this word keeps recurring. what is our objective?

dominance of the domain. dominance of cyberspace. the navy renamed their organization the cyber-dominance office. i will skip the obvious jokes. the united states needs, if it is going to enter into international agreements to mitigate the damage that can be done by cyber war, to give up some options. international agreements, particularly to arms control agreements, you have to give. you have to accept limits on yourself. if our policy is, in fact, what the navy and others keep saying about dominance, then we will not get an arms control agreement. this is why i think this is an issue for the president and the national security council. the military can make a case that should -- they should be

unfettered to achieve dominance, if you thought that could actually be achieved. i doubt that it can be. the fact that we are so weak ourselves, so unable to defend ourselves, really calls into question the use of the word. if the united states had come in some attack, -- had in a cyber attack done something in another country, and they turned out the lights in washington and stopped the natural gas from the pipelines and derailed our trains -- who has dominated whom there? >> how would you structure and where would you begin building a defense for the u.s. private sector? >> that is a good question. i used to think that to defend the private sector you had to defend everything.

in fact, when we had a national strategy back in the clinton administration, the early-bush administration, a national strategy for cyber security, it called for everything to be defended. you have to be much more selective to get something done. you have to concentrate on a few things. i would concentrate on securing the power grid, on which so much else depends. i would look at the five or six internet service providers that are the backbone isp's. i would, through regulation, nasty word in washington, required those five or six iskbone isp's to filter what moving across cyberspace and look for packets which had known signatures of a tax -- attacks.

it is a doable technology. we could be doing it today. some of them are doing it today, but they did not have the benefit of all of the attack signatures that the government has. if the fcc were allowed to regulate the internet, it would be simple to allow that agreement between the isp's and the government filtering attacks. >> my question was simply whether or not your book proposes the elements of a plan for the -- plan or the general contents of a plan and is not just what you think we should do. >> it has elements of a defensive strategy and it has elements of the initial steps in arms control. the defensive strategy builds around, and i just said, the

electric power grid -- securing the electric power grid, which i think can be done. right now, the federal electric regulatory commission has issued rules for securing the power grid, but it is not capable of auditing to know whether those rules are being implemented. doing the filtering for attacks on the backbone, that is the beginning of a defensive strategy. there are a whole series of small this -- small suggestions or the beginnings of arms control. >> i will read your book. >> about two years ago, we had a session attended by a cyber expert from the pentagon and from goldman sachs. a pentagon gentleman said that the record had been 6 million attempts at intrusion in a single day. goldman sachs' representative

said it had reached about 1 million. is there any way of figuring out what might have been successful at of that? airthat ad run by the n force could say something along those lines. if your definition of an attack is a ping by computer, that is not my definition. when we use the word attack in that context, it loses its meaning. the number of attendees, i -- the number of attempts has no correlation with the number of successes. >> do you have any idea how this could move from conventional war to cyber war? eminence to the threat, target distinction and proportionality

-- imminence to the threat, target distinction and proportionality. >> if there is on a there attacks you, -- if there is a cyber attack on you, why should you be limited to a cyber attack in return? it seems to me that you should not be. you would want to be able to respond to an ethically -- kinetically. once you have done that, i do not know where proportionality goes. it is very hard for me to make those distinctions. we do have laws that say we are not supposed to attack certain kinds of facilities, civilian facilities in general, specifically hospitals and others. that is fine, if you think you can control the attack. if you take out the power grid, it will knock off the electricity going to hospitals. if you're going to try to not do that, i do not know how you take

down the power grid. if you leave the power grid up with the line to the hospital -- there are serious questions about how the treaties we have already signed have meaning in cyber war. people are only beginning to think about that. >> [inaudible] i just came from the discussion in which the legal adviser, one of our allies, describing their national security strategy statement, including cyber issues and outlined by challenges facing the national community. he mentioned the growing use of the electromagnetic field. is that the same thing? >> no, no. there is a whole group of people

who think there are electromagnetic weapons out there and that we need to worry seriously about those. i think they somewhat exaggerate. i think the effects however can be the same, which is to wipe out computer memory. the thing that we really have not all internalized yet, particularly people our age have not internalized yet, is that everything in our society depends upon computers. airplanes now are just a bunch of software. trains. everything we do all day long, the electric power, the water we get -- everything is dependent upon a computer-controlled network. even though people may tell you that these computer-controlled networks are not connected to the internet or are not accessible to attackers, any

time any cyber war unit or even sophisticated hacker has tried to get into these networks, they have. the pentagon's secret network, supposedly airgapped, has been penetrated, according to the pentagon. the control systems for the power distribution grid, which they say is separate from the internet, people have penetrated by moving from the internet to the corporate internet -- intranet and then to the gird. we have -- to the grid. we have to come to grips with the fact that everything we do all day long is computer- dependent. is not just cyber criminals who are taking advantage of that -- it is not just cyber criminals or cyber spies who were taking

the advantage of that. it is beginning to the who are taking advantage of that. the defense's we have deployed do not work. until the country comes to understand that, we will continue to be under attack. >> thank you so much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> this is cyber awareness month. i think dick is doing his part to make us aware. he has raised a number of issues that will give us a lot to think about. again, please go to our website www.aba.org. this will be up on the web as will the application process for our annual convention. we do not want you to go away empty-handed because we know how

much alike attorneys. we're giving the -- how much you like attorneys. we're giving you this book on law and i know you will cherished this for a long time. >> thank you so much. [applause]

>> in his weekly address, president obama discusses the financial regulation law he signed earlier this year. he discusses the administration's efforts to prevent future economic crises. then, senate republican policy committee chairman john thune offers his party's view of the democratic-controlled congress, health care and financial reform law, and the republicans' legislative agenda after the midterm elections. >> over the past two years, we've won a number of battles to defend the interests of the middle class. one of the most important victories we achieved was the passage of wall street reform. this was a bill designed to rein in the secret deals and reckless gambling that nearly brought down the financial system. it set new rules so that taxpayers would never again be on the hook for a bailout if a big financial company went under. and reform included the strongest consumer protections in history -- to put an end to a lot of the hidden fees, deceptive mortgages, and other

abusive practices used to tilt the tables against ordinary people in their financial dealings. it was a tough fight. the special interests poured millions into a lobbying campaign to prevent us from reforming the system, a system that worked a lot better for them than for middle class families. some in the financial industry were eager to protect a status quo that basically allowed them to play by their own rules. and these interests held common cause with republican leaders in washington who were looking to score a political victory in an election year. but their efforts failed. and we succeeded in passing reform in the hopes of ensuring that we never again face a crisis like the one we've been through -- a crisis that unleashed an economic downturn as deep as any since the great depression. even today, we are still digging out of the damage it unleashed on the economy. millions of people are still out of work. millions of families are still hurting. we're also seeing the reverberations of this crisis with the rise in foreclosures.

and recently, we've seen problems in foreclosure proceedings -- mistakes that have led to disruptions in the housing markets. this is only one more piece of evidence as to why wall street reform is so necessary. in fact, as part of reform, a new consumer watchdog is now standing up. it will have just one job: looking out for ordinary consumers in the financial system. and this watchdog will have the authority to guard against unfair practices in mortgage transactions and foreclosures. yet despite the importance of this law -- and despite the terrible economic dislocation caused by the failures in our financial system under the old rules -- top republicans in congress are now beating the drum to repeal all of these reforms and consumer protections. recently, one of the republican leaders in the senate said that if republicans take charge of congress, repeal would be one of the first orders of business. and he joins the top republican

in the house who actually called for the law to be repealed even before it passed. i think that would be a terrible mistake. our economy depends on a financial system in which everyone competes on a level playing field, and everyone is held to the same rules -- whether you're a big bank, a small business owner, or a family looking to buy a house or open a credit card. and as we saw, without sound oversight and common-sense protections for consumers, the whole economy is put in jeopardy. that doesn't serve main street. that doesn't serve wall street. that doesn't serve anyone. and that's why i think it's so important that we not take this country backward -- that we don't go back to the broken system we had before. we've got to keep moving forward. thanks. >> hello, i'm senator john thune of south dakota. as you've probably noticed, we have an election coming up in a little over a week. president obama has been running around the country trying to reelect democrat members of congress. but if the conversations i've

had with voters are any indication, the president should spend less time campaigning to save the jobs of democrats in congress, and more time trying to create jobs for the american people. all across south dakota and the country, i've heard from people who aren't fooled by president obama's well-written speeches. they have serious concerns about our economy, and they are all too familiar with the administration's failed policies. one of the democrats' main responsibilities over the past two years was to improve the economy. instead, they decided to try an experiment to grow government, raise taxes, and take over health care. after two years, the american people are left asking, why have the democrats' priorities been so different from ours? the obama experiment has failed. when the president and his democrat allies in congress pushed through their $814 billion stimulus bill, they promised it would create millions of jobs, and keep unemployment under 8%. but their approach didn't work, and they failed to deliver on

their promises. unemployment has climbed to nearly 10%. rather than create jobs, the democrats expanded government, and now the american people are stuck with another bill for nearly a trillion dollars. when the president was introducing his big government health care plan, he promised to reduce every family's health insurance premiums by as much as $2,500. but premiums keep going up. families in some states are seeing increases in the double digits. here again, democrats promised but didn't deliver, and the american people are stuck with rising health care costs and another tab, this one for $2.5 trillion. the democrats have controlled the white house and both chambers of congress for nearly two years, and have proven that more government is not the answer. this year they were not even capable of passing a budget. instead, they spent their time passing more and more burdensome regulations, like their so-called financial reform bill that failed to address the

main cause of our economic mess. despite a dangerously high national debt that is closing in on $14 trillion, the president wants to spend even more money on these kinds of failed policies. and he appears intent on raising taxes to do it. giving democrats more opportunities to manage the economy and spend taxpayer dollars will not give us the economic growth that we need. it will only lead to more growth of government bureaucracy, and to national bankruptcy. there is a reason unemployment is stuck near 10%. there is a reason jobs are not being created. there is a reason too many americans who want a job can't find one. there is a reason the dollar is weak and our economy is not growing as it should. the reason is that president obama and congressional democrats have led this country in the wrong direction. government cannot be openly hostile to american businesses, and expect them to grow and create jobs. government cannot raise taxes during tough economic times, and expect small businesses to

grow and create jobs. a new direction is needed. the president likes to say that when you want to drive forward you put your car in d, and when you want to go in reverse you put it in r. it's a clever line, but when you're speeding toward a cliff, you don't want to keep the car in drive. republicans want to reverse the dangerous course the democrats have us on. republicans want to reverse democrats' plan to raise taxes on the 750,000 small businesses in this country that employ 25% of all workers. so employers have more money to create new jobs. republicans support policies that will grow the economy, not the government. republicans want to repeal the flawed health care law that has been rejected by the american public, and replace it with a new plan that actually reduces costs. we want to reverse the uncertainty in the marketplace so that small businesses have the confidence to grow and invest and create jobs. and republicans want to reverse this nonsense of government

bailouts and takeovers of private businesses. republicans have proposed real, concrete solutions to the challenges we face as a country. we have learned the lessons not only of what hasn't worked over the past two years, but what didn't work the last time republicans controlled congress. republicans are listening to the frustration being expressed by americans all across this country, and we are determined to take this country in the right direction. the choice could not be more clear. democrats are driving more of the same failed policies they have pushed for the past two years. republicans are proposing to take this country in a different direction. so, i would like to suggest a simple question people should ask themselves to help cut through all the talk, are you better off today than you were two years ago? i'm senator john thune. thank you for listening. >> we take you live to the final colorado senate debate where incumbent democratic senator incumbent democratic senator michael