open the doors. we have to build our institutions. we need your help. we need your support. of course, there is a very important issue we have to handle in amongst ourselves as libyans. the libyan people know they are ready to establish a new democratic country, believe in freedom, believe in human rights, believe in the freedom of -- but they need your support, they need your support, they need the support of the united nations, of course. we need to know where our mone ys are. there is some in europe, some in

the united states. we're worried about other money that may be in african countries. the libyan people made the right choice. thank you very much. [applause] >> mr. ambassador, thank you for your comrades of and thoughtful remarks. i am certain i can speak for this audience that the best wishes of the national council and our friends are with the people of libya at this time. one or two questions. he seemed to have a wonderful appreciation that the apparatus of government that remains may have an extraordinarily difficult these and challenging with creating a new state, and

that seems to be the experience of the world when these things come. there's this of the concerns about the weapons, the weapons that may have become misplaced during that time of the uprising, and as you mentioned, there is the question of will you be able to get the money. as we know some times -- sometimes when terrance and their families depart, they managed to bring a lot of their resources of the country with them, and one could only wonder how much money has been transferred to niger in recent days. any thoughts of yours will be appreciated. >> weapons are a main concern of libya, if you watched the ceremony in benghazi, saw the military group that presented president jibril with weapons.

we start to see that many groups are giving up their weapons, and this is a very good sign. it is important to encourage them to do whatever we can collect all these weapons. maybe this is not the main issue. the main issue is we do not know where they are. we need help, technical help, to get them. i believe this is the united states and great britain -- they are giving their help and support. concerning the money, of course, now, after the united nations security council resolution 2016, libya now has more access to their money. they are working with the international banking and other

financial institutions, how to get this money, but the problem, how was what we're going to do with this money and how can we keep them away from any corruption. this is an issue. i believe the money which we get from any bank may have to go directly to the libyan central bank or to the libyan banks in libya. i think the libyans now are mature, they know what -- means, they also know very well that the libyans now are a free people. i hope -- one more item, please. a previous speaker mentioned the possibility of a defense

relationship between the united states and libya, and of course the united states has just formed a new command called the africa command that seeks to establish relationships not only throughout africa, but also as of the day with the arab -- one knows when kroll gaddafi -- came togaddafi power -- >> the relationship between the united states and libya will be one of these issues, but we will never think that the united states will have pieces and libya. this is the kind of idea that is

not on the table at all. we want to have a very respected and equal relations with the west and united states. we want technology and their experience to help to establish the libyan national army. this is very important. relations between libya and the united states in the past since we establish the relationship in 2003, the relationship is very slow. but i think after this that will be completely different. we will work with them, we will try to -- we in libya to understand very much what the united states and the west did for us, but at the same time, the libyan sovereignty has to be respected. with this weekend the

relationship, the interest, and it will not be blamed as we have been used by the country's the support us and the countries will not be blamed that they will come for a certain interest and they will make the libyan little decisions. i am sure we have reached understanding between our leadership, even at this time, that we have to do it any better way. we have to build confidence between our countries, between our peoples, and of course our economic and trade relations will be taken into account, the country's looking to support us when we are desperate. i will never forget on march 19, when mr. jibril called me and told me if there is no action tonight from nato, then benghazi

will be the biggest -- cemetery in the region. if they are late one hour talks that would have been -- if they are late one hour, that would have been true. >> we are going to consider some of the 20-odd questions in a more thoughtful way, i checked with our friends with the libyan delegation, and provide images electronically on our website. wheaton our most appreciative of the ambassador's remarks this afternoon, but also his willingness to adjust his schedule as we needed to adjust hours to look after -- to adjust ours to look at the events as they unfolded. join me in expressing our appreciation to not only the ambassador from libya, to the libyan people for their freedom.

thank you. [applause] >> will the presenters on palestine please come forward. >> all this event later in our program schedule and in the video library at c-span.org. president obama will meet with tony blair on monday at the white house, but the stalled middle east peace process is like the topic for this fashion. -- for discussion. also, a pentagon report today

says security has improved in afghanistan, but the insurgency posese haven in pakistan significant risk to a stable afghanistan. the peak obtain a copy of the semi annual report sent congress, and there is more information on afghanistan and pakistan in the hearing we covered this week with secretary of state clinton. a programming update for you, vice president biden is the keynote speaker this morning -- this evening at the democratic party convention in florida. this is happening in orlando. live coverage at 7:30 eastern. other speakers include debbie wasserman schultz, bill nelson, and state democratic party chairman rod smith. european leaders reached agreement this week to deal with greece's debt.

david cameron answer questions from parliament this week about this plan and economic growth this week. piquancy his questions sunday night on c-span. -- you can see his questions 7 night on c-span. >> i do not want every story to be 1800 words. >> last month jill abramson become the first woman to become the executive editor @ "the new york times -- at times the -- "the new york times." >> sometimes there are three quotations making the point where one would do, and i would like to see a variety of storylines. >> she will discuss her book sunday night on "q and a."

general william westmoreland led troops in vietnam. bill vlasic details the unraveling of the automobile industry. then an examination of race and politics and being black in america today. also we will feature offers and literary sites around knoxville. every weekend on american history tv, people and events that got him at the american star. this weekend, picketing and an'sests, the national wom

party. archival film from abc and the army signal corps. also a look at the young harry truman. look for the complete we can schedule at c-span.org/history. >> patrick kennedy called on congress this week to adjust long-term health care. he spoke at this house energy and commerce hearing on capitol hill. long-term legislation is part of the new health-care law. a congressman who sponsored the legislation repealing the health care law says it is a new entitlement picket his portion -- it is a new entitlement. this portion is about an hour.

>> hhs announce what many people know about the class program since before the health care bill became law. it is completely unsustainable. after determining the class program cannot be along's -- the law's solvency requirements, hhs has decided not to go forward with this law. the warning was being sounded. on july 9, 2009, an actuary wrote 36 years of actuarial experience leads me to believe that this program would collapse in short order and require significant federal subsidies continued. also, that month, the american

academy of actuaries wrote to the senate health committee, the proposed structure and the premium requirements within the class act plan are not sustainable. kent conrad, the democratic chairman of the senate budget committee, called a class act a ponzi speed quick scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that bernie madoff would have been proud of. all this was before it was signed into law. what was the class act included put simply, all others needed savings, and the class at provided a gimmick. since participants would have to pay in to the program for five years before becoming eligible for any benefits, cbo estimated, including the class act, would reduce the cost of the legislation by $70 billion.

by february 16 of this year, even secretary sibelius publicly admitted that the class act was totally an incidence -- unsustainable. the class act was doomed from the start. we have a very serious long-term care problem in this country. costs are driving people into bankruptcy. a class act should not only be shelved. it should be repealed. i would like you to the gentleman from nebraska the remainder of my time. >> the failure of a class act is of no surprise. most people in this room knew the class act, a class program, was flawed from its inception, because there was no way the incoming premiums to cover the benefits being paid out. the unhealthy and disabled would have rushed into this program is such great numbers they would have immediately increased

premiums for everybody and roll. health-care analysts raised a red flag because they saw these false and understood the high likelihood that taxpayers later financing a class bailout. the ultimate question is, was that a purposeful ruse by hhs and the administration to make the accountable affordable care at look better, therefore, passing? or is this just plain old administrative incompetence? hopefully, we will get a clearer view on which one of those it is. i yield back to you, mr. chairman. >> the chair now recognizes the ranking member for five minutes for an opening statement. >> on march 23, 2010, our government made a promise to the american people to improve health care in this country by

enacting be affordable care act, landmark legislation that expanded insurance and health care coverage in this country this promised including the toss act, which gives hhs develop a long-term care option. the goal of class is to brought americans with an affordable method of obtaining long-term care benefits. secretaries of the list has announced that hhs will not move forward with this. i'm here to tell you that if we do not move forward with the implementation of a class act, which will be turning our backs on the millions of americans that are in need of a solution for finding long-term care support. an estimated 15 million people are expected to need some form of long terror -- long-term support by 2020. today millions of americans lack that kind of insurance, and medicaid pays 50% of that cost of long-term services, and that is rising everywhere.

persons that adult in parents are often forced to quit their jobs or spend their incomes to qualify for the long-term care support and services they need. a class act program is designed to allow people to plan in advance to take personal responsibility for their own care and obtains support they need in order to potentially remain in their communities and even remain active in their jobs. instead of allowing this population an opportunity to remain self-sufficient, we are sentencing them to unnecessary property to receive the care that they need. if we as a country cannot invest in fixing long-term care, people with functional impairment will keep returning to costly acute settings addressed potentially preventable conditions. i do not think we can sit back and do nothing. i do not agree that hhs is completed their work on try to implement class. the class actuary signaled that hhs abandoned the program gave

his report, and it's the a class benefit plan can be designed to be a valid proposition to the american workers as the class act prescribe it. one of his options is what he called faced enrollment in which large employers offer the plant's first before individuals can sign up. another option is temporary exclusion, no benefits for 15 years if the need for help arises. he is an optimist. he explains how hhs move forward. why does the department take such a negative approach and close the door on implementation when the work has not been completed? the affordable care act requires a class act implementation proposals be reviewed by the class independent survivor a council, which hhs has yet to

establish. the council should be convened immediately to inform the efforts of dept. and represent the interests of stockholders that had been invested for over a decade. the department is not supposed to abandon class without convening an advisory council. the council may review other options for long-term care that the department has not considered. a class act is the first step toward improving our nation's long-term care problem. it provides an official church that can be implemented, and this was an important part of health care reform. i refuse to give up on class as i refuse to give up on health reform. my colleagues on the other side want to give up on it all. they want to repeal all whole affordable care act. i have to say i am tired of the republican rhetoric that has been saying the government cannot do anything. terms like bloom, failure, can

do, no way. why can we do things because -- why cannot we do things? we are can-to people? we can provide long-term care insurance. i do not think the department should play into the same negative thing that i keep hearing every day from my opponent on the other side, and that is so disappointing me, this he the hhs play the same negative thing. i look on the floor today, what are we doing this week? we're not doing anything. this is the attitude is pervasive. we can have a formal health care. i wish we would understand that the american people expect us to do something and not to sit back and say we are failures, we cannot do this, we cannot do that. let's do the class act. go back to the drawing board, be

optimistic, and come up with a plan that implements that class act. >> i recommend the chairman of the subcommittee for five minutes. >> i welcome this opportunity to have a joint hearing. i would address the gentleman from new jersey that he refuses to give up. this is something that all of his democratic colleagues, many of his democratic colleagues in the house and senate, all indicate the have grave concerns about this new entitlement program, too much spending, and i suspect that he wishes to continue this program in light of the fact that it is going to be a budget buster, and we are doing something here in congress. where trying to balance budget. we convened this hearing to address the energy and commerce committee's inquiry into the

circumstances under which the class act was passed. this is a program that was recently pronounced dead by the secretary. the community support act or the class act is a long-term care program that was included in the president's health care law. it was meant to be self-funding. individuals pay premiums into the program would cover the cost of individuals receiving benefits. however, even before the passage of "obamacare," it was recognized to have a critical flaw. it would eventually go bankrupt. some democrats even joined us, saying they had great concerns that the real effect of the act would be to create a new federal entitlement program with large long-term spending increases that far exceed the revenues. perhaps the most damning

indictment came from senate budget chairman kent conrad who characterized class as a ponzi scheme of the first order. the kind of thing that bernie madoff would have been proud of. as with other provisions of "obamacare," a kraft did not fix it and they did not work with republicans to find common ground. they were too busy using tricks to cram through along before leaving the public could realize what was in it. they did not just quietly sneaked a class act in. they had the audacity to claim it would provide $70 billion in deficit savings. democrats' stated even though they knew better that the class act would have actually saved the american people monday . they were deliberately ignoring

the truth about the class act. democrats overstated fiscal conditions of this program intentionally. the savings from the class act was crucial to passing the health care law, and this administration promised the american people that the bill would result in $140 billion in savings. one half of that savings was from the class act. after 19 months of trying, secretary sibelius' announced she does not see a viable path forward for class implementation at this time. the question is, why did it take the administration so long to figure out what everybody else, even the cmf chief actuary, has known for many years? the administration seems to have gone to ensure neri lengths to ignore the truth so they can

continue to sell the false savings on this program to the american people. even staff at hhs knew long ago that the class act was a financial disaster and would cost money and simply not save its. this committee conducted a comprehensive investigation with a congressman and a group of other republicans from the house and senate. we discovered 150 pages of emails and documents from hhs questioning the sustainability of the class act as early as may, 2009. staff and officials within hhs the program a recipe for disaster that would collapse in short order. this is going back to 2009. this is from 150 pages of documents. while voices of reason question the program privately, the secretary and other officials publicly proclaimed the support,

and first with the waivers, now with a class act, the obama administration overpromises and underdelivers. the class failure whelks cost -- will cost one had a $6 billion trade if it went into law, when will the administration tell us ?he truth about that >> >> i now recognize a member of the committee for five minutes a. >> i want to welcome harker colleagues -- i want to welcome our colleagues today, including patrick kennedy.

i hope we can develop a plan to divide and pay for the plan for longterm care. tens of millions of people will face this in the future. the program was added to the health care bill and this committee on a bipartisan voice vote. it was designed as a voluntary insurance program to provide beneficiaries with the cash benefit to help pay for institutional care or assistance to live independently in the community. as we have been discussing, the administration announced last week it would not move forward with the implementation of the class program because it is currently unable to do so. i am interested in hearing from the administration's representatives about how they came to this conclusion and what potential behalf for moving forward. from this side of the aisle, the reaction has been one of

disappointment. we understood the scope of the nation's long-term care problem and the impact that these problems had on seniors and disabled and their families. we were hopeful when we passed the affordable care act that the class program would be the solution. as you can hear some on the other side of the aisle seem positively gleeful that this cost program has been set aside. that view, in my opinion, is really shortsighted. we have to keep looking for a solution to the long-term care problem and we need to do so in a bipartisan way. we cannot and should not give up. 10 million americans need long- term care and this is expected to grow over the next decade. long-term care, as we know, is expensive. it wipes out seniors savings and forces many to go on medicaid

which costs states and taxpayers billions of dollars. the present situation is both physically and morally wrong. many opponents of health care a lot are using this cms announcement about class as an opportunity to attack the entire wall. in context, i want to set the record straight. first, with or without class, the health care reform bill continues to be hit financially responsible lot to reduce the nation's debt. the cbo said it would save about $200 billion over the next decade. class was responsible for about $70 billion of that savings which means even without class the numbers still add up. the health care law will save over $120 billion over the next decade and even more after that. i want to address the myth that the administration announced.

the class program was an important part of the law that provided a new and important long term benefit. even though the administration has decided not to move forward, the rest of the benefits continue to pile up. millions of seniors are enjoying discounts in the part d doughnut hole and dozens are able. dozens are saving money because of the ability to cut fraud, waste, and abuse. many are protected from the worst abuses. small businesses are receiving a valuable tax credits for health care coverage. by the time the health care bill is fully implemented, over 30 million otherwise uninsured americans will of access to good, affordable health care coverage. i am disappointed about the outcome of a class, but even without this part this will

continue to provide critical benefits for tens of millions of americans. my hope was that this would solve our problem in providing long-term care and i hold out hope it can be a part of the solution. i want to hear from the administration today. i want both of these seven committees and the full committee to explore how we can move forward. can they find a way to make class a workable solution? are there legislative solutions to make this a sustainable program? the committee in the congress have a responsibility. i hope this hearing will help us meet this responsibility. >> the chair thanks the gentle lady and now recognizes the gentleman in from georgia provide minutes. >> i will admit to being a gleeful. it is hard not to be when we

just rescued $80 billion from a democratic sinkhole and our return it to the american taxpayers. yes, indeed, i am gleeful. to "a story from yesterday, the press strategy is to keep the class act on the book until it takes hold end of the political environment changes enough. that sounds like a recipe for disaster. when a pharmaceutical drug does not work as intended, it is not kept on the market in the hopes that one day and maybe we tweaked. it is recalled. this is not on like a defective drug and its repeal is a necessary step toward successful long-term care reform. they cannot work this without massive taxpayer bailout. as long as it survives, it is an

threat to the current the entitlement programs and especially to medicare. a congressional report released last month shows that former senator kennedy senior staffers and administration officials ignored cms actuary repeated warnings about the insolvency of the program and ignored studies by the society of actuaries supporting the concerns. according to reports, but kennedy staff report was, "she does not. she needs additional work on the actuarial side." she said she had a score on cbo that was actuarially sound. it kept going. one month later, deputy assistant secretary for planning at hhs stated publicly that they have monitored class and are

entirely persuaded that the financial solvency over a 75- year time can be maintained. to my knowledge, no model from cbo or the administration suggests class has been solvent has ever been produced publicly even after repeated a requests made by this committee. that is unacceptable. if the warnings were ignored, the american public needs to know why. simply cannot afford to let this administration hide behind back room deals any longer. mr. chairman, i believe we must continue to seek the truth from the obama administration on the economic modeling used to sell us on the class act and obamacare and on the entire bill sold to the american people. further, i will once again fall on this congress to pass h.r. 1173, a bill my friend has

introduced to repeal the class act. i yield the balance of my time. >> uphill we appreciate having the hearing today in reviewing what is taking place with the class act. i think it is apparent that despite the best efforts that it is very clear to all of us there is no way that the federal government can effectively or officially -- efficiently run this like the private sector. i will remind my colleagues across the aisle that there is no example in the united states where the federal government has run this effectively and has saved money. there's no example where these near term extensions yield you a long-term savings. it has not happened. not in tennessee, massachusetts, new jersey. it does bring up other problems

that exist with the class act. indeed, the budget gimmick that was there throughout the entire obamacare bill, what else is within this that would be a gimmick to get savings? we need to get to the bottom of this. the other. this highlights are the red flags that many of our colleagues have mentioned. indeed, this is being called a recipe or disaster, and it is not quite apparent that it is. another concern we will want to address is the lack of transparency that existed. they moved forward with the discrepancies in public and private statements and will want to get to the bottom of this. they have spent 19 months to implement a workable problem. i appreciate that we are having a hearing to get to the bottom

of this and i yield back >> mr. waxman is recognized for five minutes. >> republicans are gleeful and happy to admit they are gleeful because they want to repeal the affordable care acting in this particular provision which attempts to deal with the issue of long-term care. of people around the country do not realize that even medicare does not pay for assistance when they need what is called long- term care. if they repealed the car fact, they will have the following status quo continue. right now, 10 million americans are in need of some form of long-term care and this number is expected to increase to 50 million by 2020. seven in 10 people will need help with basic daily living activities at some point in

their lives because of its functional this ability. the cost of long-term care is astronomical. the average nursing-home bill currently stands in excess of $70,000 per year. monthly services for home health services averages out at $1,800. private health insurance, which my republican colleagues say is the solution, the ones offered are too expensive or are difficult to purchase. less than 10% of the population holds these policies. by far and away the largest spender of prolonged term care comes from the medicaid program. in fiscal year 2010 alone, the combined federal and state price tag for these services was some $120 billion. that is a publicly financed program. the republicans will allow this

program that is publicly financed to be the only hope for those who cannot afford a policy to cover them for long-term care needs. they started off this year by saying they wanted to repeal the affordable care act and replace it. we've never heard with the replacement is. they have no idea how to deal with this problem, only to tear down the attempts to make the problem more manageable for the millions of americans who face the dilemma of how to pay for their long-term care costs of themselves or their family. it is a through this problem that they worked to establish an effort to meet the long-term needs of our elderly and disabled citizens and their

families as well as to provide fiscal relief for the medicaid program. the community living assistance services and supports initiative, the cost program, was made part of the affordable care act. this represented the first real attempt to tackle the long-term care puzzle. it has eluded us for decades because of the complexity and the expensive price tag. we should not lose sight of all this, even as the program's troubles to get off the ground. no doubt it is not drafted perfectly. in a piece of legislation is, especially one as a novel and unique and class. everyone is knowledge is that. regrettably, republicans have called this hearing today to dwell on the problems that have stymied in the implementation, not how to fix the problems to

deliver a promising future that could and should lie ahead for the cost program. 10 days ago, secretary sibeliu'' announced she was putting class on hold because of unintended flaws in the statutory authority so she thought she could not, at this time, employment class. i find that disappointing, but until she pines it out for work, this is the responsible thing to do. calling for a timeout is not the equivalent to throwing in the towel of the republicans would have the public believe. contrary to the republican tidal of this hearing, it has not been canceled, rather it simply stand in recess. republicans complain that we are ignoring the truth. plight ofaving the millions of people to finance their own long-term care. what about the financial

disaster to those families facing this issue? a recipe for disaster is doing nothing and repealing the cossack. -- class act. they talked about under promising and over delivering. of a promised to repeal and replace but never said what they would do. all they have done is pass a law that would make the medicare program not a guarantee but something that may be available in the future, but for most people will not. i want to put all this in perspective and look forward to hearing today. >> and now recognizing the vice- chairman for five minutes. >> thank you for yielding and welcome to our panelists this morning, a great bipartisan group. i also want to welcome the second panel from the agencies. we certainly look forward to your testimony is. i am a believer in long-term

health-care insurance. this is more about the budgetary gimmicks to pass through the affordable care act. i would like to a least remove the word "affordable" from the title. nonetheless, this is a meeting about the cosset washington who done it. -- classic whodunit. i encourage other people to do the same. mr. waxman says it is too expensive. my premium is less than $100 per month. i do not what it would be in the class act, but the benefit would not be as substantial as the one i purchased in the private sector. i am not dependent upon the government to do the right thing. i did not have a 15-year

exclusion on the policy that i bought. congress could do something to make it easier, letting me pay with that fre-tax dollars or my health savings account. these are things within our reach and i do not understand why we will not do that. he also referred to us as " opponents." i remember when the cossack first appeared in this hearing room, at the last minute for a place holder language that they brought to the marked up, never had a hearing on it, never called a witness on it, and we were just presented with this information and we would fill in the details later. now it is later and we are filling in those details and

they do not look too encouraging. it looks like it was a budgetary deception to mask the actual cost. people are rightly asking now if we would have passed this have the true extent of the budgetary impact been known. what did they know and when did they know it? the chief actuary talk about the financial structure of this which was hit a problem. they knew that in may 2009 coup. why did we not discuss it then when we read during the marked up? i think that would have been a service to the committee in the people if we could have had those hearings, but we did not. here we are. it is a fact of life that we all age and we will have to rely on some form of long-term health insurance. i can think of no more loving gift for parents to leave their

children to relieve the children of that burden. we never got a chance to fully debate this. mr. waxman, i would say "class dismissed" and then we work on account -- canceling. i submit the balance of my time. >> i have been concerned about how this is double counting the premiums. as far back as march, i said if any insurance company wanted to pay $86 billion before collecting premiums, they would be prosecuted as a ponzi scheme. what is a particular concern is a lack of a forthrightness on behalf of the hhs and the administration. i come other republicans, and some democrats question the long-term solvency of this program, but the administration insisted it was not in question

and that it would significantly reduce the deficit. the original cbo scores projected savings of $70 billion accounting for almost half of the deficit reduction we were told it would achieve. now secretaries bilious says it is unsustainable and the promised savings have evaporated. they uncovered evidence that the administration knew it was insolvent since 2009. we're left with serious questions about what the administration knew and when they knew it. it looks like they knew in it would never be a cost saver. >> the gentleman from texas, mr. green, is recognized for 10 minutes. >> first, i want to welcome our colleagues here. three of them we see all the time, but i want to

particularly welcome patrick kennedy. we worked together on a lot of mental health issues over the years, and i want to thank you for your service. you were a service to your father. without your father's work in the senate, i do not have enough bankers and toes to talk about the issues that would not be in the law today, including the class act. generally, thank you for the service of your family. all of us think you for that. -- thank you for that. the class act was added by voice vote, but i do not want to use this as a reason to oppose the affordable care act. there are thousands of people who do not have the same opportunities that federal or state employees have come our

association vendors, american association members to purchase -- bar association vendors, or others to puchase these plans. this is about giving a gift to our children so we have that opportunity. it is difficult to find. i know we have heard it called "a ponzi scheme." up until today, the republicans only thought that about social security. insurance could be considered a ponzi scheme. bp these premiums and hope you will collect it. this was to give people an opportunity who may not have the same opportunities we do as federal or state employees. a lot of businesses have it, but most people do not. that is what the class act was about. is it perfect? nothing in the affordable care act is perfect. i disagree with calling it obamacare because this committee

drafted that bill. the president did not send us up a bill. i noticed popular call it obamacare because it sends a message, but we drafted the bill in this committee after a lot of late night markups, not dissimilar to what we went through in 2003 with the prescription drug plan that the majority now pushed that a lot of us did not support because of problems in the bill. you do not see us repealing that prescription drug plan. we want to perfected. i know we need to protect the affordable care active. that is what we need to look at. if we can perfect it and make it better, let's sit down across the aisle, but for 10 months, all we have seen is "repeal." i guess that happened after social security was passed. a lot people say we need to repeal. and goodness the congress in

1935-1936 did not do that. i yield my time to dr. christensen. >> thank you, congressman green. i welcome my colleagues, and it is good to see you, patrick. all lot of comments have been made, but it is my understanding that the cbo director has said repealing class will happen no impact on the federal budget and to claim otherwise is not true. repeal would have a profound effect, as the urban institute has recently written and i agree. "it is an opportunity to transform long-term care from the means-tested medicare program and insurance-based system. it causes repealed that opportunity will be lost in millions of americans will find themselves with a shrinking medicaid benefit to support themselves as they become disabled." are disabled need us to amend it, not end it. i yield the balance of my time.

>> thank you so much. we did not have a long-term care policy in the united states of america. the we only have medicaid when people run out of money. the 10 million americans who are in need of long-term care, services, and support really need a program like this. it is disturbing to me that when one of our colleagues say "class dismissed," no. but there are problems, we are all willing to sit down and see how we can draft this better, but the very idea that we will take away better choices for americans, already one out of six people who reach the age of 65 will spend more than $100,000 on long-term care. and in this country, that is a disgrace. we need a long-term care policy.

class is a good start. the >> that concludes the opening statements. the chair has a unanimous consent request to enter into the record a statement by senator john thune. without objection, so ordered. our first order of business today will be the members panel. i would like to welcome the members, former member, and witnesses today. the first panel includes congressman rayburn, the chairman of the subcommittee on hhs and education-related agencies. as we all know, the congressman is a doctor and will have plenty of company on the energy and commerce committee. also with us, congressman ted

deutsche from florida. and no stranger to the energy and commerce committee, patrick kennedy. happy to have you today and we will start with congressman rehberg. >> thank you for the opportunity to testify today. i want to thank the members of the class act working group. i see mr. upton is not here, probably has something else on his mind. senator thune's leadership has been extraordinary. this has been the culmination of a lot of work in this has unfolded a lot like an episode of "law and order." on march 23rd, 2010, the american public was handed a mystery when obama signed the patient protection act waiting in 2500 pages calling in for thousands of pages of regulatory

role making. even the authors did not read it. but we were told we had to pass the bill before finding out what was in it. that is what the class act group dealt with, using the oversight to retract the paper trails. as chairman of the committee that oversees hhs, i requested internal documents that revealed the insolvent nature of the program. when it passed, we were told it was a true insurance program and would collect benefits paid out. as they dug deeper, the cover story began to fall apart with a new facts coming to light. but every actuarial expert agreed that as currently written, class would not work. it would not pay for itself. the government is exposed to tens of billions of dollars in cost according to the cbo. earlier this month, we got the equivalent of a full confession.

hhs has rightly decided to cancel program. this was a profound development. once we stripped away the political spin, brushed off the budget gimmicks, and cut through the bureaucratic jungle, we saw the pillar of the president's lawyer for realogy -- for really what it was, a ponzi scheme included solely to help the bill appear to be deficit neutral. there is a problem. class is not gone. not yet. the secretary claims she can rewrite it. there will be the temptation for some to slip additional authority and to an unrelated bill to turn class into something it was never intended to be, which is why we are here today. now we have to decide what is to be done. i am here because i think it should not be we britain are be designed by the bureaucracy. at a time when we struggle to save the entitle programs already have come a good programs like social security

and medicare, we simply cannot afford programs like this. the cost of the employment and government is so great that the full cost needs to be fully considered in a transparent and open way by the public and congress. just as with the other entitlements, and a program of this type for existing beneficiaries, it makes it even more difficult. i introduced a bill to repeal class and others in the bill. colleagues, the most important responsibility congress has today is to create an environment for the economy to drive, to do what we must do to reduce government spending and onerous regulations. out of control government spending leads to higher taxes, lower government debt ratings come and onerous regulations leader not to the higher cost of

doing business. we have come to the final act in any "law and order" episode. congress has the chance to protect the taxpayers from an unsustainable new government >> we will just go in the order we are seated. >> a thank you. thank you for the opportunity to discuss the class act. i'm privileged to be here but mr. kennedy. senator kennedy captured the failure of our system when he said too often they have to give up the american dream, the dignity of a job, at home,

family, so they can qualify for medicaid. class brought to many americans hope because it was the first real path to delivering affordable long-term care. 10% of americans over 50 have insurance, yet 70% of them will need long-term care at some point. the remaining 90% rely on medicaid. that is why over 1/3 of its dollars go to long-term care and cuts demand we make affordable insurance available. the current system incentivizes poverty. it forces seniors to blow through their savings and spend down in order to qualify for medicaid. this perverse incentives forces struggling families in the unthinkable positions. take the man in his 50's with early onset alzheimer's. he is and all the xbox crist he is ineligible for medicaid

because of his wife's salary. her salary is not high enough to pay for the nursing home care that can cost up to $90,000 annually. she can leave her job so they can fall into poverty, divorce her sick husband, leaving him destitute, but eligible for long-term care through medicaid. these are the current system's sentence -- save nothing, pass what you have on to your children before you get sick, own little property, cannot purchase long-term care insurance. follow this plan and you will at be eligible for expense of long- term care through medicaid. triumphant save infants from opponents of health care reform do nothing for the grandmother in my district, who must choose to help pay for her grand the sun -- grandson's college rec.

i visit nursing homes in florida and and pain to hear constituents miss their homes and retirement communities. medicaid steers them into institutional care despite their preference for less costly in- home care and other options. i have heard from seniors facing foreclosure do to nursing home bills. i have heard from families who cannot afford quality care for the ailing parents they love. no one is immune from the frailty of old age. anyone can fall ill or become disabled. take the case of alan brown, a 20-year-old who in 1988 was struck by strong ocean wave that damaged his spinal cord, leaving him a paraplegic. from wheelchair's to transportation to long-term care, his costs are

astronomical. with two jobs, he struggles to get by. those who are young and healthy may not always be. anyone of us can become disabled ise mr. brown, and if incthat not compelling enough, aging should be. if sustainability is a concern about let's fix it. hhs was given statutory latitude, and i join the class advocates in believing that the secretary has enough authority to make the program work. others disagree. they imply a legislative fix is needed. let's fix it. just as social security succeeded as a wage insurance, reducing elderly poverty from 50% to 10%, americans should have an affordable way to finance long-term care. for the 200,000 seniors i represent, the jovial reaction to the suspension of class was both the gardening and

predictable. mr. chairman, my constituents, our constituents, deserve more. we must seize this opportunity to get long-term care right in america. together i believe we can improve upon and incredibly promising idea -- reduce entitlement spending, and insured americans greater financial security. thank you, mr. chairman, and i yield back. >> now i am pleased to welcome our former congressman, patrick kennedy. >> i appreciate the opportunity to testify. let's think for a moment and step back and use our common sense. all of our family members are going to need supportive living services, and the question is not how and what program we are

going to put those costs on -- is that on to be at the state level, local level, or federal level. the notion is to cannot turn away from this problem and think that the problem is gone to go away. someone is going to have to be there for people in our families who are going to need supportive living services. the question for congress is really, how are they going to address this problem? and so you can say that actuaries say class act is going to cost money, but the whole point of health care reform is that we take a broader look at all the costs associated with health care and see the forest from the trees. so we are well aware that health care systems have about -- have been about cost shifting. you take time, city the care and hope that someone pays for the bill that cannot afford to pay.

when are we going to start to be realistic about this, because just turning away from a problem is not want to make the problem galway. so people -- bill way. people will say this is a problem that -- -- a program that costs money. my father needed supportive living services, and sargent shriver, it was nonmedical support of living services that help them in their lives. it was a guy that helped my uncle sarge up from the living room into the dining room. and to help him get transported around. this was someone who did not have a medical degree, that's not have the student loans because they went to get a degree, but they were the most essentials person in my uncle's life in giving him dignity can

giving him a life. and guess what -- it is the least expensive! i should be all of a chorus of support for my republican friends if you want to reduce medical costs. try using non-medical support services. you will hear a lot about this is on the cost money. let's that and understand if someone is going to pay, one is going to pay, and so let's be realistic here. that's also the right thing by our family members and give them the kind of lives of dignity that they deserve, that we would want for any one of our family members. and i hope that we get away from this notion that lets place the blame game -- washington is good at that -- but at the end of the day, our country is facing a

demographic tsunami. it is going to bury this country in red ink, and the question is, do you want to take all of your tools out of your toolbox now? class act can be one of the tools that you use to help address the overall costs of trying to take care of long-term care. in my mind, you can either pay high-price acute-care, institutionalized care costs, or you can pay for nonmedical supportive living service costs that will keep people out of acute-care settings. the whole notion of health care reform was to move us from a sick care system to a health care system, because it is less expensive at the end of the day to keep people independent and not dependent, if you will, on our medical system, which is costly. class act is a tool, and let's

make it work for all of your constituents who are going to need the support of services that are on to give than the human dignity that each of us would want for our own family members. thank you, mr. chairman. >> the chair is not pleased to recognize dr. boustany for five minutes. >> thank you for allowing me to testify today. chairman, i ask unanimous consent of my full statement be made part of the record. i appreciate you allow me to testify in support of hr 1173. the bill is simple. it repeals the class act as the program has been shown to be fatally flawed, fiscally irresponsible, an irreverent. i posed a class act and have worked to highlight the floss the program. i can tell you as chairman of

the oversight subcommittee on house ways and means committee, a bicameral oversight commission is were necessary to expose the truth about this program. mr. chairman, this is a victory, a congressional oversight victory, on behalf of the american taxpayer. leading the statute on the books is irresponsible, and it must be removed. keeping the law on the books gives bureaucrats a creative license to try to keep -- to keep trying to implement it and it is an opening keep trying to tweak a program. it is unsustainable and cannot afford it. i agree with employer groups who have no doubt that class will return if congress does not strike it. eight h s -- mr. chairman, i

have to say i am deeply disappointed that secretary sibelius' refused to testify today. she should come here today. she should explain why she ignored warnings of the insolvency of this program and falsely claimed that she had the authority to change the program. lawmakers consistently ignored warnings about the congressional budget office, chief medicare act sure, and the american academy of actuaries when the inserted this gimmick in the affordable care act. after months of refusing to answer questions, hhs finally conceded it lacks the legal authority to make class system appeared congress should repeal it instead of waiting for bureaucrats to change their mind. be's credibility should also called into question for scoring the program as a saver when they knew it would be needing a bailout. i want to quote a former cbo

officials. they wrote, what remains most perplexing in this whole episode is why cbo played along with the class shawn rate. they had access to all the same actuarial data as everyone else. their own numbers showed the program was unstable beyond 10 years. the gregg amendment gave the excuse that class would never be launched because it could never be viable without massive taxpayer subsidies. yet they kept showing a surplus in the arrest appeared among the many questions about this sorry episode that are worth pursuing is the role of cbo. mr. chairman, as a physician who has dealt with many patients, i

was a cardiac surgeon and i saw a lot of these complex conditions and solve the entire spectrum of care and the needs that are out there. i can surely tell you that as a physician there are many, many other options that are much more responsible, fiscally irresponsible, and sustainable than what this program was. my colleague dr. burgess mentioned a number of options. beyond class, we must continue to encourage americans to plan. that is the fundamental issue, planning ahead, starting at an early age and planning for these kinds of things. you cannot do it at a late stage, planning for retirement security, purchasing long-term care policies. we can do a number of things to make that even better if we look at these options very carefully. i can tell you from having dealt with my own father and my wife's

stepfather, there are viable ways to deal with this. what we need to do now is be responsible. let's repeal this fatal program. let's move forward and come up with responsible policies that will move the ball forward on health care. mr. chairman, i think it for this opportunity to testify. >> the chair thanks each of the witnesses for your testimony. at this time we will dismiss the first panel and call the second panel to the witness table, and the chair will turn over the chair to mr. stearms for the -- mr. stearns for the second pane. >> vice-president biden is the keynote speaker at the florida democratic connection this evening. you have coverage on c-span2 at

7:30. other speakers include debbie wasserman schultz and also florida senator bill nelson. although this had line proved defeat by truman was iconic. tonight followed the career of thomas dewey as three-time governor and influencing national politics in the election of dwight eisenhower and richard nixon. "the contenders" tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. [no audio] span >> this weekend in

knoxville, tennessee, with book tv and american history tv and the behind-the-scenes at the literary life of the marble city on c-span2. university of tennessee's body farm is 4 acres of decomposing human remains. a look at "roots" author alex haley. on american history tv, a visit to the sequoia of birthplace museum. -- sequoyah birthplace museum. also, a visit to secret city. is not still a true southern city? historian bruce wheeler on its future. watch throughout the weekend on

both tv and american history t in knoxville, tennessee. >> james amos said the marine corps should go back to the pacific once the service is out of afghanistan. he talked about the restructuring of the corps. his comments are about an hour. >> good morning, everybody. just a couple of housekeeping matters. for those of you with blackberries and cell phones and pagers, please turn them all the way off, not just to silence.

we're using a wireless microphone system, and on the vibrate mode you will interrupt. next, for all the journalists, this meeting is on the record, so everything that the commandant says can be used and discussed and spread far and wide. one of the reasons the council likes that had become a preside is i spent five years based in moscow and i run these meetings with a stalinist as a. -- efficiency. the challenge is what can you say about them especially to an audience of interested folks here today so early. all i will say is that over at the pentagon there are several chiefs, but just one commandants. and you see with us today general james amos.

i would like to start at the top of at the strategic level. the 10 years since 9/11 have forced the american military to adapt and change as much as the adversaries have and it is a new darwinism. the adversaries learned a neat trick, we have to adapt. to have b-52's as trustee assets. troops are getting out of their armored vehicles on patrols. one of the adaptations that the marine corps has had to make is you have given up your historic expeditionary role for deployment to iraq and afghanistan. so in a post iraq, post- afghanistan world, how do you see the marine corps getting back the its historic mission and what other changes are you at anticipating? >> we have been on the ground for 10 years now, and one of our

more senior leaders use the term we have become a second land army. that was coined from a marine which i have lived to read the day that his comments were made. regardless -- >> wasn't that not about the other white meat? >> we did that in france, a vietnam, over periods of time. while we have been in afghanistan, we have had units out in the pacific and around the world doing other things. they certainly have participated. we have kept our amphibious roots, but we have not been practicing that trade to the level we have been meeting to get back to. when we come out of afghanistan, and secretary gates last fall said build the marine corps for a post-afghanistan environment. we did that and we have done

that. we have about 10 months of analysis behind that. it incorporates the lessons we have learned for 10 years of this counterinsurgency and this irregular warfare, built a marine corps that incorporates those changes, but allows enough to be used the way that it was designed to be used, that expeditionary force that is doing the nation lost bidding and representing the united states around the world. our goal is to get back to that, and i intend to do that when we come out of afghanistan. we're not waiting until we come out. we are shipping it right now. >> walk us through the orders you have given and concepts you have described to get you where you want to be. >> we have begun to look at the units that need to orient themselves to the pacific. it is an appalling part of the world for our nation. it is an area that the me marin corps has been operating in for the last 70 years. we are familiar with it.

it is in our nation's best interest to orient back to the pacific. i have been looking at units, who would be the units that would be able to operate in the pacific? we had units there right now, so first is the identification of the units, and in changing your regimen back here. i sat with our head trainer out there, in a premier training area, and said talks as we look at orienting to the pacific, that one need a different kind of training. it will require war shipboard operations, the bread and butter of the marine corps pre-9/11. we're retraining our training phases right now in anticipation of next year taking the first units and putting them into this training regimen, and getting ready to the back to the pacific. >> this has to be carried out in

a time of less money for the pentagon. it seems to me that the public has not yet been engaged in dialogue as the pentagon has to cut at least $450 billion and perhaps more after the super committee. it seems the public might want to be engaged in the discussion if there is less money, the military cannot do everything it is doing today. what roles, missions, capabilities the you not what your military to do for you anymore? how does that dialogue on the budget affect your thinking? >> i think there is dialogue going on. i do not know if it is public, but there is certainly -- >> i can change that. >> it will be public at today. there is great effort underway right now with the department of defense to align itself with the administration's vision of a strategy for the united states of america.

in this environment where we are fiscally constrained, that is going on right now. there is nothing happening within the department of defense where they are going we are going to go do this, and their respective of the budget. it is informed by the budget, but has been driven by the national strategy that is being worked right now. i'm comfortable we are heading in the right path, but back to your issue about the implication about pacific. you have already bought the marines, you have already bought the ships, he had bought the airplanes, bought the sustainment and supplies. the bill has already been paid for that, so it is a function of what the you do with them? the you leave them back to the continental united states, or do you take those ships and deploy them and do the bidding of the nation? >> will that be driven by the available funds?

i assume it is more expensive to be have them forward deployed and still here. >> there are ways you can do this a little bit cheaper. the navy is looking at positioning some ships for deployment. they certainly have some now. they are looking at that, and that is one way where you did not have the transit time, which is fuel, time, away from home, so there are things he can do. the other thing he can do is you look around the globe and say, where are my greatest interests? where are the areas in the world that the united states needs to focus its efforts on? i will tell you that as of it is certainly one of those areas. as you begin to try to balance all this, you will look and say, we will see the pacific is where we need to be. >> the marine corps went to a

deliberate process and coming up with a glidepath from 202,000 down to 186,000. can you talk about the analysis that went into that number and why is that 186,800 the right number? >> we bought a record up from 170,000, which is what it was on 9/11, and we started about 2006. we grew the corps knowing how long it was going to last. when secretary gates said come out of afghanistan or build a corps when you come out, you will not need to hundred 2000. we said take the lessons of 10 years of warfare, and what are those things? we have always had, but it

showed its face, what we call low density high command of critical skills. we call the military operational special place. the counter intelligence, human intelligence, signal intelligence, the guys that listen and do all kinds of the things with radios and space, and they are closely affiliated to nsa. we need it those guys. we need it explosive ordinance. when we had 200 guys of those today. 8075 tic.ghat military trucks. let's take those and let's build them in this mix, throw them in the bowl, and then let's determine what are the other lessons? one of the things was when we began in 9/11, our manning in

their units was around 99% perricos the equipment rating was an little bit less than that on any given day, in the unit, he probably had somewhere around 88%, 85% manning. as we went to war, which started putting these units into the plumbing. we had to borrow manning from other people. so we came to the inescapable conclusion that the manning levels were built for a reason, so let's increase the manning in the units to what is supposed to be. so we built units in the 1867000 that were ready. so we built units in this 186 that were ready. and then we took the mission of

the marine corps, which is to be our nation's crisis response force, to respond to today's crisis with today's force today, not next week, not a month from now. you don't ask me to do something and i say, thank you very much, thom, it's going to take me about three weeks and i'll be able to cobble this force together and i'll be able to train them, and then i'll be able to -- no, the nation has a marine corps to respond today. that's what we do. we have a very high level of readiness, and the nation expects us to be able to do that. whether it be responding to that terrible earthquake and tsunami with our friends in japan -- we went overnight; whether it be libya no-fly zone -- we did that very, very quick. so -- so we put that in there. so i told the guys, i said, all right, build that, tell me what that number is. i did not give them a number, nor did the secretary of defense or secretary of the navy. and it came out to be 186.8. we reduced the numbers of battalions, we reduced numbers of squadrons, collapsed 21 headquarters -- did away with 21 headquarters, took john wasser headquarters out. nobody told us to do this. we just built this to be more efficient. when we went into the reserves, we kept the number of reserves at 39,500, but we shaped the

reserves so that we could take these lessons learned and incorporate those into the reserves. so that's what 186 gives you. it gives you a heck of a force that in my estimation is what our nation needs in the next two decades. and so we built it at that and with a lot of analysis. and i feel very comfortable about the number. >> all right. is that really the floor? i ask because it's, you know, a truth of pentagon finances that personnel costs are such a huge part. if the government came to you and said you have to lose some end strength to make the budget work, is that possible, or is this the floor -- >> well, i think the way that the pressure's being applied, the reality of where we are budget-wise right now is -- and i think everybody knows that there is at least a $450- billion-plus bill that's been levied on the pentagon and -- for the next -- we got to pay for the next 10 -- over the next 10 years.

so to do that, i've only got three levers. i mean, i can either dial down manpower, (which is called ?) force structure, or i can dial down procurement, which means i buy less things -- which for us is pretty significant, because we've been on the ground for 10 years; we don't have a lot of extra equipment in the marine corps. our stuff is in afghanistan. i've got twice as much equipment in afghanistan than a normal unit -- if you're an infantry battalion on the ground, you have -- let's just say you have a hundred pieces of gear. in afghanistan that infantry unit's got about 200 pieces of gear, because we're spread out. we're spread out. the climate's harsh. the area is very -- very unforgiving on vehicles and equipment. so i've got to reset all that. so as we look at this, as i take a look at dialing down procurement and modernization or even recapitalization, that's a strain. and the other one is operations and maintenance funds. in other words, i can cut training, i can cut ammunition, i can cut those kinds of things. so those are the three dials.

so one of the dials is manpower. so if -- if this continues to increase, i'm going to end up reducing the marine corps below 186.8. i guess the good news is that we have a model -- in other words, we at least have a system, a framework that we can judge what would be the -- not necessarily capabilities, the capacity that we would want to pull out of the marine corps to get down to some number so we could pay our bills. so i'm not sure 186 is the floor. what i can tell you in the audience is that 186 has more rigor and more analysis in it than any effort that's been done that i've seen by anybody in the department of defense in the last five years. so i'm comfortable, confident in the number. it's been briefed to the secretary of defense, gates, in february, he approved it, and that was before we got into the fiscal crisis we're in. >> of the specialized capabilities that you listed for the corps a few moments ago, you didn't talk about your new special operations component. it's been operational now for a

couple of years. what's the report card? >> tell you what. i think it's a -- i visit them all the time. i'm a huge fan of them, and in fact to the point where we've plussed them up. in this 186 bill, there's a lesson learned of the 10 years. we drew the marine corps down. we've put a thousand more marines into marine special operations command. they were sitting at about 2,600; they're going to go to about 3,600. we're going to go from -- cyberwarfare, from where we were, about another 600 in cyber. but back to marsoc, they -- i visit them. i was with them last month in afghanistan. we're going to see them -- we're going to spend thanksgiving with them, running around helmand. they are just -- their report card is very, very strong. very high marks. i'm very pleased with them. i'll tell you what they --

they're -- they are the ultimate economy of force organization -- and by that for everybody, i mean instead of taking an infantry battalion of nine other marines and arraying them on the field somewhere or the marsoc marines, the special operations marines -- and it's more than marsoc -- it's the seals and it's the rangers and it's the navy -- i mean the green berets, because we work together. but you put small teams of these guys in there and they can occupy a space and have an awful lot of effect, which allows the general purpose forces to do the other things on the battlefield and face the enemy in other areas. so my -- i'm very pleased with marsoc. i feel like a proud father to these guys. >> right. i wanted to ask a bit about the global posture. you've already spoken at length about the pacific. and it seems to be really the current theme or focus -- secretary clinton had a very powerful essay in the new issue of foreign policy, you as well. so since you've addressed that, let's talk about africa for a second. the president just two weeks ago deployed a hundred enablers,

mostly from special operations, to uganda to help enable, build partner capacity. do you think africa should be a renewed focus of what the marine corps is doing? >> i think africa and i think south america are two prime areas where the marine corps can really -- can really help with whatever our nation's bidding is in there. and i say that because we are -- we are reasonably inexpensive. we are prepared -- we do training; we do that well. in fact, we're -- we spent -- we had over a thousand marines in central africa over the summer training with african nations. we know how to do that. we live -- we're -- we don't need fancy hotels or air conditioned hooches to live in. we -- we're more than welcome -- more than willing to live hard. so you get a lot of bang for the buck with us. we can go in small areas. colombia is a great example, down in south america. we've been training and working with colombia for the last, goodness, probably 10 or 11 years. look at what's happened in colombia. i mean, the country has turned around. you know, we're working with

peru right now, so -- and we're working in africa. so i think -- and what i would envision, (kind of ?) penny packets of small units of marines doing what our nation would like it to do with regards to training and assistance in africa and south america is clearly a mission that the marine corps would excel at. i think -- i think it's affordable. >> right. your comment on austere environments reminded me, i was last in rc south in august. it was one of those typical southern afghanistan days in august, 126 degrees, dust was blowing, body armor. i was talking to a soldier from oklahoma actually, my homestate. and he said, my grandpa fought in france in world war ii. how come we don't get to invade nice places anymore? and i thought for a second. you know, i love the army; i love all the services. but you really wouldn't hear someone from the corps say that because you never get to invade nice places. >> no. well, you've got to think about where we train. we go to 29 palms, california, and train in the high desert. so i mean, we're used to it. you know, but you're right. >> right. but that raises the next set of questions, general, which is the procurement aspect -- clearly, not only resetting and rebuilding what's been in

afghanistan, in iraq, but looking to your future needs. i mean, there's -- you know, the list of weapon systems, f-35b, acv, jltv. talk to us a little bit about how you're trying to assess your needs and requirements and how you're going to put your funds against those. >> you know, if i kind of start big and down small: our nation needs a military, first of all, that can -- that can do what our nation needs it to do, and then it needs a military that's not going to break the bank. for years the marine corps -- i mean, for decades the marine corps was known as -- in some circles as the cheap force. they were known -- i'd call it the frugal force; that's a little bit more esoteric. but we were known to be the penny-pinchers. so to begin with, we're going

back to that. you know, we've had 10 years of what i call a culture of plenty. and i don't mean that we've been squandering this or abusing the nation's wealth, but i do mean that we've been obviously tied up in afghanistan and iraq. and that does cost a lot of money; that does require a lot of new stuff. and so money has not been a problem. it is now. so we are going back to our culture of plenty. what i promised the senate and the house was, is that i will not ask for anything i don't need -- excuse me -- i will not ask for things that i want; i will only ask for things that i need. and that's what i promised the leadership and that's where we are in the marine corps. so to your point, we've gone back now. we've got -- for example, we've got 40,000 vehicles in the marine corps. that's tanks. that's 7-ton trucks. that's humvees, mraps.

it's a whole -- the whole thing. we're going to have to -- we don't need 40,000 vehicles. we need about -- for this 186 force, we need about 30,000. so we're not going to recapitalize all those vehicles. i've told the corps -- i said, you take a look at what's good enough. what is it that's good enough to get us through the next, say, eight to 10 years? the -- you know, the temptation would be, ok, take all that stuff out of afghanistan. we'll put it in a lot over here, and we'll sell it -- foreign military sales. meanwhile, we're going to buy all this new stuff over -- we can't do that. we understand that. so we've gone back in and built a plan that we can afford, based on our budget. and it's all dealing with affordability right now. there are some vehicles that are going to have to be replaced. i'll give you an example. and this is for everybody here -- i mean, this pulls at the hearts of congress, and moms and dads. we've got some great humvees, all these high-mobility,

multiwheel vehicles that are -- have been up-armored, and we did in iraq and saved lives. but as the ieds got bigger and then we transitioned to afghanistan, where the ieds are huge, we have evolved to these -- we've been seeing these homemade explosives. they will take a humvee -- i don't care how much armor it has on it -- and will destroy it. so as we -- as we look to the future at places we might deploy, where our nation might send marines, we're going to have to have some vehicles that have some heavier protection on it but have a higher mobility than an mrap has on it. it's -- mraps are very difficult, if not impossible, to take off road. so that's when things like the joint light tactical vehicle comes in. it -- but -- >> because you're doing it with the army.

>> yeah. and we are working a deal right now. in fact we have worked a deal with the army. now what we're doing is going back to congress and saying, ok, you've got the two largest services that are -- that are in -- that are in cahoots on this jltv. now what we need to do is go back to congress and get their support on it. but we're going to buy a -- if congress allows us, we're going to buy a slice of those 23,000 humvees, a slice of them, way less than -- you know, in fact the number is probably a little -- around 5,000. and that will then suffice, and we'll take the rest of the humvees and the rest of the 7- ton trucks, and we'll live with that. then if we go someplace where we really need that extra protection, then we'll have the joint light tactical vehicle. if we don't, then we'll have the humvees, and we'll live with what's good enough. so that's how we're -- that's how we're living within our budget there. you know, our mv-22 always seems to kind of come up -- by the way, i mean, i've flown all over afghanistan with them. i was out to the uss wasp 10 days ago, watching the joint strike fighter fly off the wasp, flew out in an mv-22.

it's replacing 44-year-old helicopters. think about that. those helicopters were introduced in 1968 in vietnam, and we're still flying them. so they've got to be recapitalized. our c-130s are just about completely recapitalized. the ones we took to war in 2003 -- i had one -- i was a wing commander. i had one that we took delivery of, i think, in 1956. so we're actually pretty good stewards of our equipment. so we have equipment that has got to be recapitalized. our fleet of tactical jets -- we made the decision in the late '90s that we would skip a generation of airplanes and not buy the f-18e/f. we said that we're going to keep our f-18a/es and cs, our harriers and our ea-6b prowlers, and we're going to keep those, and we're going to invest, save our money and really save billions of dollars for the department and buy the

f-35. we are that close to seeing reality come in. the airplanes we have right now, our f-18s, begin to run out of service life in the next 10 years -- i mean, out of service life. they're going to be done. the harriers run out of service life, i think, in about 2024 or '25. i mean, they're done. i mean, it's no more -- there's nothing left on them. and the prowlers we're just -- we're just limping the electronic warfare prowlers along. so that's why the f-35 -- so we're working right now on, ok, how do we buy it, what's the affordable buy rate, and that's -- i mean, that's kind of the big-ticket items. >> right. >> right. >> a "small" in procurement and then a "big" in procurement: at the small end of procurement, i see you and i both have that same hiker's compass on our watch, so i guess don't like being lost. >> that's right. >> right. >> i'm ok here. it's just when i run around the rest of washington, d.c., i want to know where i am. >> that's right. and at the high end, it's

probably a question more for your sister service, the navy, that takes you around the world. but as you talk about, especially in the pacific, the rise of anti-access weaponry, that has to be a concern for you. it's the asymmetric advantage of a potential adversary like a china and even some smaller powers. what is the corps thinking about in the world of anti-anti- access? >> yeah, i think, you know, you've got to -- as you look at anti-access, you tend to immediately gravitate to a weapon. and you tend to think, ok, i'm going to pull up here off the coast, and then something is going to come flying out at hypersonic speeds, and it's going to sink me. but what you really need to do is kind of back out of that and say, ok, what -- how do i make a targeting problem for the adversary. in other words, how do i make myself either stealthy, or how do i make myself -- confuse the enemy? how do i -- how do i disperse my forces such that the enemy doesn't know where i am? how do i take the enemy's overhead capability to watch me away? how do i take the enemy's command and control away? how do i sneak into his ability, and how can i confuse him? the pacific is huge. i mean, 70 percent of the world is covered in water, and the pacific is the greatest body of water out there. so if you start talking anti-

access, you tend to think, oh, man, we're really restricted now; i'm going to be driven a thousand miles off the coast. not the case. i mean, there are capabilities, which we can't talk about in here, and -- that we have that can deny the enemy the ability to just say, ok, i'm going to push you out there, and you can't come anywhere close to me. so it's more than just a single weapon pushing a ship or a vessel out or a single weapon that's going to target a single airplane out there. there are -- there are ways that you can -- that you can increase the degree of difficulty for the enemy to deny you access. and that's where we all fit. that's where the entire joint community is working on right now. and it's everything from cyber to weaponry to stealth to -- i mean, it's a variety of things that we're doing. and again, a bunch of it is things that we -- that we can't talk about.

but i will tell you that there is no -- doesn't mean it's going to be easy. it doesn't mean we're not investing in capabilities. but what i will promise you is, is that it's not going to be insurmountable. >> that's fascinating. one last question before i invite the members and guests to join the discussion. there was a bit of breaking news last night on capitol hill, a vote about the montford point marines. can you bring us up to date and describe that action for us? >> that's pretty exciting. for the audience, the -- in 1942 to 1949, you know, president roosevelt in the -- just before that, right around the early part of 1942, signed a proclamation telling the department of defense, you're going to integrate your forces. and the marine corps went at it kicking and screaming. and -- but we did. and between 1942 and 1949 we went across the nation and

recruited african-americans to join the corps. now -- but we didn't send them to our own boot camp because we didn't want to integrate it. we sent them to a boot camp that they helped build down in a small point of land called montford point that sits on the new river down in north carolina right next to camp lejeune. and they had to build their own boot camp. and then we put white drill instructors over the top of them. their training was certainly every bit as hard as what was going on at parris island and san diego and probably, in many ways, harder. and then we kept them in segregated units, and we deployed them in the pacific in things like ammunition companies and artillery batteries. and in 1949 we quit -- we closed down montford point.

twenty thousand marines had come through montford point during that period of time. this is an organization which is predominantly -- we've lost a lot of them by now. you -- as you can imagine, they're well into their 80s. and they were true heroes. i mean, they were american patriots. you talk to them today -- and i had them at the barracks for a dinner -- a breakfast and a parade at the end of the summer. and they just said, general, we just wanted to join -- we wanted to join the best service. we wanted to join the marines. we heard about it, we saw them on the newsreel, read about it in an advertisement in time magazine, and we wanted to be a marine. >> and the action on capitol hill last night was to do what? >> they did -- to give them the congressional gold medal. and so the house passed it 422 to nothing. and then it's over in the senate. so if there are any senate staffers in here today, i need your help on this. we need to get this through the senate and get them awarded their congressional gold medal. just like the tuskegee airmen, the buffalo soldiers, this is a big deal and this is long overdue. and i'm as proud of them as i possibly can be, and i'm very grateful for the house. >> that's a fascinating piece of history. thank you very much.

i'm now eager to invite the council members and guests in the audience to join our discussion. please wait for me to call on you, wait for the microphone, stand and give us your name and your affiliation if you would. and very importantly, please keep your questions as concise as possible, so as many people can ask. yes, the gentleman here in the second row. >> thank you. nick kalman, fox news. i wanted to ask about reports that the marines are planning to close the brig at quantico. is this in any way related to bradley manning? >> they're planning to close the what at quantico? >> the brig. >> oh, brig at quantico? >> yes, sir. >> you know, i don't -- i don't know. i can't speak to that. i have heard -- i know it's been open until -- in fact, i think it's open right now. but i don't know of any plans to close it, but it might be. i don't want to -- i don't want to misrepresent anything. i truly don't know the answer to that question. >> ok. so all the way over here, the gentleman in the second row here. >> mike kostiw. i just retired from the senate armed services committee. nice to see you, commandant. it's a pleasure to be here. >> nice to see you, mike. >> thank you for coming.

joint strike fighter: we've been hearing arguments -- i'd like to hear your opinion more about the utility of it to the marine corps. and i understand what it is, but there's an argument out there now that it's unlikely that the marines will fight again without the navy, and let the navy have the joint strike fighter. the marines -- the marines' version is being -- is expensive; it's had some cost- overrun related issues -- as they all have. but i'd like you to address this a little bit more, if you -- if you don't mind. >> no, i appreciate that, mike. i think if you -- again, going -- starting big and going down to the marine corps, at this point, it's -- from my perspective, it's what's best for our nation. in other words, i can get real parochial in a hurry, because i wear this uniform and i'm -- and i'm the commandant of the marine corps. but at this -- but what i want to talk about for a second is what's best for the united states. you know, the navy has -- our nation has what i call 22 capital ships. and a capital ship doesn't mean that cruisers and destroyers and submarines aren't, but we're

talking about nuclear-powered carriers -- big-deck carriers. and we've got -- we've got 11 of those, and we've got 11 large-deck amphibious ships. and those are the ones that look like a smaller carrier; they look exactly like a carrier, only they don't have an angle deck . that's what's flying in the gulf of aden right -- i mean, that's what's operating in the gulf of aden. that's what was off the coast of libya during the early part of the no-fly zone enforcement. in fact, for the first several days, the harriers -- our version of the joint -- you know, yesterday's version of the joint strike fighter -- was flying into libya, and they were the only airplanes that were flying into libya. so for our nation to have 22 carrier type ship -- capital ships, and to be able to send them around the world to do whatever our government decides it's important for our nation to do, is a significant capability. if we don't have the f-35b version -- the short takeoff, you know, and vertical landing

version -- then our nation basically will be down to 11 ships, 11 capital ships, to do our nation's bidding. and we all know that on any given day -- it's just like a fleet of trucks -- you're only going to have so many of those that are going to be available; some are going to be in maintenance and whatever. so our nation will lose a -- will lose a -- lose a great capability. we're using the harrier right now in the gulf of aden for a host of different missions. we use them off -- we used them off the coast of pakistan. they were flying close air support into afghanistan. we used them -- when we crossed the border and i was the wing commander, we flew our harriers off the highways. so as we look to the joint strike fighter, our version of it, not only is it best for the nation, it's a capability our nation gets; it also allows us

now to operate the way we did when we were in -- when we were in iraq, flying off of highways, flying off of bombed-off -- bombed-out runways of saddam hussein, flying off of taxiways. it's the expeditionary capability that the marine corps brings. so we really will miss an awful lot. i mean, we will hamstring our nation, in my -- in my view, if we don't have the f-35b. and by the way, it's really doing well -- and i track it like a bird dog. i mean, that's -- i've assumed ownership of that for the united states marine corps. so if it fails, you can point a finger at me. >> yes, sir, here in the front row, please. >> is this it, this thing? >> yeah. thank you. >> i'm ed rowny, a retired lieutenant general, retired ambassador. my question is, i wonder if the marine corps as a whole is aware of the small but vocal minority that's doing the marine

corps, in my opinion, a lot of damage with the department of defense and with the congress. this is a group that's downgrading their adversary or their compatriots, saying how much better they are, how they don't need the others. let me go back just a minute -- tell you that in 1950 i was one of the planners of the inchon invasion. and in order to make that invasion work, general macarthur needed an additional division. he went to his chief of staff, general almond, who was my boss, and said where do we get this division. and almond said, well, let me try general shepherd -- classmate of mine from vmi who is now the head of the fleet marine -- fleet marine forces. and he went out, and he said,

look, we have one regiment here of marines in korea; if you can get us two more regiments, we'll have a division, and we can make this inchon invasion fly or succeed. so shepherd went out, and he got the reservists from world war i to come back and made a division. and with the help of the army and the other forces, that -- inchon was a brilliant success. now, instead of capitalizing on this success, again, the small but vocal minority said that, well, we didn't really need the army; we could have done it all by ourselves.

and the facts are that the army is about 80% and the marine corps about 20% of those forces in those days. >> sir, yeah, thanks. the question was about the internecine rivalry among the services, right? because -- >> excuse me? >> your -- if you could pose your thought as a question, general, so we can -- >> well, the question is, i'm wondering if the army -- if the marine corps is aware that this small but vocal minority is again rearing its head and is downgrading and down-mouthing or bad-mouthing the army and saying how they are doing it all and don't need it. and i think that this is just -- is doing harm to a marine corps that doesn't need any real boasting or that doesn't need anybody to build up its reputation. >> ok, thank you. >> general brown, i think i can tell you that, first of all, i don't know of that vocal minority. i've not heard that. i mean, historically over the years -- and you know this from our two services -- there's always been competitive rivalry. but i will tell you the relationship right now has never been better than it is today. and we've fought alongside of one another for eight years --

six years in iraq. we're fighting alongside of one another. army generals have commanded marines, and we've commanded army brigades. i think the relationship is better today than it's ever been in my 41 years of being a marine. so i am unaware of that. but i've got my staff in here. and i'll tell you what i will do: i will pull the string on that thing because if they're active duty -- if they're -- if they're retired, much like you, sir, i can't reach in and touch you. but if they're wearing this uniform on active duty, i can sure as hell reach in and touch them. and i intend to do it because that's not the message. today's joint environment -- this is not a paid political announcement for today's environment requires us -- all of us -- to work in the joint, combined, interagency environment. the world is too complicated. we cannot do it ourselves. so i -- sir, i am -- i am unaware of that. but i guarantee you that it -- that it doesn't sit well with me if it's true. >> well, it just seems that the underlying narrative the general is pointing to is when there was plenty of money to go around for the past 10 years, it was

easy for the joint force to get along. money is going to be tight. the knives are out. i mean, i can certainly second what the general said, the whisper campaign in the hallway, not just from the marines about the others, but from many of the services about the formerly great partner is -- you know, we deserve our equity. >> well, i'll tell you, being one-fourth of the service chiefs, you know, so therefore one-fourth of the joint chiefs of staff, i look around the table -- we meet -- when i leave here and i meet at 10:00 for this meeting, i'll be sitting there with my fellow service chiefs. and to this day, when we go to the tank on friday afternoons, the tank on monday afternoons or we meet the way we are, there is none of that that goes on, none of it. now i made a comment over at npr last week; i said tight budgets bring out kind of the worst in behavior in people, which is what you're implying, thom.

but i haven't seen it yet. and i'll tell you, we've got a great chairman. i don't know how well you know marty dempsey, but if there's anybody that can kind of keep the tribes together and say, look, folks, we're going to do this together -- it's going to be marty dempsey. >> good morning, and fink. -- and thank you. the spoke at the brookings institution is saying you were favorable. is it the way to save money because of the increasing of expenditures >> can you repeat the question, please?

you please come up here? >> you said you were favorable to senator webb's proposal. do you think that is still the best way to go forward? >> thank you. secretary panetta was in japan and he is in korea today. the reports i have read, same newspapers you are reading, is that it was an encouraging visit in japan, that there is strong encouragement from the central government to continue on with the implementation plan, which is building the runway and

moving the marine corps station. what we have done, to try to be a good partner in this, is delinking some of these things, and saying i am willing to move some marines to guam. we want to give the land back. i mentioned we want to give the land back that we have agreed to between our two governments. all that is done with honorable intentions. i am encouraged by what i have read about secretary bennett of's latest visit. i am hoping we can do that. >> to follow on to mike's question, about the be-22. since 2001, the united states military has lost for the five

helicopters and have lost 580- some american service members. only one of those four and a 25 was a b-22. this same aircraft flies one- third less cost of passenger per mile than any helicopter we know. why is it that the v-22 takes such a bad rap? >> that is not a set up. [laughter] i have not seen him in a couple of years. what he did say about cost per passenger mile, because we get beat up and they go the airplane is expensive. it hauls 24, back-loaded forces and will take them three times as far, twice as fast.

it really will. we went over 100,000 hours of action free hours in the airplane. the rap goes back to the late 1990's and 2000, and we are well beyond that now. when the uss kearsage poll off the coast of libya, v-22's were on mathat ship. they were sitting 100 miles off the coast of libya. they launched, they briefed, they pick a pilot up, and were back on deck in 90 minutes. juste say, why don't you lie -- name some other helicopters. buy the other helicopter. we would have been negotiating with gaddafi for the release of

that pilot because our forces were on top of that pilot by the time we got there. had we not had the speed for launch, the ability to get there quickly and get him off the ground in libya and get him back, we would have been negotiating until last friday with gaddafi. that is the significance, of the speed, the list, all that stuff. >> we recall those dark days when the osprey seemed to go down a lot and a lot of people die. was it pilot error? was it something they discovered and fixed? >> it was a little bit of all of that. the airplane was in development then, and it suffered -- and this is a lesson learned for procurement today. that is why the f-35b is watched

very closely. we as a nation and we as a department of defense and we as congress and we as a program managers of the v-22 graham underfunded it. instead of while it is going along and being developed and you are supposed to do these can things, the program managers had to make a decision. i can only afford to do six of these things. we do the six most critical, and then the program continues to move along. what we are doing is trying to mitigate risk, and we end up with an airplane in 2000, and the airplane actually was flying fine, but we lost an airplane in march of 2000, we lost an airplane in december 13, 2000, and that is when secretary cohen said we are

right to take over this airplane. one of the findings was let's not make a time schedule driven development program. let's make it yves and driven. will the fix the airplane, but the money in the program, but the right management in the program, and put the right parts, and everything. now everything is set up the way it should be to bring in a successful program. that is what has happened since then. the program is not anemic. it is funded well and has been care for a while by congress. we have that today, the efforts of that labor today. >> yes, ma'am. here in the front row. >> it is great to get a chance to see it. i want to ask about the human side of this. it was my impression that when the marines were going off to

iraq that on our way over the getting some cultural training. what are you doing about learning about countries where you are likely to be going, and do you have language skill requirements for marines since you spend your time on the ground? >> yes, we do. thank you, that is a good question, and i talked about the lesson learned. that is one of them. we have increased in the last year -- i think we doubled the number of fort officers in the marine corps. >> did they get promoted? >> >> we are tracking that, and they are getting promoted from major to lieutenant-colonel and for lieutenant colonel, colonel at a higher rate now. they did not used to be. we could take them and teach the mandarin chinese in monterrey," be great officer, and then we would terminate them at major. there are some of us to use the

charge -- in charge of that program. it is a recognition that we need more expertise in the regions around the world, so we are building that. there is irrefutably a requirement would that we are going to go somewhere to understand the culture, people, when we called the micro, rain or the human terrain of the country and a nation. if there is anything we learned out of 10 years it is that, to include all around the world. every lieutenant goes to the basic school, and we come out of the naval kennedy, rtc, like that was, you get commission, and he spent six months at quantico at the basic school for officer training. everything will lieutenant is assigned to a region of the world. he is tested on that and for his promotion and we are in the process of tying it to his promotion, you have to pass a

series of examinations in your region to be eligible to become a first lieutenant, captain, or major. that is probably one of the greatest since learned. -- lessons learned. >> you mentioned lessons learned coming out iraq and of dennison. i wonder whether he had concluded that you have drawn or lessons that you have learned at the strategic or operational level pertaining to libya, and it may be too early, but if you could comment on that. what lessons have you learned or conclusions you have drawn based on libya? >> i think as a nation and i am trying to think of who said this last week, we do not want to overlearn the lessons from

libya, saying that is said and that is the way we are on to the business as a nation. as a nation, our government made the decisions it did on what are we going to do with libya? are we going to put forces on the ground? are we going to be in the lead, of course we were not. my sense on this thing is the lessons that i learned as a service chiefs and somewhere along the line i will get asked over a period of the next three years, to give my best literary advice, the lesson i got out -- we do not always have to be in the lead, we did not always have to be jump in or first. we have lots of strategic partners out there that we can rely on. this will be a thing is a classic case of nato and our allies jumping in and we supported that. that is kind of what i got out of it, at the strategical

international politics level. >> it is true that nato was the man -- nato was in command, but it was impossible without the united states. we remained the essential partner. the fuel in, one of the%, the important intelligence surveillance, some of the specialized anti-aircraft activity. there is still this requirement for the united states that a lot of skin in the game and for political reasons it has to be a nato-led mission. >> there is no question that we did not provide enablers, and some of them are more technical and a higher level of capability than others. i will give you an example. wendy -- when the kearsage

pulled on the coast, the european awacs had not gotten there yet. when you are going to do something like this, we all expect it to be cleaned and executed on a clean time line. when you are dealing with nations, things did not happen that way in the where -- in the real world. when the ship pulled up there, i guess who control the airspace. it was the uss kearsage, an amphibious for the first two days of the war controlling all the airspace over libya. the tankers that came down were not just u.s. tankers. i cannot tell you how many u.s. tankers came down, but there was a slug of nato tankers that came down, and they just had not gotten there yet. they were working on their way down, working on the scene. -- on basing.

we are truly a team on this thing, and we had the ability to provide some technical capabilities that perhaps our nato allies did not have, and they were willing to provide the leadership and a big chunk. a lot of those airplanes were flying, and that most of them, were nato airplanes. i am not offended by that. that is the way we do as a nation in the future, and that is the lesson we learned coming out libya. that is a team play. that is a team sport. >> good morning, general. going back to some of the things we were talking about overcoming access in the specific, stealth, firepower, command and control. the gao has been directed to

restart other programs. is that something that is welcomed? >> that is out of my lane, i cannot talk about that. i cannot give you anything that is going to be worthwhile. i will tell you, it had an enormous credibility, and from the marine corps perspective, besides the command and control, we were looking to provide fire support. that is what the marines were looking at. so it has been truncated. the ddg 51's are going to provide the ballistic missile defense that the nation has agreed to help with around the world. that is the extent of my knowledge on that. >> we have time for one more question.

this meeting has been on the record, and the last question, sir, please. >> retired air force tricks tying procurement and people together, i wonder if we could have your assessment of the overall volunteer force, but its benefits and its costs and what alternatives if indeed he might be thinking about because it seems to me that that is going to be one of the basis of the foundation of the strategy what ever we develop. >> in the paper he had seen the secretary commenting while he was traveling in japan yesterday and in korea, made some comments about it. his goal is to protect the all- falter force. we sat with all the chiefs and started with the budget, and how we are going to this, and what the fiscal environment -- how that is going to impact the services. the secretary has been clear in saying we have to protect the all-volunteer for spirit

sometimes you have to be right in the middle of it to appreciate the quality of the young men and women we have today. they are lined up. if you want to join the marine corps to the, if you want to be in the marines today and you walk into our recruiting station in dallas or topeka, it is on to the eight months before we can send you to boot camp. that is how big the line is. that is the quality of the young men and women we have today. the secretary is adamant. how deep you incentivize young men and women to join and then tremaine? in our service, -- and then remain poker in our service, only 10% of the young men and women who joined the marine corps stay for 20 years and retire. the other 90%, some get out

after four years, after eight years, but only 10% of them go all the way to retirement. that is really what we're talking about, the 10%, when you talk retirement. we got to keep it in perspective. we are talking -- when we talk about paying benefits, we emotionally get to the 100%, but we start talking retirement, you're talking only 10%, and the addresses -- and the other services are a little bit more than that. the benefits in between, and other words, pay raises, health care, copays for pharmaceuticals, most of that affects retirees, but basic allowance for housing, current pay. i saw last night if you take the -percentile across the

nation, and the average pay for a 24-year old college graduates x, and what is the pay for a second lieutenant with you want that second lieutenant to be paid at weather ever the average is across the country, been paid at 70% of what the market will bear across the nation. we are sitting at 79% for officers, and we are about 82% of what the market will bear for enlisted. we are doing pretty well. we are paid pretty well. as we look at how we pay this $450 billion, is there room to question it? is there room to add just inside that to bring that back down a little bit and make it more of a level playing field? the answer from the service

chiefs is there is room. how much? i do not know. where is the bend in the knee? i do not know what that is. we have not that put of rigor to it. we will need to do that as we start looking at benefits. we will need to look at that to make sure we know what we do and what the second and third order effects are. >> with that, a special of thanks to the council today. thank you for joining us. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> road to the white house coverage coming up this evening.

vice president joe biden is speaking at the florida democratic party convention in orlando. also debbie wasserman schultz and florida senator bill nelson. live coverage on c-span2 at 7:30 eastern. although this headline proved trumandewey's defeat by was iconic. tonight followed the career of thomas dooley, a dominant force in new york state politics and influence in national politics in the election of dwight eisenhower and richard nixon. "the contenders" night at 8:00 eastern on c-span. this weekend on bill t.d., general westmoreland led forces in vietnam. lewis sorely contends his

decisions were why we lost. bill vlasic tells the unraveling of the u.s. auto industry. and toure interviewed at over 100 african-americans in an examination of race, identity, and being black in america at stake. also is not still weekend on tv. look for a complete schedule online at booktv.org. >> i do not want every story to be 1800 words. >> last month jill abramson became the first woman to hold the post of executive editor at "the new york times." >> there is a certain lack of discipline sometimes, a point is repeated too many times in a story, or there are three

quotations making the same point where one would do, and i would like to see a variety of storylines. >> she will discuss her career, a new book, and the future of "the times" sunday night. now a discussion of federal and state budget cuts on the impacts of children. this event focuses on the challenges and opportunities presented by the budget cuts when it comes to the nation lost children. this is an hour and a half. >> hello, everyone. i am judy woodruff. i am pleased to be a board member to participate in a

discussion about a subject that is near and dear to my heart and a subject that i thinking gets far too little attention. i think it gets too little attention in this city and around the country. and whether it is because children cannot vote and they do not have the voice in the halls of power, or whatever the reason is, it is undeniable that americans at the other end of the age spectrum have far more influence than do the youngest americans. so i think this topic, the nation's parties in children, how they go together, could not be more timely. we have a fabulous panel of experts from across the spectrum. i feel privileged to be part of this conversation.

to kick it off, there is no better evidence of how timely is in the news in the last day or so that the administration has granted california a waiver 4 x medical -- for its medical program, so it will be harder for millions of americans who count on that program, and many of those are children. we know that 74 million americans are under the age of 18. children are poorer than all other age groups. a gallon, in all the sound and fury of today's budget battle, the word children does not get mentioned as often as conversations about socialist kirby and medical. the deadline we know for

congress' super committee, less than a month away. elections, especially for the congress, justd previ a year away. in a new publication from the urban institute, which you have a copy at your seat, and which you on television will be able to get online at the urban institute website, the ublication is titled "today's children, tomorrow's america." experts from diverse disciplines tackle hard to answer questions, how does solutions to our national crises affect children in the united states. each one of these writers

wrestles with democratic challengers in different ways and brings very different experiences to bear. we will be testing some of this option stations some of those observations of the next hour and a half, and we are privileged to have an extraordinary group of scholars here today to talk about this. i will introduce them, starting on your right, on my left/ charles kolb, the president of the economic committee and he served four tours of the bush -- he served george w. bush. he has been deputy undersecretary for planning, budget, and evaluation at the department of education. sitting next to charles is olivia golden, who is an

institute fellow at the urban institute. she has been the director of state operations for the governor of new york. she has been the director of the district of columbia's shroud agencies -- child agencies. seated next to live via -- to oliva is robert reischauer. he was the director of the congressional budget office. bob is one of two public trustees of the social security and medical trust fund. he brings that experience to bear in his observations. moving on to my right is jim kolbe, a senior trans-atlantic fellow of the marshall fund of

the united states. he served in the u.s. house of representatives from 1985 to 2007, representing the tucson, arizona, area. he was on the appropriations committee for 20 years and 20two of its subcommittees. the next panelist is margaret simms, an institute fellow and a director of its low-income working family project. she was vice president for economic governance for the joint economic studies. one more panelists is coming, ray scheppach. let's get started by hearing for a few minutes from three of analysts to put their ideas out there and then we will discuss what they said and hear from our other panelists afterwards. bob reischauer, i want to ask

you to kick this off. >> thank you very much. i have spent most of my career analyzing federal budget policies and entitlements like social security. you might wonder what i am doing sitting up here among child policy experts rather than sitting down where i should be, with you, learning. about a month and a half ago, olivia into my office and said she thought the institute should sponsor a focus on the question of what is happening to children as a national priority as we grapple with our current fiscal problems, both short-run economic weakness and long-run fiscal and sustainability. i thought thisi thought this waa

great idea. i told her that when people asked the question of but the biggest challenges facing this nation, rather than saying something about taxes are budgets or health care, i always say that i think it is making sure the children of today will be the productive citizens and workers of tomorrow. so i will jump at the chance to participate in this. being president, i have a certain ability to compel myself to the audience. as all of you know, there's a lot of policy debate in this country focused on how to get the economy growing again. how to boost in comes over the long run. most of this debate has focused on, well, what should we do about tax policy and government regulation?

should we invest more in infrastructure? should we do innovative things to spur new technology? my view is these are all important. we should all do them. but if we lack the skills and productive work force tomorrow, none of these are going to make a whole lot of difference. fundamental to our economic future really is the composition and skill level of our future work force. and on this floor, there's a lot to be concerned about. today's children are going to be tomorrow's workers. and any objective analysis of what our children face right now leads to the conclusion that without a really significant investment by the public sector, by families, by our society, tomorrow's workers are going to

lack the skills they need to compete successfully in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. and you can look at this by comparing the situation facing kids now versus in the past, and you come to the conclusion that, you know, it does not look so high at. -- it does not look so hot. a larger portion of today's kids are spending in formative years in disadvantaged circumstances. medicaid pays for 40% of america, indicating that a lot of these kids are starting out at a disadvantage. one in five children last year or living below the poverty line, and that happens to be a higher fraction of kids than all but two years of the last 36. so this is not an area where things are looking good, and we know now, which we did not know

30 to 40 years ago, that young people who grow up with deprived circumstances have much less chance of getting a job that is stable, that is adequate to support a family, when they are adults. in addition, you look at the situation and fewer kids are growing up in circumstances where they have two parents who can share the burdens of child- very, which are increasingly complex. -- who can share the burdens of childbearing, which are increasingly complex. in the 1970's with two parents, it was a lot more. it is less than 70% today. on top of that, because of changes in our values and patterns, a much higher fraction of parents are in the work force, particularly women who might have spent more time

devoted to getting their kids to do their homework, rather than watch television or whatever. for this generation of children that is growing up, also the educational system really is not quite what it used to be. migration patterns and differential birth rates across states means that a larger fraction of kids in our growing up in states that have not placed a very high priority on elementary and secondary education. they are the ones that have lower spending per kid. they are the ones whose test scores in achievement levels are not as good. and when you add to that sort of the cyclical problem is happening now, which is states and localities are under a lot of pressure from falling

revenues and other burdens, then you see how they're responding, to cut back the length of the school year, the length of the school day. the number of subjects taught and things like that. you know, you despair when you realize what is happening in korea, taiwan, china, and the places that we're going to compete with. about 46% of all kids now are an ethnic or racial minority. that this a fraction of the mid- 1970's. they will face some discrimination. we also know dropout rates of some of these minorities are relatively high, and it is going to lead to less training. but he put all these things together and you say, well, what

should we do, and the answer is simple. i think we have to put our shoulder to the wheel and get together a comprehensive and integrated investment strategy for children, one that will direct resources to words assistance, augmented early childhood education, more of an emphasis on effective k-12 programs and support for those kids to go on to post secondary education, either in a technical school or an academic setting. but there's a big obstacle to this, and that is that historically we have placed the managerial programmatic, and a lot of the fiscal responsibility to things that affect kids that the public sector does at the state and local level. and these governments have neither the will, nor the

wallet, at this point to engage in a massive kind of intervention of the sort that i think is needed. what that means, i think, is that the federal government is going to have to step in and take the lead. but we all know that the federal budget is also under extreme strain, and there are a lot of folks who want to scale back involvement of the federal government, especially in areas like this. i think that would be a huge mistake. a huge mistake, because the consequences of failure in this area do not end up largely at the state level. the end up at the national level. we as taxpayers, we as citizens, bear this burden if it comes to pass, the poorly-educated individual who cannot get a job migrates to other states when they fall through the cracks and cannot earn enough.

it is federal programs that end up picking up the income support in the nation as a whole suffers. so i think that as the super committee, congress, leaders consider how we get on a fiscally sustainable path, at the same time, they should spend as much time thinking about what it would take with respect to an investment strategy for children to ensure that once we are on that fiscally-sustainable path, we are not as such a low level that the standards of living are not what we have come to expect. >> thank you. i would like to add to what bob said, pointing to children who

are persistently poor. we get figures every year about the number of children in poverty, but that only points to one place in time when children might be poor. but about 10% of children are persistently poor. that is they spend at least one- half of their years between zero and 18 living below the poverty line. that is true in terms of a study that two of my colleagues have looked at this issue and are continuing to look at how it changes over time. in their study, they found that of the 10% of children who are persistently poor, about 40% of african-american children are persistently poor. and that means, as i mentioned, at least one half of their childhood in poverty, and for many, three-quarters or more of their years in poverty.

the consequences in early adulthood, and most likely if we could look at that group beyond early adulthood, are detrimental for the succeeding generation. they have lower educational attainment. they have lower employment. in their late 20's, then do their colleagues or not persistently poor, and among the young women, they're more likely to have had a teenage birth, which means it will be harder for them to provide for their children. now if we think about this hard and we want to say we want to do fourhing positive, children, we would ideally think of a dual generation strategy. that is, we would work to make the parents more economically self-sufficient so that they could provide for their children and provide a better

environment. but that does not always work out on their own, and it certainly would be more expensive strategy if we're thinking about it in terms of public policy. at a minimum, we do need to help children so that we can make them economically self- sufficient as adults and also try to ensure that there will not be a third and a fourth generation growing up in poverty, thereby extending the detrimental impact in terms of economic productivity, as well as the well-being of these children and their families. there are several strategies that we could talk about, and i am short olivia will talk about some of them. that is to look at some of the problems that young children face. one has to do with stability in terms of child care. we expect most parents not to go out and work.

the current projection is that fathers of young children will not stay at home. they will go out into the work force, and their children will go into child care. but some work that we have done all so under the low-income working families project is to look at child care choices that are available to low-income families as they try to combine work and taking care of their children's needs. and these options that they face are pretty limited. often they work in jobs that had erratic work hours, and that means that the standard 9-to-5 is not necessarily available to them. if they have language issues, they might be looking for child care centers where the language that they speak in the home is available, even if that they prefer their children learn english. they would like to make sure that there is a way that they

can communicate well. they may look for ones that are convenient for their place of employment or their home, and it may be difficult to find things that meet the needs that they have and are still convenient in terms of being able to get their children to day care and get to work. if they are able to find all of those things, are there affordable? most likely not without some kind of subsidy. so that is one area that we look at in terms of who is on government support. also, residential stability is very important. low-income families, families living in poverty frequently have forced moves. they may lose their lease. they may be evicted. and that means that when they move, often their children have to change schools.

these are not usually good circumstances for children, and in addition to the stability issue, they may frequently wind up in schools that are not as good as the schools that were previously in. i was in a meeting earlier this week where somebody says they go from crappy schools to more crappy schools. that is kind of the a view of the circumstances in the absence of public policy that will be the life of young children born in poverty. there are different ways of handling end, and some of these fall to the federal government, perhaps some residential stability issues. of course state and local governments are important players in the education system. we need to think about ways in which those schools circumstances could be improved. my colleague talked about the

importance of federal incentives to ensure that states that may not have these things at the top of their priorities could be incentivized to move them up through federal financial support, as well as program or regulatory issues. >> ok, thank you. now, olivia. you are our third kickoff speaker. >> thank you. good afternoon. as bob said, i am very excited that this paper and this panel are happening. because to me, what we have tried to do with this distinguished panel of guests and moderator is get three different groups that have to be on the same page of we're going to solve this problem to share some information that right now nobody has. to me, that is people who are experts in children's policy, experts, advocates, people in decision making roles that frequently no lot about the

needs and circumstances of children but very little about the ins and outs of the federal budget, or they feel they have no access to that the federal budget experts tend to know a great deal about the federal budget. but the way children are funded in many federal programs and intergovernmental programs, and makes it hard for them to have a picture of how the pieces fit together. and the state leaders, in the parts of my life that the state -- state level, sometimes, not always, you have a good picture of children's funding within the state. but there is not a national picture, and the complexity of the way federal money travels to the state can make it hard to make good decisions there. my hope is that we are needing those things together today. i want to make four points from my essay in the collection. i will try to push us a little closer to solutions, building on some of the diagnosis from bob and margaret. the first point, which bought

develop very fully, is that children's lives changed in the last couple of decades in ways that for a substantial number of children make it harder for them to succeed. that is the issue of poverty, low income, low wages, parental unemployment, and the fact that almost half of children are now minority, groups that have traditionally suffered and a ray of disadvantages. the second point i want to highlight is that the process of figuring out what public investments we should make to help meet the needs of children is a lot harder than it needs to be, because some of the key information about how budgets and spending relate to children is not widely known. the process is not transparent. to give you a few examples of things i think are important to solving the problem, the largest single federal children's program is medicaid. others in the top 10 are snap,

the new name for food stamps and other nutrition programs. several programs in the tax system, social security, and then several of the education programs that we traditionally think about, and in some of the early childhood and social services programs. another example of a fact that is really important to solving the problem but is not very familiar is that public spending, when you take federal, state, and local, in some ways is the reverse of what would make sense based on what we know from the research when you think about the ages of children. we spend far less on the youngest children, babies $3, than we do as children get older, even though a lot of what we know from the research is about the crucial role of investment and to start early and then continue. yet, another fact, which bought highlighted, is about two- thirds of the spending on children, public spending on children, is state and local.

will be interested in ray's tape, but i was thought that federal budget officials tend to think of the state as an annoying interest group, not as a crucial partner whose fiscal well-being is central to being able to invest in children. those are kind of key budget facts that are important to solve the problem. the third point i want to make is that the problem of getting that two-thirds to be spent successfully and effectively for children, it is hard right now with the aggregate circumstances of state budgets. the paper gives more details, but overall, they're not baguette to where they were in 2008. but it is even harder because of what bob mentioned, the fact that some states are losing children. in aggregate, not many individual children are leaving, but have fewer children than

they used to. those states are mostly in the northeast and midwest. states would dodger increasing numbers of children are in the south and southwest, like texas, georgia, north carolina, arizona, nevada. many of those states have both lower for people spending and they have tax structures that make it hard for them to expand to meet the needs of increases in the number of kids and shifts in the kinds of needs those children have, for example, as english language learners. that is a challenge to meeting our future needs. the final point i want to make is that i think there are practical steps that can help us to do better, although they face an enormous number of obstacles. i made four suggestions, and i am sure we will talk about those and many others. the first is that we increase the share of spending on education that is federal now. they get about 7% now. there are a lot of practical the

occult is in the way of that, which we can talk about more, but it is also a point that bob made. second, that we add investment in the youngest children, because there are some crucial opportunities there and specific ideas about what we should do. third, if there is reform or change to entitlement programs as part of overall budget strategy, it is important that we keep in mind the crucial contributions, particularly of medicaid, but to a lesser degree, social security, to children, and that we think about how not to just protect but to potentially build on those. the fourth suggestion is a process suggestion, perhaps coming a little bit from my state experience. more common at the state level. but the federal budget process should include an explicit step each year that assesses spending on children to be more or less elaborate. the children's budget or some look at needs and effectiveness. and that would help us have a

focused conversation. i know that in the rest of the panel, we're going to hear from a very distinguished people representing all of the different experts that are part of the federal and state budget process, and i really look forward to that conversation. >> all right, thank you, bolivia. we have heard a lot in the last few minutes from these three experts. i want to turn it to you first, congressman jim kolbe. you spent 20-some years in congress. 20 years on the appropriations committee. now part of the committee for responsible budget. picking up on what olivia just said on how we would like to see the federal budget process addressed the issue of children. help us understand how that process works. how well does it work? give us a thumbnail of how decisions get made and whether you think that process is working and how hard it would

be to tweak it to see the children were adequately attended to. >> welcome i am not here obviously as the children's expert peter i am certainly not here either as a public expert. that guy is sitting on the other side of you and knows more about this than the rest of us combined. i really should be referring to him. but i can talk about it a little bit. as i listened to this discussion here today, it occurs to me that there is really two things at work here. we're talking about a budget issue, and we're also talking about a priority. i do not think anybody in the room or anybody listening would disagree with hardly anything that has been said of here about how important children are. the question is then, why aren't children being made the priority? that is a fundamental question.

it comes back to the budget. when you come to the budget, it is not just children that are not getting talked about in congress. it is things like cancer research, things like environmental protection. these are all things that are in the discretionary budget. people are now focused on -- not defense, which is discretionary, and its entitlements. and as olivia pointed out, entitlements to play a big role when it comes to children. but we cannot really talk about what we're going to do for children are how we will make children a higher priority until we fix the antenna problem. because entitlements are squeezing out more and more of the discretionary spending. there is less and less there to spend on, whether your priority would be saving national parks or somebody else's priority is cancer research or whether the

priority is early children's care. those things are going to be squeezed out if we do not fix it. so we should all be applauding the fact that congress and the super committee is at least focus on this problem, but whether they accomplish anything or not remains to be seen. but they are at least focused on that. we have to begin reforming this and actually making some changes so that we can then, perhaps, be able to save the kind of discretionary spending we need in order to make children a priority. that really is the issue. until we are able to curb entitlement spending, and it is revenues and entitlement, and i recognize that there needs to be tax reform so we can get a higher degree of revenues there, but ultimately if you look at the long-term picture, at it is entitlements that will squeeze everything out over the long haul.

you cannot raise enough revenue to get anything to work. that is medicare, social security, and others. it is a matter of, i think congress since his priorities for children, but they have their mind focused on this other issue. and one other thing i would say is that one of the reasons it does not get the attention at the federal level is because it is already been said here, it has been largely states that have had the responsibility for children, whether it is education, early child care. a lot of it is through federal programs, but states implement those programs. so it is not as much on the mind of federal legislators as would be a defense program or something dealing with epa and environmental protection. >> because it is in the state.

>> the states that had the responsibility. >> that is the goods that way to introduce our next panelist. i am reminded that we want to ask anyone watching, either on television or the webcast to please send questions you have for the panel but you can get your questions in. please send your questions in the of the next analyst todd to introduce this a -- is raymond scheppach from the university of virginia. he served as 28 years as the executive director of the national governors' association. he worked with more than 300 governors. two became president. many have become u.s. senators are cabinet secretaries. you have heard the tail end of this conversation. but speak to us about what is on

the mind of governors, and picking up on what jim was just saying about members of congress and that is what state and local governments are doing. what is the mindset of governors are now when it comes from children's welfare and children's issues? >> it is tough. there is a sort of deteriorating fiscal situation. unfortunately, i think that will be a long run problem now. a lot of people say, you know, once we come back to the 2008 revenue level, we're going to be ok. i am a little more pessimistic, because we have primitive tax systems, which means revenue growth is not going to be very good. we continue to have $3 trillion unfunded liabilities in the pension area. and we have sort of health reform and a huge increase in medicaid. so i think there's a lot of

interest, particularly on the early >> really, over the last several years, $150 billion of deficits that have to be filled, there is the balanced budget requirement. it is a priority, and it is true that very little public money goes and the first five years. to the extent that there is any system out there, there are a lot of volunteers and small groups as opposed to states doing it. it is hard to find the money now to actually put it down where it needs to be. >> money is tough at the federal level and at the state and local level. the committee for economic development where your has focused on the need to invest in

children, who have seen the budget process from the white house, from the department of education. what would you add to what we have just been saying to how hard it is or isn't to get something done for children. >> i think we can fix this problem right now if we wanted to. i understand that there are budget constraints, there are all sorts of issues, but let me state what i think the fundamental problem is. it is not budget or appropriations, it is cultural and it is political. the cultural issue is the fact that this country simply lacked the strategy to invest in human capital. we don't live our young people from an investment perspective, and across the entire education, in the early years, we have brought business leaders to urge

greater public private debate, federal local investments. we under invest in the early years. the countries we like to make fun of all the time, france, they get it right. they are smaller in terms of their economy, but they have a system that is a model for the rest of the world. and as a result, the human capital investment means that young people start school ready to learn and to have lower incidences of infant mortality, childhood obesity, etc.. we have a k-12 system that we invest a lot, that is fundamentally dysfunctional. the education trust put out a report that almost 25% of the high-school graduates that of the army entrance exam failed it. with questions like 2 + x = 4,

solve for x. in many instances, the graduates can't do third grade math. we had an investment strategy, the young man returning from europe. what do we have right now, and have a dead driven model where for the first time, student loan debt is about to hit $1 trillion. look across the spectrum and you see an appalling approach to human capital investments. how can we fix it? the country as a whole is fixated on short-term. investment is a medium to long- term issue. we could change this out if we had the cultural will to do it. we have to get off of the short term fixation and having him in capital strategy for the company -- for the country.

i think you alluded to it in your opening remarks, 3-year-old don't vote. they don't make contributions or super pac contributions. we need to look at the way that money comes into the political system. it does affect our ability to set priorities. young people are being shortchanged by the system. >> what are the practical ways around that? your all acutely aware of the budget situation that the federal and the state level. how do you make human beings, young human beings more of a priority? >> what we tried to do, both at least a and a national level is to -- many of the business

leaders understand the concept of investment. the other thing we did, some years ago, we went to a nobel laureate and we asked him to draw down more deeply to try to quantify the returns on investment and young people. you get some of the highest returns when you invest in young children. look a lot of the education department's. if you have a problem, fix it up front. other countries do it.

>> he reminded me that you have put the proposal forward for early childhood. did you want to talk about that? >> currently, states can't collect sales tax on goods sold over the internet. they lose about $15 billion a year. there are bills pending that need to be passed, basically, that says out-of-state sellers have to collect the tax. one option would be to tie with children's trust or individual states. if congress passes it, it is allocated back to each state and goes into an early childhood -- i think that is where the real

key is. it may be a specific -- >> is something like that practical and workable? if it is, how long would it take to get something like that going? >> you didn't manhattan that he was also once deputy director of the congressional budget office. people in the budget office are very much against high taxes. but we will forgive you.

i am with ray on and, there is an important national priority to ensure that it will be a priority the for many years. the equity was created by the fact the services through the internet via a large, sales taxes solving the problem in dedicating the resources to something like early childhood education where each state has the ability to define what it is doing with its trust fund and i think is good policy. and i think it is something that two years from now, if congress passed this, it would be up and running. >> the software is already available. you could start collecting it a month after they did it.

>> is and their enforcement problem? >> not of congress acts. the last time the court in the early 90's, a court decision after them to fix it. >> somebody's still has collected to the states. you're saying the five bison and over the internet, a company in california, tax and those two -- >> were ever the good is used? >> the company and the california has to send the tax all over? i have been told that that is a very difficult implementation problem. >> if you are a small and that a seller, you can log in to suffer the is already available that does it for you.

>> does anybody know how many money -- how much money we're talking about? >> it would be a dent. >> the total in the children's budget papers that you can find, total federal expenditures is something like $440 billion, about $10 billion a $20 billion is an important amount of money. it isn't what is spent on k-12 education, but is important. this exceeded my expectations. i want to come back obstacles raised. the obstacle that we have to fix entitlement programs first, i have a slightly different reaction to that and wondered what the thinking was on those

much more expert than i am. if bob is right about the urgency, we can't necessarily way to have a plan and get started on it. part of the solution is to plan in parallel, what you can do at the same time. given, for example, the importance of medicated for children, the fact that health reform will be important to them. as we focus on prevention and early intervention and higher quality care, does that automatically add to what we are doing for children? people talk about incorporating ideas like paid leave, special security. i wonder if the panel has reflections on whether you can do those things at the same

time. >> i think it is important to do them at the same time. there are a number of proposals about how to reform some of the entitlement systems, social security and so on. people have proposed ways that you can modify and to save money, also a target more on the groups. i think in any of these entitlement programs, we can do that. as was putting a cap on some signatures. you can do well and do good at the same time. >> just to clarify, perhaps i overstated my position. i am not saying that you can't or shouldn't do things for children's programs at the same time you're trying to fix entitlements. what i was trying to say is that if you don't fix those entitlement programs,

ultimately, anything you do in terms of discretionary budget is doomed to failure because unless you move of the children's programs, the entitlement program people are going to consume everything in the budget. there just won't be anything left. >> you make a very good point here, if you look at medicare or aggregate u.s. spending on health care, a lot of which is driven by medicare, we have an extremely poorly structured and wasteful system. a point of france. they spend slightly more than half of what we do on a per- capita basis and they get better results. another is the smoking stuff at the red wine, but they live longer.

you can also look at some of the specifics around how they deliver health care. we have a very expensive and inefficient service system. the system can be restructured. and i am not talking about just saving money for the sake of money, we are wasting money. we missed an opportunity a couple years ago to do the type of structural reform that would have enabled us to redirect money in a more efficient way towards area and people. until we make the structural reforms in the entitlements, we will have difficulty as a country. but it is doable. what that some of the other models, we are no longer at the top. we are not even at the middle, we are out at the bottom. >> i think one of the challenges that i hear when i talk with children's advocates or children's policy officials is

that people do think children's programs are mostly discretionary. so that isn't true, children advocates and policy- makers, governors, sometimes they don't think about the extraordinary opportunity to meet children's early needs through medicaid or the nutrition program because somehow it is coming down in a separate chunks. i also think that there are tweaks we can make to enhance what are already some of the strengths. >> that was the question i was going to ask. when you're talking about entitlements and discretionary, medicaid falls under entitlements. >> i acknowledge that, i said that earlier. there are a lot of other programs, and we are talking about children, we are talking

about education. in >> i will keep going back to what is practical, what can really be done in the short term, and by that i mean the , discussing what children have. if we simply say that we have to get control of the budget and do this, how to work around that? >> one of the things that is important is to distinguish between cutting the budget and getting on the right course for the budget. we have a long-term problem that is one that is the most serious, how to deal with the budget over the next 20 years or

so. that is a little bit differently than the short-term problem, partly trajectory and partly the economic situation. we shouldn't think that spending on children out is going to destroy our situation. looking at the fact that if we look at children's needs, the long-term project 3 is not going to look very the because we won't be in the economic situation to a for the famous that we would like to be able to afford. but we need to make tough choices. congress needs to not only reach agreement on a long-term trajectory, of looking at choices among the different programs on the table.

if the super committee of congress can't do that, we will wind up going through an automatic cutting process. >> it might be worthwhile to take a look at some of the spending that we now undertake as a country that resulted from the failure to invest up front. one example is prisons. we have the largest number of people in the world incarcerated, the highest percentage of our population incarcerated. does anyone think that that is not related to the failures of the front end? and the possibility of investing more, better at the front end might actually free up some resources on the national and the state level that, frankly, are a waste?

and to the individual human beings that are subject to that system? >> there is no question -- >> it is fixable now. >> i want to read very quickly, this comes from a viewer that is a minister. we're talking about the underemphasis on children, a different perspective. many people misunderstand entitlement. delicacies as if there are welfare programs. i've paid into social security for more than 45 years, served in the military and risk my life for more than 20 years. i would say far less in civilian jobs, lifetime medical care.

. it goes on to talk about social security. this is a genuine view. why it is so difficult. >> i think is linked to that question. charles raised a set of questions about what is culturally american's beliefs. i would say that we have not quite all been explicit about the obstacles to invest in children. it is helpful to do that. many people believe that these investments are above all, the responsibility of parents. it doesn't mean that people think every child should go to private school. the k-12 education people

understand it is the public role. and to some degree, health insurance there is the trust that public investment means something. doing more than throwing money at the problem. the example understands more on what might be a return as they get older. i think that telling the story about the ways in which -- and not being able to make ends meet. part of the issue is that the public alike in members of congress has some

understandable and long-term skepticism about what we are saying. >> of the news media clearly plays a role in educating and informing the public about this. i want to come back to ray and get bob to comment on -- pushing a little bit more on the role of the space, i think that what i was noting, california is going to be able to cut red -- medicaid payments to providers. and many of those recipients are children is not just happening in california. >> if you look at actions and states over the last two years, they have cut back options,

benefits, and have done more on the drug's side. they have decreased reimbursement. they know full well when you cut reimbursement rates, they don't get double savings they try to conduct secondary education. they have caught everything else, tuition and so long. medicaid is the state government. it was larger than the change in state revenues.

>> that was quite robust during the 1978-2008. 6.5% per year on average, only one year was negatived. there is no growth in revenues for five years. it'll take us two more years to get back to the 2008 level. and then we have the expansion of medicaid that will hit in 2014. we can debate and who pays what, but the truth of the matter is that it will be more costly first dates. we don't know how much, but it will be more costly for states. i am fearful about where the supreme court decision those. the big way that they will save money going forward is to cut the reimbursement rate.

the bill for primary care freezes, as i remember it was only for two years. this raises another issue. it goes back to charlie's point to little bit. it is not just children, but we have got to commit to the public about public investment. the infrastructure and so on. we have got to start putting those budgets out. >> you mean putting the budgets out? what do you mean? >> you get into problems of definitions, that research and development, that somehow pulls those together and started beating the drum, the future standard of living is to make

investments here now. >> be want to comment, bob? >> is creating a little dissension here. more importantly with those the road the very fine essay on medicaid and health, i would say that we are spending too much time talking about medicaid with respect to this issue. medicaid is a big stink, financially, for the states. by and large, it is caused by the elderly and disabled participants. the big assumption that the affordable care act is implemented, who and goes forward, most children most of the time, we have health care

pretty much taken care of in the horrendously an efficient way. he and i could sit down and free up a lot of resources and doing this in a more efficient way. that is where i think the real challenge is. it is really twofold. one is the income distribution in america. kids are growing up in families without the adequate resources to provide a safe environment, and that is going to take a long transformation of our economy. if we do right with respect to education training and everything like this, we will have those in prison and a

different kind of income distribution. we can talk about reagan, welfare payments, things like that. but politically, it has proven to be a real struggle. the place that we should be focusing is on the institutions that we have to train our children. charlie mentioned the way that the french do it, done at the bottom. other countries pay schoolteachers more than they pay secondary schoolteachers. the realize this is an investment and you want the best things to happen early on. it is hard to get back on track once you have gone off. we can transform the institutions that we have now

with these responsibilities. largely state and local responsibilities, it creates a huge problem because every locality or school board thinks that it is the source of wisdom , and that creationism -- you know, it is equivalent to darwin's theories. there is nothing you can do at a higher level. >> of the american way. >> we are in washington, so it is commonplace to spend a lot of time talking about programs, federal and state. i don't want to create another cabinet department, but maybe we need a children's czar, something like that. there are two parts of this that have not come up yet because they are not federal or state programs.

that is the private sector and philanthropy. i think a tnc bank, for example, the ceo renew their commitment to invest in young children. i think they are making a second $250 million commitment over 10 years for a program that their employees helped create. example of one major bank that is investing in young people in the communities where it does business, and it should be an inspiration to others in the corporate sector. then i would point to -- it is $250 million over 10 years, so they are up for another 10 yours. the ceo gets it. he is a very serious and sincere man about this. the idea to invest in the gun

people in their communities came from the employees of their bank. what would you like your bank to do in your community? more involvement from the private sector, not to take the place of government, but the complement it, and then i would point to the philanthropic sector. united way of america and is still the case that the united ways around the country have 350 6 per gram, which means in addition to education, immunization, and as part of this combination between business and philanthropy, i would appeal to billionaires' who have signed up to divest themselves of a lot of their fortunes to play a role in making investments human capital

riorities for the country. that is what i meant by having eight children czar a sense, to focus on all the strands that come together here on behalf of our young people. >> how much do you think could be picked up by the private and nonprofit sectors? >> i cannot how to answer that, because the issue is the federal government already spends a lot of money in these areas. it does not always spend it very well. ok? i did not know. for universal pre-k, some years ago, we looked at and we estimated the additional cost of $30 billion to $50 billion -- that is not a lot of money. we just spent $1 trillion on one

of the wars, i forget which one. [laughter] we can do this. it is not a question of the private sector filling in for the government. it is looking at the resources of public-private beds philanthropic and having a national strategy, like kennedy had when he made a commitment in tears. in recently we've made a lot of commitments under presidents bush and clinton. we were going to be first in the world in math and science by the year 2000. one of those goals by 2000 all our young people would arrive at school ready to learn. ray remember is that. >> i want to open the room up for questions. if you have a question, i will try to get to you. before we did that, any comment,

reaction? >> the first one is i do think that connecting a broader array of sector is really important, but also a balancing act. you do not want to be confused about the fact that the scale is what is needed is going to be provided by dollars, whether it is needed at the state level or texas with half of the increase in children from 2000 to 2010 taking place in one state. >> charles is nodding his head. >> you have to keep the scale and mine, but you want the engagement. the second comment is both charles' justin of the and -- part ofr

what i think of a challenge is the way of noting here are the things that are most important and what is not important. he cannot even get there unless you have some way of pulling together the conversation and the intermission. >> one comment, the private sector can play an important role in this. i am involved in something, a program where we are trying to involve the private sector in foreign assistance for children and others. it is remarkable, the kinds of programs available out there, in industries, businesses, corporations, once they get involved in it. they can do a lot. it is not a substitute for public dollars. where it can be really important is it is often the very leading edge, the innovative, creative kinds of things and it is the leadership of having those corporate executives and people all the wealth -- all the way down be involved.

they become the advocates and they become the ones that are out there lobbying congress for it at the grass-roots level. >> i saw a gentleman with a question. will you tell us your name and your organization. they are right to bring you a microphone. >> i tutor twice a week here in adams-morgan. i can assure you remedial education is a lot tougher than starting to read too a kid at 1 or 2, and the obesity problem is off the charts. the thing that really disturbs me the most, when i asked the young boys what the what to do, they all said i want to go to the and that -- to the nba or the nba. i explained to them that they should have a plan b, and they said they're looking incredulous. i asked one of the girls, and i

said you are smart enough to be a doctor, and she looked at me like i was from the moon. how do we instill the aspirations to help these kids get along? >> a very important question. >> so they can all be hedge fund -- [laughter] >> it is very important that they see how possible is, and some of it is through role models and some of it is through understanding the pathways that you have to follow in order to get there. we did these international comparisons. at one time i was working on a youth apprenticeships and school to work transitions in germany and looking at how the established a way in which people understand that path that you take, said that by eighth grade students and their parents if you want to be this,

this is that had to have to take, these are the courses you have to take. we do not have any of that, even among middle-class students. there is not always a clear picture of how you get from here to there. and we need to instill some of that in our system as well, but i think also we need have people see the possibilities of escaping from the neighborhoods in which they are. and that they can see the resources and there are resources available to them that will help them along that path. >> i would also link the question back to the conversation we just had about the role for other than the governmental sectors, committee, nonprofit, because the fact that you are having those decisions with this guest provides them with an important connection to the broader world as the united states gets older, as people who

are white get older and live in different places, and families with kids look different, that this connection in itself placed out of politics and plays out and children's lives. a purchase to make those personal connections, so older people, people who do not live next to school, that sense of connection. that is a really important role outside of government that contributes to the solution. >> yes, sir, in the back. there's a microphone back there. >> thank you. i am a consultant. i work with community-based organizations that work with children who are living in poverty. and one of the greatest problems that we have around children who are living in

poverty is that the problem is not simply live in it the issues of education, but it becomes an even broader issue because these children live in very isolated communities, so that the kinds of resources they need are not available to them, including issues of health care, issues of mental health, and as a consequence, what we see is growing numbers of children involved in the juvenile justice system. so the research has shown that the number one indicator of adult incarceration is incarceration as a juvenile. we need to begin to start toward addressing those issues of how do we invest in children at a much earlier age, and also include the entire family,

coating the parents of these children. because often these issues are entered-generational. -- inter-generational. >> sometimes the parents are not there to do the job that we traditionally think parents should do. anybody want to comment then, when of the other comments that was sort of hot implicit was all question of safety of neighborhoods. we are talking about how you make the communities were supported environments for children. and so we go be on education in some ways to the criminal justice system, but in a positive way, not about incarcerating down people, but about how we steer them away from opportunities and how we

have police think more positively about kids who are not really doing bad things people quickly i would like to interject here, an on-line question that comes from a woman, she asks between the federal government and america's children, single parents, absentee ballots come annika systems that control it -- and systems that contributed substantially the property. promotes marriage. kids need parents committed to each other. educate urban youth about the impact of the get coming -- impact about a parent without a job. she puts this out, and then thinks about what the you think about the longer school year? that costs more money, doesn't it? >> i am all for, and let's stop

saturday mail delivery. [laughter] no, i think those comments and john's before or very thoughtful and they deserve a seat up here more than i did. >> can i comment on the first question. i think part of the investment in young people also entails explaining that they also have to invest. in other words, the young people you are tutoring, they look at the basketball players and celebrities and they think that is a quick way to success. most people in this country cannot get there like that. most people who are successful get there because of hard work, lot, serendipity, education. i remember a report some years ago that said the typical fifth- grader at home every day spends

something like up to five minutes away reading and 180 minutes watching tv. if you flip those numbers around, you will get better performance. and people have to invest in the time. a person who has written a book on post secondary education points out when you look at some of our colleges and universities, they are not much better in terms of time on task and our k-12 situation, and a lot of money being spent for five hours a week spent on studying. >> right here, and then there to other hands. >> hello, and i am also a consultant. we seem to be asking questions today. i have done most of my work with hhs. of the concerns i have is none of these problems are brand new. they change through the decades, of course, but in the 1970's,

when moynihan had a kind of theldren's czar role government, what are we going to do now that will be different from what we have done over the past 30 or 40 years because this all sounds like the conversations we were having in the 1970's, and how are we going to make a change, and how is it going to be different this time? >> has the congress for -- as the conversation really not changed? >> i think there have been successes as well as moves in a damaging direction and it is important to identify the successes and learn from them. have is -- nobody could said that in the 1970's. we have had a big increases in children's coverage.

it is worth thinking about how did that happen. it is big compared to what is out there for young children in terms of its reach, low-income kids. i think the quality is an important accomplishment, although there's more to go, and that is also an important accomplishment. what is different that makes the problem more urgent is the economic disparities and the enormous change in the u.s. population in terms of these children are latino and african- american, about half now, and asian-americans. that creates a set of different challenges. and some of the geography of where kids are, and circumstances of the state's financially. >> a separate point that has not been talked about, is my feeling is we are in this period of

austerity for all levels of government for a fair amount of time, so we have to acknowledge the fact that the only way we are going to generate more money toward children is to become more efficient in the delivery of all government services. somebody indicated presence, and i know at the state level, we went through that period of three strikes your out. guess what prisons have become. we probably do everything wrong in prisons. we probably have increased the inputs. across the board, we have preached for some time, states have to redesign the delivery of all their programs, because that is the only place you are going to be able to generate savings that you can make the investments in. we got to understand that and get on with it. >> the can start with education.

we spend more per capita with education that any country in the war, and get the results are pro -- pretty abysmal. it suggests that just doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is foolish. that is the definition of madness, isn't it? >> i am reminded we have less than five minutes left for our discussion. i will ask each one of you for a comment that will pull together what you think is the most important thing or things that should be or can be done as we move ahead, given the budget constraint, given what we have talked about this afternoon, to advance the cause of children. you already have talked about some solutions, but tell us what would you emphasized. >> i think if i were on to emphasize it it would be one i

would think others have also talked about, and that is getting children off on the right start. we did not want to abandon the older children, because they are -- there is still time to work with them, but if we want to think about the best way to get started, we want children not to be behind when they start school. we want children to be healthy and had a positive attitude when they come to school, so that from there on, the trajectory is up. >> charles, what about you? >> i would like to see a president of the united states hamid and investment of youth -- a president of the united states who would make the investment in new capital a priority. >> talking as a former member of congress, i would like to see us convince grandmother and grandfather that we cannot have

-- that they cannot have everything in the entitlement program, they cannot have the constant shift of income to the elderly that if we do that we are sacrificing our future for our children and our grandchildren. you can appeal to people on that basis, and we are on that to do that if we are going to be able to have resources available, either in entitlement programs or and discretionary programs for our children. >> and struck by the creativity of this conversation, which confirms for me the sense that bringing together people who have been thinking about children's issues and the budget is useful. i will highlight the process as the next that, whether investing ideas into continue this conversation, children's czar, figuring out the next way to keep this focus going seems to me to be very important. >> i guess i would move on this

concept of a total government investment budget, probably try to get state, local, and the federal government to agree on definitions of there and ask all three levels of government to publish it every year so that you have transparency and try to change the culture around investment versus assumption. my second point would be to get bob reischauer and op-ed to get mei internet thing passed. -- to get my internet thing passed. >> what d. say to the next generation about how they should be thinking about -- -- thepublic's other public sector is the probably

the most fascinating thing, but the challenges around the partisan nature is much more the call, and that they have to rely on their analysis and stand up and push it and do not be pushed away so much by the politics. >> and that is connected to what we're talking about here. >> my comment was going to be all of the about until ray suggested i write an op-ed. i think we are going to have to spend more money, but we cannot spend more money until we restructure the institutions and create some new institutions to do this, and particularly i would focus on younger children. >> as we look specifically to

the super committee, what do we hope for coming out of their ?our children >> -- for children? >> that they do not do so much damage. >> thank you. >> vice-president joe biden accused republicans of launching the most direct assault on the night teachers and labor since the 1920's. he is and for that to speak tonight at the democratic party convention there. we'll have live coverage at 7:30 eastern on c-span2. although this headline proved false, the week's defeat by harry truman was iconic and he continued to impact political history. tonight, followed the career of

thomas dooley, a, of force in tics.ork state polici "contenders" tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. >> earlier today the libyan ambassador to the u.s. said his country needs support from the international community in order to provide security and training for the libyans. he spoke at a conference hosted by the national council on u.s.- arab relations. this is 35 minutes. >> are to recover that and hope he can remain with us throughout this friday afternoon, which may extend a little bit longer than we are originally thought. that said, the next event on the schedule is one you certainly would not want to mis.

harriet fulbright, of course the widow of senator j. william fulbright, i never fail to meet a fulbright scholar throughout my travels and we know the world is a better place for that program,, but mrs. fulbright was introduced earlier. we know she is in her own right every bit as much of a force for international understanding and the peaceful resolution of disputes as was her wonderful husband before. i will not go into the deep details -- the details of her ivory, but the national council is greased that harriet fulbright on our stage. -- is graced that harriet fulbright is on our stage. >> i am standing here to actually introduced ambassador

ali aujali, was a first-rate diplomat, and we are very happy to have him with us. born and raised in libya, he started his career in 1968 in london and went on to malaysia, argentina, and brazil. he has also held a variety of positions in his country house ministry of foreign affairs, and then on september 9, 2011, he presented his credentials to president barack obama. so we are happy to have him here. he is the first ambassador to the u.s. from eight free libya. he practices his profession according to one of senator fulbright's more memorable statements. the making of peace is a continuing process that must go on from day to day, from year to year, so long as a our

civilization shall last. our participation in this project and process is not just the signing of a charter with a big red seal. it is a daily task, participating in all the details and decisions which together constitute a living and growing policy. it is therefore my great pleasure and honor to present to you ambassador ali aujali. [applause] >> first of all, let me say

thank you very much for this invitation. thank you for the arab-american policy makers conference and for organizing this thing every year. it is a very important event in washington, d.c., and i am very happy to be here for the second time to give some remarks. three years ago, exactly in this month, 2008, i can hear and i made very few remarks. that day when i came here, i was expecting a very important news from tripoli, concerning the supplements of whom local issues. -- of local issues. then the outstanding issue with libby and united states, which -- with libya and the united states was settled that day when i came to this conference.

thank you very much. i want to pay my condolences to the saudi arabian government on the death of the crown prince. i want to think first of all united states for what you did for the libyan people when they asked for help against this brutal regime, which took place after the libyans assembly peacefully decided to raise their voice to ask one simple question -- what happened to our beloved who have been detained in 1996? and we only came to know about them in 2008. gaddafi faced this demonstrations with weapons and guns. the libyan people were desperate, and they asked for

help. i was here in washington,i was t sir. he put a camera in my face and -- wolf blitzer. he put the camera in my face and said, of what do you want to tell the president? i said, mr. president, the libyan people need your help. they are going to suffer. if no international action will be take, then i am sure there will be regret. we have experience of leaders in african countries. we're grateful to the united states. we're grateful to the people. we're grateful to the media. we're grateful to the congress

who came forward with their support, even when there were voices of people here telling them that libya is not in the interests of the united states. the libyan people were facing this brutal regime and they had no ways and means to defend themselves. i'm really happy on behalf of the libyan people to tell you thank you america, thank you, mr. president, thank you very much. second thing, nato also came to help the libyan people. united nations, the arab league, egypt, tunisia, all of the countries who came forward to help the libyan people.

when the revolution happened in libya on the 15th and 16th of february, i was making call to people, trying to find out what happened. i was told at that time, they are only young people on drugs. when i hear this, i said, there is no meaning for calling anybody. then my family, the libyan community, we have been discussing what is going on in libya. there is only one choice in front of me. there is only one decision i have to make, and that decision is not difficult.

what i have seen on my eyes, what we have been watching on the tv, it is unbelievable. i want to thank the libyan community, the libyan citizens, my staff, and also my family. i am sure if i am delaying my resignation by one day, my wife and daughter would go to cnn and make it on my behalf. i'm grateful to them. nobody in libya, and i think in the world, expects that the libyan people raise one day against this regime. the main purpose, the main issues, the main interests of this regime, how to keep the

power in the hands of gaddafi and gaddafi pose a family? -- gaddafi's family? i have been working in libya for years. we have been trying for all these years that if we can make some changes. we cannot leave the country in the hands of gaddafi and gaddafi's family to do what they want. there are many decent people, many honorable people in libya. they felt a long time ago that what is going on in libya is completely wrong, wrong direction. libyans never even dreamed of a future for themselves or their children. they're desperate. they have no loyalty to their own country. but every 17th, -- february

17th, major changes. for the first time in 42 years, we're proud of our country, proud of our people. on the 23rd of this month, when we embraced free libya, raise your head, you are free libya. libyans now see after this resolution -- after this revolution, you do not know how much we suffered to keep our principals, to keep our dignity, and to work to make some kind of understanding between the united states and libya. i always believed that maybe when gaddafi he feel comfortable with the united states, maybe he would turn to his people, look at them, realize they need attention, they need instruction, they need education. and the need back their wealth. two messages from the victory happening in libya.

message and a lesson. message to the dictatorships all over the world. don't ever underestimate your people. nobody believed in libya that when the libyans would raise up against gaddafi. this is a great message. a message to the leader, also. they have to give the democracy to the people to choose their government. without this, i think the arab world has been under stress from their own government. they're rising now and there is no more chance for compromise. when the libyans rose against this regime, i spoke to the chairman of the [unintelligible] in rome, in march.

i said my advice to you is one thing, no compromise, no discussions with gaddafi or gaddafi's government. we have one destiny. we of one hope. we of one dream -- we have one hope. we have one dream that libya is free from gaddafi and gaddafi's government. the libyans find themselves facing a brutal regime and they find that they need leadership. they organize themselves into the national transitional council. people know each other, but they never worked together in this such situation to become a real war.

these young people who have been fighting, unbelievable. i believe it is because of frustration of the press, of frustration of unemployment, and of hatred of this regime. for eight months, the libyan people made their dreams come true. but we must realize that there are so many challenges in front of us. at the same time, two things. one is the libyans that have been able to unite for eight months to fight this regime, who have been using everything, weapons, raping, killing, mass graves. a have a great hope in these

people to continuing the dream of libya for a free and democratic government. secondly, the international community who became the dig -- who came to help libya. we need your help and support during the peace. libyans need better education, infrastructure. the need -- a need security and the need stabilization. -- they need security and they need stabilization. these are very important issues. yesterday the and security council met to discuss the mission of nato. i was not very happy myself if you ask me. i thought maybe they would extend it to the end of the year until we managed to control

everything, every piece in our country. but the forming of another option led by qatar, the united states and other countries, this makes me more comfortable. the dow is dead. gaddafi is finished. but at -- gaddafi is dead. gaddafi is finished. but at the same time, we have borders with african countries, many of them have come over our borders to kill our people. we have to remove the arms from the streets. we have never seen the libyan people carrying arms in their hand except the police and the gaddafi soldiers, but now of course, their arms everywhere.

we need help to collect the missiles and the other weapons. we need to secure our borders. libya has no army, no police except for security brigades. their purpose is not to protect the country, but to protect the regime, the family. we need help from the international community. we need to reconcile among ourselves. there are so many wounds, so many hurts, so many suffering. it is not just the last eight months, but the last 42 years. but what is happening in the last eight months is deeper than the last 42 years of suffering.

we have to be careful how we're going to absorb, how we're going to get the libyans to gather to unite. it is not impossible. i am sure the libyans to carry the guns to fight gaddafi will be able to carry in their hearts the reconciliation for the people, the one who corrupted and the ones whose hands are with the blood of the libyans. we need reconciliation among our friends. the media carries many stories about libya, carries the slanders. what is going to happen to libya? there is some is line group. what about their agenda. -- islamic group. what about their agenda? from the beginning, gaddafi is using al qaeda. who brought them to libya? he is the one who is responsible for that.

they came back for libya for a long time and they are living their normal life, but once they see their family, their houses being graded and being killed and being taken by the regime, then you can blame them. but there is no worry about libya to unite. there is no worry about one group to take over. all libyans want one thing that they want to achieve in their life, democracy. i the guy that i'm still alive to see that this regime -- i thank god that i'm still alive to see that this regime is no longer occupying the libyan people. they're also talking about sharia.

don't worry. this is the excitement of the celebration. now the process to make the roles will be completely different from gaddafi's time. we have to elect the council. they will have their role according to the interest of the people. i want the international community to take it easy with the libyans. libyans are not aggressive. libyans are conservative. libyans are wanting to have a normal relation of the world. we want to normal relations. 50 years ago, libyans used to

travel to europe without the says -- visas. during gaddafi's time, getting a visa is a nightmare. we want the international community to help security, to help countries that also have a dictatorship regime. our responsibility is completely different than what it has been under gaddafi. what we expect from the united states. we expect, of course, to build which does not - exist for the last 30-35 years. i come to this country in 2004, trying to help as much as i can to normalize the relations for the same reason i mention just a

few minutes ago. but my mission has been difficult. this relation has never been stable. any statement, any to do with gaddafi and he is not happy with it. that means we go back to the first square. i hope this period of non- confidence is over. we want the participation of the united states in the legal structures of our country. we want the american think tankers and democratic institutions to help us create the atmosphere of how the libyans they can practice their rights to form these governments. i must say right here that i'm really grateful to secretary clinton and senator john mccain and others who have been to libya.

now they will see, the first libyan wounded will arrive by boat to boston tomorrow at 6:00 to be treated by united states hospitals. this is a very important and urgent issue for the national transitional council to deal with. the security of the country. because the security of libya is very important, we have to me see it to the east. to the west, we have egypt -- to any set to the east. -- tunisia to the east. we of egypt to the west. illegal immigrants. gaddafi would use illegal immigrants as the weapons and the blackmailing. if he is happy with them, he'd will stop the illegal immigrants. if not, he will open the doors.

and not only open the doors, but bolster the immigrants. we need your help. we need your support. of course, there is a very important issue we have to handle in among ourselves as libyans, as a nation, reconciliation. many people are ready to establish a new democratic country, believe in freedom, believe in human rights, but even the freedom of the oppressed, but they need your support. they need the support of the united nations, of course. we need to know where our monies are. there are some in europe, some in the united states. we are not worried about this, but we're worried about the other money which may be in african countries which we do not know where they are. we hope we elect our government

next month as a temporary interim government. we hope that the people make the right choice. thank you very much. [applause] >> mr. ambassador, thank you for your comprehensive and thoughtful remarks. i am certain i speak for this audience that the best wishes of the national council and our friends are with the people of libya at this time. two questions. you seem to have a wonderful appreciation of the apparatus of government that remains that it may have the extraordinary difficulties dealing with the challenges of creating a new state. indeed, that seems to be the experience of the world when these things come. there are specific concerns about the weapons, the weapons

and may have become misplaced during the time of the uprising. as you mentioned, there is a question of will you be able to get the money, as we know that sometimes when a tyrant's depart, even when their families depart, they managed to bring a lot of resources and riches of the country with them. one can only wonder how much money was transferred to niger in recent days with the family. your thoughts on these subjects would be appreciated. >> the main concern of libya, if you go to benghazi in the 23rd of october, you will see the military group asking the libyan fighting groups to end the

battle. this is important to support them and encourage them to do whatever we can to collect all the weapons. but maybe it is not the main issue. the main issue is the weapons that we do not know where they are. we need some help, technical help to get them. i believe united states and great britain and giving the help and support. concerning the money, of course, now after the united nations security council resolution 2016, libyans now have more access to their money. they are working with international banking, banks and financial institutions, how to get this money. but the problem is not only had to get the money. the problem is how are we going

to keep the money away from any corruption. what are we going to do with this money? this is an issue. i believe that the money we get from any institute or any banks, they have to go directly to the different banks in libya. i think the libyans now are mature. they know what corruption's mean. they know all so -- also that the libyans now are free people. they will raise against any correction anytime, but not in the same way, i hope, that they raised against gaddafi. >> one more item, please. a previous speaker mentioned the possibility of a defense relationship between the united

states and libya. the united states has just formed a new command that seeks to establish relationships not only with libya but throughout the arab world. one knows that just when colonel gaddafi came to power, the u.s. air force departed the air force base just outside of tripoli. there are those who remember those days and wonder if the new government of libya would seek a defense relationship or would be open to negotiating one with the ira united states. >> i think with the new relationship between the united states and libya, this would be one of the issues. we want to have a very respected and equal relation

with the united states. we want their technology and we want their experience to help establish the libyan national army. this is very important. the relationship with libya and the united states in the past, since 2003, the relation is very slow. but i think after this, it could be completely different. we will work with them, tried to get our people into the right institutions, the right colleges. we understand very much with the united states did for us. at the same time, the libyan decisions have to be respected. with this, we can keep their relations. with this, we can keep the interests. with this, we will not be seen

as being used by the countries that support us and the countries that support us also not be blamed that they have a second interest and they want to manipulate the libyan political position. i am very sure that we have reached understanding between our leadership, even at this time. we have to do this in a better way. we have to build the confidence between our countries, between our people, and of course, our economic and our trade relations, we will take into account the countries that came to support us. i will never forget on the 19th of march when the acting foreign minister called me and told me if there is no action tonight from nato, then benghazi the next day will be the biggest cemetery in the region.

i was glad that the french strike just in the right time. if they were laid just one hour, i think it would have been a cemetery too. >> i think we will go ahead and move along with our agenda this afternoon. we will consider these questions in a thoughtful way, check with our friends in the libyan delegation and provide answers electronically on our website. we are most appreciative of the ambassador's remarks this afternoon, as well as his willingness to adjust our schedule as we needed to adjust hours to look after the events as they unfolded. please join me in expressing our appreciation to not only the ambassador of libya the to the libyan people for their freedom. [applause] >> a reminder, you can see all of this event, which happened earlier today, at the video

library at c-span.org. coming up in about an hour over on c-span-2, vice president joe biden is seeking -- speaking at the florida democratic party convention. next up here on c-span, we're going to take you to the federal communications commission meeting yesterday. in part of that meeting, they voted unanimously to change the universal service fund to provide broadband to rural service areas. the changes were called "a historic," saying they would help bring more jobs to a rural america. this is from yesterday.

pleased to're very present changes to the universal service fund. you had suggested we encourage and target investment in broadband infrastructure and emphasize the importance of broadband to the future of these programs. today, we read port -- we present a report accomplishing just that. we have supported the availability of phone service in rural america. the order realistically reforms both programs to eliminate waste and inefficiency, target support to where it is needed, and transition support from voice only networks to broadband connections capable of supporting voice as well as other applications. the order would establish a connect america fund for

supporting voice and broadband communications in rural, insular and high-cost areas of the country. for the first time, such support would be allocated according to a budget set at $4.5 billion annually, based on the existing level of high-cost universal support. once the transition is complete, up to two billion dollars would be available to areas with regular return carias -- carriers, and a billion dollars to areas with private carriers. at least $100 million would be dedicated to a new remote areas fund as described in an accompanying further notice of proposal. a reform of this magnitude could only be accomplished through collaboration and teamwork.

we required two slides to the knowledge the many dedicated legal drafters, financial analysts, economists and others who contributed their expertise to this roughly 500 page item. the leadership effort included many of the folks seated behind me. in addition to those joining me at the table today, rick kaplan and his division chiefs, the wireline deputy bureau chief, associate chief, chief qaeda officer, pricing deputy division sheaves -- chiefs and advisers. amy and marty will present the wireline and wireless portions. amy.

>> today's order establishes rigorous public interest outlines for all elements of the caf. we maintain a strong partnership with state commissions to be will continue to play an important role and by designating carriers eligible to receive support. required to submit annual reports to the fcc and state commission to ensure effective oversight and accountability. in price cap territories, caf will provide support for broadband in two phases. in phase one, all existing legacy high-cost support will be frozen and overtime subjects to obligations to advance our broadband goals. in addition of $300 million in funding will be made available to carriers to expediently

deploy broadband to a specified number of unanswered locations in their specified area. for phase two, in price cap territories, the order establishes a framework that would provide support in the first instance based on a four- looking cost model and direct the wireline to undertake a process to develop a specific model. in each state and territory, incumbent price cat carriers will be asked to undertake a commitment to serve the high cost locations in their service territories in that state with boys and broadband -- voice and broadband, excluding areas where there is an unsubsidized competitor come at extremely high cost areas, and low-cost locations that can be served without support. carriers will be obligated to meet robust, scalable broadband service requirements. in areas where the incumbent declines in state level commitment, a competitive

bidding mechanism will be used to distribute support. any broad income biter -- any broadband provider may participate. for rate of return carriers, the royal support continue broadband investment while increasing -- rules support continued broadband investment will increasing the use of public resources. the reforms recognize the unique nature of small carriers and allow them the predictability of remaining on the current system in the near term. the further notice seeks comment on establishing a long-term, broadband-focused cap mechanism for rate of return carriers and on adjusting the interest rate of return from its current level of 11.25%. as a transition to the new support mechanism for mobile broadband service, the order eliminates the identical support rule that determines the amount

of support for air mainly mobile communities today and faces down support over a five-year time. margie will provide further details on the mobility portion of the item. >> the report in order before you explicitly recognizes the role and value of mobility as a universal service will and implements measures to ensure universal availability of mobile, voice and broadband where americans live, work and travel. for the first time, today's item provides dedicated funding for mobile voice and broadband service to phase one and phase two of the newly created mobility fund. phase one provides $300 million in onetime support and an additional $50 million dedicated to tribal areas to expand the deployment of mobile voice and broadband in areas where such service is lacking. face to provide $500 million annually for on -- face two

provides $500 million annually for ongoing support including up to $100 million for tribal areas. phase one of the mobility fund will provide one time support of the swift deployment for mobile and broadband services in areas currently in served by mobile networks or three g. this support will be awarded by reverse auction, in current -- in contrast to the current system. the auction will maximize coverage within the budget, reflecting the value of mobile broaden coverage. auction winners will be required to deploy 4g service with in three years or three g's service within two years. to ensure that important public service objectives are met, there will be subject to a variety of obligations including voice and data running

echolocation requirements. co-ddition, -- romainaming and location requirements. the order provides several mechanisms to ensure that my ability fund support address as tribal -- mobility fund supported dresses travel needs. phase 2 will provide $500 million per year in ongoing support. it will include dedicated ongoing support for tribal areas of up to $100 million per year. the funds available in phase two will expand and sustained mobile broadband service in places where service would be unavailable absent federal support. the further notice of proposed rulemaking proposes a structure and operational detail for phase

two of the mobility fund including a distribution methodology, eligible geographic areas and providers and public area -- public-interest obligations. finally, the order dedicates at least $100 million in annual support to provide voice and broadband to the fewer than 1% of americans living in remote areas where the cost of providing traditional, terrestrial service is extremely high. further notice is incumbent on how to award support to this remote areas fund. victoria goldberg will now discuss itc. >> this system, created in the 1980's, reflects geography-based permanent charges and explicit subsidies that are fundamentally in tension with and a deterrent of deployment of modern networks. the situation is eroding rapidly

as demand for wired lines dropped and consumers increasingly opt for wireless, voice, texting and e-mail. this order comprehensively reforms the itc system to help bring substantial benefits to consumers, including reduced rates for both telephone and broadband services. the reforms also improve the fairness and efficiency of subsidies flowing to rural areas and unleash innovation by setting the stage for transforming legacy telephone networks into the broadband networks of the future. the order first tackled regulatory arbitraged by adopting rules of phantom traffic, combating service provider schemes that exploit loopholes that cost consumers millions of dollars annually. the order next tackles reform of the current system generally and adopts a key methodology as the end date for all traffic. this new methodology provides a

unified national framework with states leveraging their localized expertise to help implement this remark and oversee the transition from the status quo -- this framework and oversee the transition from the status quo. establishing a transition path for the reduction of most terminating switched access rate elements and some transport rate elements. the order also adopts a transitional recovery mechanism to mitigate the effect of revenues reduced by these reforms while providing greater certainty and predictability going forward. productions are adopted to ensure any increases in residential rates are minimal and capped. where necessary, as some carriers will be eligible to receive cash support, the subject requirements to use the cash for support of universal service and broad band.

the order addresses the treatment of voice traffic, clarifying that traffic that is exchanged over facilities that originated or terminate in i.p. format are subject to traditional itc and makes clear that all carriers originating and terminating voice models will be on equal footing in their ability to obtain compensation for this traffic. further, we resolve existing ambiguity and address disputes. the use of ip networks and the accompanying further notice seeks comment on the policy framework for interconnection. the order also makes clear that even while the further notice is pending, we expect all carriers to negotiate in good faith in response to requests for i.p. to ip connection and the exchange of voice traffic. the bureau requests adoption of this item and editorial

privileges. >> thank you. commissioner, please. >> thank you. a lot of folks that we could not get here today. they said universal service was too complicated and intra- carrier compensation too convoluted ever to permit comprehensive reform. universal service was sadly out of step with the times and the carrier compensation was broken beyond repair. yet, here we are this morning, making telecommunications history with comprehensive reform of both universal service and into-carrier compensation. so the first thing i want to do is congratulate your leadership. mr. chairman, you have gotten this to a place where no previous chairman has managed to go. today, thanks to his leadership, we have the support to build a framework for the 21st century

that our consumers and citizens so urgently need. even though some may take exception to parts of what we have approved today, join me in thanking him for his commitment, his courage, and his herculean effort to make this happen. in the face of the complex systems we modernize today, it is all too easy to forget the simple, time is all behind our policies. all of us benefit when more of us are connected. the principle of universal service is the lifeblood of the communications act, a legislative mandate to bring affordable communication services to all americans no matter who they are, where they live, or the particular circumstances of their individual lives. it is only fitting as we move away for support -- from support designed primarily for voice to support for broad band that we bear witness to the accomplishments the u.s. has made over the years to connect america with plain old

television into telephone service. the fund has achieved success. we of penetration rates in excess of 95%. no other infrastructure build out in our history has done so much to bind the nation together. additionally, it has enabled millions of jobs and run new opportunities to just about every aspect of our lives. some stark challenges remain, of course, particularly in native areas. the shocking statistic in indian country is that lack of telephone rate hovers in the high 60th percentile. getting broadbent to native areas is an essential challenge to any reforms we launched today. bringing universal service into the 21st century is the only way we can extend the full range of communications services to places where those services will not otherwise go.

the big is here, of course, is the universal service is finally going broadband. this is something of advocated for a long time. it is more than a decade overdue. these new tools and advancements in technology and communications services are essential to prosperity and well-being for our country. they are the essential tools of this generation like the whole and the plow -- the hell and the plow, the shovel and the saw were to our forbearers. whether we work in a factory or a farm, are effluent economically disadvantaged, fully able or living with a disability, every citizen has a need for an array to advance communication -- a right to advanced communications services. america cannot afford access denied unless we want to confine ourselves and our children to growing not shrinking digital divide.

we are already skating around the wrong side of the global digital divide in many ways when we should have learned by now that the rest of the world is not going to wait for america to catch up. but here is the good news. fiore if we seize the power of this technology and build it out -- if we seize the power of this technology and build it out to every corner of the country, there is no telling what we can accomplish. america will be back at the front of the pack. the current system, for all of the good it has accomplished, has outlived its time. inefficiencies and waste crept in where efficiency and ongoing oversight should have been standard operating procedure. as problems arose, there are too often minimized or allowed to compound. there were band-aids and never managed to staunch the hemorrhage. sometimes we did not even try band-aids. the commission more than once made things worse by calling communications technology

services things that they were not, engaging in linguistics with a theory that even the most biblical scholars of old were incapable of understanding. some loss side of the purpose of the communications act in general and the universal services fund in particular. whatever the causes, and we could debate them for hours, our current interim compensation regimes are broken. they encourage carriers to maintain yesterday's technology instead of reaping the benefits of today's i.p. based networks. the hidden manipulations of into carrier payments cost consumers billions of dollars each year. we reimburse some carriers for whatsoever they choose to invest in certain parts of their networks, regardless of whether a lesser amount was all that was needed to provide service to their customers. in some areas of the country, we subsidize four or more wireless

carriers based on the cost of one wired line network. all of this is reflected in the rates that consumers play. the old saying is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. but this is broken, and we are left with no real option short of a major fix. no tinkering around the edges is capable of putting the systems back on a solid footing. some will claim we attempt to so much today, but we would not ask to overhaul these programs so fundamentally if we had to address these problems as they arose over the years. it is not as if we did not see the writing on the wall. many people did. years ago i proposed supporting broadband build them -- broadband bill that like other countries were doing. four years ago, my colleagues were willing to support competitive auctions and enter carrier compensation, lower rates and an end to phantom traffic.

we worked very closely on it. are we doing today is repairing two broken systems and putting together a more credible and efficient framework that will benefit consumers, carriers and the country. we are approving a framer for allocating limited resources to repair communication shortfalls. it will provide predictability for ratepayers, businesses and policymakers. i would have preferred a higher budget for the fund, a budget that i believe consumers would accept because of the importance of putting this nation back to work in providing our kids with the tools they need for their futures. that being said, we sat down together and came up with steps that will make a huge difference, and that is why i am able to approve the item, although it will come as a surprise to no one that it is

not the private -- not the precise item i would have recommended. there is much to be said for this approach at this time because of the hard budget realities the nation faces and because of the perceived need to limit universal service. but i hope and expect that our actions today will have spillover effects in underserved areas too, because america will not be brought been sufficient until the underserved become police sufficient too. inner cities can be -- policy sufficient too. i welcome the new approach that focuses on where private investment for broadband refuses to go. this means targeting money for areas where consumers would otherwise not have service. i believe this is the first time we can really say that about the fund. acting on another longstanding recommendation of the board, which for the first time and

creating a specific funding mechanism to support mobility, this is an historic accomplishment. clearly, there are many areas where mobile broadband providers are doing very well in providing services and are profiting handsomely. support is not needed. but there are other areas that are strangers to the mobile broadband coverage and were the market refuses to go. options is a new tool for the commission. while we have considerable experience with auctions, this is in many ways and used pcs of auction and we will need to be careful -- a new species of auction and we will need to be careful in how we approach it. i expect we will learn a lot from the first auction and apply those lessons to the future. the me also say how much i appreciate the prohibition on packaging in the mobility fund. i believe this is an important

safeguard against gamesmanship, further consolidation in the industry, and that it can only benefit consumers. i am also pleased that we are adopting another safeguard to encourage stability during the transition to the new regime of mobile support. there are two phases. the second installment of mobility support is dependent upon further commission decision making. understanding the need for maximum predictability throughout these changes, we will all support if for some unanticipated reason the second auction days does not take place as planned. given the financial constraints we imposed, i am also pleased we were able to grow the inability fund from the initial proposal. he did the mobility fund from the initial proposal. -- the mobility fund from the initial proposal. i particularly commend the

leadership of my friend, commissioner cliburn. i'm encouraged that we launched the tribal mobility fund for tribal areas. the state of broadband in any country is a national -- in indian country is a national disgrace. sitting -- getting this right will take more money, but it hinges on more than money alone. there are spectrum issues looming before us. in addition to all of this, there are a host of confidence- building and cooperation building challenges confronting us. i do believe the current commission is on the right path to rebuilding with native nations. we have new dialogue is taking place, a new commitments being shared and new impetus to work together. we are also aware of the need to accord tribes the fuller and

more active role they must have to ensure the best and most appropriate deployment and adoption strategies for their areas and their populations. i feel encouraged that we are at long last positioning ourselves to make progress by working more closely in creatively together. the sad history here, as we all now, is many promises made, many promises broken. we need to turn the page, and i think we're beginning to do that now. i also applaud the strong build up that was a condition of receiving dollars and support from any of our programs with meaningful enforcement and call back consequences if providers do not meet their obligations to consumers. this index much needed discipline into the system. -- inject much-needed discipline into the system. it will inspire much more confidence in the new system than we ever had in the old. today is also historic because we finally take on the challenge

of inter-carrier compensation. we take meaningful steps to transform what is badly, sadly broken. this item puts the brakes on the arbitrage and gamesmanship that have plagued itc for years. by some estimates, access costs nearly half a billion dollar a year and phantom traffic affects nearly one-fifth of the traffic on carriers' networks. today we say no more. we could dress these schemes had on -- addressed these schemes had on an reversed these incentives entirely. i enthusiasm here is tempered by the fact that and user charges are allowed to increase, albeit incrementally, for residential consumers. i first preference was to prevent any increase. alternatively, we could require

carriers to demonstrate the need for additional revenues before imposing the arc. perhaps some of the largest and most profitable companies should not be able to charge the art. however, the commission does adopt some important measures to protect consumers even as it allows additional charges. in particular, a consumer is paying $30 or more cannot be charged the park. arc.he par in the end, i am grateful to have at least the end charges not been as great as they might have been. target should be offset n-word than matched by savings and -- charges should be offset and more than matched by savings to

consumers. while the inside the beltway crowd in the armies of analysts and others will be focused exclusively on which company or industry is up or down as a result of what we do, who gains the most, who gains the least, and all the other issues there will call for us to be shot down, i hope we can keep the focus on the consumer benefits of what we're doing. i would not, could not support what we do today unless the expected consumer benefits are real enough to justify the effort and yes the risks of those we have planned. much will depend on our implementation and enforcement, and i'm sure of some midcourse corrections, but i am sure there are real and tangible benefits in the framework of items before us. more broad band for more people

is at the top of the list. as one example, we anticipate significant new investment with over 7 million previously unserved consumers getting broad band. that means more service, more jobs, more opportunities. building critical infrastructure, and broadband is our most critical infrastructure challenge, has to be a partnership. the states are important and central partners as we design new programs. i have been a strong advocate for closer federal state regulatory partnerships since i arrived here. i have had the opportunity to serve on joint boards with our state colleagues, to be part of deliberations, to appreciate the tremendous expertise and dedication they bring to their regulatory responsibilities, and to have learned so much from them. it is just simple good sense to maximize our working relationships with them.

more even than my a deeply held personal preference, this is the demand of the law. the states have a critical role in the implementation and advancement of universal service. wilander stan the need for predictability, i am -- while i understand the need for predictability, i am understand that my colleagues will be helping to implement the universal service fund as well as in many cases their own state universal service funds. state regulators are by definition closer to the needs of their consumers than federal regulators ever can be. they are the first line to receive consumer complaints. thel discuss how to expand state's role as we implement these new systems. i would hope that carriers will see the benefits of this

federal-state cooperation too, but it is unfortunate and highly counterproductive to consumers when some companies exercise their huge lobbying machines to encourage state legislatures to effectively cut state public utility commissions out of telecommunications. this makes everyone's job except the industry giants more difficult and it harms the nation. on the legal front, some of the calls made on this item are necessarily and unfortunately more circuitous than i believe they need to be. we ought to be long passed declaring that i.p.-ip connections are required. we had a chance to do this back in 2002 and 2005. our failure to do so has had tangibly perverse consequences. avoiding action not only harms competition and delays the bill out of our infrastructure, it

ensures that america will continue to be down the global broadband rankings in a world where that just does not cut it.

all universal services programs now include a real and enforceable requirement for affordability. it is only logical that carrier users not funded by federal support should be required to fund services at affordable rates. that said, we have an imminent opportunity to link -- establish the linkup and lifeline programs before 2011. so there is still much work to be done. the success of today's programs depends on getting things right. we have to revisit small businesses and anchor institutions. this is an issue with huge spillover consequences on the rates consumers are forced to

pay. it has simply waited years too long the we must similarly act on contributions methodology. the distribution of funds is only part of the broadband challenge. the -- of equal importance is the contribution of funds going into the system. there is an inherent unfairness on interstate tell phony. once we assure that double and triple entities pay their fair share we will not be so constrained. among other good results, it would drive better mobility auctions. successful implementation of the programs today will demand a degree of stakeholder

cooperatition wave not seen in many, many years. consumers, the f.c.c., congress, all have a vital role to play. cooperation is how we managed to build the infrastructure from the early canals and bridges up to the 21st century. now is the chance to play that american way one more time. everyone has had an opportunity for inputt. when we approved the p.r. -- m.p.r.n. in february i remarked that everyone would be asked to give up a little so everyone could gain a lot. the process has generally is -- if not perfectly worked. shake -- stakeholders have stepped up to the plate. their suggestions were helpful. i have no illusions about what

perils may await us but i do want to suggest how much better off we will all about -- be if our efforts are focused together going forward and on efforts to make changes when called for rather than wasting precious time the country doesn't have on litigation and seeking to advance interests of a private firm. lots of made -- people made heroic efforts to get us today's historic achievement. already mentioned the remarkable lead ership of the chairman. the team worked mightily on a whole host of unbelievable complex issues. the dedicated experts in wireless and wire line bureaus,

remember he cana, ruth, tim, everybody on the two-page list spent many, many hours answering our questions and discussing our requests and they were backed up by dozens more of our typically brilliant and dedicated f.c.c. team. my commissioner colleagues spent weeks and months immersed in the tall weeds, taking hundreds of meetings, talking with one another and developing proposals. and the staff worked long days, night, and weekends to make this happen. in my own office margaret mccarthy and mike stone created not only expert analysis but ideas for better outcomes. i should add all my staff performed at the stardom level. it has been a highly professional effort by a

world-class effort of -- agency of which i am proud to be part. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the fee for subsidizing next-generation technologists while keeping a lid on spending is truly monument awl -- monumental. thus our action today is a vital first step in prorm while suring that rural coon -- consumers get needed services. as i've said before, the needs for communication in ruremdrg rural america is personal to me. my father spent part of his boyhood on a ranch on the texas-mexico bored without electricity, running water or phone service. i am dedicated to ensuring that the most remote parts of our country are connected. the challenge of solving the

most seemingly intractable problems has cast a long shadow over the f.c.c. for more than a decade. in my nearly knife -- five and a half years here i have traveled across the country to learn more about the practical parts of the program. i held round tables in the least populated state, wyoming, as well as its neighbor, south dakota. i have traversed tribal lands and some of the least densely populated parts of the country, alaska. i have heard from consumers who pay above cost to subsidize rural consumers. i know that my colleagues have performed similar studies as well. i have turned to one of america's best telecommunication policy minds, none other than the great one,

wayne gretzky. he said, without any of us even realizing it, he predicted what we would do today. he said a good hockey plays where the puck is. a great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. . today the f.c.c. is repurposing technologies from where they are to where they're going to be in both a technological and other senses. today marks a dramatic departure of course -- from a century-elled policy of subsidizing analogue, circuit-switched communications to using the efficiencyies of markets to support broadband connect i havities in those areas where penetration has stalled. the high-cost fund has become bloated and inefficient.

today a republican and three democrats are taking a giant leap together to fix that. i commend the chairman for his leader chip -- leadership and fortitude throughout this process and the commissioners for their thoughtfulness and graciousness throughout the proceeding. since i arrive at the commission in 2006 i have been calling for the f.c.c. to achieve five primary goals. the most important of which is to contain the growth of the fund. while our efforts today are not perfect, today we are largely achieving this goal in a town otherwise known for its inability to control spending. while i'm on that subject, some have suggested that we scrap the u.s.f. program altogether. others can have that debate. in the meantime we are reminded congress created this program and its ultimate survival is a matter only for congress to

demplet we are duty bound to operate within the statutory constraints given to us. we are asked -- asking that the high costs of the rural service fund live under a budget. the fund may not rise more than 4.5 a year after that -- without true ups. after that time i am hopeful new technologists and market forces will work together. perhaps the day will come that congress can determine subsidize -- subsidies are no longer needed. there is nothing we can do to prevent future commissions to alter what we have done and

spend more money later. that would be true as a matter of law whether we call our action today a cap, beret, or sombrero. if the f.c.c. of tomorrow wants to undo what we have done today however, good luck with that. if history is our guide, the alacrity with which the commission can accomplish com presencev reform is nothing short of glacial. i hope future commissioners will keep their caps on out of respect for fiscal responsibility and the consumers who pay for these subsidies. today we are only addressing the high cost portion of the distribution side of the universal service fund as the commissioner pointed out. we are not addressing the entire fund which currently distributes over $8 billion a year. to put that context into context, u.s.f. is larger than

the annual revenues of major league baseball. i cannot stress enough that all of the fiscal efficiencies we will realize in the wake of today's reforms will be lost if similar discipline is not applied to all universal service programs as well. moreover, we are only dress -- addressing part of the distribution or spending side of the universal service program. in fact, despite all of the exhaustive efforts to get to this point, our work on comprehensive universal service reform is not even half finished. equally important is the need to reform the contribution methodology or how we're going to pay for all of this. it is no secret that for years i've been pushing for contribution reform to be carried out at the same time as distribution reform. obviously that is not happening today. therefore we must act quickly. the contribution factor, a type of tax paid by consumers, has

risen each year from approximately 5.5% in 1998 to an estimated 15 ps 3% in the fourth quarter of this year. this trend is simply unacceptable. we must abate this automatic tax increase without further delay. according think -- accordingly, i strongly urge we work together to complete the proceeding to reform the contribution methodology in the first half of next year. in the meantime, today we are undertaking significant reforms. although time does not allow me to discuss each one i'd like to mention a few of my favorites. first it may surprise some observers the vigor and breadth to which we give life to competitive bidding, a -- a market based approach to distribution subsidies las -- also known as reverse auctions. this is more than i could have hoped for in 2008 when a republican controlled f.c.c. teetered on the cusp of

comprehensive reform before our efforts were scuttled. i'm delighted we're here to actually get to this point. supporting these positions was likely not easy for some of my colleagues and i thank them for their spirit of compromise. secondly, we are eliminating the weight of of error of subsidizing multiple competitors in the same place. third, we're finally give consumers the benefit of more transparency by phasing out hidden subsidies, albeit 15 years after congress told us to do. better late than never, i guess. and we will have to keep consumers prosecutor -- properly educated as to what they will see on their phone bills and what it all means. for the vast majority of consumers, rates should stay

the same or decline. so i will look with skepticism on any news stories that say we are raising rates. we are not. second, we are creating a frugally minded waiver process for the unlikely cases where carriers are experiencing extreme hardship due to our reforms. did i say that narrowly enough? with enough adjectives? and fifth, i'm going to stop at five, don't worry, we are going to propose a screening process. as a legal matter some question whether the commission has the authority to use universal service funds to support broadband directly. as i have said many times before, i believe the commission does have broad authority to repurpose support for advance services in the

plain language of section 254. i have a much longer argument in my full statement but in the interests of time and small plaiders i will not go on further the it should come as no surprise that i cannot support that section give gives -- section 607 gives the commission authority. we respectfully agree to disagree on this analysis. finally, given the breadth and magnitude of today's actions, the effects will not be fully apparent in the near term. certainly there will be varied opinions as to what we have accomplished. that said, universal service reform is an iterative process. we will constantly monitor and make adjustments if needed. in sum i would like to thank all the people who have sacrificed countless family

dins -- dinners, weekends, vacations, birthday and anniversary celebrations and such over the past many months to make this day possible. i was going to start naming names, then i realized that might be an impossible task because i would leave people out. i'd like to reflect this is the longest table we've had in front of us in the history of the f.c.c. to the point where austin is in the press section [laughter] . and i know you would have added more tables, but then he would have been on the other side of the wall, controlling the cameras. i do want to make special mention though to not only everyone seated in front of us but to the legions who stand behind you and who have all shed their blood, sweat, toil, and tears to make this possible today. we should have probably held in meeting in fedex field but perhaps it was raining today. i want to thank and commend

zack katz and commissioners and the leg advisors. and from my office, christine kirth deserves special mention. when i hired her two years ago from the senate i said, "your main mission is to fix universal service," and she accepted my offer anyway. she's completed half that mission today and i want to thank her for it. many, many thanks to each of you and to my colleagues. there -- this is a historic day. >> thank you. commissioner clibeourn? >> we are taking a momentous step today moving ever closer to the goal that at that -- of universal service, to assure that all americans have access to affordable voice and advanced communication services. we would not be here were it

not for the hard work of the f.c.c. staff under the direction of chairman janikowski and his office as well as significant input from congress, our state partners, industry and consumer representatives. i believe we have drawn from many competing sources to form a balanced framework that will promote significant broadband deployment as quickly as possible to those consumers that are currently unserved. the painful truth is that there are 18 million americans who have not fully benefited from our current universal service policies, and that is unacceptable. they remain the have-nots of the broadband world whoo -- who i am determined will benefit the most from what our actions, this action is today. as i have considered these reforms, it is the unserved consumers who are first and foremost in my mind. this plan provides for speedy

broadband deployment to many of those consumers and with an injection of capital in 2012 for both fixed and mobile technologies. in television -- addition to those immediate needs, i carefully considered how much the consumers are being asked to shoulder as well as the impact on consumers who already have service. it also shouldn't surprise anyone that it was similarly important to me that we give service providers ond their investors time to -- to adjust to our proposal -- proposed reforms because from day one i made a commitment to no flash cuts. for those providers who require additional time to adjust we have in place a waiver process that is firm, predictable, yet fair. another benefit of this waiver

process is that it provides this commission with a safety net so that we can adjust support as needed in order to avoid inadvertantly harming the success we have already achieved through our legacy system. overall i believe that the chairman's proposal carefully balances these interests and will result in a meaningful difference for many americans, and i want to commend him and my colleagues for the significant progress that is reflected in this order. accordingly, i offer my full support for the actions we take today. as you all know, i have a deep connection to rural america. without comparable modern communications service enjoyed by urban counterparts, those citizens will never adequately compete in our global economy. they need and deserve reliable fixed as well as mobile brabbed in order to thrive.

without this critical broadband structure, rural americans would forever be left behind. we are aware tr -- that the financial needs to provide services in these areas are significant, and yes, i appreciate the fact that setting a budget for the high cotcht program with provide overall certainty and predictability. however, it is equally important that we have the flexibility to adjust as needed within and between these high-cost programs. i want to thank my good friends and colleagues for working with me to assure that we have not unduly limited our ability to revisit our current estimates of the funding that's needed for the high-cost programs in the future. an underlying theme of today's reforms is shared sacrifice for the common ground. after all, we are talking about the people's money. we are accountable to them, and i am confident that the adjustments being made to the

legacy u.s.f. support and the fend -- funding mechanisms being adopted for the new connect america fund are sensible. these will put both the u.s.f. and i.c.c. regimes on better footing so we may better accomplish the goal to serve more americans with advanced commurengs networks no matter where they -- communication networks no matter where they live, work, or serve in this country. members have called for this commission to driveway -- provide for the direct funding of broadband. oriole -- early on they recognized the importance of both broadband and mobility service. i am glad the commission has need -- heeded the call and is formally adopting the recommendations that universal service support should be directed where possible to networks that provide advanced

service as well as voice services. we are adopting a mobility fund to infuse $300 million in capital to spend 3g and 4g networks to more americans in 2012. in addition we are adopting a mobility fund to assure that consumers have access to mobile broadband services, providing support to providers in hard to serve areas and eliminating our identical support rule. we owe a great gratitude to our state members. they have been a significant resource for this commission in our reform process. we sat through numerous workshops and meetings together, hashing out ideas and concepts. they spent countless hours trafting -- drafting a proposal and have been more than

generous in their time and advice. i want to thank them this evening for their service to our nation. the f. -- f.c.c. has heavily relied on their recommendations. we are requiring them to annually report on build-out and to file those reports with the state and f.c.c. commissions. we are implementing a cap on total per-line support and other fiscally responsible measures to eliminate waste and inefficiency in the system. we are qualifying in our order that we expect all carriers to negotiate in good faith in responsibility -- response to requests for i.p. to i.p. interconnection for the exchange of voice traffic. not only did we hear from the state to assure how important it is that i.p. connection occurs, we also received

significant comment from competitive i.p. voice providers that the lack of i.p. interkex is impeding the development of i.p. networks, including voice services. as such the order confirms that the duty to negotiate in good faith does not depend on the technology underlying, whether t.d.m., i.p., or woo -- otherwise and that we expect good faith negotiation to result in interconnected networks for the purpose of exchanging voice traffic. another topic i spent a great deal of course time on with my colleagues was the intercarrier compensation regime. today's proposal sets forth a proposal for reform of rates. it's probably not surprising that i gravitated to the proposal that would have had

the states reform their own intrastate access rates and let the -- left the interstate reform to this commission. but after much discussion and consideration i will accept the chairman's proposal that a federal approach is right in this instance. a multistate process for reform would be long and arduous, costly and demanding, and with unpredictable and perhaps inconsistent results. in the meantime the pressure would continue to build for us to intervene and stabilize the i.c.c. regime, to provide the companies the predict ability and certainty they need to invest for the benefit of consumers. however, i think it's only appropriate that our actions today carefully preserve and recognize the reforms that some states already have undertaken. most importantly we have provided for replacement

funding as intrastate access rates decline as a result of our reform that we -- relieves the financial burden on states with their own reforms. so -- to that end we have carefully balanced i.c.c. replacement with the important goal much not burdening consumers with significant increases in their bills. as indicated by our staff analysis, we believe that the overall benefits that will flow to consumers as a result of this reform will far out weigh the minimal price increases they may experience on their phone bills due to i.t.c. reform. i also want to be clear that states will continue to have an important role with respect to arbitration agreements. with respect to u.s.f., states

will continue to designate eligible communications carriers and continue to protect consumers through their carrier of last resort obligations. as technologies evolve, so, too, must the roles of regulators who are experiencing a significant evolution as consumers are using multiple modes of communication sometimes simultaneously. indeed, the underlying cause of the reforms we implement today is due to the enormous technological shift that has occurred over the last 10 years. one constant i have seen, however, is that consumers expect the state regulators to serve and protect them. moreover, those of us at the f.c.c. need the states' nothing on the ground to properly

implement our newspaper universal funding mechanisms. we need the states' assistance in identifying those areas currently not covered by broadband. .

>> i have worked closely with my colleagues to ensure we are providing significant support. they expect they will have access to mobile services that are comparable to anywhere else in this nation. we want and expect our devices to work wherever we are. i believe a budget that reflects the growing importance of mobility to a americans is important. we should offer ongoing support to areas that would not be served otherwise. i am a grateful for the ongoing mobility support. the fund has been increased to 25% over what was originally circulated reflecting the fact

that it is a priority. i also want to thank the chairman for agreeing with me that while support should be phased out, we need to ensure that it is operating in funded before the phasedown is completed for wireless ctc's. it is now fully reflected so that wireless carriers can have some confidence that they want to lose more than 30% of funding before they know what they will qualify for. while it has been paramount -- the paramount purpose of the high cost, it has also provided institutions including schools, health care facilities, and public safety agencies. in order to ensure that these vital institutions can contain the modern services that are

essential to services for their communities, we have provided an opportunity to engage and the network planning stage. similarly, recipients, those who have received service as a result of the fund. accordingly, we will be able to account for all of the benefits that communities receive in support. of the reforms we adopted today, they are all important to make sure communication services are physically available to all americans. those and services cannot be truly a available if consumers could not afford to purchase them or if the devices they need are not available.

i appreciate to those who have called for us to address these needs today. we need to do more in this area. our broadband at adoption task force is working diligently to provide solutions to these issues. i fully believe will be addressing the proposal to adopt projects that benefit low income americans that qualify for the lifelong program. i continue to look forward to working with our task force so that we can make more headway on the significant issues for low- income consumers. i thank you for your tremendous and herculean efforts throughout these proceedings. i know you have made many personal sacrifices to help us

reach this moment. i wish to commend you for the results. you have reviewed our records, listened to numerous interested parties in these proceedings, balanced our concerns, crafted the order and accompanied further notice, and, yes, put up with our office. but please know how much we appreciate all of you. i wish i could say right now that we were at the finish line, but this is a marathon. for those of you who will compete sunday's risk, sadly it will not be me, you have been preparing for this month so we have reached today. we are now apt 20. it just a little further to go. i look forward to our continued engagement on the implementation of these reforms. i also want to join in a chorus in congratulating the chairman and by fellow commissioners on

today's vote. the task before us has not been an easy one. it is certainly what i am proud this commission has finally achieved. commissioner cox and mcdowell, i know you have both witnessed past attempts at reform and you must be proud to date. thank you for your diligence and hard work. and once again, i wanted to express my gratitude for your leadership, engagement, and willingness to listen and address my concerns. and for your honest attempt at reaching a consensus. lastly, i would like for you to give me the privilege of acknowledging the hard work of my wireline advisor. your commitment to our priorities and willingness to make incredible sacrifices serve me and our team well.

you were able to capture and descended those principles i hold dear in numerous meetings and exchanges. i would sincerely thank you margaret mccarthy, exact -- sorry, i could not say all women. all of you captured at those slides for your commitment to reform and for your willingness to serve this nation so notably. -- so nobly. this is an incredible day for all of us. >> to wait commissioner cliburn. this is an effort to harness the benefits of broadband for every american. i am tremendously grateful to each of my colleagues on the commission for working hard, working together, to get this

done. in the work of the staff has been just incredible. i will have more to say about those and others to think as well. this is a once in a generation overhaul of universal service. keeping faith with our nation to talk long commitment to services. we are taking a system designed for the alexander gramm of bel air of order read telephones and modernizing it for the era of steve jobs and the internet teacher he ever imagined. we are reaffirming for the digital age the fundamental american promise of opportunity for all. we are furthering our national goal of connecting the country to wired and wireless broadband. we are helping put america on its proper 21st century footing,

positioning us to lead the world in a fiercely competitive global digital economy. infrastructure has always been a key pillar of american economic success. it has connected consumers, businesses, unleashing an ovation. a broadband internet is the indispensable infrastructure of our 21st century economy. he recognizing this fact for years, respected voices have found it an essential ingredient for competitiveness and job creation. in its 2007 report, comprising about the gathering storm, the national academy of sciences said that accelerating progress before making broadband connectivity available and affordable for all is critical.

they're taking the necessary steps to meet that goal. ibm's e o expressed a view we have heard from other ceos from governors and consumers around the country. he implored policy makers to fix the bridges, but do not forget broadband. he said that it would be a powerful generator of new jobs and growth. building on years of hard work by the fcc and on capitol hill and on stakeholders outside the agency, is commission is acting unanimously and on a bipartisan basis to meet a critical national challenge.

our action will enable millions of americans to work, learn, and innovate on line. it will open new digital opportunity and enhance public safety. it will create jobs in the near term and lay the foundation for enduring job creation, economic growth, and u.s. global competitiveness for years to come. will bring the real benefits to consumers and communities in every part of the country. over the next year, the funds will bring broadband to more than 600,000 a americans who would not have it otherwise. the five years after that, millions more families will be connected. today's order puts us on the path to get broadband to everyday american by the end of the decade. to close the employment gap which it stands at close to 20

million a americans. we are also extending the benefits of mobile broadband coverage to tens of thousands of on served road miles. it the areas where millions of americans work and travel on our air is outcome of that frustration and economic stagnation for all people today. mobil connections are needed and unavailable, when small businesses lose out on customers and productivity, where people in traffic accidents or other disasters cannot reach 91. today we make mobility and service a universal objective for the first time. mobil is one of the most

promising sectors of our economy. the lead the world to global innovation. new and wireless broadband will be a lifeline for rural communities currently being bypassed by the opportunities of the internet evolution. as a result of what we are doing today, young people who did not see a future in their small home town will be able to access a new opportunity. entrepreneur is in small towns will not be able to move to the big city to live their dreams. small-business owners doing everything from starting hunting lodges like a resident i met wanted to do -- they will be able to reach customers and boosted their markets, their efficiency through cloud based services. today's action will empower small businesses that otherwise

would not create new jobs. that includes farmers who did broadband to access commodity prices, real-time weather reports, online auctions. today's action will help connect anchor institutions which can play a vital role in expanding basic digital literacy training so needed in a world where broadband skills are necessary to find jobs and landed jobs. by empowering billions of more americans to engage in e- commerce, the order will grow the size of our overall online

marketplace and provide a boost for main street businesses all over the country including urban areas. heay's action will change landscape for students who are being served by educational opportunity that would otherwise be denied it. it will change the landscape for seniors and people with illnesses providing remote diagnostics and people who would otherwise have no access and would have to travel for hundreds of miles. it will enable parents and underserved areas to finally connect with him their children overseas or other means that require broadband. each of these are examples of people we met. by constraining the growth of the fund, today's reform also minimize the burdens these programs plus all consumers keeping hundreds of millions of

dollars in consumer pockets over the next hundred years. arkansas overhaul of the compensation system ' will gradually eliminate the billions of dollars in substance seat -- and subsidies. our staff estimates the consumer benefits of icc reform will be more than $2 billion annually. consumers will get more value for their money and less waste. these benefits flowed directly from the policy principles and structural reforms we have embraced in this order. the reforms implement the idea that government programs should be modernized to focus on strategic challenges of today and tomorrow, not yesterday. if it will directly take on our country's 21st century infrastructure challenge to enable the prop private sector

to build robust affordable broadband to homes, anchor institutions and underserved communities. icc reforms will meet modern a protocol networks and as a telephone network transition to an ip network. today's order also recognizes, as i mentioned, the growing importance of mobile broadband. we make mobility and independence service objectives. we take significant concrete steps to meet that goal. today's order brings market is competitive bidding into universal service support. in a series of ways including options, we have structured distribution of public funds to ensure real efficiency and accountability in the connect america fund and the mobility fund. for the first time, our order puts the fund on a firm budget.

fiscal responsibility was a principle we announced on day one. we have adhered to that in this order protecting the interests of millions of consumers that contribute to the fund every month. we put in place series of reforms. we also our trust schemes that take advantage of gaps, closing loopholes and our rules. faced with many complex and nuanced policy questions, i believe this commission -- all of us together have reached the resolutions because we have approached the issues the right way. we did not rubber-stamp or adopt proposals in a group of stakeholders, but we welcome all proposals and all constructive engagement. we made our decision on what is right for the american people in our economy based on a fax and data gathered in one of the most extensive record to an fcc history including hearings and

workshops all across the country. all of which were reviewed carefully by this team. we have focused on putting consumers first calibrating the policies we adopt to maximize -- he make sure effective companies faced measured paths so they can invest in networks to better serve consumers and support our economy. we have brought increased clarity to areas of uncertainty created by tensions between new communication services like voice-over internet protocol and our own who are old rules. getting to this point was not easy. it required us all to make tough

choices about what the connect america fund and consumers could not support. it started at a very high level. some would require them to pay a higher share of reformer would increase the size of the fund. some said which is dramatically increase -- it reduces the size of the fund. that would have left behind the millions of americans being bypassed with no prospect of connectivity denying access to the communities. some would have had as operating as if we're riding on a blank slate. of course, we are not. getting to this point not only required choices, it required the engagement of many stakeholders a round the country of our partners in the federal government, the states, tribal communities, the private

sector, the nonprofit community. i appreciate the broad level of engagement. made a difference in our results. that's includes the many members of congress on both sides of the aisle who have worked for years to reform and improve universal service and whose ongoing and constructive input is reflected in our action today. there are too many to think individually in congress, but i am grateful to all of the members of congress who provided input and guidance. the president has been a consistent leader. our actions today help meet national goals of universal access has to wired and wireless broadband. moving forward, i am pleased that the states will play a vital role in ensuring consumers are well served by our service program.

now, very importantly, i entry -- i am deeply grateful to my fellow commissioners who have worked hard to make today possible. they have been fighting to fix these programs for years. --missioner cliburn's strong experience at the statewide level has been a body blow to our efforts from top to bottom. today represents the serious of purpose from each of my colleagues on the commission. it is a better order as a result. on behalf of the american people, i thank each of you. at a time when citizens want solutions and not gridlock, i am proud that this commission is a proving bipartisan reform of a broken system that will deliver a mass of benefits to the

american people. of course, this would not have happened without the tremendous work of the expert staff of this agency. without you, we would not be accomplishing today what has been elusive for many years making reformate viotti. as all of my colleagues have acknowledged, my staff is not only worked hard, they performed brilliantly. crunching numbers, mastering complex technologies, operating at a world class policy level. today's order is a product of that tremendous effort. i am not the first person today to say this. your work makes us proud. it fulfills a vision of the fcc as an expert agency serving our country. there are so many people to think as he saw from that list. each of you sitting here.

we had our first conversations about universal service reform 20 years ago. so many others in our wireless bureau all over the commission. i want to acknowledge the work of the team that worked under the national broadband plan. it includes people no longer on the commission for playing an important role in advancing the ball on these reforms and a significant way. the staff of each of the commissioners on the eighth floor deserve a tremendous amount of credit for mastering these complex topics and for ensuring a serious -- a series collaborative effort.

i mention the fact that so many people from the 84 staff and the bureaus were here last night. that might -- the more important point, i got to anyone can remember the last night you were not here late working on this. we appreciate that so much. you have produced a result that you will be proud of for many years. i want to salute and applaud my office. the quarterback of this effort, and zack, you have ran this effort in a way that makes us all proud. i think we have all seen how

indispensable you are. pretty this together but not be possible without you as well as the staff of the bureau's. your leadership, your persistence, your savvy, we all connor that and appreciate it very much. the bad news to zack and our team and everyone else is our work is not yet done. we have implementation work ahead. we will continue to be intensive with all stakeholders in response to further notice. as my colleagues have mentioned, we still face a tremendous challenge and broadband adoption.

while there is no silver bullet for broadband adoption, the life fund portion can be part of the solution including a significant investment in pilot programs. as my colleagues have also noted, there is work to do on the contribution side. hi will leave with a closing thought. in the 1930's and 1950's when presidents roosevelt and eisenhower directed fund -- federal funding to bridges in the national highway system, they were investing in the then current technologies to connect our people in our communities.

the same was true for electricity. the same was true for telephone service. key 20th century service achievement. all of those investments have paid tremendous dividends for our economy and our country. today broadband internet truly is the information superhighway. the key connective infrastructure of the 21st century. it is what will drive our competitiveness, brought opportunity for decades to come. our action today is firmly rooted in sound principles that have served our country well in the past. i am confident it will help deliver a bright future for all americans. with that, let us proceed to a vote. all of those in favor say aye.

all those in favor say nay. the request for a tour of privileges is granted. i am asked to make the following reminder that under the rules, the sunshine. of prohibition -- please announce our next item. >> here is a look at the prime- time schedule. coming up, c-span scheduled the contenders. the three-time york governor lost to harry truman in the 1948 election after being declared the winner in a famous headline. a spoke earlier today at a conference on u.s. arab relations.