>> ♪ people don't know what i'm about they haven't seen me when it looks like sometimes i'm down i'm lonely with people all around

pieces of me like every moment -- like every woman i know i'm complicated fo sho but when i love i love til there's no love no mo these are the pieces of me ♪ ♪ so many colors i make up the woman that you see a good friend and lover anything you want yes i can be i can run the business and make time for fantasy these are the pieces of me now i'm gonnet make mistakes from time to time but in the end believe that i'm gone fly no neart if i'm wrong or if i'm

right these are the pieces of me ohhh as the pieces of me start to unfold now i start to understand all that i am a woman not afraid to be strong strong ♪ ♪ so many colors i make up the woman that you see a good friend and lover anything you want yes i can be i can run the business and make time for fantasy now understand all that i am a woman that is not a frayed to be strong strong ♪ ♪ oh, you know ohhh the pieces of me i make up the woman that you

see ohhhh as the pieces of me start to unfold a woman a woman yes i'm a woman a woman these are the pieces of me yeah ♪ thank you so much. god bless you, ladies. thank you. [applause] >> and now to the stage we welcome gina adams, senior vice president for government affairs at fedex corporation. >> thank you and good afternoon. i am privileged to represent

280,000 fedex employees worldwide as we honor the life and legacy of dr. martin luther king this week and recognize four dynamic women whose exemplary lives pushed us to embrace movement, equality and service to others. considering our speakers this afternoon, i am fault to work for an afternoon that embraces the diversity the dreams of our honorees. and one that also believes in supporting and improving the community where its employees live and where it has the business. this week fedex is especially proud to have been one of the first million dollar leadership

donors to the martin luther king jr. memorial project, and we are equally pleased to have provided transport services to bring part of the memorial stone and statue from china to washington, d.c. [applause] and i want to acknowledge my fedex employees who are with me today. now, one of the perks of being a sponsor of today's women of the civil rights movement luncheon is i get the privilege to introduce someone we all know and admire. she is a woman who has chartered her own course with determination, resiliencey,

talent and grace. indeed, the face, voice, intelligence and great personal charm of this new york city native has significantly shaped our culture by entertaining us and by showing us different and positive ways to look at ourselves. while earning a degree in architecture and interior design at northwestern university, jasmine also dreamed of becoming a model and signed on with the eileen ford modeling agency. she soon became a trailblazer as the first african-american woman to grace the cover of "glamour" magazine. her extensive television career includes roles in popular shows

like "st. charles place," "the a-team," "hill street blues" and many others. however, she may just be known as the role of the leading lady and will smith's loveable aunt vivian on "the fresh prince of bel-air." additionally she and her husband, actor, producer, director, tim reid, have worked together on numerous projects that helped others learn about the entertainment industry both in front of and behind the camera, including her own syndicated talk show from their very own production studio in nearby virginia. i could go on but my time is up. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the very

talented, lovely and equally just nice daphne reid. >> you all recognize your power. let's keep the movement going. now, there are principles closely associated with dr. king and they echo through his speeches in his daily walk through life and in the legacy that he left. now, there are -- there's love, democracy, justice and hope and today we will hear from four people for whom dr. king's memories still resonates with a forceful power.

now, first, we will hear from a close friend of the late coretta scott king who learned from dr. king while she was an organizer for the will speak on love. the honorable elijah cummings. a teenager when dr. king died, has taken the promise of democracy to heart by serving his nation in the house of representatives. and even becoming the first african-american in maryland history to be named speaker protemperature. -- speaker pro tempore. co-founder of the first -- and the first vice president amayor tuss of the united farm workers of america will speak to us about justice. and concluding the four will be ambassador constance morella.

while being part of the house of representatives, connie introduced legislation in 1996 to -- alpha phi alpha, to establish the memorial. after two years of intense work, the alphas and morella were successful in their efforts and the bill was signed by president clinton in 1998. ambassador morella will rightly speak on hope. have a wonderful afternoon. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome ms. clayton. -- xernona clayton. >> thank you.

good afternoon. i am speechless about the way i feel about this dinner of celebration. i'm just sad that it couldn't continue because everybody is in such a good mood and i'm glad that they chose me to -- the subject of love to talk about dr. king. such a loving group of people who have assembled here for this celebration. but i know that i don't know how many other women in here from the southern christian leadership conference we worked very closely with dr. king and knew him very well. and i told the news media this morning that if dr. king were asked if he would approve of this monument he would definitely say no. dr. king did not want any attention to himself.

if you remember when he got the nobel peace prize, you got a monetary gift as well. and he gave it all away. because he said, that gift was not for him. it represented the work he did. so he spread the money between the organizations that were trying to save the souls of america. as i prepared for today, i was looking through my papers of the books that dr. king wrote and i was going to share with you some of his words about love. then i remembered, why should i do that? you can read his words. so i just got up to share some stories you won't read about.

stories about the man we revere . so here goes one. dr. king believed so strongly that love was a powerful record that could transform an enemy into a friend. one day we were on an airplane together. a very well-dressed white man walked over to him and asked -- are you dr. martin luther king jr.? and he said, yes. a well-groomed man -- because somehow we take their sole appearance and make a judgement. the man looked like a nice man, but as soon as dr. king

acquiesced and said he was dr. king, he just hauled off and -- spat. all over his head. i was so mad. i was new to the nonviolent movement. [laughter] and so he had to take time to give me a lesson. don't hate him. love him. well, that was very difficult for me. well, the incident passed. he cleaned his head off. and continued with the love in his heart. another incident similar to that, we were in birmingham to we had integrated the hotel in birmingham preparing for our national convention. we were standing in the lobby

of the hotel talking to the general manager about our proceedings for the week. another similar incident. a white man walked up to him. i was standing. there was andrew young, reverend abernathy, j.t. johnson, and the man said, aren't you martin luther king? that's what they used to call him. martin luther king. he said, well, i'm martin king. and he swung and slapped him. and knocked him down. well, they were trying to get him up. i was getting ready. [laughter] because my norn violence wasn't working yet. and i was going to take on this

man. dr. king said, listen, you too little to whip anybody. so you got to be nonviolent. i said, well, dr. king, i might be little but i can kick him in the right place and get his attention. [applause] well, dr. king spent many hours trying to teach me how not to retaliate. love your enemies in spite of their actions. love those who do evil without having to love their deeds. the man practiced what he preached. he believed in it and practiced it every day. and when i come into rooms like this i think about another

incident that will transform to you the reality of the real man we read about. there was a hotel in downtown atlanta where we -- where dr. king would host luncheons for dignitaries. and my job was to help arrange the details for the events. and somehow because i'm -- i was feel like i have all the details in place. this day i thought i did. nothing went right. the service was lousy. the food was lousy. and dr. king brought me over to the side and said, what's the problem? and i said, i don't know, because i planned so well. i thought.

he said, let's call the general manager. you go to the top you can get this resolved. we called the general manager to the ballroom. dr. king displayed to him that we had these people here that were blacks and whites together. dr. king said we've come here to eat. patronize your place, give you business. and we're not getting good service. what seems to be the problem? the general manager said, dr. king, you always bring in black people and white people in here to eat together and to be honest with you, we don't want your business. well, here i go again. [laughter] i was ready. dr. king, who showed love all the time, never ever, ever

showed any sign of retaliation. he said, i hope i didn't make you mad. dr. king said, you've given us the strength to continue on forward, and mr. justice manager, when we get -- general manager, when we get through our project, we will not only bring blacks and whites in this hotel, we will bring blacks and whites to eat together in the city of atlanta, the state of georgia and all around this country because that's what freedom is, to make everybody free to sit down and eat. [applause] so today, as we blacks and whites are dining here together , i never forget the moment when dr. king said, we'll have

the day when all of us will be free to dine together. the man believed in gandhi's teachings of love. he practiced the love. preached the love. and he is love. that's my story on martin luther king jr. thank you. [applause] >> and now welcome to the stage the honorable elijah cummings. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. come on. you can do better than that. good afternoon, everyone. it is certainly my honor and my privilege to be here this afternoon and on behalf of two great members of the

congressional black caucus, congresswoman sheila jackson lee of texas and congresswoman donna edwards of maryland, and on behalf of our entire congressional black caucus, we thank you. first of all, i want to say to the organizers, all that is planned to happen this weekend, sometimes god has another plan. i know that it can get kind of discouraging when you lay out plans, but the fact is that sometimes god will create a situation that will make it even better the next time around. and so i'm looking forward to the celebration. but i also came to not just to thank all these awesome, beautiful women. i told someone, i'm so glad i am a black man in america. i don't know what to do.

when i saw and i see all these wonderful african-american women and women in this audience and i think about all that you have done. so often unseen, unnoted, unappreciated. folks like rosa parks, dorothy, ella baker and countless others, i cannot help but think about my own mother, a former share cropper, got a sixth grade education but raised her children to do great things. and i think about a woman named bonita jackson mitchell in my neighborhood in baltimore who led us to integrate a swimming pool when i was only 7 years old. and then i think about leana, a

delegate in the house of delegates who gave me my first opportunity to enter the house of delegates. i don't just thank you, but during the dream i thank you for sing row nicing your conscious with your conduct and making it happen. -- synchronizing your conscious with your conduct and making it happen. i thank you for standing up for a man named dr. martin luther king. friends, dr. martin luther king jr. had faith in our democratic potential. i recall for you that on may 17, 1957, three years after brown vs. board of education, segregation and exclusion still dominated the american society. all was showing itself to be no speed at all. dr. king, along with a. philip randolph, wilkins, johnson and thousands of other courageous women and men came here to

washington to challenge america to take action. give us the balance, dr. king asserted, during that pilgrimage of freedom at the lincoln memorial, we will nonviolently, route ranker, implement the supreme court decision of may, 1874. after dr. king testified for drauks, our nation responded -- democracy our nation responded with the voting rights act of 1964. democracy advanced. however, less than four decades later with bush vs. gore we learned that the will of the american people does not always prevail. yet, like dr. martin luther king jr. we kept the faith and we march onward. another eight years pass and our faith in democracy, our confidence in our own

competence as citizens was reaffirmed. and in 2008 we elected president barack obama to the presidency of the united states of america. but i believe that if dr. king were here, i believe that he would cite jeremiah 15: 9 and there it said, my sun went down while it was still day. dr. king lived only 39 years, but in those 39 years he did a whole lot. he affected every single person in this room and generations yet unborn. but this democracy that he worked so hard for i believe that he would say while we live and his sun has gone down, he will say to us, you must guard your progress. you must understand that democracy is constantly under

attack and it is being attacked every single day. he would tell us, guard our democracy and watch out for things like voter suppression. he would say, watch out for those who are constantly demanding identity cards at the voting booth. he would say, watch out for supreme court cases like citizens vs. united. he would say, watch out. he would say, it is your -- you onguard now and we must preserve this democracy. finally, he would say that freedom is not free. he would say that we must stand up and make sure that our children inherit a democracy better than the one that we had when we came upon this earth. he would tell us that it's bigger than us. it's not about us. it's better than us. it's about your grandchild who isn't even born yet. it's about the little children

that you see in your neighborhood. it's about those generations to come. he would say, guard this democracy with everything you have. and so on behalf of our chairman, mr. cleaver of congressional black caucus and all 42 members, we thank dr. king because we fully realize that we would not sit in the seats we sit in if it were not for him and his belief and his tireless efforts to lift up this thing called democracy. may god bless. >> we now recognize the honorable delores welta. >> good afternoon, everybody. buenos tardes.

we know that the march we have been on for so long is really in danger because there are people out there that are organizing and they want to turn us around, right? but we're not going to let them, are we? we're not going to let them. but you know when we talk about this ongoing march of justice that was headed by dr. martin luther king, we know that we cannot get justice unless we get economic equality, and we know in these days now that it's getting harder to get because the way to -- wage gap is so huge now between working people and just a small percentage of people really have the wealth of the world right now. even in our own democratic united states of america. and we can't have economic justice if we don't have labor unions. we have to remember dr. king, he was assassinated when he was defending the garbage workers in memphis, tennessee, and that's where he was killed.

we know when we talk about economic justice we can't have that without quality education. we know our young people are being deprived of a quality education. if they don't have that how are they going to get those jobs, right? the professional jobs that they need. and even just an ordinary working people's job, they need to get a decent paycheck when they're not getting in today's world. and when we talk about not having a quality education, we know what that leads to. the incarcerations, the incarcerations of our kids, our black kids, our brown kids, our poor white kids. this has got to go. this has got to stop. [applause] dr. king, he stood for peace. when he came out against against the vietnam war, he knew that he had gotten a whole new host of enemies that were going to be against him. but that did not stop him, this great man of courage. and when we talk about stopping and trying to get peace, we

need to stop. the money that is going into the war industry, and the guns that are being sold in our neighborhoods that are causing our young people to kill each other. and i was very blessed to be with yolanda king. yolanda king just a few weeks before she passed away, we were on the peace train together with gandhi's grandson. and on that peace train what yolanda king was talking about was domestic violence, violence we have in our own homes. this is what she stood for when she was advocating before she passed away. and we mustn't forget about the great women of the movement. congressman cummings talked about rosa parks. coretta king. without coretta king there wouldn't be a national holiday for dr. martin luther king. she is the one that fought so hard for that. i remember her words. this world will never get

better until women get into leadership. right? there is what coretta said. so i implore all of you that are out there, all of you women out there, we have to get in those decisionmaking positions. we have to run for the school board, run for the legislature, run for the congress. women, we got to get out there and be in those positions of power so we can make this world a peace -- world of peace and one that really believes and dead indicates itself to nonviolence, right? and, again, we talk about peace and we talk about equality and we think of how do we get there. we have to think of other people, too, that are not getting, the people denying their human rights. i want to mention another leader of the civil rights movement, rustin. how many of you remember him? he is one of the great organizers of the celebration. but he was gay.

byard was gay. i want to mention you the president of mexico, benito juarez, the first president after the independence of spain. he had these great words with you. you can share with your families when you talk about these kind of conversations that are difficult. benito juarez said this -- [speaking spanish] respecting other people's rights is peace. people's rights to marry, to fall in love with. the person that they want regardless of their sex. that is a human right and we got to respect that and we got to support it. if we really talk about equality. [applause] and lastly, justice for our immigrants. justice for our people who are undocumented. yes, let's remind everyone, again, in these conversations, this is a nation of immigrants. right? this is a nation of immigrants, and all people here deserve

citizenship and deserve legalization. and when we get to that racial equality again, i think this is one easy way we can remind people that we are one human race. that there is only one human race on this world. it is called home owe sabean, right? -- homosapian, right? we have a lot of different ethnic groups. we have only one human race. homosapiens. and our human race began -- where? shout it out. africa. our human race began in africa. and as we went across the planet we went to asia. we got lighter in skin. we came down to latin america, got lighter in skin. one of our tribes, unfortunately, got lost, they went way up north where it's very, very cold and they lost their color, right? they lost their color. so now they have to go to the

beach or the tanning salon to get their color back, right? so we are all -- we are all africans of different shades and colors. and so we can say to the k.k.k., white citizens council, some of those in the tea party movement, get over it. you're africans, ok? just get over it. [applause] and to remind us that we are wrun human family -- one human family, that we need to stand up, that we need to defend each other and, yes, we need to go back to the streets where the civil rights movement began because there are those out there that are losing hope. this march that we are -- we are dedicating today, that we are remembering today is calling us to go back. we got to go back there. we got to go back to the neighborhoods. we got to give that hope that dr. king inspired. especially to those young people.

to let them know that this march cannot continue without them. that they got to join in. and so i want to share this word with you. i want you to shout it out very, very loud because this word means we are one, one, one human race, one, one, one human family. it's a zulu word from south africa. the word is wozani. can you say that? and it means we are coming together to fight for justice. in dr. king's name, we are coming together. someone say, one, two, three, i want you all to shout at the top of your lungs so the racists and the bigots and the homophobes and i want to say, one, two, three, wozani. let us raise this roof in dr. king's name. one, two, three, wozani. one, two, three, wozani.

one more time. one, two, three, wozain. i want to say a big viva for dr. king. everyone say viva dr. martin luther king. let's say one for core receipta king. i go first, you go second. ok. just shout viva. viva coretta scott king. and let's say one for yolanda for all she stood for and worked for. viva yolanda king. now, let's all put your hands together and i will teach you some spanish. can we do this, can we go out there, can we keep this march forward, can we keep the dream continue and come true, in spanish we say, si se puedue. the president said it, yes, we

can. put our hands together and say si se puede. si se puede. si se puede. muchas gracias. let the march together. >> and now please welcome to the stage, ambassador constance morella. >> my dear sisters and men who get it, i am very -- i am honored to be here with you. you know, it was 48 years ago when referenced dr. martin luther king jr. gave us his "i have a dream" speech, and that's actually what i am

supposed to briefly mention to you, hope, because in that speech it was filled with hope. i want to say i am very -- i am overwhelmed and very moved to be in this incredibly talented audience. the few people that i've seen and those i know who are here and those who preceded me here at the platform. i heard elijah cummings with whom i served. he did a super job of energizing and motivating us. i also saw sheila jackson lee with whom i served. and donna edwards who represents part of montgomery county and prince george's county in my area of maryland. well, you know, i spent most of my time today with the alphas, with the alphas. why? because actually many years ago i introduced the legislation to establish the monument on federal land to the reverend dr. martin luther king. [applause]

it was to be paid for by the alphas, by private donations. no government money involved. there had to be the establishing of the appropriate site with all of the approval that was necessary so it was a long journey. nobody goes on a journey to success alone and there was a lot of hope involved in that journey. the alphas, the alpha wives, and you know, i've always felt that behind every great man is a surprised mother-in-law. [laughter] i don't know whether coretta scott king's mother was surprised but indeed we have a man who is now part of the stone of hope between the two mountains of despair coming from his "i have a dream" speech with all kinds of wonderful statements that he

made that conveyed so much to us in terms of the conowe take of words and -- connotation of words and energize us to action. so it was a long road getting through all the various things, the legislation, the legislation that was signed by president clinton, as you know, but then beyond that it had to go to the planning -- planning commission in washington. it had to go to the fine arts commission. it had to get the department of interior involved. and so there was the hope all along that it would come to fruition. and indeed it has. and i want you all to have an opportunity to go to that monument because on the four acres you can sit and reflect. you can think about the words and the actions of this great civil rights leader, martin luther king jr. and i would recommend it for all the young people. so if you have young people to bring there because they don't always know the civil rights movement. they don't always understand

the sacrifice and the struggle that has gone on. and it will inspire them to the words of dr. martin luther king that every person, regardless of color, religion, ethnic or background should be judged on one's character and not color or other background. and so it is full of hope. hope is such a strong word that some of his dream will be fulfilled. now, we all know here in this area there's a long way to go. i mean, we have seen the fact that the dream of 48 years ago is still unfinished. inequality, distrust, misunderstanding face us as a nation, and you've heard some eloquent speakers address some of those very points. and so i think we should not

rest and say, great job. it's a wonderful memorial to a great man here in the nation's capital where everybody can see it but that we should be energized in terms of doing something so that those words are put into action. hope is such a strong word. it conveys optimism. it suggests in abiding belief that will sustain one in the very darkest hours. and dr. king said, "faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase." and i would also like to comment another phrase of dr. martin luther king jr. "if you lose hope somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving. you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all."

and so today i still have a dream, and may you continue to have that dream and work toward fulfilling it because hope is what inspired us and hope is what that memorial, martin luther king jr. is all about, and our coming together today is all about. so thank you. go for it. [applause] >> please welcome back to the stage former labor secretary, alexis herman. >> thank you so much, congresswoman connie morella, for your leadership and for grabbing that gaunt let to help make the memorial happen. i think all of our legacy tributees who have been on stage thus far. but my friends, i want to bring on someone very special who

especially continues to embody the dream of dr. king. all of us in this room, if we don't know it, we should know the history and the contribution, the struggles of medgar evans. it is not what happened during the civil rights movement. it is a story about our nation, our country. and as much as we can never forget the violent death of medgar in mississippi, we've always been inspired throughout the years by the triumphant and inspirational leadership of his widow, mara lee evans. i always remember her, betty,

the wife of malcolm x, coretta scott king, and mara lee evans. i am pleased that for us today she remains with us. flees welcome mara lee evers. >> good afternoon and thank you, thank you so very much. i am so pleased and deeply honored to be a part of these magnificent events that are taking place, that will take place in the next couple of

days and i believe will take place throughout the years yet to come. because as we honor dr. martin luther king jr., as we walk through the monument, have a chance to touch the stone, have the opportunity to look up and view this man who has meant not only so much to his people but to all people not only in america but throughout the world we realize how blessed we are to have had him walks, live, direct, love and encourage us all on this planet because he indeed was a man of all-time, a man who did not necessarily want all of the glory and recognition that was

given to him but a man who always said i would not be able to do the things that i do without all of those who support me. i wish to personally thank everyone, the great organization that put these events together. no easy task. but as someone said before me, we don't always know what god's plan is. and it may be something even greater than this as we move forward that no threat of hurricane, anything else, can damage the hope, the trust and the faith of us all. i am so pleased, so pleased that we are honoring women as

well. i -- [applause] you may applaud that because it's for all of you. i could not help but think of all of the women known and unknown who spearheaded this movement. i feel a sense of pride as i saw the women get up from corporate america, women in government, women in all aspects of american life and i have to say, god, thank you for allowing me live long enough to see these things happen because i stand before you today 78-plus years i have seen so many changes that have taken place in this america.

i have seen so many women who opened the doors for those who are in now. we used to be the spook who sat by the door and we moved in and we opened the way for others to come and look at us now. i think of dorothy heights. i think of c. delores tucker. i go on with the list and list of women who were at the forefront of all that we enjoy today. and i think what a mighty army we were and we are today and how martin luther king himself was so pleased an and so proud of the women who supported him, and i cannot leave this podium

without saying to the king family, thank you for sharing martin luther king jr. with the world. and i cannot help but say to my sister, coretta scott king, to my sister, betty shabazz, as the three of us stood with the same horror that befell us all, who stood hoping that we were doing the right thing by our children who stood realizing that the fight continues on and on and on. and my friends, because we have made the progress that martin luther king jr. saw does not mean that the battle is over.

for some it has just become real, and we must reach out and do as he and others did, embrace the young people, help them to understand the time that was dr. martin luther king jr., be infused with his spirit . do what they do at west point, they teach the men and women about the battles that took place so they could learn and craft their own games for war. but we need to do that, craft our own games for justice, for peace, for equality because all we have to do is look around us. in might be uncomfortable but we still find touches of

prejudice, racism, hatred around us. my daughter that i love dearly said to me, now, mom, don't be negative when you get up there. i hope i'm not being negative. i hope i am being realistic because there is still so much more to be done in martin's name and in the names of the other martyrs and in the names of all of the women who have gone ahead, and those who are here today, the challenge still rests. and, again, i thank the king family for the sacrifices that they have made through all of this. many of those sacrifices we don't know because it's been private. but i have to inject this one personal thing in here. it was june 12, 1963, that

medgar evers was struck down at his home. i would like to think that with the monument dedicated to martin luther king jr. that there might be some kind of tie between martin and the granite and medgar who is buried over at arlington cemetery that some way those two vibes are still coming together, still infusing us with the need to continue the dream of dr. martin luther king jr. and all of the rest of us. thank you. [applause]

>> in an afternoon filled with special treats, we have yet another in store. we are excited to have the incredibly talented and beautifully voiced ms. leyla hathaway performing for us today, let's welcome her. accompanied by ray. >> ♪ hang on to the world as it spins around just go let's spin

get you down hold on tight and let's keep yourself -- your self-respect your pride let yourself endear. keep your stride never mind but the day will soon be here taken from me someday we'll all

be free ♪ ♪ keep on walking tall hold your head up high

lift up to the sky singing your favorite song take it from me omeday we will all be free ♪ see someday we will all be free take it from me someday we will all

be-e-e-e-e- free-e-e--e ♪ thank you. it's an honor. thank you very much. >> we can do better than that. let's give up for her and her daddy. thank you so much, lalah. thank you. thank you. and now as we move to a very special moment in this program, before i have the opportunity to present the king family, there's a young woman who has

made history at so many -- as so many women are now blazing trails. i nowkhah mila, the first african-american attorney general for the great state of california. i know that the premere, paula cox, but lisa jackson is someone she said the first person i want to sit and talk to is dorothy .eigaight she has led the environmental protection agency with strength, commitment, and principal. never wavering, what it means to make sure that we are going to leave this earth a better place

than we found it. please welcome the first african-american woman to head the environmental protection agency, my sister, my friend, lee said jackson. -- lisa jackson. [applause] >> thank you so much. alexis is someone i watched with great respect during her time in the clinton administration. our work as a first african- american to head the department of labor help to meet their to dream that i might one day be where i am -- helps me dare to dream. [applause] it is an incredible thing, ladies and gentlemen, to be here with so many women who have contributed so very much. it is an honor unlike anything i have experienced before to celebrate this memorial and recognize women who made it all

possible. the contributions have quite literally lifted us my entire life. i was a year and half all when dr. king gave his i have a dream speech. i talked to my mother this week. she talks about that speech like it was yesterday. she remembers visiting around a whole neighborhood in new orleans, watching it over and over again on everybody's brand new television set. and i remember her sitting my older brother and i down every year, once a year, on august 28, to watch it as well. it was a ritual in our home. i was only six when rev. dr. king was killed. i had never seen my mother and father shocked. you know that first time you really see your parents rocked by something, realize that they can be rocked like you can beat. not long after it happened, my school asked me to recite the "i

have a dream" speech in his memory. i was too young at that time to grasp the importance of that moment, but today as an adult, after 40 years i recognize what it means. it means that i have not been just able to dream, i have been expected to dream. since i was a child, i was told to expect nothing less than the vision that dr. king spoke about that day. that is a profound change. it is something that i and my generation 0 to so many, especially the women who came before us and dared to dream, the women whose names we know and those whose names we don't know gave me the gift of believing that anything was possible, even though i started elementary school just a couple of years after segregation

ended, even though i came from days where racial tension was still very high, even though it might have taken national guard mobilization to get some of my older cousins in to certain schools. for me, there was no other expectation that i would do all those things without the national guard, but on my own merits. so i am very grateful to have the chance to set thank you for the extraordinary sacrifices of women like coretta scott king and merilee evers. not just because like so many black women, they lost when they love, but because they thought by their side and carried on the struggle when they were gone. i am happy for the chance to say thank-you to the unnamed an unsung heroes in the photographs, on the march is, in the homes and schools and churches, and i am proud to honor the memory of four girls

in a church in selma, not so much older than me, whose dreams were taken away. but most of all, as a mother now, i am grateful for every mother, including my own. to be a mother, to hold that young merkel in your arms, is to dream. it is to dare to dream. i believe that is why so many women play such an important part in the civil rights movement. this movement has lifted me up my entire life, including today. my work in environmental and health protection takes lessons from the movement. the struggle began fighting against obvious interest this, why only sons and terrible racial violence. today, the struggle continues in the fight against things that are harder to see. disparities and economic opportunity, achievement gaps in our schools, deeply ingrained institutional prejudices'.

the environmental movement association must the same way. people organize to get things that could see, like river so polluted that ever catching on fire. after years of work in progress, we are still fighting, but now we find things that are harder to see. toxins in our water and air that are invisible, or internal disparity between rich and poor in the burden of environmental degradation. i take inspiration from dr. king, and we do in our work for internal justice. environmental challenges have the power to hold back opportunity and hold back communities from progress. another woman who dared to dream once told me that if dr. king were alive today, internal and health protection is a battle he would be fighting. that woman was dr. dorothy haight who i did have the honor of meeting and before ending

near the end of her life. after decades of work for justice, she has -- she had taken up the environment and our help as the next debt in the march forward. the work goes on and it changes. it touches every young person, every rich person, every poor person. the memorial being dedicated will be a wonderful thing, and we will dedicated very soon, -- we will dedicate it very soon. the struggle is not complete just because we dedicate four acres on the national mall. our work will not be done until we change and transform the entire nation into that place that dr. king and the women and men of the civil rights dared to dream about. i am proud to continue that work with all of you and honored to be able to share time with you today. thank you very much. [applause]

>> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the chairman and ceo ofb.e.t. holdings inc., debra lee. [applause] >> bid afternoon. i am delighted to be here. i was hoping for an introduction by alexis herman. hasn't she been wonderful this afternoon? [applause] but i will take the voice of god. i am delighted to be here, and on behalf of b.e.t. networks, i want to express my gratitude to the dr. martin luther king jr. national memorial project foundation for bringing together this esteemed group of women today, in honor of the

women of the civil rights movement. it is so good to be here among so many friends and familiar faces. over the past few days, i thought about this afternoon's luncheon and the impact that the women before us, these amazingly brave and strong women, had on our country and our global community. what was particularly important to me was that while each woman displayed an incredible amount of grace and courage, it was the strength of their collective in the fight for equal right that was truly amazing. those women do that when we band together, whether it is fighting for the right to vote,

equal access to quality education, or empowering our young girls to dream big, we can achieve anything. [applause] that was the premise of dr. king's dream and that was exactly what the mlk foundation did to make this memorial a reality. and i know that my success was made possible with the encouragement of my mother and father and the women in my community in the segregated south who paved the way and told me i could achieve anything that i wanted to do. so to be among this distinguished roster of guests is truly amazing, considering how far we have come.

at the same time, we all know that there is work to be done. i know that i stand on the shoulders of women such as coretta scott king, betty shabaz, and others who dreamed big. i know how truly fortunate we are in this moment to be celebrating our women and all of our civil rights leaders. while we see the fruits of their work all over this room today, we must continue our commitment to make a difference, whether it is stem education or helping black families. i want to thank harry johnson andy mlk memorial project foundation for their continued work in bringing us to this very special place in history and for gathering us all here today.

if you have not been to the mlk memorial yet, it is an amazing an awesome experience. it is truly something that we should be proud of, and that people from all over the world will come and be inspired as they read the quotations by dr. martin luther king jr. and see the amazing mountain of despair and stone of hope. it is truly an incredible experience. while hurricane irene is attempting to challenge this week in's celebration, b.e.t. networks is moving forward with dedicating our entire day of programming on sunday, august 28, to the legacy of dr. martin luther king. [applause]

beginning at 9:30 a.m. we will pay tribute to dr. king was custom that the nets, a documentary entitled "how awful man, the brotherhood of mlk" and a special that captures the first lady's inspiring international journey to south africa and botswana. we are excited to share this inspiring content and we invite you to tune in. hopefully everyone will be inside avoiding the hurricane, and if you have power, please tune in. thank you again for having me today. i would like to share a brief video produced by the b.e.t. team that took great pride in producing it. i believe it captures the

commitment, ingenuity, and dedication of the powerful women of the civil rights movement. please enjoy the video. [applause] >> so we can be free and all the people can be free. i want to leave my footprints on the sands of time ♪ something that i left behind when i leave this world i leave no regrets something to remember so they won't forget ♪

>> my children were crying, what is going on? are they going to shoot us? >> is this the land of the free and home of the brave? >> the freedom riders arrival was a genuine revolution. ♪ >> every state we got, we are going to have something done. ♪ >> one person just does not have to fight for themselves.

we are all fighting for each other. ♪ i just want them to know that i gave my all, did my best >> if no one else is going to serve, someone has to do it, and i would be glad to try to do it. ♪ i was here

[applause] >> thank you, debra lee. thank you for that very, very powerful video. i know the next question is going to beat for so many here, how can i get a copy of that? we will answer that question. this has been a very long afternoon, but it has been a very meaningful afternoon. [applause] i thank you for staying.

i thank you for giving of your heart and your spirit to this luncheon, in memory of our heroes of the movement. and now this very special moment that we have been waiting for. it is the opportunity for us to pay a very final tribute now to two women who have continued to carry on the legacyt. wo women who have spent -- two women who have spent most of their lives reminding us that dr. king was a real human being, and the best way to honor him is through our own actions and deeds to keep the memory alive. i first met the rev. dr. bernice king when she was a little girl growing up in atlanta, georgia.

i have been so very, very proud to watch her grow and become the strong, committed, never wavering principled woman of god that she is today. and christine zarras, up -- christine farris always inspired me, because i used to watch her laboring beside mrs. king, always there, always giving back, and she is still doing it as she continues to document, especially for our children, the story. now, you rise and welcome for our final words, the rev. bernice king and the wonderful

aunt, sister of dr. king, christine king farris. please welcome them. these are truly the women who were our first family before we could boast of a first family. here is our first family. thank you so much. god bless you today. [applause] >> thank you. i am delighted and honored to have been invited to say some words at this wonderful luncheon honoring women who dared to dream. women visionaries have played critical roles in the struggle

for human rights and freedom, and so as we gather to celebrate the unveiling and dedication of the martin luther king jr. memorial, it is fitting that we honor the courageous and visionary women who inspired and supported my brother and the movement. but we also must be about honoring and supporting the women of our times and the women visionaries to come who will play vital roles in fulfilling his great dream for our nation and world. as one who was in the house on the day that martin luther king

jr. was born, and who witnessed his upbringing, i can assure you that our mother, mrs. alberta christine williams king, had a pivotal influence on the leader who is being enshrined on the national mall. virtues,artin's including his courage, faith, and work ethic, for example, all espouse the teachings an example of our mother. i don't see how martin could have done what he did without the sustained sacrifice, selfless commitment, and nurturing wisdom of alberta

christine williams king, and the other woman who had a powerful influence on martin was his beloved wife and partner, coretta scott king. as my brother said, i am convinced that if i had not had a wife with the fortitude, strength, and calmness of force, i could not have withstood the ordeals and tensions surrounding the movement. she was not just my brother's wife, but a full partner in his leadership of the movement's. in fact, none of us would be here today comparing -- preparing to celebrate the martin luther king jr. memorial

on the mall without the tireless efforts of coretta scott king, whose leadership was instrumental in the establishment of the king holiday and in making certain that my brothers live, work, and teachings would not be forgotten. my brother martin had an acute sense of history, and he well understood the magnificent contributions of women. he certainly knew about patricia motts, gertrude, harriet tubman, mary mcleod bethune, and so many others. he often paid tribute to the great work of courageous and dedicated women of the modern

civil rights movement. martin understood that women worked tirelessly in the movement, and many injured the threats and not spare actual violence to themselves, as well as their loved ones. many in dordrechts and beatings -- many endured press and miss violet eastwood is a revered martyr of the voting rights struggle. activebrate rosa parks' resistance which sport to the modern civil rights movement, but let's not forget all so her continuing the example of dignity and unrelenting commitment to the calls

throughout this --to the cuase throughout the struggle. we must also celebrate the courageous contributions of other women like to dorothyhaight and a legion of owned sung u --nsung sheroes who put their lives on the line and made great sacrifices for the cause of freedom, often with no pay and very little recognition. in the beginning of the movement in montgomery, women's certification as energetic activist. throughout the year long boycott, they organized carpooling. they worked telephone trees and mimeograph machines. they cooked food, drove,

distributed leaflets and spread the word every way they could. we could not have won the montgomery bus boycott without their remarkable commitment. [applause] after montgomery, women played critical roles in every campaign of the modern civil rights movement, and they are still playing leadership an activist role in the ongoing struggle of civil and human rights. the women of the civil rights movement have left a precious heritage from which the next generation of women leaders can draw wisdom and inspiration. in closing, i just want to encourage everyone here to take

some time to mentor and encourage young women to become leaders in the future. our society desperately needs more women in leadership positions. women are still only about 17% of the united states congress, and that is just unacceptable. we must do better if we want to fulfill the dream. our sisters in africa have a saying. women hold up half the sky. as we gather this week to honor the dreamer, let us also remember, honor and support the women who dare to dream. the visionary sisters of all

races, religions, and nations who will lead america and the world to a new era of peace, with justice and equality for all. and i thank you. [applause] >> and the people said amen. i know we have done is probably numerous times, but i am just going to ask everyone if they would just stand and give a round of applause for mr harry johnson, for all of the hard, dedicated work he has put in to

assuring that this memorial will stand and be paid for. come on, you all can do better than that. [applause] and do not sit down yet. let's give a round of applause to all of the corporations who have contributed to this memorial foundation and every ad -- every individual contributors, including the children. [applause] don't sit down just yet. i want you to give yourselves a round of applause for being in support of the first monument to an african-american here in our nation's capital. you may be seated. this is a magnificent moment and

a magnificent time, and i just have to give this out, to god be the glory for the great things he has done. in the words of thepsalmist, this is the lord's doing, and it is marvelous and our eyes. women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, you must become it's soul. these words, spoken by mother, reminds us of the significance and the important of women to the contribution of every nation on the face of this earth. where would the world be without women who have dared to dream?

and women who have sacrificed, and women who have often put their own dreams aside, that the dreams that lie in the hearts of men might come to pass? surly as christine has already paid tribute to my mom, i want to add just a few words to that. it was no different for martin luther king jr.. i said earlier to date to the alpha brothers that the greatness of the man is usually because of the woman who walks by his side. this certainly was the case for coretta scott king. in 1956, january 30 to be exact, all my mother was at home, my father was at one of the mass

meetings they were holding during the montgomery bus protest. suddenly, there was a thump on the porch of my parents' home, and my mother and the lady that was staying there with her at the time rushed to the back of the house, because they heard this thump. suddenly a bomb went off, and we know the story. my father got word and quickly came back to the house. he wanted to see how his wife and his baby girl, my late sister yolanda denise king, who was here with us when we broke ground for this memorial. everything was all right with them. my father said my mother had an amazing calm about her at that time. further on that night, after

everything settle down, that went to stay with some neighbors. there was a knock at the door where there were staying. it was my grandfather who had come to get my mother until things had cooled down. my mother looked at my grandfather and said dad, i've got to stay here with martin. she made the decision very early on that she, too, would have to sacrifice her life in this movement. she recognized that it was possible for her to lose her life. the only bone i have to pick with her is, she also made the decision for us. we did not have a choice,

because of the decision our parents made to sacrifice their lives for freedom, justice, democracy, and rice. but this woman who was a strong, dignified, and eloquent woman, was determined to stick with our father, no matter what it took. those ladies that are in the audience today know that it takes a special lawman to stick with -- a special woman to stick with a man in those kind of times. most of us would have been twisting our necks and saying i deserve better than this. we need to get out of here and do something different. so i wonder where we would be today if it were not for the courageous and the strong women , who wereby their maen

just as much devoted to this movement as the men whose names we call over and over again. where would we be today in this nation if it were not for that group of women, courageous, resilient, determined, sacrificial and selfless women? some whose names we know and some whose names we don't know. those women contributed so much to that movement. i just got a note earlier from one of the ones who is here today by the name of dorothy cox. she is right here over at this table. she worked in the southern leadership christian conference. we had training all non behind the scenes. you see the marches and you see the water hoses and you see the demonstrations, but this was a movement that was filled with

discipline and training and teaching and simulation. they did not just turn another cheek. they were doing it because they had it emulated and embodied and modeled by people who showed them how to turn the other cheek. and so we thank god for the women who were teaching and training in the fields and in the churches. these devote these to nonviolent social change. there is another woman here by the name of doris crenshaw was only 12 years old when the montgomery protests started. she was part of the youth council of the naacp and worked closely with ms. rosa parks. she was part of a team of young people who helped pass out leaflets and has been a lifelong

and devote tea to the movement and struggle of freedom, and justice, and rye justice. right now she is raising of another generation of young people in montgomery alabama through our organization, and i want you to give her a hand, along with miss dorothy cox. [applause] there is another lady, i am not sure if she is here because the storm had to turn some people around. she stood side-by-side with her husband it was a master mobilize or an organizer, and really miss his gift and his talents, but she is continuing his legacy in atlanta, georgia, along with their children, and we thank god for them. there are so many other women. i just want to go on to say, a question was want raised with my father by a gentleman who asked,

did you educate mrs. king to become equal to you in terms of sharing this burden, or did you research her before your marriage to see if she had the potential for this? how did it come about? my father said, well, it may have been the other way. i think at many points, she educated me. when i met her, she was very concerned with the same issues as i was. i never will forget the first time that we met. we discussed the whole question of racial injustice and economic injustice and the question of peace. in her college days, she had been actively engaged in movements dealing with these problems. so i must admit, i wish i could say, to satisfy my masculine ego, that i let her down this path, but i must say, we went

down this path together. she was as actively involved and concerned when we met and she is now. yes, coretta scott king was already a part of the peace movement when they met. in fact, she had spoken out against the war in vietnam before or father took his public stance against the war in vietnam. she was perhaps one of the very few people who stood with him during that very difficult time and people misunderstood his stance against the vietnam war. many had turned their backs on him. many of his colleagues in civil rights, in fact, had turned their back on him. many began to hate him and hurl all kinds of criticism and persecution his way, but coretta scott king continued to encourage him and applauded him and said she was waiting for the day when he would take a

stance, because she knew that his moral voice was needed in the peace movement's, and so began a a glorious journey towards continuing to read the nation of what he called the triple evil of poverty, racism, and militarism. so when he died, she could have been consumed in her grief. she could have become overwhelmed in her grief. in fact, she could have been consumed with bitterness and hatred. but no, this courageous woman, this dignified bauman, this called an anointed lawman decided that she would continue to champion the legacy and the work of martin luther king jr. and she founded the king center, and told us that we need to study the principles and the techniques and the philosophy of

nonviolence. i say to people that read a scott king is really the one who helped raise and nation while also raising four children at the same time. she was an awesome woman. many men told her, stay home and raise your children and let the men do the job. but ladies, thank god that coretta scott king heard another voice, a voice that sounded for from heaven and said coretta scott king, i have called you. for such a time as this you have come into the kingdom, so go for the and the power of love and go forth in the power of strength, and lo, i will be with you until the end of your assignment. that stood with coretta scott king and she carried that better and championed that calls, and

we thank god for her laying the groundwork for this day. as i close, i was talking briefly with clay carson who is over the king's paper project at stanford university. he is here with us today. one of the things he said is that dr. king has many honors. this is really not an honor for dr. king. this is an honor for the nation. and i agree with him. he stands on that memorial -- i am getting sleepy. he stands on that mall to say to us, let's continue the movement. they may have killed me in

memphis, tenn., but unfortunately, they did not understand spiritual things. they did not understand that unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone, but if it dies, it produces much fruit. so today, the force that they tried to stop has actually become a stronger force, an unstoppable force, because we are gathered here today are the fruits that are continuing the tradition of struggling for freedom, justice, and the quality and righteousness. you may slay a dreamer, but look around and watch what becomes of his dreams. there are those that are carrying and embodied the dream.

there are those that are continuing that work, and we will continue this movement. your life will not be in vain. the blood that you shed will not be for naught. we will carry the banner and continue on. as you stand overlooking the potomac, we know that it symbolizes you standing as you looked over the mountaintop and you saw that promised land. the children of israel had to cross the jordan see, and as we crossed the water, we will get to that promised land that you talked about, and we will not sleep. we will not tire. we will continue to work together. we will continue to struggle together. we will continue to hold onto each other. we will fuss and fight and get over it together, because we know there is going to be a great camp meeting in the promised land. so far, women of greatness,

women of substance, women of power, women of dreams, and let's take this love to the whole world. god bless you. [cheers and applause] >> please welcome back for final remarks alexis herman and harry johnson. >> we are back. first of all, thank birdies king one more time, please. --bernice king. a very special reception for you after that. i have to acknowledge my staff, because we have not done that. our cfo, dr. ed jackson, robert

stewart, all of them, we love you, we appreciate you very, very much. let us thank the wonderful, the vivacious, courageous alexis herman for all that she has done. thank you. >> thank you, harry. i want to give a special thank you to my husband, and one more time, let's thank our captain of this ship, harry johnson. thank you so much. we are going to close out as we began, in prayer. i would like to in -- birdies already took us to church -- bernice already took us to church, but we are going to

have our benediction by our chaplain, cynthia hale. thank you so much. >> will you stand, all over the building, and pray with me. great and of some god, what a glorious time this has been of remembering, honoring, and celebrating the women of the civil rights movement who dared to dream of liberty and justice for all. we have remembered the women who for the most part remained in the shadows, being rarely ate knowledge, but who risk their lives and work tirelessly to achieve a social revolution in our nation. we have honored the sisters to organize the movement, arranged carpools, marched in the streets, spearheaded campaigns for voter registration, demonstrated an educated sometimes quietly, but always holding up more than their half

of the world. thank you, god, for this opportunity to applaud these freedom daughters and be challenged by their courage and commitment. thank you that they were guided by your love and empowered by their faith in you. we are the benefactors of their labor. the quality of our lives and this nation has been enriched by their sacrifice. but lest we forget, the struggle is not over. racism and sexism are alive and well. poor people are still poor and have not still do not have what they need to live their lives with dignity and honor. as we leave this place today, we ask you to send them forth with a renewed desire to dream, to imagine more for our new nation. send them forth with the renewed fire to continue to fight for freedom. send us forward with your power, and with a passion that will not let us rest until all men and

women, boys can girls can say in the words of the late dr. martin luther king jr., free at last, free at last, they got almighty, hallelujah, we are free at last. amen. that concludes our program. said journeys, and god speed. s --afe journeys -- safe journeys and godspeed. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

[crowd murmurs] >> one of the many events this week surrounding the dedication of the new martin luther king jr. memorial. you will find this and many more of those events on our website at c-span.org in the video library. the dedication was set for this sunday. we had plans to cover that. they have postponed that dedication to a date to be determined either in september or october. we will keep you posted about that. president obama was said to speak at the dedication on sunday. one piece of news about the hurricane, the president is

returning to washington a bit earlier than planned, ending his vacation in martha's vineyard today instead of tomorrow. ♪

>> was more video of the candidates. see what political reporters are saying and track the latest political campaign contributions with c-span's website for campaign 2012. easy to use, it helps you navigate the political landscape with the latest polling data, plus links to c- span media partners in the early primary and caucus states, all at c-span.org/campaign 2012. >> now two months bill, texas at a town hall to talk about the economy, the deficit, and what is ahead when congress returns. the texas congressman sits on several financial committees in the house.

you will hear more about representative brady from the hunts bill town hall. this is just over an hour. [applause] >> it is my pleasure to introduce my friend and our representative, kevin brady. kevin considers it an honor to represent the eighth district of the great state of texas in washington d.c. a leader in congress, kevin is the senior member of the house ways and means committee, chairman of the trade subcommittee, and vice chairman and top republican of the joint economic committee. as the deputy whip for the gop and a board member of the conservative republican study committee, kevin is actively involved in the new conservative house majority's effort to protect the unborn, in bad luck regis let reject legislation and

regulation, and cut federal spending. he has been named a hero of the taxpayers, a defender of liberty, a small business champion, and a super friend of the seniors. above all, kevin never moved to washington. he commutes to his job at the capitol and he and his wife kathy are able to raise their sons in montgomery county. ladies and gentlemen, i give you our friend and our u.s. congressman, kevin brady. [applause] >> carol, thank you very much for the introduction and for that chamber commerce leadership in the region. i want to thank dr. jones, an old friend, for leading us in prayer today picket i was a

scout and my wife was a girl scout. my 12-year-old is in scouts, and my theory is, any meeting that is open by a boy scout troop is going to be a pretty good meeting. so join with me in thanking our scouts again for all that they do. [applause] thanks for being at this town hall meeting. during the health-care debate, we held 54, the most of any member of congress in washington. that is one of the reasons we live back home here, not in washington, to make sure we stay close with the neighborhoods and counties that i it represent. we did three town halls yesterday's and we will continue to do it. the reason is, you need to hold lawmakers accountable. it is critical for lawmakers to

be at all to explain an update you on what some of the key issues are in washington. more importantly, these town halls are very important to me. i have learned through the years that you cannot be an expert on all issues, so you depend upon people in your communities, small business people, and those involved in the veterans' issues, and others who are teachers. that will tell you about what is going on and how the government is helping or holding them back. today i would like to go through a few slides about the financial crisis and talk about how this new bill on cutting debt will work, and talk about an upcoming vote but i think is very important, dealing with the balanced budget amendment to the constitution. i will share with you what i think is the real solution to our spending problem in america. as i do that, i want to thank

the veterans museum, all the leaders and volunteers. i always tell people, i don't think any county loves their veterans and does quite as much as walker county. you look at the museum next door, it is full of heroes. one of my sons is reading colonel etheridge's book right now as we speak. they love coming to this museum. again, this is one of the things -- never forgetting those who sacrificed to keep us free says a lot about this community in this area. thank you. let me see here if we could make this work. by the way, larry, we appreciate all you have done, both for the museum here and for the county. she will be missed as our state representative.

thank you, john, for the work you do in austin as well. want to talk about this financial crisis and where we are at. are you just going to pop those for me? why don't do that -- why don't you do that? one of the three great lies in america now includes "the video is ready to go." [laughter] by the way, if you get a chance, we are serious about staying in contact with our employers -- that is you. come to our web site. we have a newsletter, a blog, facebook, twitter. we want feedback from you, too,

on these issues. let's start with this. this chart shows america's future if we do not change our ways. the green line is the revenue in america. you can tell, over time, revenue goes up and down some, but for the most part, it is always about 19% of our economy comes in to the federal government. we are in a recession today or getting a little better -- coming out of one, trying to -- so revenues are going to come up some. the red line is america's spending. this is the problem facing our nation. there is a sea of debt and deficit continuing to grow. to put this in real terms because we have two young boys, you look at that debt. a child born today in brussels valley in huntsville and walker county in this region, a baby

born today, their share of the federal debt is $46,000. it it is as if they owe already a new lexus to ogle sam. we do not change our ways by the time they are 13, they will owe a second, and by the time they are 22 and a graduate from a local university and get ready to start their lives, they will owe a third lexis -- lexus to uncle sam. as we know, young people did not actually buy luxury sedans for the government. they pay in other ways. they pay for it in higher interest rates, and they pay for it in a sluggish economy. just like in your business, in your family come eat you are loaded up with that much debt, it will slow you down. for young people, this chart means of the most important,

their lives, when they start their lives, their families, all that goes with it, they will have fewer job opportunities and then have your money in their pocketbooks when they do get a job. by the way, i see mayor turner here tonight. thank you for being here. i will your wife is doing ok. i understand she was in a car accident this afternoon, and our prayers are with her and with you. though black one if you would. the point of this chart is we do not have a revenue problem in washington. we had a spending problem in washington, a major spending problem. if you look at our revenue, you could literally double everyone's taxes in america today, and we would still be running a deficit as a nation. you cannot tax your way back to a balanced budget. the only solution is to put discipline and control on spending.

this next chart -- i always like to put this in to remind ourselves. this is the federal budget today. the yellow hi chart here is defense. it is a big part of our budget, as it should be. i believe my constitutional responsibility to each of you is to keep this nation safe and keep you safe in it. i am strongly pro-defense, and we will spend the money it takes to make sure our troops are -- are safe, they have the most up- to-date equipment, they finish their mission and can return home to their families as soon as humanly possible. defense is a major part. the green part -- that is where a lot of people think is the rest of government. that would include highway transportation, air traffic controllers, border security, veterans care, education issues.

they are all in that green chart. those two, the defense and non- defense discretionary, is what congress, through their appropriation, funds each year. we had great control over those two pieces of the high, but if you look at the interest under debt in other mandatory programs like food stamps, for example, that is really the bulk of our spending as a nation. those we often called entitlements or mandatory spending, but all that means is they are basically on autopilot. if you are eligible for social security, you get it. if you are eligible for medicaid, you get it. if you are eligible for food stamps, you get it. regardless of how many people need it, that money is spent. we will have the challenges going forward. one of the reasons i and other republicans believe we cannot

balance our budget unless we get a handle on those entitlements. you will see why in minute. we have three very important programs. very important seniors. medicaid very important to our for as well, but they are growing. the reason is we are signing up 10,000 seniors each and every day in social security because those baby boomers are starting to retire. it will drive those costs in health care and social security board in a major way. medicare especially because it is tied to health care, which is expensive. in not too many years, those programs will literally eat up every dollar that is sent to washington. they're literally will not be another dollar left for any other part of the government. today, if we added interest on the federal debt to that, we are

almost there. that is why you will see we talked about the need to be able to figure out a way to preserve social security for every generation, major medicare is there for every generation. the longer we put off the solution, the harder it is going to get. i had the joint economic committee put this chart together because i wanted to know if we could live on cash flow alone. if we did not raise the debt at all, we just lived on what is coming in each month, what would that mean to us? i will explain this to you, but at the end of the day, it tells us how far spending is out of control from what comes in. the bottom line here, dark blue, is interest dollar debt. we will never default on our debt as a country. we are not greece. we are not other countries. we pay our debt. social security is the red dog

line. medicare is the light blue. then we get into defense of our nation. medicaid, veterans' care, income security is housing, welfare, issues like that. then, the rest of government. highways, air traffic control, board of security, the rest of government. the yellow lines are how much cash is coming in each month into this government. as you can tell, it falls short of paying for what we need. in one, two, three, for your, five, six, seven months, we do not even have enough money to pay our military. in only one month to we have enough to pay for all the government. the only way you could balance the budget in america is to make every day april 15, and that is the last thing anyone in this room wants to see, my guess. but it tells you just how far short we are and how big we are

in spending going forward. the budget control act -- the debt ceiling bill that was just passed -- everyone knows what the battle lines were. the president sought to $0.50 trillion in new borrowing authority without any cuts at all. the house rejected that. he then asked for a 3 g e s for 2.5 trillion dollars in increases. we turned that down theory as for the full amount in the next election, and we said no. this is too important to hand anyone, any president, a blank check. our positions were pretty clear as well in the house among republicans. was the if you want $1 of new borrowing authority, we have to cut at least $1 out of the federal budget. second, there would be no tax increases. we are an over-taxed nation,

exactly the wrong thing to do, tax your and fewer people more and more the share of government, and it is exactly wrong for our economy as well here finally, we said no blank checks through the next election. we have to have cuts first. so what the bill does is cuts more than the high. there is a dollar for dollar spending cut that exceeds the amount new borrowing authority. the first phase of that is about the size of the stimulus. the cut is the equivalent of the massive stimulus bill. the second amount is coming up this fall, about the size of obamacare in its first 10 years, not after it gets rolling, but in the first decade. it is not enough. those cuts in my view are not enough. the deficits we are running of each year, the deficit's over this next decade -- we need to go much deeper than this.

we passed down the house a bill that would cut significantly more than this and put significant controls on government. unfortunately, we did not get a single democrat vote in the senate on that bill, and the president, of course, rejected it outright. cuts come first. it requires the president to sign cuts into law before any increases in the debt ceiling so you do not get a blank check with a hope that cuts follow. no tax increases. control, for us, house republicans -- we will cut discretionary public spending two straight years in a row. that is good. need to do more, far more than that. it achieves about 2/3 of the ryan budget that we passed earlier this year. as you know, the past president, we believe is sort of a game changer in the size of government. it is about 2/3 of the budget cuts that paul ryan laid out in

discretionary spending. it forces a vote on the balanced budget amendment this fall. the reason i think that is important is that every lawmaker needs to be accountable to getting us to a balanced budget. we have too many people who have talked about the need for a balanced budget amendment for years, but they have always ducked the vote on it. the new law changes that. it requires an up or down vote with every lawmaker in washington standing up and declaring whether or not they will support a constitutional amendment. my view is i am is a quarter of this bill. my thought is our businesses have to live within their means, local governments have to live within their means, in washington needs to live within its means as well. so we are going to see people

stand up and take a vote here finally, the president does not get a blank check. this is done in two phases. one of the reasons i supported this bill was that it changes the trajectory of our federal government. i had our joint economic committee run the numbers. i just asked a simple question -- where does our government grow without this bill? where does it go if we pass it? i also ask a second thing. i said, as they are figuring this out, take out all those little tricks they play to make it look like they are cutting spending and other things -- take that out of there, and they did. what this chart shows is that if we did not pass the bill, the government continues to grow to over 23% of the size of our economy, and that is the way you measure the size of your government.

with it, it shrinks to about 21.5% here is that enough? absolutely not. if you are satisfied with that, we have a pretty strong disagreement. i believe it needs to go farther, but every chance i get, and those of you who know me in our district know every chance i get to cut taxes or cut spending, my voting card is yes. it is. and i reserve the right to come right back and fight for more tax cuts and more spending cuts, and that is exactly what we are going to do with this bill. the next step -- passing a balanced budget amendment this fall. i want to talk briefly about what i think the real solution is. pass a balanced budget amendment -- as you know, it takes a 2/3 vote in the house and senate to send it to the state, and you need eight 3/5 " -- excuse me, 3/4 vote at the state. here is where we are at. it takes 270 house members to

pass it, 67 senators. right now, as of today, we have 240 republicans that have committed to voting for a balanced budget amendment in the house. we will need 30 democrats across the aisle to send it to the senate and to the states. we need 67 votes in the senate to pass this amendment -- constitutional amendment. 47 republicans have signed a letter from an -- committing to that. to win that fight, we will need 20 democrat senators to step forward and pass this amendment down to the states. it is going to be, as you would imagine, a fight, and we will need everyone in america weighing in with their lawmakers about if they support the amendment or not. if we get back step, the next step is sending it to the state. we will need 38 states -- 38 state legislatures to approve

the amendment for it to become part of our constitution. we will need 38 states to do it. this map shows the red parts of the country here at our legislatures and states controlled by republicans, the blue by democrats. people are split in power here in nebraska is nonpartisan. as you can tell, to get this amendment ratified will require all 26 republican legislatures to approve it. all eight of the split nebraska to do as well, and then we will need at least one more, not two democrat states, to approve it. it is going to be a battle this fall in congress. hopefully, if we can prevail, it goes to the states. everyone in america are electing state legislators to have a chance to weigh in on a balanced budget. tell me if i'm wrong -- how much

time will last in the state legislature between the time that amendment gets to austin and you approve it? not very long, i would imagine. we have a challenge on the balanced budget amendment. here is what i think is a solution to getting the federal government spending under control. right now, it seems to me that the debts and deficits -- this country has added $5.50 trillion over the last four years. almost $4 trillion now just in the last two and a half years. it is that like we have never imagined in our life, and i think a lot of people in our district -- you know, they are either angry, or they have almost given up. they have almost despaired their country will ever live within its means, but there are solutions to doing this, but we

have to take lessons that we have learned from how this government works and how our state government works. earlier this year, some of you may remember, i asked my committee to look across the globe. i said i wanted them to look at every country that has gotten themselves in deep financial trouble like america has, what they did to get out of debt and what they did to get their economy going to have the same time. we studied for 40 years our global competitors. what we learned is that 26 times, nine of our competitors when they got themselves in financial trouble, including canada next door, when they lowered their spending and lower what they owed as a nation -- guess what happened? their economy took off. it did not take off just a little. i took off dramatically -- it took off dramatically. time and time again. we know what the model is to get our economy moving as well, and

it is to get our financial house in order. second thing i did was to ask the same group to look at the state's but i think you a better job of controlling spending than washington does. i said, "tell me the tools that states use to control spending." we looked at them. we look at sunset laws, line- item vetoes, a balanced budget amendments, and we took what we learned from our competitors and took what we learn from our states and with them in a bill to control spending in washington. it is called the max tax, maximizing american prosperity. it basically puts a guard rails, discipline around the federal government where you shrink the size of government. you create guard rails in such a way that neither party can jump those the guard rails or burrow under them, which is what they do today. with the bill does is shrink the size of federal government by 1/4 of this decade.

it sunsets obsolete programs and agencies. we literally as a government, as a nation, do not even know all the programs and agencies that exist today, much less the ones that duplicate time and time again -- the latest report we got from general accounting office commissioner -- we have one program duplicate itself 84 times, each with its own bureaucracy, its own staff, its own rules, its own money. we cannot afford that. we put the rails about the white house. we require that each year they sent an honest budget to congress that stays within the guard rail, so it has to be not a pie in the sky budget but a real budget that stays within those guardrails. we give the president -- every president -- sort of a line-item

veto. the reason we call it an item reduction veto is it is an even sharper scalpel. governors use this. what we found was that the governors who had the best success in controlling spending and cutting out for bell project and waste of money is that when a budget came to them, they did not -- they not only had the authority to zero of the whole line item, but they could actually go within that line item and search out that fork and cut it out. i think every president needs the ability to do exactly the as well if congress sends them that have a budget. finally, we end forever the threat of a government shutdown. you guys have seen this act it out before. it comes in the fall. for these hit heads over spending. there is a threat of government shut down at the end of the day, d.c. more spending. in this bill, we end that

threat, and we have a simple budget that continues. if congress deadlocks, on the budget, each fall, the federal government continues on, but at a 10% cut. when congress gridlocks, it is the taxpayers who win and not the bureaucrats. congress needs to do its job each year. have not seen a budget out of the senate in more than two years. this is going to force lawmakers to the table. we did some things differently in this bill that make sure that we do not make it impossible to cut taxes. we make sure that congress cannot game the system because that is what they do in the past. we have had good support from the act we just introduced.

a top economist at american enterprise institute calls it the most comprehensive and well- conceived plan ever to reduce the size of the federal government. jim miller is the former budget director to president ronald reagan. his strong support of the map at, and he came to washington to testify that this is the solution. the cato institute, which is a strong government watchdog group, and citizens against government waste have weighed in support. day and a number of conservative groups have weighed in support as the way to actually control spending going forward. this is why we're doing it. people often ask, "republicans, where is your jobs plan? where is your government jobs plan?" we believe that is the problem. we think washington is in the way. history proves us to be true. as federal government spending rose, jobs along main street

shrink. they do for every decade in the last 40 years. but the opposite is true as well. here's the chart that shows from 1981 when president reagan started to shrink the size of government, through 2001. we shrunk the government fairly significantly, and during that time, we grew 37 million new jobs in america. but when we started spending more as a nation -- 2001, you can tell where the attacks of 9/11, the war in iraq and afghanistan -- congress started to lower its deficit and shrink it. you can see the spike. as government has grown, we have 2.5 fewer million jobs today -- 2.5 million fewer jobs today. the answer is not a stimulus, not more bailout, not more spending from washington. it is just the opposite. get our financial house in order and shrink government. this shows you the glide path we have put in place to get the

government shutdown to the size that we can afford it over time. this is the change -- this is spending the way it is projected to go, spending under the mat act -- the map act is dramatically different theory the reason i bring you this is we're going to fight for a balanced budget amendment that we can get it through congress. we will fight to get it enacted at the state level, but regardless of whether that happens or not, we will need laws to constrain and put a guard rails around future congresses years from now. i'm convinced the map at, done right, but in place, and continually monitored, is the right way to shrink the size of government over time and keep it affordable again. with that, we've got some other stuff. let's stop the powerpoint at this time and take questions and

answers from the crowd. a subject we want to talk about tonight, let's hear from you. you got the microphone. hold on. >> you mentioned the sunset provisions, which are very good, but they only work if they are allowed to work. >> yes. >> in 2001 and 2003, republican- controlled congress, of which you are in member, past what are now called the bush tax cuts. these acts included sunset provisions to automatically end them in 2010. this was done just because congress did not want to fight the bird act, which meant they would have had to show that they would not significantly increase the federal deficit between the following 10-year period. now, you are trying to win big

on that sunset rule -- trying to renege on the sunset rule. you are calling what is being done tax increases instead of tax restoration here in my question is this -- after 10 years, contrary to what we are assured of, our country's economy has been the worst it has been since the great depression, so on what basis do you claim that making these cuts permanent, ignoring the sunset provisions, would do what they have failed to do so far in the last 10 years? >> thanks for the question. i respectfully disagree with almost every description you just laid out. in the house ways and means committee, we lead the bush tax cuts through congress. only reason they were not made permanent at the time is that democrats in the senate blocked that permanent provision, so we did the next best thing -- we face it in over a number of times -- no, we had a great

fight over it. unfortunately, the votes in the senate were not there. and i will tell you this, as far as the economy -- i would gladly take over the bush years unemployment averaged 5.5% than the 9.5% we are enjoying under president obama. so we are going to fight to extend those tax cuts for everybody, for every family, for seniors, for job creators. i think the president has it exactly wrong. the worst thing we can do today is raise taxes on americans. i will tell you, too, because i know the question is coming -- why did we just tax the millionaires and billionaires? the answer is our tax code is wrong today. with more than half of americans not paying any federal income taxes at all, we are taking more and more taxes, laying it on fewer and fewer americans. at the end of the day, that is a

recipe for disaster for this country. i appreciate the comment. >> i have a follow-up question. he said he knew the question was coming -- >> i just met i know we are going to have that question. i just want to make it clear right now i am not voting for tax increases for any reason. [applause] >> i want to say something about taxes. first, i want to thank you for understanding that you represent everyone in your district, not just those people who voted for you. i appreciate that. i appreciate you as a thinker, someone i am honored to have before me. we talk about taxes as income taxes. and you mentioned that half of us pay the taxes for the other half. i am sure you're paying your taxes and vso not supporting you, but i think we should give the opportunity of the other half of our country so that they

can contribute, like our service men contribute to the country. that as we restructure our taxes, we need to think about a consumption tax. it is taxes and spending. [applause] it is taxes and spending, and when we talk about taxes and the upper 50% paying for everybody, we simply need to divorce increasing those taxes and increasing taxes for everybody. this is called a fee, called the transaction, overhead, i do not care what it is called, but we need to restructure that. >> thank you very much. i agree. one, our tax code would have to pay is in peril. you can add these and it to be a bigger drag, to be harder to comply with, than what we have today. it needs to be fundamentally reformed. we're pushing for that reform in

the tax code. and i do think, and many of you already know this, but i think a flat tax would be an improvement over what we have today. but if we really want to reform the tax code for the next generation to really see fairness and we jump-start the economy and we remain the strongest economy in the world, my view is many a fair tax. a consumption-based tax that does it. that is my view. [applause] >> my name is beth strange, of huntsville. why is medicaid so much less than medicare? >> lies medicaid -- >> is seems like there are so many more people on medicaid. what is the difference? >> great question. the main difference is all seniors hitting that age going to medicare, medicaid is really for the low-income.

it includes both children, low- income and low-income families, as well as nursing home care. some medicare, because it is primarily health care versus just financial health, and health care continues to grow at a fairly high quit, that is what is driving medicare going forward. and can i make a point? you hear a lot of efforts that try to scare seniors in america today. the problem we have, medicare is so important, but it runs out of money in 12 years. its own accountants say it becomes insolvent in 12 years. so if congress does not act, medicare ins itself. what we're proposing is we have got to act now to keep that program in place, both for these seniors and for the next generation as well. what we're, republicans, our budget, are proposing is if you're 55 years or older, there

is no change to you. if you're on medicare today or you are getting into medicare in the next decade, medicare does not change. but to try to preserve it for the next generation, we make some changes. give them some choices. provide than the models that federal employees have and that our prescription drug plan offers for seniors today that allow that plan not only to continue but to be more tailored to them. my concern is that congress, like it has in the past, would put its head in the sand. because it is too tough. it is not popular. or someone will run an ad against you. but they do not act to save medicare now. my mother is on medicare. you know, i am not going to do anything to jeopardize that for her. but i know there are young people in this room who are paying out of their salaries today for medicare, and it will not be for them. it will not be around for them unless we start to act. let me ask you this. how many of you believe congress

needs to act now to preserve that program, medicare? [applause] that is what we see in our districts. >> my name is bob goldstein. i do not know whether i was fortunate or unfortunate to come up in a time when my parents came from the start of the 1900's all the way up to 1995, 1996, over 100 years. and both my parents seemed to think, and were firm believers in one thing, if government found a way to have an income tax, it would never decrease. it would only increase. and over the years, the government has proved them

right. and every year that i hear in elections, somebody is going to do something about it, it is never radical enough or enough people are willing to stand up and pay the price that is going to take this country to get back to the point where government ceases to take our freedom, ceases to take our income, and the people have a choice. because right now, in my lifetime, i do not see that the people have the choice. it is all of their on washington. and as much as i hate to say it, over the years that i have lived and participated in military and other things in my life, all i have seen is a

generation as taxes increase and entitlements increase, socialism to the point that i would say better than half of a person's salary now goes to illegal immigrants and people that are no longer working, whether it is their choice or that they just want to live off the government. now, i really enjoy listening to congressmen and senators who are going to run, and they all make promises. they go up there, but i heard a man over here say, why didn't you do more? >> [inaudible] >> a response? not yet, no. is going to respond, i know he

is. my question to you is, all the rhetoric aside, if you had a chance to go for a fair tax and you had a chance to go for a zero budget, how strongly would you stand up for it? would you be willing to put your career on the line for that? i am now done. >> bob, thank you. the answer is absolutely yes, i would. i will tell you, the reason i run for congress as we have two little boys. we have a 9-year-old and a 12- year-old, and their future and opportunities are going to be less than mine and yours if we do not win the battle in washington today. this whole fight we're having -- i know people do not like the battles that we're having, but it is really about the future of the country. are we going to have a government that continues to grow and grow and take more and more of what we are earned or we going to have more faith in people and the strength and size of government and make it constitutional again and give

our kids and opportunities? so the answer is, the only reason i am here is to make that sacrifice to get this country back on the right track. and we're going to need, as we fight these fights, we're going to need your support in doing it. i am co-sponsor of the fair tax, as you know. i have got the sunset law. i think the real answers on how we get spending under control, we're going to need more votes and more people behind it. thank you. >> i live in riverside, texas. good to see you again. my subject for today is the federal register. the story today on 740 am was that the federal register, last month, passed a new regulation which will greatly affect only the state of texas power plants. very selective. while the number of bills that have made it through the house

and the senate is not at an all- time high this year, national forests are being laid down by the administration's regulators. is there any way that we can review, muzzle -- my personal suggestion is to place the new federal register in a state of review that will end january of 2013, until such time, because right now, the federal register is the tool in which the administration is enacting their agenda. >> scott, the point scott is driving home is in the federal registry, we see all the new rules and all the new regulations getting pumped out of washington at a level we have never seen in our lifetime. and it is regulations dealing with obamacare, creating 159 new federal agencies, bureaucracies, and commissions tied with that. we have 400 new rulings dealing

with the dog frank banking regulation. and i know that double-dealing with the dodd-frank the banking regulation. i know they say we're creating a new bureaucracy to watch over your pocketbook. hold on to your pocketbook. we know what is happening. we have seen regulations. the epa's on steroids these days, taking its biggest swings against our stake in texas, taking over our refinery permits, new rules on air trips, all of which penalize us, because we are a state that is not bought into their back door efforts to put cap and trade and global warming regulations in place. and we said no. so we're fighting all these in a major way. but here's the answer, those regulations go out the door. they are in place. they're doing the damage. conduit -- congress is rarely able to move quickly enough to

repeal them, especially of the white house is supporting it, which is. the answer i think is a bill that has been introduced by one of my colleagues in the ways and means committee. jeff davis from kentucky. it is called. reins act. it puts a stopper on new rules and regulations, that if it and has an impact of more than $100 million on our economy and in our country, before those rules and regulations go into effect, congress has to approve them. i think that is the solution to stopping the tidal wave of regulation. but i can tell you, between now and next november, this president is going to stop -- we're going to pass the reins a ct in the next month out of the house, i believe. we will have another fight to send it over. but ultimately we need a bill

like that in place. do you agree? is that something that might be helpful? >> yes, sir. the federal register, in addition to not being very green, by letting down many national forests through the paper that it prints. [laughter] live, et our fine trees and that's muzzle the federal register. by putting it in this data review, that puts it on hold. i chose january 2013 because that will be when president perry is sworn in. [laughter] >> ok, thank you, scott. >> my name is charles, from walker county. i apologize for not standing, but i have a bit of trouble with that. i know this is a sensitive subject, but i see very clearly that there is a sort of royalty

building up, basically a classic kind of difference between what our congressmen, federal employees, and so forth are receiving by the way of salaries and benefits. in fact, the equation of what the private sector used to receive was, in fact, a head of what the federal government employees received. all of that is reversed now. and i see this situation that we, the taxpayers, are relegated into certain programs, such as this new health care, and the federal employees have a different program but they do not have to present and social security. there's something not right here. and is getting worse instead of the better. >> thank you for being here today.

let me -- you are right. congress should live under the same laws that everyone else in america have to live under. [applause] and there has been some progress along that line. in 1984, congress changed social security and the retirement system and health care. they put members of congress in social security in 1984. they ended their separate health care plan and put the mine with the rest of the federal workers. and members of congress, i know this, we have blue cross-blue shield. we have a choice of health care plans, like other federal workers. we pay for it. retirement did the same thing. with the rest of the federal workers. it is again to get away from these cadillac plans. then in 1994, speaker newt gingrich and that congress passed laws to put congress under the laws of the land, and

a list of those agencies, regulations, equal opportunity, all that, apply to congress. so there has been some progress there. but i do agree that our salaries in the federal sector have gotten too large. they're now outpacing what is happening along main street. and it used to be the opposite of that. i think i saw one study where there were -- gosh, how many more thousands of federal workers in a state that made more than the governor of that state even made, and that has got to end. i have got a bill that cuts back and starts to reverse that. it cuts the size of our federal work force by 10%. it starts to strengthen the size of government, starts to reform some of those plans. it is not the end solution, but

i think it is the start of the solution. let me tell you, i get those same e-mails that you get about members of congress and retirement. i do know this, if members of congress got full retirement after two years, no one would serve longer than two years. i mean, i know that to be the case. they fully they changed a lot of those plans, as they should have, and now i think it is in a little better position. this gentleman right there. >> [inaudible] i would like to go back to the federal registry. i checked that document today. the united states government has 551 agencies. the great fact majority of them, people have never heard of. anyway, i have noticed that since congress has been on recess and the president has

been on vacation, the epa has been on fast-forward. i noticed that some of the things, such as congress voted down, such as cap and trade, they went on and did regulations just like it was law. they seem to ignore congress and thumb their nose at you. my question to you, who oversees these agencies? many of the regulations, the have attached what you call an excise tax to, imposing an excise tax, such as tires, dryers, many things. who oversees these agencies, and who gives them the power to do that? thank you. >> congress enter to questions to overseas agencies like epa, who gives them the power to do a congress authorities stop through the back door -- the answer is

congress does oversee these agencies. the problem with this, the epa, for example, they have taken a court ruling from the supreme court that allows them to regulate certain emissions from a greenhouse gas emissions coming and taking that and stretching it into basically a global warming agenda. this is one of our biggest fights in washington. in the house, at the very beginning, we not only voted to repeal obamacare, the president's health-care plan, but to repeal the authority to do cap and trade through the back door, to do the epa regulations on refineries, and cement plants, and boilers, all that they're trying to do. our problem continues to be the same. none of those bills get a vote in the senate. they certainly never make it to the president's desk. i am convinced if we're going to stop some of these regulations in repealed, it is not enough to stop them. we have to turn the back. we're going to have to repeal

some lawmakers along the way, until we get to the point we can repeal them. i mean, just straight talk, you and me, that is what is going to take. >> today, the obama administration released their epa regulations on the coal energy. it will eliminate 60,000 jobs and all the coal energy that is produced. has that come to congress? >> no, absolutely not. that is why we need a new law that allows that to be blocked. i can tell you, and i am not exaggerating, but coming from an energy state, this white house sincerely believes that energy jobs and oil and natural gas and coal are expendable. that they are not clean energy jobs, so they do not count.

meanwhile, we become more and more dependent upon foreign sources -- foreign sources of oil, when right now we're discovering more natural gas. i mean, a 100-year supply, and it is gaining every day. yet we're getting blocked in washington as we try to access it. and it is a fight. it is a fight. i do not understand why we do not create more american-made energy with american-made workers. in fact, whenever the president says, you know, i want the energy companies to pay more to get our deficit under control, i have got a solution. but the energy companies back to work. we leave $7 billion a year in taxes and royalties off the table because we do not have access to the gulf, to the coast, to alaska. and we leave 1 million jobs on the table by not doing it. but this is the constant fight

about what is good energy in america and what is that energy. unfortunately oil, natural gas, coal, and to some degree, nuclear, they have all got it on the bad side. it makes no sense. >> we have time for three or four more. >> ok, great. >> bill, trinity. does the department of transportation -- the department of transportation has something going now that would require a cdl for commercial driver's license to operate in the farm and equipment. is there anything that can be done to stop that? [laughter] >> there's no chance we're getting punked with you saying that at all? candid camera? california resentenced that regulation? >> i read it for the first time about a week ago, and i saw it

again yesterday. >> [inaudible] >> it is it? that makes no sense at all. let me get the information from you. let us grab on to that. we would be glad to challenge that. that makes no sense at all. one, it always tells you that these bureaucrats have too much time on their hands. second, they have never been within 1,000 miles of a farm or ranch. you can tell that as well. >> i was listening to you talking about safety for the nation, and when we're talking about safety, a week, in texas, arizona, and new mexico are very concerned about our borders. i moved here from el paso, and they have already had several gunshots that have come across the border right there in town. so i think when we talk about the government safety and our

country's safety, we need to talk about the border, the illegal aliens, and i know that that is not politically correct, but i cannot make myself say the other words. and in conjunction with that, all the foreign aid. people always say, well, we have got to send money to all these foreign countries so they will like us. they're not liking us one bit more now than they have after we send them millions of dollars. >> yes, i agree. on both counts. foreign aid may only be 1% of our budget, but every dollar counts. there are plenty of countries that can stand on their own dead do not need $1 of our help, -- that can stand on their own and do not need $1 of our health, and we are going to see the bentley cut aid to those countries, i can tell you that. -- we're going to significantly cut aid to those countries.

second point, you're right on target. when your own administration admits we only have operational control of less than half of the border, you know there is a real problem. and if a country cannot control its borders, it cannot control its future period. i always say this in a preface to this discussion because i believe it. you have to shut the back door of illegal immigration seeking keep open the front door of legal immigration. so people want to come here to better their lives. they can do it, but we asked them to come in through the front door. right now, that back door is wide open. i know the spin we're getting from washington on deportations and how secure is, -- but it is not. all you have to do is talk to texas landowners along the border, and they can tell you what is happening. we need more boots on the ground on the border. we need deportations for those who break the law.

newi think the president's backdoor amnesty is exactly the wrong thing for the country. it sends the wrong signal and only invites more to break laws and, in the back door. i also believe that we have to shut off the magnet of jobs in america for those who are here illegally. not only is it illegal, but is unfair for a company in huntsville to follow the rules and to have its competitor across the street not follow the rules and win the contract as a result. so we have got to shut off the jobs as a magnet. final point, and i know is controversial in washington, but i am a co-sponsor of legislation to end what many call anchor babies. you know, when those mothers who come across the border --

[applause] again, because i really believe that front door of legal immigration is what built this country. i think the more we do that, the more we invite more of that. i know the constitution is that dispute on whether that legislation would pass. but i say to send it to supreme court. let them make that decision about citizenship or not. i will live with the results, what ever they are. but i do not believe that is what our founding fathers intended in that section of the constitution. so we have got a lot of work to do. and i really think it has to start with the white house, one that is serious about closing that back door, and we do not have one, in my view. >> it could be the calm before the storm in the nation's capital as the city makes preparations for hurricane irene. hurricane warnings were issued a short while ago for new york

city, coastal connecticut, and martha's vineyard. president obama returning to the nation's capital one day earlier from martha's vineyard today. representative brady town hall, one of several we are covering during the congressional august break. the group no labels has done some research. there is a report about the lack of town halls in many congressional districts this time around. we talked to a congressional reporter on this morning's "washington journal" for some details on that report. emails. jonathan allen is on the phone with us from "politico," a regular voice with us. august is typically been a time when congress has gone on to listen to and the concerns of constituents, and that ties in with our question about the federal government's role. what have you been learning about congress' direction with

the public during this particular congressional break? guest: it depends a lot of a member of congress and the type of constituent that shows up at their events and the degree to which they are somebody who is already somewhat controversial. a colleague of mine, jake sherman, went to congressmean fred upton's district during the break. he is chairman of the house energy and commerce committee. the town hall there was a very sedate, nothing like the ones we saw in 2009. earlier this summer, we saw senator john mccain and arizona getting testy with constituents. there was a back-and-forth. i think there has been a variety this year, i think we will still have a lot of opportunity next summer to see how that plays out as the elections actually, a little nearer.

host: a watchdog group calling itself no labels did research on town halls and their conclusion was that there were far fewer of them this year. is that surprising, given where we are in the election cycle? guest: i don't mean to criticize without looking at myself, but anytime you do a study on how many people are holding town halls, there are a lot of obstacles to getting information there. the no labels group says that 60% of representatives are not holding town hall meetings, but my understanding, the caveat offices and ask, that is not only a good way to get a response -- not always a good way to get a response immediately. sometimes you get the wrong response. the newspaper reported earlier this week that despite that report, oregon representatives

were doing them. it is hard to make a comparison of this year to last year simply because it is difficult to get accurate data. host: certainly the questions, blots on the minds of the people, what some aspect with the economy -- will have some aspect with the economy and federal spending. a reminder of when congress gets back to work, please. guest: they come back not next week but the following week. host: is it possible, if the storm attacks the kind of punch we're looking at, the one of the first items on the agenda might be spending? guest: there could be additional spending for the hurricane. republican leaders in the house insist that a merger to dollars be offset -- that emergency dollars be offset. so far that has not been a problem, but if the east coast were to get pummeled by our r -- by a hurricane, offsets

by billions of dollars, the kind of spending you saw in the wake of hurricanes katrina and rita -- that remains to be seen. the preference of republican leaders would be to offset any spending related to a disaster. that has its own political battle that would ensue. host: jonathan allen, thanks so much for your time. members of congress will be for ♪

>> for politics and public affairs and american history, it is the c-span network, available on television, radio, and online. what are programs in any time with c-span's video library, and we are on the road with the c-

span video bus. it is washington your way, the c-span networks, created by cable, provided bas a public service. the neighboring states of virginia and maryland have declared a state of emergency in anticipation of hurricane irene. d.c. mayor gray is expected to do the same this afternoon. the warning stretches beyond new york to massachusetts, including martha's vineyard, where the president is wrapping up his vacation. before doing that, the president said he is in close contact with members of his response team, along with governors and mayors along the east coast. it is set to make landfall somewhere in north carolina. president obama for about 10:00

this morning. >> i have just convened a conference call to make sure we are bringing all federal resources to bear and deploy them properly. i have spoken this morning with governors, and mayors of major metropolitan areas to let them know that this administration is in full support of their efforts to prepare for this storm and stood ready to support their response efforts. we will continue to stay in close contact with them. i cannot stress this highly enough.

if you are in the projected path of this hurricane, you have to take precautions now. do not wait. do not delete. we all hope for the bus, but we have to be prepared for the worst. all of us have to take the storm seriously. you need to listen to your state and local officials, and if you are given an evacuation order, please follow it. to underscore this point, or on an aircraft carrier group out to sea to avoid this storm yesterday. if you're in a way of the hurricane, you should be preparing now. if you're not sure how to prepare your families or home or business for a hurricane or any other emergency, you can visit ready.gov or listow.gov. since last weekend, fema has been deploying its instant

management assistant teams to communities up and down the coast. fema has millions of liters of water and tens and thousands of cops and blankets along with other supplies, meals, and and read american red cross has begun preparing as shelters in north carolina and other states. resources are being coordinated with local partners and they stand ready to be deployed as necessary. again, if you are constructed to evacuate, please do so. it is going to take time for first responders to begin operations and to get resources we have positioned to people in need. the more you can do to be prepared now, making a plan, making a supply can, know your evacuation route, follow instructions of your local officials, the quicker we can focus our resources after the storm on those who need help the most.

to some, all indications pointed is being a historic hurricane. we cannot predict with certainty the impact of irene over the next few days, the federal government has spent the better part of last week working closely with officials and communities that could be affected by the storm to see to it that we are prepared. now is the time for residents of these communities to do the same. fina and the director will be cuba -- fema and the director will be keeping people close the posted in the next 24 hours. thank you very much. >> president obama from about 11:30 eastern on martha's vineyard. since his comments, martha's vineyard has been put on a hurricane watch as has all of massachusetts and connecticut,

new york city as well, the first time since 1985. --er to the president's,, prior to the president's comments, janet napolitano and other officials talk about preparations for the storm which is expected to hit the north carolina and south carolina border sometime on sunday, and is a fremont from fema headquarters at about 10:00 eastern. it is about 20 minutes. >> hi, everyone. i would like jet of hot,. >> the good morning, everyone. we will provide a brief update

on our preparations for hurricane i rain. before we do that, i would like to make a few larger points. we are taking this storm very seriously, and i know our partners are as well. we have already seen a number of states declare emergencies ahead of the storm. now we are in the preparation phase, and if you can divide this into three phases, corp., response, or covering. the window for preparation is quickly closing. if you are in the projected path of this storm, please listen to your state or local officials, please listen to emergency radio or television. if you are told to evacuate, please do so. those in the path of the storm should make sure you are also

taking necessary, -- and common sense precautions, such as having an emergency plan, having emergency supplies, food, water, a flashlight batteries in case we lose power, and we anticipate a significant amount of power outage with this particular storm. there are all kinds of common sense things you should do. you should do them now, because as i said before, the window of preparation is quickly closing. with respect to our own preparations, the federal government is leading for at of the store. we have mobilized assets. the president has directed us to ensure that all needed resources are available and that we should coordinate closely with our state and local partners who are the first responders in this storm situation. we're doing just that. we have man -- i have been in touch with the mayors and

governors in the storm path, and we are also in touch with all the first responders in the storm passed along the east coast. fema has its assistance teams already located in a number of the states. we will not have to wait for them to get there. we have embedded them in the last few days, and that will make sure we are seen less and our response and recovery pitcairn the administrator will detail some of those efforts. a bitstorm's addiction is of science and a little bit of art. this is been category 3, category two. given the amount of rain associated with the storm and the likelihood of flooding, i would encourage you not to focus too much on whether it is a category 2 or 3. if you're in the storm passed, you will not be able to tell much difference taconic let me

introduce bill reed the national hurricane center. he will give you the most current update of the storm, and then we will turn it over to the administrator. bill? >> those are good words about -- [unintelligible] right now irene a classically shaped her cane with the exception of one featured. it does not have a clear, well- defined eye. one of the reasons we may not see a higher wind speed and we are, given great organization. this points out clearly what we plan he decorations well ahead of the hurricane. that is why your of local officials were evacuating people yesterday.

jacksonville, florida, steadily moving toward the coast. [unintelligible] this is the imagery that we highlight features of the atmosphere. you have heard us talking about what might change the tracks of the storm. the area of low pressure that moved through new england history is leaving the united states. we have another system out here passing through the plains, but it may not have an impact on the track of the storm now. changes in our reasoning, is somewhere in the carolinas, we will have impact today. on sunday.d t here is the current official

forecast. the update will be coming out in about an hour. i do not anticipate significant changes. that represents the likelihood. i have to say at this point based on the data we have gathered, models we have looked at, through early sunday morning and higher than normal -- center of hurricane passing through that area. we have warnings extended all the way up from north carolina, south carolina border, new jersey, and the watches up now to the merrimac river in new england. further up the coast, it is paralleling the coast democra.

let's talk about the winds. if you have a problem -- following the when the probability, not a lot of change there. these factors have led to a much higher probability of tropical storm force winds, all the way from carolinas to southern new england, and then a good chance well up into the interior of new england. a lot of the things that i have seen is in lenders are surprised by the amount of wind they get -- inlanders are surprised by the amount of wind they get. [unintelligible] to try to highlight the threat of storm surge, a probabilistic

storm surge. this is the graph that we've have of the surge exceeding 4 feet. it is pretty good for the carolinas and up into the tidewater, because that off the evacuation routes. [unintelligible] those numbers stay pretty low because -- the parameters of the storm are dropping because we cannot predict precisely where the hurricane will be until precisely before landfall. rainfall has not changed much in the forecast, and follows that track. the point i want to get across

is a huge amount of rain, 5 to 10 inches of rain in the densely populated corridors where we have had a lot of rain in the last few days. increased river flooding, and high winds in the trees will bring trees down. that is what i have and we will introduce craig fugate now. >> good morning. as the secretary talked about, we already have our teams linked in with the governors' teams, to prepare for the immediate impact and the aftermath. one thing we have to emphasize is as well as the forecast has been, all the steps of preparation, it does not mean there will not be damages. it does not mean that power will

not go out, and it will take some time to get back to normal. that is what it is a forum for people to prepare. the one thing we can change the outcome on is loss of life, and that is why the orders being ordered in the coastal areas are key. people need to leave early, travel a safe distance, not wait for another forecast. all the planning and preparation will be in vain if people did not heed those orders. as the senator reported out, we have a whole government approach. all agencies have been working together to support governor s and the teams. it is not just about government. today as we prepare for this, i would like to enter this -- to introduce the president of the american red cross. >> you very much, craig, let me

acknowledge the waffle partnership that we have with fema and with secretary napolitano an administrator fugate. you could not ask for a better set of partners. i thing the way we were able to respond during the spring storm highlights how well we can work together as three organizations. i will not repeat what you have already heard about the storm. it is obviously a very big one. it will cover a large amount of the area. i do feel that the american red cross is better prepared, more prepared than ever. we have forged a number of partnerships with buffet-based organizations, like national

baptist conventions, southern baptist convention's, a lot of ngo's. we are anticipating that it is going to be a huge geographical area, with lots of people in back, and from a thai perspective this could take weeks, even months to be able to respond to. let me give you some quick numbers. we have over 200 and emergency response vehicles that we are sending to the east coast. these are vehicles that can drive around through neighborhoods, it out meals, relief items, things like buckets, mops, pails, etc. we are sending 60,000 ready to eat meals into richmond and another 60,000 up to massachusetts.

we're working with the southern baptist so they can prepare a lot of meals. we think we can serve to have a 50,000 meals a day initially, and we can actually jinn that up to a million meals a day. our local chapters have thousands of volunteers on the ground, and we are deeply -- we have already deployed 8000 specialists , a number of who were responding to the spring storms, and we are looking to get 60,000 additional volunteers if need be. the of the open up shelters in north carolina as opened up a few shelters in the long island. we have 15,000 potential shelter sites through the affected area , and if any of your listeners or viewers need to know where their shelters are, they can rnd it on our website,

edcross.org. finally, as the secretary and the administrator said, we urge everyone to get ready. have a kit, papers you need, supplies for food, the right clothing you need. there is a very robust list of what you can put in one of these kids on redcross.org. stay informed about the storm's track. had a plant if you are asked to evacuate, and if you are asked to evacuate, please do so. that is going to be responsible for reducing loss of life. you can also go to the web site to register and help your family members that you are safe and well on her are safe and well part of our website. as the administrator always

says, getting ready and responding to a disaster like this takes a whole team, and we're hoping that the american public is part of that team and your red cross is ready and prepared to help him any way necessary. thank you. >> we will take a few questions. >> give us the worst case assessment for me york city. there are some flooding models this show that there are significant portions of lower manhattan facing considerable flooding, given high tide, and if you have spoken with max mayfield, he said one of his greatest nightmare is having a major hurricane go up the east coast. >> i talked to the mayor yesterday about preparations being made in new york city.

they are already evacuated some of the lower lying areas, nursing homes, hospitals. we will be working with them today. there were ambulances being positioned to help move people out of the way. this is another reason why we urge people who are able-bodied to prepare to evacuate. this is so we can at the governmental level and the red cross focus on those who need special assistance. we are watching the storm as it hits all the major metropolitan areas heading up the east coast, d.c., wilmington, new york city, possibly in boston, so we have been in touch with all of those states. one of the concerns in new york city is the subway system and maintaining the subway system. those decisions will be made by the mayor and his staff and they will be prepared to support

them. craig, do you want to address that? >> bill, you can talk about that and show where the search may occur. >> yes, [unintelligible] all the bays in north carolina are additional concerns. [unintelligible] what we have not talked about is the tidewater area, vulnerable to a storm surge creek. the areas will be impacted, we are focusing on that very close the ticket -- on very closely. [unintelligible] we update [unintelligible]

so we can predict where the storm surge will occur and they use that for the planning of the decorations and use those as the decision points for each decorations. it is becoming more of a function of where is the worst of it going to be, and then after the storm hits, very precise single tracks runs give people an idea of where you might have to go in for height- water rescue. -- high-water rescue. [unintelligible] >> have one thing a person said with regard to the uncertainty of this storm, head, she made, everybody is getting prepared, and i do not think it is gone to be that bad. could this be the east coast

hurricane katrina? >> when people think of katrina they think of the homes destroyed. that may be something we seen in the storm surge areas along the coast. here in the district, here is what you need to be prepared for. howard added is that it be days or longer carr. you're not going to be able to get that on quickly. flooding, gusty winds. s -- those things are things you need to be prepared for. people want to put it in the context of what it means. inds, heavy rain,scott oc lots of local life flooding, and

along the potomac river in, storm surge potential, so you may see those of low-lying areas flood. that is why we are telling people to be prepared. >> can you address [unintelligible] from january through today. what happens now? >> the disaster relief fund, we are quite that resources we need to respond. there is, have to be some financial stuff on the disaster relief fund, but in terms of immediate needs, we will have the resources made available. >> it is not a limiting factor. we have been putting money back in as the early this week.

we are over $900 million in the fund. we still have open disasters including for re, which was already hit by irene. we are continuing the response to prepare for this response as well per. you can also good to ready.gov, m.fema.gov. >> thank you all very much. >> since that briefing, warnings

have been put up all the way to massachusetts. you heard questions about the subway system in new york that will close tomorrow nin. a short while ago, the president has declared an emergency for new york state. this is heated press rights that declaration means homeland security and fema can coordinate disaster relief efforts, and that the state can receive aid. that declaration intended specifically to alleviate the threat of a catastrophe in a number of areas around new york city, which could bear the brunt of the storm. along those lines, a producer theh fox tweets b virginia congressional backers and has asked president for emergency declarations ahead of the storm.

senator barbara mikulski demands that pepco prepared an aggressive plan to address expected power outages. pepco serves 800,000 people in the region. earlier today that those at the customers to expect widespread and multi-day outages. we will update you on those because the bit of information. earlier this month fema's administrator spoke about responding to disasters. he explained a new approach engages the whole community. he spoke to a group in arlington, virginia. this is just over an hour.

fugate, gater thancrag the administrator of the map. i have observed during his tenure we have the first the white emergency management program in the nation to receive full accreditation from the emergency management accreditation program. kudos to the administrator. he also brings the blues on the ground experience because he began his her as a volunteer

firefighter and served as an embassy permit and has a lead tenant in a rescue team. he has served in a wealth of relevant positions, and i think you will find quite interesting. >> good afternoon. i will try to cover all that. i was asked to talk about whole humidity -- community. we keep hearing about that. what does it involve? it is not mysterious. what happened was my staff got tired of using my talking points in trying to explain stuff.

i refer to it as an emergency management. whole community is based on two things. when we respond to disasters, who are we serving? there are a cover observations i was making -- a couple of reasons that i was making in florida. i came to the state in 1997, and i am always live in the aftermath of katrina. you handle a few tornadoes, wildfires, you still have not done a katrina. we're not sure you guys have fixed anything. that was the situation in 1997. we lived under the shadow of hurricane andrew.

that was how to deal with the challenges, when you have a state very prone to hurricanes, and one of the things we thought we learned after andrew was there was an initial report, when somebody can tell you that 15 minutes after something big happened that it seems like we dodged a bullet, run, because i have heard this twice. i heard we dodged a bullet in hurricane andrew. the reason was they were not getting any 911 calls. they were getting the usual power out, trees down, but for about 120th street south, there were no calls coming in. the power lines, the 911 center, it had just been erased.

we heard that in the hurricane katrina. initial reports said we had botched the bullets. we thought we learned in in true that the key to knowing how that something is is to do a quick assessment. we were going to go in and get a quick snapshot of how communities where impacted, so we would get experts from health and transportation, and we are run to put them on national guard helicopters, fly them over the areas, they are run to meet with counterparts, send it back to the states so they can act on it. the only thing i ever found that was a rap about this was the amount of time it took it to say we are on to do it, because that

point forward it lost all essence of been rapid. you had about 18 subject matter experts that you had to get somewhere. by the time they landed on helicopters, linked up with people busy doing the disaster, ask them about their systems, it was about 72 hours. the problem was in 72 hours, you are trying to make decisions about what you are going to send, that builds in another 48 hours. we are getting there in the same time frame we got in in andrew in the fort -- in the first place. maybe if we focus in on a much quicker response. what was interesting was i kept finding ourselves, we were getting things on the ground effective no earlier than about

72 hours from the time and occurred.nt it took 72 hours to get critical mass where we were starting to see stabilization. i ask a different question. instead of trying to figure out how bad it is, let's define what the outcome is we want to change, and i started looking at things and disasters differently. we talk about we are responding, but nobody says exactly what we are doing and how much time will it take to get that done. as i did this, i started dissecting these disasters, i look at international, a variety of of things, are quick response, and hurricanes. there is a standard process we have to get through. you have to reestablish communication. most people think that is electronic. i was thinking majestically.

you've got to be able to get in there. in most cases you think you could drive in, but in hurricane ivan, when he lost a bridge, you have to get to the area. the other thing i found his safety and security. there is a tendency to wait the use national guard until you have a security issue. i found talking to social scientists that you are doing more good by getting people there quickly, by reassuring people that are not by themselves and showing that people can get in from the outside, and this is one of the things a person coined "presence is ommission."

it does not take an actual situation. it takes the perception that it may be dangerous, and you just shut down almost all of your law enforcement response to disasters. a lot our teams would get their work 24, 48, 72 hours later. the reality is when you look at most earthquakes and other types of events of damage, what is the survivor number looking like after 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours? is it a stable population or is it decreasing rapidly for t. if you are right to change the outcome for the injured, you will have to get their early,

within 24 hours. the ones you could have made the difference for, that decision has already been done. he will not get that back. -- you will not get that back. the other thing i observed is the 72 hours it took to figure out how bad it was was the time frame we needed all that stuff there. i got to do the assessment to know how bad it is to respond, but the time it takes to do that is eating up the time i could use to change the outcome. i propose of the a lot of folks on my team, was radical. let's do away with the assessment. how do you know how bad it is? we will not. but if i had a major hurricane impacting an area population, why don't i respond against what the potential impact is going to be and adjust downward if it is not that bad. they say there is going to be a lot of rest for waste. i said, yes, but i have never

seen a disaster go well if he did not have enough stuff get there fast enough. if you stabilize it, you bide time. getting to the point of civilization to wear -- of stabilization, you stop all lost is a key element in how we approach and respond to hurricanes. the interval in 2004, we had a troubled storm hit before charlie did, which was inconsequential. charlie, francis, and then hurricane-. nine days later, then hurricane jane hit. if we were using a traditional model of doing the assessments, or turn up resources, we would have had overlaps where we could

not have moved to the emergency phase for the next disaster while we were basically maintaining a steady state to get into recovery. i thought i had figured this out. we can make this work. then the next year if you have a series of hurricanes. most people forget this started with hurricane dennis, which should have been an indicator it was an interesting year. it was a relatively compact storm. we responded like we did in 2004. we moved into recovery. we thought we had figured this out, and here comes katrina. as much as you read about katrina, what you do not realize you suck all the resources out of the system. there was virtually at the point where it this hurricane set off the yucatan peninsula, will law,

which got to a bare mattress pressured lower than katrina, starts moving toward florida. we are in a situation where the country his focus now on the katrina response. you have a lot of resources committed there, and i am looking at a substantial hurricane coming to florida, weakens.kends -- it did not weaken enough. wilma did not read that book. it did not weaken significantly, and we had greater impact on east coast because what it did was take power out to about 6 million people, the ball, which lived on the west coast of florida. we responded based on the potential impact. we sat in supplies, set up

distribution, and we had this rush of blood from the west coast to the east coast. the problem was we did not have all the distribution up in the first 24 hours. more heavily on the west coast and the east coast, and we got slammed of not having enough supplies out for everybody in the first 24 hours. this is where i learned another part where outcome is the building block of the community. after andrew we learned volunteers and organizations have to be part of the team. we cannot run with different organizations doing their response and we doing hours. we have to work as a team. we have to deal with the unaffiliated volunteers and deal

with donated items. we had built a good thing to do that. where we had not done that is the private sector. based on previous history, the assumption was the power was out, retail was down. one of that in, being government talks we were government center, we look at how government would solve it as if we had the total ownership and had to figure everything out. we have been responding to hurricanes that have been bad enough that a government centered approach was getting the job done. when wilma hits, it is a much larger area. we put out as much product in three weeks as we had done for three hurricanes in 2004. it did not have the damage as the earlier ones, but the impact was a much larger area, much

denser population. the assumption that the private sector is not up and running, we got reports that did not jive with that. wait a minute, there are stores open. they are using generators. when did they start doing that? they started doing that about half way through the hurricane season in 2004, but we were not paying attention. from miami beach county, we did a quick phone survey and started calling the box stores, and only five were not open. . bush likes to remind me of this because he was meeting with constituents who were complaining about the length of lines to get free food and water which we have located in areas that were central to the

community as we were serving, good road access, good parking. this is where they've built the grocery stores. we were in the parking lot handing out free food and ice are eatingsaid they fast food and it just bought her shoes at the open grocery store parking lot where we work for a mating the free food distribution. do you think we can do a better job next time? up until this point we have been so focused on what government was wanted to. assumption was in disasters, government was want have to do everything, take care of everybody, but we were arrogant in making the assumption that if one minute before a disaster happens, most of the good and services are done by the private sector, why do we make the

assumption that one minute after we are quite to be able to do this o > we ask a question, and you may have heard this after katrina, why do we not contract with the folks to get this? they got the supplies. why don't we give them the job had this stuff out of for a small fee, more than my annual budget, that that much slack, excess capacity, they would be interested, but if they went out to us that they operate in a system that does not have a lot of slack, they did not have the capacity to assure demand beyond which they are doing for their stores, and unless we agree to invest in that somehow they can move stuff in small disasters, but they could not do the things we were doing. i said, i am asking the wrong question. what can i do to get you open?

it dawned on me, i am competing with private sector, something they have done and perfected to the nth degree, and if i am try to come in and set auction and operate in that environment and compete with them, maybe i need to change the questions and say, what can i do to get open and where are you not going to be open to o four? what is their footprint like? when you look at where they are not, the start looking at inner cities and pick up areas like lake okeechobee to did not have the box stores, and if you had worked as a team, those would have been the places we sent supplies to, because those people did not have the walmarts

and home depots. they have a small iga's that got tened. i want to be so operation that i know where your stores are at and i want to know more status freight i want you to know where i am distributing supplies, and when you have stores online i need to know when i get shut things down and do that this revision were targeted to individuals who need it more. when i came to feel like, i brought that philosophy. i said we have got to figure out how to bring the retail sector in as part of the team. we have worked to bring in those folks. we now have representatives on a

rotating basis that have a position dedicated to the fema coordination center on a full- time basis the represents the private sector. the goal is to look at the private sector as part of the team. not competing with them, asking a more simple question -- how can i get to open? what can i do to support that? i can set the tone, be a bully pulpit, and she the federal court made officers, i can work issues back to the state to get things done. my team started getting it, that it was not on to the government center, we were brought to embrace a volunteer organizations. the fourth piece it started out, we tend to call them victims,

and i kept talking to social scientists, this is the problem of calling people with ms, helping people deal with trauma, you have to get them in control. loss of the ability to make decisions excessive rates and makes the situation of recovery more difficult. they said sometimes words have power. i had adopted back in florida that term "survivor," not " victim here "the wall street journ -- not "victim." i take his circle a fence and say, what if it happened today? we would take the great miami hurricane in 1926, and use all the predicted models we have. we ask, what does this look like?

some of the research was, they the that the numbers, said this is about $150 billion hurricane. in packs florida from miami all the way to tampa and then makes another landfall at pensacola. population in packs of up to 8 million people. housing losses, almost five times of what hurricane andrew took at out. bigger area than katrina. as we are doing planning, we are looking at all the resources including dod, all the ngo's, and the private sector. we were running against the lines of how we get these areas stabilized in the first 72 hours. the answer was it cannot be done. he cannot define success to me

know what you are able of doing. you have to look at what you are trying to do differently. it hit me, what about the people living there? the answer was, they are all victims. i have been to a lot of disasters. the tendency of people to portray people everybody shellshocked, sitting around, not doing anything does not happen. people start trying to help each other, people will start trying to do things precaution of one -- to do things. we think of the public as a liability, they are granted to bad things. after andrew, we talk about people who were starting to ook, small groups, sitetting

up committee kids, and that the fear was they were not licensed. bornee going to get food- illnesses. i get the idea about we are concerned about sanitation. they could be devastating. would it not make more sense to give them some instructions about if you guys have bleach or need to do sanitation, or did not do this, because if it is that bad, the you have the luxury of telling the public to stay on the sidelines and not help there is a real challenge because it allowed -- there is a real challenge here. we have developed this idea that we are trying to be rid

gentleman -- we're trying to be credentialed. if that is true, i am waiting for that ticket sold to somebody, but the reality is every disaster is a, as you are, and if it is bad, you did not get the luxury of saying what he will choose to use and not use. it will be what if his. i started changing how we look at the public, and said, we tend to take a parental approach to the public. we tend to think we are want to have to tell them what to do, how to do it, and make these decisions for them. we get ants about anything that suggests the public will take matters into their own hands. we need to get past this, because with the tornadoes, as much as we give credit to the

responder community, who was doing the first rescues in joplin? the neighbors crawling out of the debris, going over the next rubble pile, searching for their neighbors. that happens time and time again. it is not a unique thing. it is pretty much what people do. maybe we should change messaging from taking care of your family, that at one blow thing -- check on your neighbor. during the heat waves, we -- saw this message going out, check on your neighbors. you may save a life. if you go three or four years ago, you're not going to see or hear that, but we are starting to see more of engaging the public as part of the team. my evolution has gone all

-- full circle, volunteers the merge, you got to be able to bring them a seat at the table. the private sector, in particular, and that is cannot and evolving factor, the ability to focus on if you are the subject matter expert on this fema will talk to me," but did not talk to us. how do we go through and looking at getting critical resources online? whether it is a utility based or other things up and running. we need to speed up the recovery

process. but the private sector has to realize something else. they cannot plan their continuity based on government. they are starting to realize that if the community plan fails, they may not be successful either. this is something we talk to them about. is your community really going to be able to deal with housing, i keep schools open, get basic services up and running? how many of you will keep your employees if schools are not open for months? it may be six months before school reopens and i have marketable skills i can take somewhere else, am i going to stay here that long? what if law enforcement is not up and running. people cannot rebuild. this is really an evolution that we have gone through to get to what we call the whole

community. it is not saying that government is telling everybody you are on your own. it is really recognizing that each part of the team has roles and responsibilities, and you need to move away from a government-centric approach to problem-solving and realize that there are other solutions, other models, other capabilities out there, particularly when you are doing it every day in the community and they often know as little about us as we do. on the other side, which goes back to being prepared, this is where i often get feedback because we do some parental when we talk about being prepared. the reality is, we are all on our own in a big disaster. you are not going to get to us. we have got to ticket -- we have got to take care of ourselves. it is all smoke and mirrors. that would be the senate's

approach. let me be more pragmatic. if -- the senate -- cynic's approach. let me be more pragmatic. if everyone who lived in the d.c. area had their power go out, if we started setting of supplies and commodities for you to go get them, have you ever asked yourself, if you already have the supplies, would you go get them? there is a shared responsibility. it is not about being on your own. it is about being prepared to the best of your ability. those of us that can and should have the financial means and resources, who did we just cut in line in front of, those communities that are most

vulnerable. for a lot of people, this is not something that is comfortable to year. i pay my taxes, why can i not get the supply? we do not respond to disasters in a format where everyone is equal and get whatever they want. it is based on need. part of what we're trying to get people to understand is that during a disaster, the more we prepare ourselves individually and as families, the less resources we have to ship ben. we can also get those services up and start moving toward recovery. when we talk about fairness, too often it sounds like this. you need to have a plan. you need to have supplies for 72 hours. thank you very much. we are done. we never tell people why that is so critical, why there will be members of the community that will not have the resources,

will not be ready, and guard just trying to get through the day to day. when week -- are just trying to get through the day today. when we have supplies coming in, they should not have to compete with the rest of us. we have kind of gone away with from that. we talk too much about what government is going to do. in the past, the response was neighbors helping neighbors. they brought in resources. they got to the injured. in 24 hours, they had just about gotten primary things done. the bulk of the rescues were done in the first 24 hours. a lot of credit goes to neighbors helping neighbors. people literally just going in and applying skills that they had. that is that. one last piece. in our planning, we had overly-

identified what we are going to do based upon planning for what i call the generic population. now, if we were doing a good job for that generic population, then why is it every time we have a big disaster we identify a group that was marginalized and we did not meet their needs? in my time frame to be doing this, we have written annexes for people with disabilities, people that have passed -- pets, and you're about to do it for people who had children. [laughter] how much of the population is that? half the population has pets. a quarter percent have children. if you add in the elderly, we're

up to 80%. it is like, wait a minute. we are paying for the people that should have been prepared and do not need everything we are bringing. it really hit me. mark said, and you have to address children's issues. you have to write an annex because you are not getting the needs met. infants and children should not have to suffer the indignities they suffered during katrina. you guys are close. i look denmark, and i am going, -- i looked at mark, and i am sense ifuldn't it make we made the people who need the most of the core of our plan instead of marginalizing them and putting them in an annex?

kids are not small adults. their needs are different. their dietary issues are different. but if you put them in an annex, everyone is going to think it has been done and trust me, it will not be part of the court process. it will be an afterthought you have to think about. here is the problem. if i get a request from the state for meals, and they say we need meals for 1 million people, what will i ship them? i will ship them to 1 million -- 'swill ship them 1 million mre -- military ready to eat.

if i am a grandfather or a child, i cannot eat that. [laughter] what good is that going to do to infants and children? we do not putt baby formula in there. we do not put infant formula in there. if i write an annex, do you think that is going to change it? we have got to change the culture. if we are feeding the general population, you have got to go from the infant all the way through. and by the way, what goes in comes out, so you are going to need diapers and more diapers. you're going to need bottles. you're going to need bassinets. if you are sheltering people, people may show up that are in a wheelchair and they need assistance. our solution was to put them in a special needs shelter where we

could bring all the resources for their needs, but they could not go to the general population shelter because they were special. the disability community said first of all, we do not like the term special needs. second, the american disabilities community really frowns upon what you're doing, even though he realized you -- even though we realize you're trying to do the right thing. why cannot just make this part of our core instead of making it special. do not have an asterisk that says this does not apply eight it did the americans with disabilities act does not have an -- the americans with disabilities act does not have an asterisk that says this does not apply during disasters. if you have a high school education, english as the primary language, financial

resources and insurance, that is not exactly the most vulnerable population. but that is who we were planning for, and we put everybody else into an annex. that approach is failing and it fails every time. we are going to start planning for the communities we levin, not the communities that fit our plans. we know that we are going to have to address these issues and the response, so let's address them in our corporate perebiynis. -- in our prepare dness. we are going to look that instead of having special needs chapters, having functional access shelters. we were looking at how do you incorporate all of these issues in the planning stage and bring

the folks to gather that day to day work with these various communities? i have gotten a lot of push back saying this is too hard to do, and unfunded mandates, it is unrealistic to expect that we can do this for the population? how many people heard of joplin before the tornado hit it? not exactly disasters central. if i went to joplin -- and i was there pretty quick because the president told me he wanted me there pretty quick. i am there about my second day. i get over to the red cross shelter. this is a red cross shelter. there was no special needs shelter. there was a red cross shelter. people were there on oxygen, in wheelchairs', getting medical attention, not being turned away. there were a public health

nurses, public counseling and health screening. infants were being cared for by adventists and southern baptists who were setting ups areas to distract the children from where their parents were registering for fema assistance. one of the local casinos went to their lost and found, got all of their cell phone chargers and donated them. when people showed up for their pets, they were not turned away. they could be housed with their pet. or there were areas to put their pets. how did this happen? they took all of the challenges the people said are too hard to do and they said, we do this every day. we are going to plan how if we ever have to open up the shelter, how we will work with

the team and bring all of the resources together. a couple of weeks later, they got to practice it. when people tell me this is too hard to do, i point to joplin and say, they did it. and they did it when a tornado with barely any warning at destroyed key areas of downtown, killed hundreds, took out one of the major medical facilities of the region, and yet, in spite of all of that, they operated at a shelter that was a textbook of how we plan for the communities we live-in, not what is easy to make them fit our plans. so, fema, we are trying to embrace the whole community. we are trying to build speed in our response. we are trying to be forward- leaning, forward-thinking. i tell my guys, when something big happens, think big. be smart. the fast.

people say we are wasteful and are going to spend all this money. i say trust me on this. if you do not plan and respond that way and you get behind, it will be far more costly in those situations. we do not do this for every disaster, but when we have, it is because we cannot get enough information. we are going to change the outcome. we have got to get the ball to the table so you get the full team in there. -- get people to the table so you get the full team in there. this is emergency management. emergency management is not just what government does. it is how you bring in the whole team. because the real goal here is to get to the injured quickly, stabilize, recover, rebuild and restore communities in a rapid

manner. that will all be set in the first couple of days of response. the laundry or there, the longer you prolong -- the longer you are there, the longer you prolong suffering and the more bit costs. look of the tsunami in japan. those things could happen here. it is within the realm of possibility, not a hypothetical. we have had a historical events so we know not only can it happen, it could happen again. with that, questions? [applause]

>> can you say how you use the mass media as an enabling, supporting function instead of having them in the react mode? i have read books where the media would come into fema or into emergency management and learn what it really took to run a response and then help give instructions to the public and what not. >> there is a two-edged piece here. if you try to coopt the media to be part of your mouthpiece, they are going to rebel. they do ticket things. their primary responsibility -- they do two things. their primary responsibility is to report the good, bad and the ugly. they can be great communicators to their viewers and listeners about what to do. what you have to understand

about the balance is that you need to educate and provide information ahead of time. just-in-time is detrimental. you build relationships and make yourself available. tomorrow i will be a having a chat with the weather channel about hurricane preparedness. you have to build that on the front end. you have got to understand that if you try to coopt the media as part of your team, they will say wait a minute. we have to maintain some sort of separation and independence because we are going to be reporting your bed and your dad. we have to be seen -- your good and your bad. we have to be seen as impartial. they need to educate and reach the of yours. make yourself available to them. provide formats better useful to

them. work their schedules. this is classic. they do the press conference at 5:00. the tv guy is like, you are killing me. kenya moving forward so we can get it out? unless -- can you move it forward so we can get it out? unless you are doing it live. it is stuff like that. i go to the newsroom and say, i need to get this message out. what is the best time? what is the best format? i am not trying to do the job for them. i am not trying to coopt the message. i am trying to make my information user-friendly. the more user-friendly it is, the greater chance i can get it out. here is a new piece of this. if the public are survivors --

and we have got to look at them as part of the team. maybe they are not a liability but a resorts'. this is something that everyone is dipping -- a resources. this is something that everyone is dipping into. i have gotten information from the weather channel. when you look at the individual information, everybody gets weirded out about getting bad informations. i cannot tell you the number of times as a paramedic [unintelligible] this idea that only official information is actionable, of course it is, but you have to have a relationship with the media had of time and you have to remember that if they think you are trying to go up to them, control them, and only show the good news, you're going to lose

whatever relationship you have with them. >> what relationship does fema have with foreign governments in terms of lessons learned? in particular, the tsunami and fukushima in japan. >> we have a lot. in fact, we have bilateral agreements with australia and new zealand, russia, the european union, the asian pacific countries including japan. we had staff go there in the aftermath. we do a lot. everything that happens may be applicable to us, so we always go through the process of, what happened? how did they deal with it? how does it apply to us? what was interesting about the earthquake, a tsunami and the aftermath that the nuclear power

plants, which turned up to be the real story as far as total impact, was looking at all of this from the standpoint of planning for things that are bad. we had actually released the strategic plan leading up to that. we did not know this tsunami was going to occur. but if you look at our strategic numbers of what we needed to be planning against, the tsunami fit our maximum threshold of events. a lot of people say, you will never have something that big, it is not theoretically possible. i am not in the business of things we can handle. when something like that happens, what will we do as a nation? one of the interesting things about our conversation with australia and new zealand, australia has a very similar central government system. their emergency management is

similar to the u.s. in that their territories and local governments have more authority like a state does. we actually found ourselves when we were talking to australia about the floods and cyclones that hit them, that many of the issues they ran into our once we have run into, particularly -- are ones we have run into, particularly dealing with recovery. sometimes there are nuggets of stuff that we go, this is something we have got to prepare for. >> he mentioned the role of the national guard and the federal military. what are some key areas where they can support you in medicine? >> statice commanders. this is probably one of the breakthroughs.

congress appointed 10 governors, have republican, have democrat, to look at ongoing issues of the national guard with the particular focus on if we brought forces into a state having to have dual command structures, from a state perspective, this had always been troublesome. many national guard commanders had served overseas but when they came back stateside, they were told they could not be in the legal chain of command. working with folks about policy, we introduced a process of

allowing governors to flag officers serving in their guard to be on command active duty and then bring all of those forces together. this is done a significant breakthrough. it is part 1 of part two. being able to bring forces in and integrate them into the team that is already there is a community effort. the other piece of this is something we still face as a nation. we cannot reach out and touch our reserve forces in a disaster without a presidential mobilization, which has a time commitment, and basically takes him away from being able to do any other duty for the time frame of that activation. but many of our combat support forces that are in the states of impact could be faster and more responsive if we had congress

given the authority to provide the presidential collops could be less than the call-up of the reserve -- called up kabir less than the cala of the reserve back. the sec -- call ups could be less than the call ups of the reserves. i think that is going to be one of the key issues of bringing the rest of the team on board, because although they are out there, they're difficult to bring into response in a situation. i think longer term, again, we have been looking at -- i would give the example. we were talking about search and

rescue. when we look at earthquakes, we have specialized urban search and rescue teams that are designed for collapsed complex structures. if we have a large square l -- a large scale earthquake, we are going to have a lot of suburban impact. how do you address that? the tendency we get into is to tell you what we want you to do instead of sitting back and saying, here is the outcome i want. what do you think would work? we said, we want engineering units. they would be perfect. they can do a search and rescue. our urban search and rescue guys and north, came back and said, that is not what you need. you do not need engineers. you need to 11 bravos. it was kind of like, do not tell me how to solve the problem. tell me what this problem is and

let me find a solution. in katrina, we had so many missions that were so micromanage, we needed to step back and say, this is the outcome and give greater flexibility to figure out how to meet those needs. you do not know who is available when the next disaster strikes. he cannot be so focused on a particular type of -- to not be so focused on a particular type of unit gives greater flexibility. i think these are some things we are working on. the biggest thing is speeding up the process. again, mission assignments, getting them passed coming getting warning orders. it still takes us a long time to move units. i was really pleased the we were working on northcomm. the vice chairman of the joint

chiefs shares my passion. there is a lot we have to speed up to get things moving faster. part of it on our end is making the mission assignments more flexible and more based on outcomes. >> my question is about the whole community concept. can you speak to the future of the private sector prepared this program and how it integrates or fits into your vision? >> dhs or private sector in general? >> dhs [unintelligible] >> i am finding that if i really want to get the private sector is engaged, i have to talk about return on investment. i am taking a little bit of a different tack.

what i am finding is if you want to get to the heart of business, it is about the bottom line. unless they are a nonprofit, what is the return on investment? if you cannot a lot of companies would be better off scrapping all their contingency plans and all pretense they're going to reopen and have enough insurance to pay off everything and make a nice profit and close. they'll make more money. because what they fail to do is they don't plan for what their community is going to do. and if the community is not ready they're better off not reopening. what i'm trying to get across to them is their interest in government's ability to respond is great as -- you're seeing this. when i started this business, most everybody i ran into in the private sector was business continuity planners and more focused on their data and financials and things like that. you're starting to see titles more and more in the big companies called emergency

managers. so i think the credentialing, that was an early attempt. i'm way past that looking at how do you integrate the private sector as part of a team of responding. tear down the walls of government and private sector. it's worse than church and state. there's the separation, like i'm not contracting with them. i just don't want to compete with them. one of the things we're finding that's very useful is to share data across open data systems to give them visibility of what we're doing and what they're doing. so we're pretty close now to where several major retailers are going to give us live data feeds, g.i.s., where we can map and see store statuses in real time in a disaster. so there is some good starts there. but we're going way past that to really look at how we work and respond and support each other in a situation where you're not going to have clear lines of this is government, this is private sector, who is closest to do what to get

something stablized. >> is there a lot -- in this room and on the other side of this camera who are involved in the study of homeland security or federal emergency management? what are those areas which we can focus on, whether it be a think tank or in academia as researchers that would help you do your job better, are there gray areas and gaps in your knowledge that folks can lean forward and look at? >> i think we put too much emphasis on the hazards themselves and less on the impacts of the societal and how people deal with things. there's a lot in my profession, there is a lot of people that really -- the hard science, the engineering, the forecasts and the meteorology, and this is one of the things i've often questioned, we'll spend more money coming up with the perfect forecast but never ask the question will it change the outcome? will the public behave any differently? are we using the right terminology and the right methods to get behavior to change? so we issue a warning and people still die.

what happened is because there is nowhere safe to go or didn't know what to do. a big question, joplin, southeast tornadoes. we oftentimes spend so much time on the science, we forget about the people. and i think this is probably for me the societal aspects of how populations react and how do you change behavior over the short term and long term? how do you take things that are not the norm? and i'll give you some examples. there are two very successful campaigns that change norms. when i was growing up, not wearing your soot belt and smoking were the norms. if you wore your soot belt or didn't smoke, you were an outliar. today, it's the other way around. but when we talk about preparedness, most people if they have a flashlight and some very basic steps, about as good as it gets. but you're actually pretty much an outliar if you -- outlier if you got ready. how do you change that? if you try to do a lot of things you end up deluding yourselves if you aren't

consistent over a long term. and both these instances of cigarettes and seat belts they were punitive impacts. bad things happened if you didn't do it and measurable demonstrated and had consequence. but since disasters are such a low frequency event fortunately, it doesn't fall in that. but what i really think we need is more social scientists. and we need to fund social science research which is not hard engineering, hard science and isn't as glamorous and a lot of people think it's soft and not that relevant. but if the populations were trying to work in, we don't get, we end up talking at them and they don't hear us, they talk at us and we don't understand. we do things and we expect certain things to occur. and they don't and we can't figure out why. cincinnati it's because again -- i think it's because we don't look at marketing and research involving social sciences and don't look at how the behavior of individuals versus communities work. we don't understand the demographics of the communities.

that's why it's real easy for us to plan for a community and forget we don't live based upon government structures except for those of us in d.c. people don't live in a city. they live in a neighborhood. people don't really identify with government structures. everything we do is based on government response structures trying to overlay that to communities we serve. to me that's a big area. that it tends to get not the funding. it's not glamorous. but that's where if you're going to change outcomes, and we don't understand and have the ability to provide information in a way that will get people to behave differently to do things to save lives and protect things and things like that, it doesn't matter how good the forecast is. it doesn't mart housts we respond. -- matter how fast we respond. too many people that could have changed the outcome didn't. and we don't know why. because we don't get it. i got the hook. [laughter]

[applause] >> actually, i'm just giving you a grateful way out because these people would keep you here for another hour easily. so i want to thank you. that was terrific. it is clear that you are a national asset and we are delighted to have you inside the beltway. although you may not be delighted by that. [laughter] but -- >> eventually -- >> i thought that in 1995. but we are honored to have you come talk to us today. it was a wonderful presentation. very clear why you are where you are. you bring a wealth of experience and talent. so thank you. >> thank you. [applause]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> in the nation's capital, washington mayor vincent gray has declared a state of emergency ahead of hurricane irene. he made that announcement from the mayor's office just a short while ago and follows similar emergency orders, in neighboring states of maryland and virginia and similar sorts of orders all the way up the east coast. president obama earlier this afternoon had declared an emergency -- federal emergency for new york state in anticipation of the hurricane. meaning the state is eligible for federal emergency aid, coordination with state and local emergency officials as well. we will keep you posted on other briefings as well and you can find the briefings we've covered, links to ready.gov and hurricane center at c-span.com. with the weekend weather anticipated next week on washington journal the focus will be on weather and the federal government. on tuesday, starting the series with a look at zaft relief and

preparedness -- disaster relief and preparedness, wednesday an examination of climateology and weather die nam scompicks nurse a look at the role of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration and next friday we close the series with the discussion on the role of the national weather service. that's all next week during washington journal. beginning tuesday, at 9:00 eastern. republican president -- presidential candidate mitt romney held a town tall meeting in new hampshire. having turned around enterprises and not just watched jobs being created but actually creating jobs. i believe that skill is what the nation needs to get america back to work again. and to restore the values that will keep us prosperous. i believe that skill will enable me in a debate with barack obama to look at him and say no, mr. president, you got it wrong.

you don't understand how the economy works. you don't understand how yourend made it harder for jobs to be created. i do. i created jobs. i know how it's done. and if i'm president of the united states, mr. president, i'll do a better job slowing down that clock and hopefully getting it to reversing and getting americans back to work. [applause] >> you can watch that entire town hall meeting tonight at 8:00 eastern, 5:00 pacific, on c-span. >> paul jennings, obscure people with little known stories. american university professor clarence lusain reveals who they were as well as many other black men and women who left their imprint forever on the white house. >> i begin to discover just fascinating individuals. whose mark on on the presidencies and whose marks on the white house were virtually unknown. except for a few scattered stories here and there and

everyone kind of knew that george washington and thomas jefferson had slaves. but most people probably didn't know that eight out of the first 12 presidents had slaves. >> sunday night, on c-span's q&a. in a moment, we'll join an atlantic council discussion on the future of libya. first, an update from earlier today on the situation in that country from a reporter who has been trapped in a tripoli hotel. >> karen fahim is with "the new york times" and on the ground there. thank you so much for reporting in to us. tell us what you know about the current situation in tripoli and in libya. >> thanks for having me. parts of tripoli that were -- fighting yesterday have calmed down. we just returned where there was intense fighting for several days. and the streets there were fairly quiet.

and they're cleaning up after the battle. there is still fighting around the airport road. and fighting is continuing in -- near gaddafi's hometown in sirte. gaddafi's home town. we have seen reports that nato has started bombing gaddafi positions in and around sirte. the rebels have been trying to advance on sirte from the east and west of the last few days. they have been having trouble on the eastern side. we're interested to see what happens to there after the nato bombing. host: i heard a news report that the united nations is calling for both sides to avoid committing any atrocities in the heat of this battle. have you been hearing reports of the civilian atrocities as the battle rages? guest: there has been several

reports of atrocities in tripoli. we are following a few stories. there had been discoveries of what seemed to be executed prisoners in several places. we know what place near the bab al-aziziya compound, which was colonel gaddafi's presidents and military base -- residence a military base. the bodies of 25 prisoners were found there. there have been reports of mass killings, including of gaddafi soldiers. we are not clear who was responsible for the killing of gaddafi soldiers yet. several of these instances we are following. host: with muammar gaddafi still

at large, how did you see this coming to a decision point or resolution in the days ahead? guest: well, i am not sure exactly what will happen, but the rebel leadership, transitional national council, in particular its cabinet or executive committee, came to tripoli yesterday and held a press conference. they were asked specifically what it meant for them that gaddafi and his family were still at large and whether it would hamper their work, their plans, their control of the country. they said it wouldn't, but that probably remains to be seen. at large, he remains sort of a rallying figure for his loyalists. i think it remains a problem for

the rebel leadership as long as he is at large. host: what will you be watching for today? guest: today we are focusing on neighborhoods where there was intense fighting. we just visited a hospital which was absolutely horrific. there are 40 bodies still in hospital, no doctors around. i think people are just recovering from, you know, a very deadly few days. we are running around town. host: thanks for spendin >> peter fam of the atlanta council said today libyan

weapons including shoulder-fired missiles are showing up in somalia and other parts of africa. he spoke at a panel discussion on the future of libya and the nato alliance. other topics include the libyan transitional national council's efforts to bring order to the country. and nato's ability to handle possible military actions in the future. this is an hour and 15 minutes. >> i want to thank you for joining us for this event. entitled "to the shores of treply," what gaddafi's demise means for nato, libya and the arab awacening. while fighting will certainly continue in the weeks to come, gaddafi's regime is crumbling and by no means too early to begin to assess the implications of the toppling of yet another arab dictator. the name of our event today borrows on a play on words from

the marines hymm but the revolution in libya is no game and it comes at the hands of libyans rather than u.s. marines. the collapse of the regime after six months of conflict is an historic development in north africa, and for nato. and a pivotal moment in the arab awakening. it seems each august when policymakers the world over take a break from the daily grind the world events just won't cooperate. earthquakes and hurricanes notwithstanding r -- notwithstanding this august is no what was seen recently as a stalemate in north africa is turning into the reality of a post-gaddafi libya. as atlanta says some of the council believes what is unfolding in the middle east and north africa is the fourth greatest challenge to the trans-atlantic community since world war ii. those being world war ii itself, the cold war, the cold war aftermath and collapse of the soviet union, leading to the enlargement of nato and the european union, and now the transformation in the middle east and north africa.

it's clear that now more than ever that the atlanta -- can't be the united states alone and europe despite facing its own economic crisis has more at stake and more proximity and must be engaged. today's discussion hits at the nexus of the work of the atlantic council and three of our flagship programs. the center for the middle east, the international security program, and the african center. at a time of dramatic change across the region this summer the atlantic council launddle its newest program. the center for the middle east. the center focuses on the link between political and commirk change and developing concrete policy suggestions for this transformational change in the region. named for the slain lebanese prime minister rafik carei it reflects his desire to promote innovative policies to promote economic and political liberalization, sustainable conflict resolution and promote

regional -- greater regional and international integration. the april of the center through the analysis and project is to more closely bind together the middle east, europe, russia and north america. and the councilas international security program mass long been the leading center for analysis on nato and trans-atlantic security. this program will evolve into the brent scowcroft center in international security next spring as we deepen our expertise on working with europe to address global security challenges including in the middle east. the council's africa center aims to transform u.s. and european policy approaches to africa by emphasizing the building of strong geopolitical partnerships with african states and strengthening economic growth and prosperity on the continent. the distinguished leaders of each of these programs at the council are participating in our discussions today. today's discussion will be in two parts. first, we will consider the implications for libya itself and the arab awakening more

broadly. then we will turn to our second panel for a discussion of the implications for nato and the trans-atlantic community. for the first panel we've assembled a remarkably talented group of individuals with varying perspectives. dr. michelle dunn, director of our rafik hariri center for the middle east will moderate the discussion. she is a former white house and state department official who brings to the council both a rich understanding of the washington policy making process but also the forces driving the arab awakening. during her time at the carnegie endowment where she was editor of the arab reform bulletin and co-chair of the working group on egypt, michelle has recognized the trends of change and their imple educationers in the region long before mubarak fell in egypt. barry pavel who holds the arnold chair at the council and directs its international security program will moderate our second discussion on nato and the atlanta community. he has played leadership roles in the development of a broad range of national security and defense strategies and policies across the path three -- the

past three administrations including serving at the white house as special assistant to the president and senior director for defense policy and strategy on the national security council staff and having many senior pentagon positions. i'm also particularly delighted to welcome to our discussion today two atlantic council board directors, one american, franklin miller, one european, and -- anetha hoyser. we are delighted to have you join us. let's turn it over to michelle to kick off the conversation. >> thank you very much, damon. thank you to all of you for being with us this morning. in the first panel, we're going to try to cover what is going on in libya and what some scenarios for how things might move forward in libya. we're going to look a little bit to at the regional implications in the arab and african regions of what is unfolding in libya and we'll start to also address some issues in terms of the

international community. and what its role might be in -- inside of libya itself going forward. we're at a really interesting moment right now in libya where the rebels made this very surprising breakthrough in tripoli over the last week. not so surprising if you've been watching it carefully because the military advantage turned to the rebels weeks ago and didn't make the international media. so we're at this situation now that it seems that the transitional council and the rebel leadership is largely in control of tripoli. although as you've seen over the last 24 hours, and even today, there's still fighting in tripoli. and there are some troubling reports emerging in terms of the casual -- casualties there and the nature of the violence there. also now attention is turning to the south, particularly to the city of sirte which is the hometown of libyan leader

gaddafi. there may be more fighting there because rebels are not in control of sirte and subhun, another city in the south. one of the questions that i think will be interesting to discuss this morning is gaddafi himself and how important his capture is. to the situation in libya. as we move ahead and as the rebels spread their control throughout the country. the issues of the release of assets on the part of the united states and others to the transitional council, and whether the plans that the transitional council had in place before they entered libya, the plans to secure tripoli, to establish security throughout the country, and to move into a political transition, how well those kind of plans will survive contact with reality.

we'll also be talking about the implications in the region. we haven't seen those play out yet. but i think we will be seeing them. i think that there will be a significant impact of what is happening in libya on syria. because what is happening in libya is now creating a different model for change. a more difficult model for change but very different from what happened in tunisia and in egypt. where there were peaceful uprisings and frankly the military sided with the uprisings rather than with the leader. and, therefore, the loord was forced to step down -- the leader was forced to step down with a minimum of violence. there were casualties in both of those countries but not very, very large scale. in libya now, we've seen a completely different model where what started as a peaceful rebellion met with a lot of resistance on the part of gaddafi.

his military sort of fractured, much of it stuck with him. some of it broke away. and went to the rebels. and we saw an armed rebellion then with international support. which has -- which has ultimately -- which has ultimately won out. and so for other countries like syria, like yemen, and perhaps others, this now creates a different way. that there's more than one way that these authoritarian leaders may go in arab countries. we will also be discussing a little bit the africa dimension. because we saw a real range of positions that the various countries with whom libya had close relations in the arab world and in africa took toward the struggle in libya and i think those will have implications for libya's foreign relations going forward. i'm joined on this panel this morning by three distinguished

speakers. first, we're going to hear from kadim misran, a professor at johns hopkins seis and also bologna, italy, a senior fellow with the mideast policy council and originally from tripoli. also daniel serwer, also a professor at seis and a scholar at the middle east institute. and my colleague, peter fam, who is the director of the misme -- of the africa center here at the atlantic council. i'm going to start with you, karim. i would like to hear from you about your evaluation of how close are we to the end of a military conflict inside of libya, how important or not important is what happens to gaddafi himself, and whether he is apprehended, and finally, what are your thoughts on

scenarios? where might libya be going from here? >> i wish i could tell you -- could take a couple of hours or a couple of days. hard to see when this will be over. i think we are at the end of it. to answer your question rapidly, it is essential that gaddafi is captured. or -- his troops are disbanded, seen in tripoli, what's happening is the defections of important parts of his troops has caused the easy entrance of the rebels into the city. the troops of general baroni, betrayed it right away. so in the city, loyalists of gaddafi got caught off guard. and started shooting. that's what you see, the confusion in -- is happening because no clear-cut division

of roles. gaddafi, there are some troops loyalist in sirte. but they will be taken care of. so we are in the phase of a cleanup. it is important that the cleanup is conducted and that for that reason, taking gaddafi off means obtaining the surrender and the possible unification of the council. the other part of the situation , we've seen incredible progress by the troops. they've been trained. the core of the rebel groups were trained in may and june and that's where we were complaining about the fact that they were not making any progress and moving forward. once the training of this core part -- not working? ok. ok. once that has been obtained by

the rebels, we have seen rapid advances. both from the mountains and from out of misrata and the eastern part. that is true. there is a group of well-disciplined or better disciplined troops that respond to a hierarchy. along with them, there are lots of voluntary heroic, courageous people who left their houses and their homes to go and fight. but they are disorganized. and the problem we've seen in tripoli is exactly that. there are groups from the town, city, groups from misrata and groups from the mountains and groups of -- that have been trained and prepared to rise up. one. cases, the capture of muhammad, the first son of gaddafi, he surrendered himself and gave himself up to the rebels. he was kept in a place by a group formed and his brothers, they went to the house where he was captured, pretending to be

rebels from benghazi and wanting to free him and bringing to the headquarters. and so they freed him. they didn't know each other. there was no communication. there was no hierarchy or nothing. so this is also led to various problems, some -- what we've seen in tripoli.i was watching s morning. i was seeing bodies over the city, bodies left in the streets. the doctors in the hospital are receiving bodies. their signs of torture. all of this is because of the sudden collapse of the resistance. and the lack of order on the part of most of the rebels. the problem, the hierarchy are

the people who are known. confused. we have said they don't talk with one voice. if you can see it as it is now, it is too easy, we shouldn't have the standard too high. he has never been seen in in a couple of months. there is something else, and something else. the whole plan is different according to the one we talked about. misrata -- then the legitimacy would be increased. there is one problem.

everybody is quick to dismiss this. they are conservatives. very few, very limited. i would be very careful. i have seen the conservatism of the people are increasing in the last two, three, four years. it is a high speed of great. the people who killed the minister of defence belonged to this faction of the group. that is an issue that we should consider. where are we now? this a state of affairs on the ground, there may be three or

maybe four scenarios. first, organization. what is going to happen once they announce information for the government and the people from misrata will not be happy? the people will say they're not represented. people will say, we carried the burden of the fight. three ministries more than you. the resources there. what will happen in that moment? what will happen when they refuse it? what will happen when somebody is charged to reform the army or the police force? that can lead to an enormous quantity of weapons in the hands of extremists. hopefully it won't happen. it is one scenario.

another scenario, we have not seen in this war the commander yet. there is no figure. "i lead the army. i am your commander." what if something happens? the battalion simply says, you know what? the problem is too much. then we are back to work. different than before. it is something a lot of people are talking about. a strong man is present in libya. someone talked about this figure. it is belonging to powerful tribes. because of the weakness and the lack of charisma and leadership -- the third scenario is nothing will happen and they remain in

transition. there is no agreement on how to administer the country. we remain with it in tripoli. there is sacrifice, they will not allow for this to become a figure. people will be ready to give up their arms, ready to start the war over again. i want to finish with one thing. there is a lot of talking about the fact that the leadership be left to the libyans, etc. t it is important to western countries remain on our side and help. libyans do not look at the

rhetoric of gaddafi for the fourth year. libya was formed thanks to the united nations, exists thanks to the libyan efforts on behalf of the united nations. this war has been one thanks to the support of european countries. in helping support the police, in administering money, and reconstruction. thank you very much. >> thanks. let me just ask you a brief -- two quick follow-up questions. one of them is, you know, you have talked about the bloodshed that is occurring in tripoli now. to what extent do you see that impeding the transition and is impeding the reconciliation and

an integration of tripoli fully into a post-gaddafi arrangement? i recall, when members of the transitional council were here in washington a few weeks ago, we were talking. they said, we don't want to fight our way through aaa because we are worried about what that will mean when we need to reconcile with tripoli. that is the first question. will that be a serious problem? do you feel they will be able to pass by tripoli without having done so much damage that it becomes difficult? the other question is more of a hypothetical question. it is something that i think we need to bear in mind. where do you think libya would be today had there been no international intervention? what would have happened? as difficult as the current situation is, what would the alternative have then? what would it have been like, had there not been an international intervention? >> thank you.

yes. we have pushed to have a solution. we will try to see if the west, the united states, would lead and negotiate a deal with gaddafi so that he would leave tripoli and there would be some success. none of this bloodshed would have happened. it has happened. very bad. very tragic. idon't think it would be -- think it would simply say, ok. the dictator is gone. we are free after so many years. it cost us many more deaths than necessary. there was a liberation. i think it would lead to something like a vengeance, but i hope -- tier second question, it would

of been crashed easily by the second day or third day had not the european started intervening and putting pressure on the french and british intervention. therefore, i think we are much better off. we should be thankful for that intervention. everything considered -- of course, when someone says, i lost my son in this, you have a difficult time telling, yes, but we did it for freedom. that has caused problems and destruction. in the end, i hope the libyans understand it was an act of courage and dignity. >> thank you. we are going to turn to you now to discuss a little bit more the international role of -- beyond

the military intervention. how do you see the international role in libya following the fall of tripoli? and if you could include in that not only the western world, but also the arab world, which has been a very significant. there has been significant support from gulf states to this rebellion. >> i think where we have to start on the international role is inside libya, with libyan requirement. that is very difficult to do right now because, where are the authoritative libyan voices? let me imagine a bit what libyans will be feeling at the moment they really need recognizing full well that i will defer immediately to libyans if they say i am wrong.

they're very clear to and resistance. they want to stabilize tripoli, get water and electricity flowing, deal with the humanitarian component, get a political process. to me, these are the logical things to be worrying about at the moment. i would be surprised if libyans were not worrying about them. when you design the international effort, you need to be looking at longer-term goals as well. what are those longer-term goals? first and foremost, a safe and secure environment. the decision has essentially been made for the moment that there will be no international peacekeeping force. this is a decision whose wisdom we will know someday. i would have preferred that the europeans prepare to put paramilitary police into tripoli

to stabilize the situation. they would have had to be landing right now. they are not. they have not organized such an effort. i think it is a mistake not to have organized it, to be ready if it was needed. i would be the first to admit that it would only dep the libyans requested that. why do i point to europeans? i point to the europeans because they have vital interests in stake at libya and the united states doesn't. the mediterranean is their great lake. it is not one of ours. libya is connected, literally, by an umbilical pipeline to europe. there are european investments at stake. there are european oil and gas supplies a stick. there's a risk of libyan migration of things go to hell

in a handbasket. there is a risk of libyan migration, which should concern the europeans, and is not as much a concern to the united states. i do believe in all of what i am going to talk about out. i do believe that the europeans should play a leading role and that the american role is in part to get the europeans to stand up to their proper role. we did this somewhat successfully with the military effort. i haven't seen the same kind of success yet with the civilian effort. looking at the longer-term, libyans are going to want rule of law. at least in this scenario. they will want rule of law. i am going to keep myself in this relatively benign scenario. this is a long-term project. it is not going to happen tomorrow. there is training and retraining of the police, the judiciary,

correction. you have got to start pretty quickly now because it is going to take a long time. it cannot wait three or four years and then begin it, because then you will have three or four years of very bad experience. on the political front, the libyans have been great. they have prepared this constitutional charter. they may talk about it differently, each one, but it is great that they have done this. it is a road map. i think it is a road map that includes a time schedule that is too fast. constitution within six months, even less than elections, within a year, i would not be surprised if they have postponed that. people have postponed elections before. they have done it in both tunisia and egypt. it is not a big issue if you are headed down the right path. i happen to believe they should do municipal elections first. i think it is a big mistake to

national elections first. i confess there is only one case i can think of where municipal elections were done first. that was in kosovo. it was a very stabilizing thing to do. why do i think that? because all politics is local, or at least good politics is local. it is much harder to form coalition based on secular versus islam is that the local level. and you get a test of who is emerging and who can get local support, very direct relationship between citizens and their local government. there has been lots of focus on getting the libyans the money they need, but i think for the long term, the really critical issue is not the quantity of money, but the transparency and accountability of the money.

and i have seen little progress in this direction. i have heard a lot of good intention, but little progress in actually establishing a system by which they would be accountable publicly. this has to be a system inside libya to be accountable and transparent about how the money is being spent. i have never known of a post- conflict situation that would not have benefited by having a little less money flashing around. the reason is that less money means you have to decide what your real priorities are. more money, more corruption, more problems, let's focus on priorities. -- less focus on priorities. once the oil and gas starts flowing again, there will be accountability and transparency for that money. the citizens feel it is coming to them. we have -- it was discussed 1000 times in iraq.

it was never done. frankly, i don't think iraqis had any idea. i hope the libyans are able to do better. the immediate social needs are really quite acute. this does not make the headlines a great deal, but there are people, and a large number of people, who have been displaced. they are in shelters. they need food. they need water. the transition to the national council has been very good about collaborating with the international ngo's in providing basic needs. i expect them to do that also in tripoli. i expected to be much more difficult in tripoli, not least because of the security situation. in the long term, though, the social needs are larger than the basic human needs -- there is going to be a real need for a sort of political

reconciliation, whatever you want to call it in libya. this was a regime with which a lot of people collaborate. a lot of those collaborators would collaborate with the new apparatus. let me tell you that i don't know the situation in which collaborators have not tried to turn quickly to collaborate again. it is the people who resisted the old regime that resist the new one as well and call it out for its misdeeds. it seems to me, though, that libyans will need a process in due course of accountability of some type for the crimes of the previous regime. for that, they need strong civil society. you know, civil society has blossomed in benghazi. lots of ngo's. i hope it also blossoms in tripoli. it is really citizens that will pervade some of the bad scenarios.

these are longer-term goals, you know? i believe that they should be set out clearly in a security council resolution. 1973 has been overtaken. we need a security council resolution that says this to be a united, democratic libya under the rule of law that uses its natural resources for the benefit of all of its people. that, to me, would be a kind of vindication, not a justification, but a kind of vindication of the nato effort. >> thank you, daniel. i wanted to ask you about a couple of questions or concerns i have about what the nature of international involvement in a post-gadhafi's libya will be like. one of them is whether we will see any kind of competition for

influence between, frankly between the west and the arab countries. some of the arab countries, the uae, saudi arabia, they have played very significant roles in giving support to the rebels. there is this factor that was mentioned, a significant islamist factor inside libya. are we going to see international players supporting different actors inside of libya and try to strike them in the evolving libya situation? the other question i have is, are we going to see international assistance to libya being shaped or motivated by the desire to have a piece of the pie commercially in libya afterwards? are we going to see a kind of scramble for, for -- after all, libya, when it is through all of this, is going to once again be a wealthy country. >> yes to all of the above, and

libya should count itself as lucky for that. yes, there will be some competition for influence in libya and competition for oil and gas. more power to the libyans. they can manage that competition to their advantage. so far as the arab-western issue is concerned, i don't really see that, to tell you the truth. what i see is a kind of synergy, actually. the west is having trouble moving money quickly to the national transitional consul. the arabs are doing it a little bit more quickly. i think that is fine from the libyan perspective. western frozen money will come in due course. i think libya is a case where there was a good deal of unanimity between the arab world and the west. if that can be maintained, it

would be a marvelous thing. let's put it that way. so far as competition among the western powers is concerned, sure. there will be. but, that a good thing, basically, not a bad thing. it has to be managed effectively. the libyans have to create a level playing field for the -- for their oil and gas resources. >> thank you, daniel. i will turn out to peter. peter, expanding out this question of the international role and relations with libya going forward, many of the african countries, of course, backed khaddafi almost to the end. we have seen a number of them now. 16 of them have now recognized

the transitional council as the leadership of libya. i am wondering, how are libyans going to feel about africa as opposed to the arab world moving forward? gaddafi had become disappointed with the arab world and tried to read orient libya toward africa. i'm not sure to what extent that was shared as being the major orientation. how do you think this is going to look in the new libya? also, a sub-question. i am wondering if you can explain to us a little bit more the role of south africa in the current situation, and why south africa has continued to resist the transfer of assets to the transition -- transitional leadership. >> thank you. in order to understand libya's relations with africa, a little bit of history we have to take a look at. in many respects, here, in -- as

in many other aspects of life, gaddafi was a bit of a schizophrenic. the revolutionary, who from the beginning of his regime spent a lot of libyan money financing liberation movements across africa, that has bearing on the current events. then there is gaddafi the hegemon, who tried to ferment and armed change of regime in african countries, financing guerrillas to overthrow or attempt to overthrow. that is why there was destruction in africa. in the 1990's, when the sanctions for terrorism began to hit the regime at home, gaddafi felt the arab countries were not giving enough support. it shifted again with the emphasis on africa. they were turning to africans, many of whom were the former victims. they were welcoming africans to

move to libya up to a a point where 1/6 of the population was part of it. it was born out of a summit held in zurich. it's foundational documents found it was inspired by the visit of -- vision of the alphonso revolution. i'm not sure if they will have to now change their charter to avoid that bit of embarrassment. finally, there is gaddafi the investor, who invested billions of dollars in everything from business to infrastructure throughout africa. all of these different gaddafis, and which one individual country dealt with will reflect in how it has been dealing with libya. the countries that were probably least affected by libya are the most flexible in reaching out to the transitional national council. the ones that carry a lot of baggage, south africa you mentioned, from the

revolutionary period, still carry that baggage, the memory of gaddafi. that has affected their judgment. i was to the point where south africa's deputy president called for an international investigation of the nato commanders for their role in assisting rebel forces during the civil conflict. these different interests are at play. also, from the african side, there is a perception of what has happened in libya. the refugees are returning. the violence that unfortunately occurred in some places again, some africans were thought to be mercenaries and were more likely economic migrants who bore the brunt of resentment from people, that has affected some african'' perceptions. i think we will see in africa and libya as relations with africa little bit of the reset. the arab league has been much more forward on this both in

lending diplomatic cover for the u.n. resolution and this week to recognizing the transitional national council as a legitimate government of libya, where is the african union has yet to come up with a consistent policy. there is a reset. i expect the new government in libya will pivot more toward the arab world, less to the african world. they will still need each other. the africans cannot help to stop the flow of arms from gaddafi's stockpiles, that are beginning to be seen in markets throughout africa. there is a monitoring group for somalia, for example, that has reported manufacture from libya's arsenal showing up in conflict in somalia. showing up 29's are on the open market. these african countries cannot hope to stop that without

collaboration with the new authorities in libya. on the other side, libya needs the cooperation of african governments to retrieve assets that the sovereign will funds -- wealth funds. it was in everything from businesses to infrastructure, that hopefully can be converted back into cash to be used for the development issue and other issues that kareem spoke about. >> thank you, peter. i would note, as you did, about africa, in terms of the arab countries, the position they took toward libya was not at all uniform. i mean, initially, with the initial establishment of a no- fly zone and international intervention, a number of countries opposed that strongly, although they were eventually

persuaded, basically by saudi arabia, to kind of step aside. the arab league did speak in favor of international intervention. it was a really unusual step for the air oblique, and a lot of it goes back to the saudi enmity against gaddafi. >> the free african members of the un security council, south africa, nigeria, all three voted for the u.n. resolution. what was interesting is how they pivoted afterward. south africa disavowed its ambassador afterward. nigeria took a middle position. this week, it recognized the transitional council. thebone's president here at last -- at the atlantic council called for the ouster of gaddafi. it recognized the transitional council. there's a bit of variety in the

african response. >> right. the libyan relations with some arab countries will need resets as well, notably algeria, which generally was supportive of gaddafi, and so we will see what will happen. we are going to open it up now to questions from theif you have put your hand up. we have microphones. i would like you to speak your questions into the microphone. please identify yourself and keep your questions brief. >> my name is waeter. my question is, do you know why

the rebel leaders in transition are the defectors who want to be a leader and how people can trust them? recently, a libyan citizen asked me, "why do you think western nations have all the answers for the middle east problems, including libya?" thank you. >> it allows me to talk about something that i could not talk about before. i have a gut feeling that we have not seen the emergence of the real leadership of libya as yet. i do not think that all those kids and young people who fought in the streets, left their houses, will accept to be led by a political class that has been

in bed with gadhafi for 40 years. even without making names, someone who has been prime minister so many times with gadhafi cannot claim to be the new leader. someone who has been the ambassador for gadhafi cannot come back and be an ambassador for libya. military commanders to have been under gadhafi cannot lead new battalions. there are new figures with the second line that will come forward. there are commanders and italian leaders who will command their role. people who leave libya inside will emerge.

they will not accept the people who have been in power for 40 years. they may need the support of expatriates. >> let me clarify something -- i think there is a widespread assumption that the transitional council that we now see, or some form of it, will actually lead libya in some kind of a transitional period. are you saying that you do not think that is the case? or are you saying that they will but other leaders are going to emerge? >> that have to enlarge. they have to bring people from benghazi and all around. we will see other people coming in. they will put pressure on and it

will open up opportunities for other people. there will be a new way of leadership. i do not believe that this is it. i do not believe that the new libya will be led by these people. i think that another, may be experienced, maybe judicial people who have done more less in this moment -- i really believe the legitimacy will come from people who will appear in the next month or month and a half. >> can i add a word? there has been a lot of journalistic commentary that the transitional national council is a hodgepodge. it is a hodgepodge and it has to become more of a hodgepodge, as karim suggests. a hodgepodge has a lot of

different perspectives in a and when you are writing the rules of the constitution, it distributes power among the institutions, that is what you need. broad attention to issues. i might be afraid of islamist issues, too. but i definitely want them inside the discussion. >> i have a question that you might pick up on. two pieces to this. one is the role of arab states. uae has done has been remarkable. i wondered if you could talk about the varying roles of the countries in the conflict of libya itself and the implications of that. for example, morocco and jordan joined the uae and formally

became a part of the nato council that was conducting the operation. saudi arabia playing a key role in the arab league yet saying a little bit back. if you could just play that out a little bit. second, what is the impact of what is happening now in libya on the arabs bring? -- the arab spring? how does this play out in the midst of revolutions and revolt? in what are the implications in tunisia and egypt, to countries that are going through the transition already? >> i will take a first cut at that. i do not know if any of the other panelists want to jump in, please do. we are seeing really confused, i think, a chaotic picture in the arab world right now as the various arab states try to cope

with the amount of change. it is a little bit more than the system can bear. i mentioned that i thought, in some ways, libya was a unique case. gadhafi made a big mistake about eight years ago by trying to assassinate the king of saudi arabia. because of that, saudi arabia took unusually forward leaning position on a change in libya when the uprising started. they were eager to get rid of gadhafi. that clearly has not been the saudi approach to other arab states in general. they were very unhappy to see president mubarak of egypt go and they gave refuge to the president of tunisia. even in syria, the saudis only recently came around to giving up on withdrawing the saudi

ambassador. it was an important step and one that paved the way for a more vigorous u.s. and european position on what needs to happen in syria. we saw that most of the arab states did pull together in favor of a change in libya. not all of them, though. algeria, stuck with gadhafi until close to the end. syria is preoccupied with its own problems and cannot play this kind of a role. 11 on had a big grudge against gadhafi and was eager to cast its vote in the security council. this does not mean that that predicts what the position of arab states are going to be on

other changes going forward. libya was a unique case because gadhafi made so many enemies over the years. syria, i am certain that the opposition forces in syria and yemen are going to be very much encouraged by what happened in libya. at the beginning of this panel, i said that it shows there is more than one way to overturn a regime. i think there had been kind of a discourse emerging that if it does not happen peacefully and quickly the way it did in egypt and tunisia, then it cannot work. then you are just mired in war forever. the libyans have shown that, with some outside help, they were able to overcome the regime. that does not mean things will be easy going forward and that libya will look like eight

perfect scenario. it does create another model. already, we are seeing things in yemen devolve a little bit into an armed conflict. it is not clear yet whether things will go that route in syria. but it is a possibility. for example, the divisions of the syrian army will begin fighting each other. there is this forth the vision that is very close to -- that is headed by the president's brother that is expected to remain loyal to him. we could see the syrian conflict, which has been going on for a long time and slowly spreading, becoming more of an armed conflict. that will raise questions about international military

assistance of some kind. i am sure that the international community has no interest in fomenting an armed conflict in syria. if we saw poorly armed divisions of the army siding with the protesters against a well equipped, elite division, that is going to naturally raise questions. if libya is seeing -- if libya is seen as preventing a successful case of military intervention, that will raise a question about syria. and about whether there should be some form of a military assistance. i want to be clear -- not in the present scenario. only if a conflict develops inside of syria. there are a lot of implications for the other rebellions in the

arab world. a number of countries, notably algeria, in which we have not seen much yet, but that has a model of leadership that is somewhat similar to the model of leaderships that are being overturned successfully. there are going to be questions about whether there is going to be spillover. two other panelists want to comment? >> this scenario that you paint for syria is a real possibility. it would be a horrible mistake. a horrible mistake for the protesters, for the international community, for everybody concerned. why do i say that? i say that because the conditions for success for international military intervention simply do not exist

with syria. there is not going to be enabling security council revolution. there is no question in my mind about that at all. if you have the potential for a breakdown of violence, people go to protection in their own community and family. you have a potential that would be catastrophic in syria. if we are smart, we will be insisting over and over again, with the protesters in syria, that they should not expect international military assistance of any sort. that they have to keep on the non-violent track. >> i agree with you. this is a very unhappy scenario for syria. i agree with you that it might go that way.

it is a possibility. peter? >> i want to highlight the role that turkey has played, which has been rather extraordinary given the evolution of turkish war policy to a more assertive role. the role it has played in helping the rebels at libya, financing them privately. it is a broader role that it has played throughout the mediterranean and africa. i think the turks will be part of keeping syria from going in that direction. it is one thing to finance and assist a rebel movement across the mediterranean, it is a whole nother thing to have it on their own doorstep. i think it will play a role in helping encourage syrian opposition to maintain discipline despite provocation to avoid provoking a type of

armed conflict. >> i agree the turks would not want to do that. they have had some difficulty defining their own position. which libya, they flipped at a certain glee. there were initially supportive of gadhafi. we saw the foreign minister to take a trip there and make a last-ditch effort which was utterly in rebuffed by the syrians. it is a very challenging situation for turkey. other questions? >> i wonder if anybody would like to speculate about why the success stories in the arab spring have all been in north africa? particularly because there is

not evidence of action between the three. any comments? >> i do believe that there has been at some contingents -- i do believe that there have been some contingents. i am not particularly surprised that it has happened there. >> i agree. they were ripe for that. >> also, the factor that -- i cannot help but think of bahrain, where there was an uprising that was put down temporarily, i do not think we have seen the end of serious opposition in bahrain.

the countries in north africa, i think, were not next door to a large arab countries like saudi arabia that was willing to intervene in all kinds of ways, including militarily, in order to put down these uprisings. other questions? >> center from transatlantic securities. a question concerning the external influence that was addressed before. i would like you to expand upon the possible role of russia and china when it comes to the influence, particularly when it comes to the economics, if at all.

>> i think you can expect the chinese to what some of the oil action to. there is no doubt about it. that is why it is so important to establish sooner rather than later in a level playing field for oil and gas through libya. so far as the russians are concerned, i have not seen the same kind of concern about libya from the russians that you see about syria. syria is something that they are very serious about. in a certain, very real sense, libya is just a gas competitor to russia. in that sense, maybe a little on welcome -- a little unwelcome in their return to the market.

libya has been a really important factor in the european gas market. >> we have all thought that most of the oil and gas is already established. the real bounty, the reason why there is a scuffle for libya, is the money that comes from libya. it catches money and goes into conflict. that is what is going on in europe. because of this money that comes from oil will then be spent here, there, somewhere else. >> construction, infrastructure. >> that is the real issue. it will be there -- it will be very difficult to take it out.

i would be surprised if it happened. it is very easy to promise contracts to everybody. >> what about china? china had a very large investment and it was a major issue for this area the chinese took large losses in libya because of the uprising. they had a problem evaluating chinese. >> the problem is they had a show of efficiency. everybody was appalled by the show of efficiency of the chinese. they got ships from greece and ships everybody out very quickly. they will be back. they are very strong. >> to follow up on the china

issue, they have proven themselves to be remarkably flexible and pragmatic, not only permitting un resolutions to past, but if china was the first country to buy oil from the rebels, $120 million worth, they have positioned themselves to make high-level statements, they expect to go back and continue their contracts and expand upon it. it is very unusual for china to force a rebel movement, but here is a case where economic growth and a steady supply of oil and contracts from chinese businesses prompts an ideological read of the libyan conflict. >> good point. any other questions from the audience? i want to raise one issue that we have not really covered in

this panel and get the panelists' comments about that. the question of the return of the libyan assets. we are looking at well over $100 billion in assets, many of which are invested, but there are significant liquid assets. we have seen the security council approved the transfer of 01 $0.5 billion from the united states to the transitional leadership. italy is now pursuing being able to transfer $500 million to the rebel leadership. what are your thoughts in terms of how this should be handled? how quickly money should be -- the money that is liquid should be returned to libya? how it might be monitored and so forth.

daniel, you already made the point that there is a danger of too much money too soon. we also hear from the u.s. administration they're concerned about getting resources quickly to the transitional leadership. i would like to hear any of the panelists who would like to comment on this issue. >> they have got to have some money. that should not have too much money. what they get should be handled transparently and unaccountably. for that, you can rely on them to voluntarily do that. i do not think that is so wise. i think a security council resolution that lays out some requirements is the right way to go. i do not know if this has happened. >> are there good models for that? >> there are lousy models for ait.

there was assistance impose on an unwilling regime. i think you could get the tnc to agree to some measures for accountability and transparency. my reading is that they are the kind of people who would be amenable to that. >> i agree with them. it is very important that some way is designed to ensure that this money is given to the libyans in with a clear budget and a lot of transparency with where it goes. whether there is some commission to decide where the money goes or something else, it should not be simply given like that.

most people in charge now do not want the money right now, because then they are put in pressure which is disarming. >> in addition to what they said, i think the other thing that is important is to get the institutional capacity to absorber -- libya certainly needs vast infrastructure, not just because of the destruction of the war, but because gadhafi has deprived the country for four decades. there is a technical expertise that is lacking that has to be put into place. otherwise, all the money in the world will only cause a hyperinflation of the services without delivering value. that has to be put in place. that is where i think the international community -- other countries can help with the technical capacity to assist in putting up the framework where

this money might be spent wisely. >> i think the italians are behaving the best. they have promised this since february and nobody has yet gone to the minister of finance to ask for the money. curlews ghani-- berlusconi said this money is coming. it is interesting to see how they will deliver it. >> are there any other questions from the floor? one more. >> i am from the atlantic council. if the panel can address the problem of the libyan diaspora. what role will they play in the post-gadhafi libya? >> you mean how good we are? i think we are very good. [laughter]

we would love to see our country go back to democracy and freedom. the role of the diaspora will be relatively limited. i do not think that the political leadership, they will come from the diaspora. we do not know what it has met for 40 years under gadhafi. the language is different. the feelings are different. the emotions -- to meet people, you have to understand the emotional stuff. that is a major factor. the leadership has yet to come. it cannot be these people under gadhafi. it has to come from the ground. we have argued about the problem in many cases.

i see the good in having municipal elections because it would allow the beginning of competition, the merger between semi-tribal family clans and a new leader. whoever is in this moment in tripoli. we have to find a way to reconcile this necessity, the good that comes with centralization, with the big problem of libya, the problem of national identity. gadhafi did everything he could to undermine institutions, to undermine any sense of that mission in the libyans to tie together people in one single vision.

the libyans have to be told to be allowed to express what it means to be libbin. -- to be libyan. you have to reconcile it carried we have to make sure that this effort of reconciliation and the reunification of national identity is reconciled with the good of having a strong effort on the region and to municipalities to this point. >> i think we will have to end there. thank you very much. thank you karim mezran, daniel serwer, and peter pham. we are going to take a couple of minutes. you can stretch and we will bring the second panel of here promptly. promptly.